Genesis 39 - Loving God Matters

Main Idea: Love for God will result in His blessings & character being lived out.

• God’s blessings follow those who love Him

  • They enjoy the blessing of God’s presence with them.

  • They enjoy the blessing of God’s work through them.

  • They enjoy the blessing of God’s glory being shown by them.

• God’s character follows those who love Him

  • They choose to work hard because God works on their behalf.

  • They choose to be trustworthy because God is trustworthy.

  • They choose to be loyal because God is full of loyal love.

  • They choose to reject sin because God is holy and just.

  • They choose to continue doing right because God is faithful.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

In our study, we are making our way through the end of Genesis. We started a couple weeks ago at Genesis 37, and we are going all the way to the end. So we'll finish up maybe about first week of October or so.

But this initial section of chapters 37 through 41, I've called character matters, because as we see these chapters detailing the lives of Joseph, his brothers, Judah, we're going to see that the choices that we make have a genuine impact on those

around us. So the first week, we saw that a love for others matters, and we saw Joseph and how God had placed some calls on Joseph's life, that his brothers hated him. They hated that he was more loved by their father Jacob than they were.

And so they initially had wanted to kill him. They ended up just selling him into slavery. So he went down to Egypt.

And then we saw last week how one of those brothers, Judah, that though he was the one that was like, okay, you know, he's our flesh and blood. We shouldn't kill him. But let's sell him over to the Ishmaelites so they can take him away.

And that way, at least, we'll get some money from what we've done to our brother. We saw Judah and his abject wickedness in a hundred different ways, his abdication of responsibility. We saw that our owning our responsibilities matters.

What we're going to see today from Chapter 39 is... Chapters 39 really to about 47 or 48 are all about the life of Joseph.

So Chapter 38 is kind of a jump in between that it says, okay, here's the story of Joseph, but I want to take one moment to highlight that the way that Joseph behaves is not like oh, yeah, this is just how everyone acted back then.

Chapter 38 shows us that God's, even people that were called by the name of God, that they were wicked, that they were selfish, that they were immoral, that they were not following the Lord.

And so as we come to Chapter 39, we see a man that is not in the land of promise like his brothers were. We see a man that is not in a position of owning things and having lots of kids and able to make business deals.

We see a slave in a faraway land. And so after Chapter 38, we should almost be reading this, if you're reading this for the very first time, a little bit concerned of, I wonder what's going to happen to Joseph.

Because we read in 37 that God had these wonderful plans for him, but now it seems like all of those plans have been destroyed. And so that's where we're going to be today. And we're going to see that a love for God matters.

With his main thought, love for God will result in his blessings and his character being lived out. Love for God will result in his blessings and his character being lived out. Would you pray with me?

We're going to dive into the story and see what the Lord has for us today. Dear Lord, we love you. We pray that you would be with us during this time.

God, I ask that you would speak first and foremost to my heart. Lord, thank you for the encouragement that we can get from this portion of your word.

And God, we ask that for each one of us today, we would have a desire to love you in such a way that it comes out of us, just like it did in the life of Joseph. Lord, we love you, and we pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Now, we're observing the Lord's Supper at the conclusion of our service today, which means I gotta hurry. And those shades that are normally open are closed, so that we were able to be a little bit cooler in here with the heat wave.

So if I see some of you nodding, no, number one, I love you. Number two, the Lord gives sleep to people, and many of us have been in those moments where we couldn't go to sleep. So if you happen to fall asleep, you're totally fine.

Don't seek to, like don't bring a pillow and like, oh, beautiful. It's church time, it's time to go to sleep. Like, don't try to do it.

But if you do, all good. But that does mean I'm going to try and preach a little faster today.

4:15

Josephʼs Success

Genesis 39 and verse number one. Now, Joseph had been taken to Egypt. An Egyptian named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him there.

All right. We'll see how this goes. We know about some slaves in Egypt.

Even the first people reading through this portion of scripture would have been the Israelites as Moses detailed their family history. And they'd go, Oh, man, Joseph is just like me. I've been there.

I've been a slave in Egypt. Says the Lord was, what's that word there? With Joseph.

And he became a, what's that word? Successful man serving in the household of his Egyptian master. What a thought that even a slave can be successful in all they put their hands to if the Lord is with them.

In whatever avenue of life you find yourself, the Lord can make you successful within that realm if you are with the Lord. Now, that does not mean, Oh, yes, I'm going to have a Lamborghini. I'm going to have a million dollars.

I'm never going to be sick. No, Joseph is a slave here, but he's a successful slave. If you are homebound, you can be a successful homebound person.

If you're a grieving person, you can be a successful griever. But the Lord being with us is the most important thing that we need.

Verse number three, when his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he did successful, pause right there. Notice it doesn't say when his master saw that Joseph did everything successfully.

Is that what Potiphar noticed? No. Who did he notice was with him?

The Lord. Which makes me think, Joseph must have told him. There must have been, from the mouth of Joseph, over and over again, a recounting of the good God who had called Abraham and Isaac and Jacob into the land of promise.

And that Joseph couldn't help talking about this God. And so, when Potiphar is looking at Joseph's life, he can only come to one conclusion. He can't say, Joseph is so great, Joseph is so wise, Joseph is so successful.

Instead, what he sees is, God is with him. How do I know? He won't shut up about it.

He won't stop telling me that God is with him. I always get encouraged. Roger often tells me, he says, the Lord is with you, or the Holy Spirit was with you today.

And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that on my good days, the Holy Spirit is with me. Thankful that on my bad days, the Lord is no less by my side.

The Lord was with Joseph when he was dreaming in the house of his father, and the Lord was with Joseph when he was a slave in a faraway land.

So when Potiphar noticed all of this success, Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant. Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority.

From the time that he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptians' house. What are those next three words there? Because of Joseph.

God's blessing and honoring of you and your work can result in blessing flowing out to those around you.

Your character matters not just because of your relationship with God, but because your relationship with God can affect every other relationship in your life.

If you get this right, though there will be some difficulties here, as we saw even with Joseph and his brothers, if we get this right, we will be all right. It says, the Lord's blessing was on all that he owned, in his house and in his fields.

He left all that he owned under Joseph's authority. He did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

8:11

Joseph Resists Temptation

Now, Joseph was well-built and handsome. Which sounds like an odd statement, you know, right there at the end of it until you get to verse number 7. After some time, his master's wife looked longingly at Joseph and said, sleep with me.

Okay, stop. Now, we just read through chapter 38. Jacob, or sorry, not Jacob, Judah, we saw over and over again his immorality.

That he's just walking on business trips, you know, going to Shear Sheep, and he sees someone that he thinks might be an immoral prostitute by the side of the road, and he goes, oh yeah, yep, I'm going there.

Under no compulsion or anything like that. Joseph here, faraway land, slave, and now his master's wife says, I want you. We could be really scared, except we've already seen where Joseph's focus is.

The person that you are before you get to the moment of temptation or decision is going to make the impact on what happens after.

You cannot be walking your own way in selfishness, self-centeredness, lust, anger, whatever, and then get to the moment of temptation where it's put before you. Are you going to follow God's way or are you going to follow your way of sin?

If you have already been walking your way, when the time of decision comes, you're probably going to continue on that way.

But Joseph, because he had been with the Lord, because he had had a love for the Lord all that way up till then, we read in verse number eight, it says, but he refused.

Look, he said to his master's wife, with me here, my master does not concern himself with anything in his house, and he has put all that he owns under my authority. No one in this house is greater than I am.

He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. Okay. The writer of Genesis here, Moses, and then any later editors along the way, would have had something very specific in mind here.

Do you guys remember a place where everything was good and everything was able to be selected except for one thing? Garden of Eden.

And if you will, in this moment, Joseph coming to this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, believe what God says, follow it, or choose your own definition of right and wrong. He says, no, no, no. God and Potiphar here has given me all of this.

I can eat of any of the trees of the garden except this one. He says, so how could I do this immense evil? And how could I sin against God?

Joseph says, it would be wrong to do this when Potiphar has trusted me because he's been kind to me, so I should be kind to him. If you will, that's kind of golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But then he says, how could I sin against God? There is no sin that any of us do against a person that is not ultimately against God. This is why David could say in Psalm 51 to the Lord against you.

You only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. We would all remember in the story of David, you know, he sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah, he sinned against some of his men, he sinned against servants.

Like, seems like there's a lot of people that David sinned against. But David recognized, my ultimate accountability is to God himself. Yes, that means I should do right by others, but every sin that you and I commit is a sin against a holy God.

So bringing it to right here where this passage is, your sexual activity is a sin or obedience to a holy God. Your financial choices can either be right and good in the sight of God, or it can be a sin against him.

The way that you talk about other people, the possibilities of gossip or slander, yelling, hatred, anger, all of those can either be sin against a holy God, or if you refuse bad talk and choose instead good talk, that can be a step of obedience

towards God. So here Joseph says, no, there's no way. Then verse number 10 says, although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her.

If you have maybe a more formal translation, it might say he refused to lie with her or to be with her. There is a little bit more literal phrasing there. Notice here that this temptation was not just a one and done.

Over and over and over again, the opportunity for sin presented itself. And over and over and over again, he said no.

Sometimes we as believers, recognizing our sin or our fallen nature, we can think, okay, well, I might be able to say no to temptation one time, but there's no way that I can keep on saying no.

Here the story of Joseph reminds us that when the Lord is with us, he can give the ability to say no to sin and wickedness over and over again. There is no sin or temptation that is stronger than the Holy Spirit of God.

There is no sin or temptation that is too great for the Son of God. And so may we recognize in our times of temptation that it's not a foregone conclusion that we must fall to the sin.

Instead, crying out to God, fixing our attention on what is right and what is true and our accountability to God, we can, like Jesus in his temptations, we can turn to the Word of God and say, no, I need to worship the Lord.

I need to look to the Lord for my needs and my provisions. And I need to follow only him. Verse number 11.

Now, one day, he went into the house to do his work, and none of the household servants were there. She grabbed him by his garment and said, sleep with me. But leaving his garment in her hand, he escaped and ran outside.

Here, as you think about the story, this would have been the easiest moment for Joseph to finally say, man, I just cannot catch a break.

I've been through so many hardships in my life, and right now, this is kind of forceful coercion into this action that I've said no to over and over and over again. Fine, I'll just go with it.

But here in this moment, Joseph embodies what Paul would later write to Timothy, flee youthful lust, run away from youthful passions that war against your soul. So here's what Joseph does.

He says, leaving his garment in her hand, he escaped and ran outside.

15:18

False Accusation

When she saw that he had left the garment with her and had run outside, she called her household servants. Look, she said to them, My husband brought a Hebrew man to make fools of us.

Notice there, she assigns the blame not just to a person, but it's in a style of racial superiority here. Oh, it's a Hebrew man that has done this.

Just know in your life and mine, whenever we need to throw in someone's ethnicity into the details of things, that might be a good indication that we might be acting in some racial animosity there.

Says, My husband brought a Hebrew man to make fools of us. He came to me so he could sleep with me, and I screamed as loud as I could. Here, of course, this is a lie that she is stating.

When he heard me screaming for help, he left his garment beside me and ran outside. She put Joseph's garment beside her until his master came home. Now, do you guys remember from two weeks ago?

Does this story sound familiar? Joseph's coat is taken, and then his, like, father figure is lied to about the coat that Joseph was wearing? Do you remember a coat of many colors?

Here we have the exact same thing happening again. So now the master, Potiphar, comes home. Then she told him the same story.

The Hebrew slave you brought to us came to make a fool of me, but when I screamed for help, he left his garment beside me and ran outside. I also want to highlight this here.

Honesty, especially honesty as it relates to our interactions with law enforcement, judges, our interaction with government. Our truthfulness and honesty is vitally important.

You can think even in the Ten Commandments that the Lord tells us to not bear false witness. Sometimes we, you know, shrink that down to don't lie, which it's also a good thing not to lie.

But specifically there in the Ten Commandments is, as you are called to give an account for grave consequences in the lives of others, be truthful.

When we are dishonest in our dealings here as with Potiphar's wife, it then damages the ability, the ability of others to get justice.

You can think in our world today, I know even with as many people as we have in the room, many of you have either suffered abuse, sexual abuse even, or you have loved ones that have gone through that.

When people have done false reports, it is incredibly damaging not just for the life of the person that they lied against, but also for the lives of all the people that will come after that, when they give truthful accounts, doubt is cast onto their

stories as a result of the lies. May we as the people of God speak what is true over and over and over again, because it not only blesses our lives when we tell the truth, it blesses the lives of all those around us.

Verse 19, when his master heard the story, his wife told him, these are the things your slave did to me. He was furious, as I hope any of us would be. Here, Potiphar is not to be blamed for his reaction to the story.

All he could go off of was his wife's testimony and Joseph's testimony. With the information that he was given, he makes a right choice based on the information that he had at the time.

We know all of the surrounding parts of the story, so we could say, Oh, Potiphar, how could you believe her?

But even as we think back to Genesis 3, and as Adam and Eve, they partake of the fruit, God says to Adam, Because you listened to the voice of your wife and did not obey me. And then he goes on and gives some of the consequences there.

So there's even a little bit of that picture that is being drawn in here.

Recognize even from that, that our spouses, our family members, our friends, much as we love them, we need to be listening to the voice of God, not just the voice of our friends or family or spouses.

Now, I say that as a general warning, not specifically for this passage, because again, given the evidence that was presented to Potiphar, he did make the right choice, and he ought to be furious at the attempted rape of his wife.

And it says, And Potiphar had Joseph thrown into prison, where the king's prisoners were confined.

19:55

Godʼs Presence in Prison

So Joseph was there in prison. Okay, if we're reading through this, we're going, man, I need everyone just to do like a giant, like, sigh of sadness. We would think, man, Joseph is just at rock bottom.

He cannot catch a break. But the Lord. But the Lord was with Joseph, and extended kindness to him.

Your situations do not determine the affections of God for you. You can be in a prison, falsely accused, after you'd been made a slave and rejected by your family.

But God can be with you, and God can be extending kindness to you, even when the circumstances around you are awful.

No matter what your situation today, you can know that you are in the favor of God, and that you have the presence of God with you through the Holy Spirit.

Not based on how you feel in a given moment, or what's happening around you, but based on the truth of God's word, that you know, if I've called on the name of the Lord to be saved, that the Holy Spirit is that down payment that is on my life until

the moment that God calls me home. And you can know that the Lord is with you in whatever circumstance that you find yourself. It says, he granted him favor with the prison ward.

So if you remember beginning of the story, Joseph has favor with his dad. Well, he gets sent away from his dad, and he gets sent down to Egypt. He finds favor with Potiphar.

Well, then he gets sent down to the prison. And in the prison, he finds favor with the prison warden.

Can I ask you, the way that you treat people, the way that you talk to people, are you consistently finding favor with person after person because you are treating them with the love and respect that God would have you to?

Are you finding favor in room after room? Now, that doesn't mean that everyone's going to like you, because if someone doesn't like God, they're not going to like you if you are following God. Joseph's brothers didn't have favor for him.

Potiphar's wife did not have the right kind of favor for him. But here Joseph finds favor after favor after favor.

The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph's authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there.

The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph's authority because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made everything that he did successful. You can be successful in the field. You can be successful as a slave.

You can be a successful prisoner if the Lord is with you.

22:33

Love for God

What's the thread that ties all of these things together in this passage? It's that love for God matters. Because Joseph loved the Lord and followed him, God's blessings and God's character kept pouring out of the life of Joseph.

Matthew Henry, a pastor from the 1700s, said about this passage, Those that have wisdom and grace have that which cannot be taken away.

Joseph's brethren had stripped him of his coat of many colors, but they could not strip him of his virtue and his prudence. Today, as we close out this message, there's just two main points there.

First, God's blessings follow those who love him, and God's character follows those who love him. First, God's blessings follows those who love him. They enjoy the blessing of God's presence with them.

We saw it over and over again. The Lord was with Joseph. Matthew Henry said, When Joseph had none of all his relations with him, he had his God with him, even in the house of the Egyptian.

Joseph was separated from his family, but not from his God, banished from his father's house. But the Lord was with him, and this comforted him. It is God's presence with us that makes all we do prosperous.

Those that would prosper must therefore make God their friend, and those that do prosper must therefore give God the praise. Or Charles Spurgeon, a pastor in England in the 1800s said, Having the Lord with us is the inheritance of all the saints.

For what blessing do the apostles give the churches in their letters but a desire that the triune God would be with us? To the church in Rome, Paul says, Now the God of peace be with you all.

To the church in Corinth, he writes, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. To the Thessalonians, he says, The Lord be with you all.

Did not our glorious Lord say, Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age? What better way could I greet you this morning than in the words of Boaz to the reapers, The Lord be with you?

And what kinder reply could you give me than the Lord bless you? God's blessing of his presence goes with those that love him. God is never going to say, Well, you love me, but I'm a little indifferent about you today.

You know, Seth or or Zach, like I don't really know. Yeah, you love me, but I don't know if I love you. No, my friend.

The only reason any of us love the Lord is because he first loved us. And so his presence with us follows us each and every step of the journey. You are never alone.

It doesn't matter if no one else knows your circumstance. It doesn't matter if no one else is there in your home. If no one is calling on you day after day, the Lord is with you.

He knows you. He loves you. He cares about you.

Secondly, those that love God, enjoy the blessings of God's work through them. That Joseph found success time and time again, as the Lord was with him. That it was the Lord that was blessing the work.

It wasn't that Joseph was just smarter or better than any other person. It was the Lord working through Joseph.

Pastor Tony Evans says, We should be the most punctual, the most productive, the most trustworthy, the most honest employees in our companies. Knowing God is with us should make us stand out dramatically.

Are you allowing God to influence your work ethic? Go to your job each day or wake up each morning in your home and consider how would Jesus live today?

Remember his work as a carpenter and think about the kind of effort and care that he would put in and put that same amount of care into your work. Why? Because you are Christ's hands and feet.

If you're a school teacher, be the kind of school teacher that Jesus would be. If you work in the health care fields, be the kind of health care worker that Jesus would be. You say, it's not fair.

He could just touch someone and they could be healed. Yeah, but do the work. Jesus didn't just snap his fingers and make cabinets or snap his fingers and make doors.

He put the work in. Here Joseph proved over and over again, if the Lord is with me, I'm going to put my hands hard to work wherever God has placed you, put in all of your effort.

Those that love the Lord enjoy the blessing of God's glory being shown by them. That Joseph made it clear to everyone around him, the Lord is the one that's blessing. The Lord is the one that is with me.

Can people think that God is real because of how you work, how you talk to others, how you process your life and its successes and difficulties?

When people interact with you, do they go, Oh, there must be something to this Jesus thing, man, because the person that Roger was, he ain't that person anymore. The person that Samantha used to be, man, she's not that anymore.

The hardships that Deena and Rod are going through, they're not interacting with those hardships like everyone else that I interact with. God is real because I see how the people that know him are different because of him.

The goal isn't to go, man, all glory to Marla because she's just so incredible. The goal is all glory to God, but people would know to glorify God because they have seen and heard us. Jesus lived his life and died his death for the glory of God.

Will you live for God's glory too? This last main point here today, God's character follows those who love him. That when you love God, you want to be like him.

So we see this in Joseph's life over and over again. They choose to work hard because God works on their behalf. So God works hard, so I work hard.

Don't be a lazy, half-hearted employee. Scripture says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Secondly, those that love God choose to be trustworthy because God is trustworthy.

Joseph could be trusted in overseeing the prison or overseeing Potiphar's household or in being right in his interactions with Potiphar's wife because God had been trustworthy with him, so he could be trustworthy with others. God hasn't lied to you.

Don't lie to others. God has entrusted things to you, and he is trustworthy with everything that we've ever given him, so may we be trustworthy when others call on us.

Choose to be fully honest in your dealings with others because God is honest with you, warts and all.

As it relates even to your speech with other people, no one will benefit from you lying to them, and even if you have to have a hard conversation with someone, it will make them better.

You will have been a good friend pointing out a flaw, and it will bless everyone else that is affected by the other person's change of behavior. Those that love God choose to be loyal because God is full of loyal love.

Joseph had been loyal to Potiphar even when Potiphar's wife wasn't even loyal to him. Can I ask you, are you loyal in your marriage?

Do your online work or friendship interactions look more like Joseph's commitment to loyalty or Potiphar's wife's interactions? Are you loyal to your friends, to your family, or to your church?

If someone knows you, do they know that you will do right by them? Do you faithfully keep your commitments? One of my favorite Hebrew words in Scripture is the word chesed.

Can everyone say chesed? The old Bible translator, William Tyndale, back in the early 1500s, he came across that word and there wasn't a great word to put it into English, and so he invented the word loving kindness.

Many of our translations nowadays, some of them use the word loving kindness, and other ones use steadfast love, covenant love, loyal love.

It's a love that says, I have entered into relationship with you, and so as a result, I'm going to stick by you. I'm going to love, care, defend you. I'm going to protect you because of this covenant, loyal love.

That's God's character. Will it be ours as well? Those that love God choose to reject sin because God is holy and just.

Like Joseph saying, how could I do this great sin against God? Do you make your choices in your words because it's what you feel like saying or because they're words that God wants you to say to or about the other person?

Do you treat your family the way that you do because they made you feel that way or because you are treating them how God would? Let God and his character be the determining factor in your choices, and you will never regret it.

Judah, in last week's sermon, made his choices based on how he felt, what he wanted, and it led to deaths in his family, led to regret, and it led to consequences that he could never take back.

Choose, I'm going to do what's right because I love my God, and I want to be like him in the choices that I make. Lastly, those that love God choose to continue doing right because God is faithful.

Joseph could have given up after his family rejected the dreams and started hating him. Joseph could have given up when they threw him into the pit. He could have given up when they sold him into slavery.

He could have given up when he was a slave in Potiphar's house. He could have given up following God when he got cast into prison. But over and over and over again, Joseph said, I love the Lord.

He is with me. And so it's going to affect the way that I live, that I'm going to keep on living for God, even when it doesn't seem like I'm getting anything out of it. Solomon would tell us a righteous person falls down and gets up seven times.

Will you choose right over and over again, even when others have failed you or life circumstances have seemed against you time and time again? What is the difference between last week's sermon and this week's sermon?

What made the difference between Judah and Joseph? It wasn't the upbringing. They had the same home that they grew up in.

It wasn't that one was just a better person and the other was a worse person. The difference was a love for God. You, today, wherever you find yourself, at 99 or 9 years old, you get a choice this week.

Will I love God? And will His character and His blessings flow from my life to those around me?

33:54

Joseph Foreshadows Christ

Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't say here at the end. Joseph, in many ways, pictures what the future Messiah, Jesus Christ, would be. Rejected by his family, falsely accused, and Jesus even being killed as a result of those false accusations.

That Jesus was the one that because he loved the Lord, he was with him. You can think back to Jesus' baptism as the Holy Spirit descends on him, and the Father says, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

That the Father and Spirit were with the Son, and he lived his life in perfect obedience. He said no to temptation over and over again, even as Joseph did.

And the only way that we can fight temptation, the only way we can have a genuine love for God is through that relationship with Jesus. This doesn't just come because you try harder. It comes as a result of you going, God, I can't.

In my own flesh, in my own ability, I'll be a Judah time and time again. But Lord, with your Spirit, with you living in me and working through me, I can live the kind of Christ-centered life that you have called me to. We're going to take a moment.

We're going to pray together. Because we have so many different people that are out for vacation today, we're going to do Lord's Supper a little bit different. We did it this way, I think, a few months ago where we'll have time of prayer.

We're going to encourage everyone to stand to come up to the front, kind of filling in the center and then going out the sides. So down the center and then out the sides. And we'll be handing the elements to the Lord's Supper out to you as we go.

But I want to encourage you today. Do you have a love for God? And is His character and His blessings, is that what is being lived out in your life and in mine?

When the Holy Spirit lives in us, when we are obeying Him, He does transform us. We will not be the same people that we were before, but are we allowing the Holy Spirit of God to change us today?