From His Heart

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Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, you'll learn to tell if you've been transformed by the Gospel.

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Here's the thing. When you really get saved, the Lord changes you. You go home on a different road. True salvation puts you on another road in life. You get off the broad road and you get on the narrow road.

Hey, what road are you on? He can heal every scar with real truth, real love.

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How can you truly be transformed by God from the inside out? How does that happen? Find out today as we follow the wise men. This is from his heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve and a message today entitled the Miracle of Transformation.

Now, transformation is defined as a process of change, alteration, or conversion from one state into another. A profound modification, so to speak. Today, Pastor Jeff will share three steps the wise men took that produced in them and will produce in you and me real transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This lesson is from Pastor Jeff's brand new three-message series, the Miracles of Christmas. If you missed part one of this lesson from last time, you can go online to listen again by clicking the listen link at fromhisheart.org.

Now, though, open your Bible to Matthew, chapter two. Here again is Pastor Jeff to conclude the series, the Miracles of Christmas and this lesson, the Miracle of Transformation.

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Here's our question for today. How can you be truly transformed by God from the inside out? How can you see the transformation of salvation take place in your life? There are three steps to take as you follow the wise men, follow the Magi.

Number one, you can begin to seek the Lord. Now we run into this group called the Magi. They were the ones who instructed the king and counseled him. Daniel was chief of the wise men; he was chief of the Magi. He had influence because very few were like Daniel in terms of his walk and relationship with the Lord. He had great influence with those guys, and he told them about a prophecy in the book of Numbers that talked about a star and a scepter. These guys had been told that there was coming one day a Messiah, the King of Israel, and they would notice it because the star would reveal that. They saw his star in the east and said, "We need to come and worship him. The King of the Jews has been born, the one that we've been told about for centuries." So they left their place in the east, probably in the Babylonian area, and made the trip to Jerusalem. They came to Jerusalem because that's the capital, the city of the great king. It's about 900 miles.

Now, you can begin to seek the Lord, but know this: seeking takes time and effort. Seeking comes with a wonderful promise, which is found in Jeremiah 29:13-14, where the Lord says, "You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord." These guys were seeking, and they weren't just haphazardly seeking or half-heartedly seeking. They were obviously all in because you wouldn't make that kind of trip unless you were all in seeking him who has been born the King of the Jews.

So they come to Jerusalem, and now it's a problem. I don't think they put two and two together, but they probably didn't know how much of a psycho Herod was. Herod said he was king of the Jews, but he wasn't even a Jew. Herod was a descendant of Esau. The line of the Jews goes through Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. Jacob and Esau are twin brothers; Jacob is the firstborn, and Esau is the second. But the Jews come through Jacob. God doesn't choose Esau; he chooses Jacob. The scripture says, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," not that he had this thing about Esau, but that he chose Jacob. Herod was an Idumean; he came from Esau, yet he fancied himself as the king of the Jews. He was a brutal guy, just a horrible person.

Well, he is upset at the news, so he sends the Magi away. They don't know all that Herod has done, probably. They don't know how awful he is. So they say, "Okay," and they go, not knowing where to go. They just set out toward Bethlehem. It says, "When after hearing the King," in verse nine, "they went their way, and the star which they had seen in the east went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was." There wasn't any guesswork; this star is not a regular star. You can't find it in the sky. It's something that God put there just to lead these guys.

And you know, "You seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart." These guys were searching with all their heart, and the Lord says, "Boom, this is where you go." They come into the house where the child is, see the star, and rejoice exceedingly with great joy. Hey, you can begin to seek the Lord as they did.

The second step is that you can begin to worship the Lord. They said, "We saw his star in the east, and we've come to worship him." The word for worship that's used in the New Testament is "proskuneo," which means to bow in homage and to kiss the hand. It pictures a dog coming to his master and licking the hand of his master. That's worship. You get down low before the Lord. Worship is reserved for God alone.

Remember, John tried to worship the angel in Revelation chapter 19 that showed him the marriage supper of the Lamb. The marriage supper of the Lamb is so mind-blowing in its glory and splendor that John was so overcome he bowed down to worship the angel. The angel said, "Don't do that. Get up. You worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." The devil tried to get Jesus to worship him on the mount of Transfiguration, and Jesus said, "You shall worship God, and him only shall you serve." Worship, "proskuneo," is reserved for God, and the Lord, as stated in John chapter four, is seeking worshipers.

Remember, Jesus told the woman at the well, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, Mount Gerizim, and you say in Jerusalem is the place that you ought to worship." He said, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers aren't going to worship on a mountain; they're going to worship in spirit and truth. The Father seeks true worshipers to worship him in spirit and truth."

These guys had come to worship, and it says in verse 11, "After coming into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped him." They worshiped him, fell to the ground, and worshiped. I love that. These guys are big shots, Persian kingmakers. They're not just three guys on three mangy camels; they have a whole entourage with soldiers. These guys are a big deal, and they immediately see the child and fall down before him to worship. They recognized, obviously through divine revelation, that this is not just the son of David; this is the Son of God.

True worship comes with humility and surrender. You can't worship the Lord unless you are humble before him, unless you get low before him, unless you take yourself out of the equation and just come and fall down before him. Now, Mary and Joseph knew this baby is God. Can you imagine? You know, Mark Lowry sings, "Mary, did you know when you kissed your little baby, you've kissed the face of God?" She would know that. She knows this is a miraculous birth, a child from the Holy Spirit of God. I can just imagine looking into the face of Jesus as he was little like that for hours and hours. This is God veiled in flesh, the Godhead.

You come with humility and surrender, and that's what these guys did. The question to you and me is, have you bowed your knee to the King? You know, Herod wouldn't do it. Herod responded with anger to the news of the King; he wanted to kill the King of the Jews. The religious leaders and the people who lived in Jerusalem, who no doubt heard the whole city was stirred up about the Magi coming and wanting to worship the one who has been born King of the Jews, didn't respond angrily to the Lord, but they responded with indifference. They responded like so many people do: "Oh, yeah, that's nice. The Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, about five or six miles away. We could get there in an hour and a half or so. It's not a real long walk."

Nobody came; nobody bothered to come. Only the wise men, who had been traveling for 900 miles, were the only ones that went to Bethlehem. So Herod was angry about it, and the others were just indifferent. Some people get angry about the message of Jesus. I remember talking to a guy on an airplane years ago about the Lord. He was friendly until I brought up the subject of Jesus, and then he wasn't so friendly anymore. He said, "I don't want to talk to you about that." I said, "Oh, come on." He was kind of laughing still, you know, "Let's not talk about that, Jeff." I said, "No, really, let's talk about that." He said, "No, I don't want to talk about that." I said, "Whoa, why is that?" He goes, "I told you, I don't want to talk about that." He didn't talk to me the rest of the two-and-a-half-hour flight. I'm sitting right next to the guy; it was a little awkward, to say the least.

Some people get angry, and then others are just indifferent. They just, you know, as it says in Isaiah, "Oh, we like sheep have gone astray; each one has turned to his own way." We just kind of say, "Oh, yeah, that's nice," and we do our own thing, saying, "I just don't have time for that; I'm too busy with other things." How could anything compare with the news that the King of the Jews has been born? Are you worshiping him with humility and surrender?

Then true worship is expressed in generous giving. I love this because it says they opened their treasures and presented to him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Those were specific gifts that spoke of Jesus, his person, and his ministry. Gold is for a king, frankincense is incense, and that's the gift you would give to a priest. Jesus is our high priest who offered himself; he went inside the veil and offered himself on the altar. Myrrh is the gift of a savior, and that's what they wrapped Jesus' body in when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus went to Pilate and requested the body of Jesus. They took myrrh and a mixture of aloes and prepared his body for burial.

So those gifts they gave to Jesus were expensive; they weren't cheap gifts. Here's the message in that: when you really come and seek the Lord, find the Lord, and worship the Lord, bowing down before him, you give him your best. You don't give him your leftovers. You give him your best. You know, in the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, the Lord had a serious issue with his people. What was that? They were bringing him the scraps of their lives for offerings. They would bring animals to the Lord for sacrifice, and you were supposed to bring the unblemished; you were supposed to bring the best of your flocks to the Lord for a sacrifice, but they were bringing the worst.

They were actually bringing to the Lord that which had been torn in the field, where a sheep would be attacked by a wolf, and the wolf would kill the sheep and rip it up. The Lord had said in the book of Exodus, "If that ever happens, and it will happen, don't eat that torn-up lamb; give that to the dogs. That becomes dog food." But in the book of Malachi, that's what they were bringing to the Lord as a sacrifice. They were bringing to God their dog food and saying, "Here you go, Lord; aren't you pleased with me?" The Lord says, "For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is feared among the nations. Don't bring me your dog food; don't bring me your scraps."

The wise men from the east, the Magi, brought the best for the King. Are you bringing your best to the King? I'm talking to myself here. Are you bringing your best? You know, when we have a time with the Lord, a quiet time, are we bringing our best? Are we bringing our full attention? Are we listening, "Speak, Lord; your servant is listening," as little Samuel said? He's not interested in your scraps; he's not interested in your little bits of time. He's the King of kings and Lord of lords, and true worship is expressed in that generous giving. You know, one of the things, if you've been around our church for any time at all, you'll notice that we don't harp on giving—financial giving. We talk about it; it's part of worship, obviously a big part of worship, but we don't focus on that.

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Why?

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Because it's secondary to the heart. When your heart is right with God, and we talk about heart a lot. When your heart is right with God, your heart is connected to your wallet and to your pocketbook. And when your heart is right, your money follows you.

Think about Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19. Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, that little guy that couldn't see for the crowd, so he climbs up in the sycamore tree, and Jesus said, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down for today I must eat at your house." And he said, "My house? That would be awesome." And so he's excited that the Lord would come to his house.

As they're eating, and the Bible doesn't tell us all the ins and outs of what that conversation was about, but it does say this: Zacchaeus said to the Lord, "Lord, half my possessions I give to the poor. And if I've defrauded anyone of anything, I'm going to pay him back four times as much." And Jesus said, "Today, salvation has come to this house, for he too is a child of Abraham. For the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." And Zacchaeus was lost. How do we know that he got saved? Jesus said, "He got saved. Salvation has come to this house." And the evidence is he began to give.

These guys that came 900 plus miles away, their hearts were right, and so they gave. And as they were wrapping their gifts, so to speak, in Babylon, they weren't bringing the "let's not put out the fine china, let's put out the second-rate stuff." No, they were bringing the best. This is the best. Because we're offering this to the King of the Jews, who is worthy of worship.

You can begin to seek the Lord, you can begin to worship the Lord, and then step number three, you can begin to follow the Lord, to follow him. Now, I love this last verse in this passage. "And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi left for their own country by another way." That's what it says in New American Standard. In the Contemporary English Version, it says this: "Later, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they went back home by another road." I love that.

Why? Because that shows that when you come, when you seek the Lord and when you find him, and when you bow down and surrender yourself to him, and worship him from your heart and give all, you open the treasure of your heart and everything flows from that, and you give him all. You're changed. And you will never be the same again.

My Uber driver, I was in Orlando just a few weeks ago, and I always like to strike up a conversation with the Uber driver. It's called Uber Evangelism. So I was doing Uber Evangelism, and this guy was from Brazil. First guy that picked me up from the airport, he was from Brazil. He spoke Portuguese and very little English. I speak English and very little Portuguese. So we had some trouble. I tried to hit him with a little bit of Spanish that I know. You know, Spanish is pretty close to Portuguese. But we didn't have a great conversation because he didn't understand me. I didn't understand him.

But the guy that drove me to the airport, he could speak English really well. I was able to tell him I was a pastor. He asked me about that. "What is that all about?" I told him about my testimony. He said these words: "How do you know that Jesus is really in your life?" Because he had picked up a woman, and she invited him to church. He went to church, and he said, "You know, I received Jesus too, but I don't know, how do you know that you're really a Christian?"

So I was able to tell him. I said, "Because he changes you from the inside out." I said, "The way I knew I was a Christian, I was getting ready to participate in a sin. And all of a sudden, God convicted my heart. I'd never felt that before. And God told me no." I said, "I knew after that experience that something had changed inside of me." He said, "I've had that happen to me." He could relate to that. It was so cool.

But here's the thing. When you really get saved, the Lord changes you. You go home on a different road. True salvation puts you on another road in life. Jesus talked about the two roads in Matthew, chapter seven. He said, "Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad, that leads to destruction. And many are those who enter by it. For the gate is small, and the way, the road is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it."

Now, when you come to Christ, you get off the broad road and you get on the narrow road. As one preacher put it, "Where is the broad road? Where is the narrow road?" Well, the narrow road isn't a whole different place. The narrow road is you turn around; now you're coming up against the broad road. You're on your own road, yes, but you're coming up against the pressures of this world and the God of this world. And don't be squeezed into the mold of this world, as the scripture says in Romans, chapter 12.

Hey, what road are you on? Because true salvation puts you on another road. You're on the narrow road that leads to life, and your life begins to change. True salvation is a growing relationship with Jesus. That's what it is. You come to know him and then you grow in your relationship with Him.

Just like you came to know him by seeking him, by finding him, by surrendering to him and worshiping Him. That's salvation. But that's repeated over and over. Not that you get saved every day. You don't. You get saved one time, but you do the same things every day. I keep seeking Him. I keep yielding my life to Him. I keep recognizing that he is God. I keep putting my life at his feet. I keep asking him to change me from the inside out, to make me the person that he wants me to be.

That's called sanctification. That's the process of being made like Christ. Colossians 2 in the God's Word version says this: "You receive Christ, Jesus the Lord. So continue to live as Christ's people. Sink your roots in him and build on Him. Be strengthened by the faith that you were taught and overflow with thanksgiving." That's how we grow in the Christian life. The Christian life is by grace, through faith, the whole way. That's how you come to Christ. That's how you grow in Christ. It has nothing to do with the flesh. It has everything to do with God's Spirit working in you and me.

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Now, after listening to this program today about being transformed by the Spirit, if that is still a foreign concept to you, unknown, and you haven't had that spiritual walk. In other words, if you don't know Jesus Christ in a personal way, you've never answered his invitation to genuinely repent from your sin and surrender your life to him in faith, then thank him for saving you and he will. He'll come in and you'll never be the same. You will be transformed. As you contemplate this today, we pray that you'll share your decision with some Christian friends and will let us know as well. Go to fromisheart.org and click the "Why Jesus" link for some important and timely helps in your new journey. Now go have a glorious and a blessed walk with God from your full heart.

You know, for many people, it's been a challenging year financially, and at From His Heart, we're amazed and humbled by how the Lord has allowed us to continue to share the reality of God's goodness, forgiveness, and power to more and more people every day. The reach of From His Heart has grown substantially on radio, television, and especially online during the past 12 months, and we're continuing to hear of lives transformed by the power of the Gospel. When you support From His Heart, you are part of that great reward.

December is a huge month for us financially, as we depend on the 25% of our annual income that comes in during December, and that allows us to close out our year strong financially and provide a solid foundation for From His Heart's ability to grow in 2026. For your year-end gift today, we'd like to say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's brand new book, "The Heart Is God's Home." It was written by Pastor Jeff and 38 other pastors and teachers with insightful, practical, and uplifting daily devotions for each day of next year. It's also a high-quality devotional book that will be a keepsake for years to come. To get this wonderful book, "The Heart Is God's Home," call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromisheart.org with your gift today.

Thank you so very much for being here today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, praying your life is blessed and that you're having a wonderful Christmas season, and that you'll be right back with us here next time. Join us for the lesson "The Cross of Christ." That's when Pastor Jeff will open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart.

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There is treasure, There is love, there is hope that you always bring love. He can heal every scar. Real truth, real love, real hope from his home.

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From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more at from his heart dot org.