Many people in this world have wandered so far away from the plan God has for their lives, the identity that they have in Him, the future the destiny He has for them – that it seems almost impossible to find the way back. So maybe, maybe it’s time to start back at square one.

Made in His Image

There’s no doubt that of all the creatures that share this planet we call earth, people, human beings, are by far the most special, the most valuable. Now you may have a pet dog or a pet cat or a pet budgie or a pet goldfish and that pet may be incredibly special to you. We happen to have a pet cat, her name’s Doggy. I know, it’s kind of weird and there’s a story behind it, but she’s very special to us. She is after all our beloved pet cat. But as special as Doggy is she comes nowhere close to the value we place on our children, Simon, Michael and Melissa.

I mean, if our house was burning down and one of our children, say Melissa, was trapped inside as well as the cat and I raced in to save them, without any shadow of a doubt I would save Melissa first and to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I’d go risking my life to save Doggy. Sorry Doggy. I hope she’s not listening. But you get my point.

There’s something incredible special about people, especially the people we love. We value them above any other living creature on this earth. Well, as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. Right? Back in the beginning before time began, there was nothing except God. I guess most of us would know how the Bible kicks off. Genesis Chapter 1 verse 1:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

And if we truncate that first verse back to limit our view of before creation, just the first four words, we get, “In the beginning God …” And of course goes on to create light and then the sky and the oceans and dry land and the plants and the sun and the moon and the stars and the animals, and the crowning achievement in His creation was of course, you and me.

Have a listen to how beautifully this is expressed. Moses recounts God’s heart, His intention in creating us so wonderfully. Genesis Chapter 1 verses 26 & 27:

Then God said, let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humankind in His image. In the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.

Now, up until now God created everything else, that’s fine but when He creates humanity, literally the word in Hebrew is “adam” which means mankind, let us make “adam” or Adam as we would say. He creates them: He creates them, He creates us in His image. Or another translation is that we were created in His likeness; we’re like God. Now I’m not saying we’re like God or we become God. There are some sects and cults around that believe that but that’s not what God is saying. Not at all. He’s saying that you and I are created in His image, in His likeness.

Okay, that’s the head knowledge, the theology, the theory but what does that mean in practice. Well a little bit later on in the book of Geneses, Chapter 5 in fact, we see this very same language again and it helps explain what God was on about in creating us in His image. Genesis Chapter 5 verses 1 to 3:

This is a list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind He made them in the likeness of God, male and female He created them. And He blessed them and named them humankind when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years he became the father of a son in His likeness according to His image and named him Seth.

And so here God’s linking His creation of us with Human procreation. Adam had a son, Seth in his likeness or in his image exactly the same word used in Genesis Chapter 1 about you and me being created in the God’s image. And by creating this link here, God’s saying, “Look, you have to understand something, you are my descendants.” Quite literally God created Adam in His own image as any child is created in his or her father’s image. And so you and I are quite literally descendants of God, just as Seth was created in Adam’s image and was a descendant of Adam which is why we can call God “Dad” – “Father”.

Something the Apostle Paul said quite explicitly much later, and we’re going to have a look at that next week on the program, this is profound. This is why you and I are so special. Do you get it? We’re made in the likeness, in the very image of God as His direct descendants. I wonder whether you’ve actually thought about that? To tell you the truth I think we kind of skim over the top of this.

“Christians always call God Father, so what? It’s a religious thing.“ Ah! Not at all. In fact when Jesus first started running around calling God Father, literally the word “Abba” which is quite a familiar term, it equates to “Dad” in our casual English of today, and that was considered to be a heresy. The religious leaders wanted to string Jesus up for that. In fact eventually they did. It was an outrageous concept. You know what? I think it’s still an outrageous concept.

My identity, your identity begins with God. We are created in His likeness. Why am I rabbitting on about this today? Because today we’re kicking off a new series called ‘Meet the New Me’. It’s all about our identity, who we are in this world. Many, many people have a misplaced sense of their identity.

Recently I interviewed a couple of women on another program. Their names are Jo and Janelle and they edit an on-line magazine specifically for young women. And they were chatting about the outcome of some research they conducted among young women about issues that really matter to the – body image, sexuality, overcoming the hurts of the past, issues with their parents – and time and time again the thing that struck me was that the symptoms that they were talking about found their root cause in a sense of misplaced identity.

Now we don’t have to be young women to have that problem. More as I sit with people and hear what’s going on in their lives I find myself thinking, if only they’d realised who they are. They are a child of the living God. They are made in His image, in His likeness just as much as Seth was made in Adam’s image. That image of God has been passed down through the generations, from God to Adam down through the generations to you and me here and now.

The problem is that that image has been marred. Like a beautiful old painting by an old master that’s been attacked with a can of black paint by a graffiti artist. And so we’ve lost our identity, we’ve lost the powerful concept that we are direct descendants of the living God. And therein, in this lost sense of identity lies the scourge of all humanity. And so the next few weeks on the program we’re going to be spending some time understanding that. And setting it right.

 

The Value of an Image

I love art. I remember the first time I saw the famous Australian work by the 19-20 Century artist, Tom Roberts. It’s called, “Shearing the Rams” – of an old shearing shed. I’ve seen so many cheap prints for sale in department stores over the years and really, I’d never thought too much of the image … until I saw the original in real life. It’s depth, its richness, the way it captured the real world, it completely blew my socks off.

Cheap prints are never a substitute for the real thing. It’s the original image that has life and energy. And that’s why this week we’re chatting about the original image that you and I were created in – the image of God – because I wonder if we’re not becoming desensitised as we live in a world of cheap reproductions. I wonder if we haven’t lost the powerful life-giving reality of the original image.

I could never afford an original Da Vinci or Rembrandt or Renoir or Monet or any of those. They’re simply out of my reach. But I love visiting galleries and feasting my eyes on them. They’re so valuable and for good reason. And it’s the value of this original image that I’d like to have a bit more of a chat about today, because you and I, we’re made in God image. Remember what we talked about before the break, Genesis Chapter 1 verses 26 & 27:

God said, Let us make humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created humankind in His image. In the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.

You and I are direct descendants of God, made in His likeness and His image. But in this world that’s something that so many of us have lost sight of. Some deny it completely, others kind of, well … kind of know it’s true, but how many people actually live their lives based on this powerful truth about their identity? Not many, is the answer, because if they did many of their insecurities and fears and self-image problems and doubts and insecurities would just disappear.

I wonder, do you live your life in the midst of this powerful truth that God created you in His image? Is that what you believe with every fibre of your being because if it isn’t, you are seeing yourself as a cheap reproduction, one of those $10 prints of a multi-million-dollar original. Can I be blunt here? You and I aren’t cheap prints, we’re the original thing, hand-crafted by God in His image; more valuable in His sight than we could ever, ever imagine.

Don’t believe me? Well, let me ask you this: why is it that ‘Thou shalt not murder’ is one of the Ten Commandments? Why is it that killing or beating or raping a fellow human being is such a heinous thing to do in our sight and in the sight of the law? I mean, we kill pigs to make bacon. They’re incredibly intelligent animals. We kill cows to make hamburgers, but when was the last time you munched into a hamburger and worried about the cow that died to feed you? And yet murdering a person is a terrible thing. Get caught and you spend the rest of your life in gaol or even worse.

We don’t tend to think too much about that. It’s axiomatic. It’s an obvious basic truth that underpins our sense of humanity. It’s because people are worth infinitely more in our eyes than a cow or a pig or any other animal.

Okay, but let me keep niggling away here. Why are people worth infinitely more than a cow or a pig or any other animal? Answer: because we’re made in God’s image. We’re His image bearers. We’re not cheap prints, we’re originals. Just like an artist will paint and sculpt a work and put much of himself or herself into that work, so you and I handcrafted by God as kind of mini self-portraits and that is what makes the difference. Don’t believe me? Well here it is from God’s own Word. Genesis Chapter 9 verse 6:

Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed, for in His own image God made humankind.

Being made in God’s image confers on you and on me an incredible sense of value. Much more than a Rembrandt or a Renoir or a Monet or a Da Vinci. But when we lose sight of that identity in God’s image, when we dive into the rough and tumble of this world that sells people short and cheap, that devalues us. We become in our own eyes just a cheap reproduction.

Can you imagine, if you had a picture hanging on your wall, dusty old thing, thinking it was some worthless print, and then one day an art expert happens to visit you at home and he peers at this painting. He studies it from this angle, from that angle, with the light on, with the light off; he starts getting all excited and finally he tells you it’s not a cheap print at all. This thing that you thought was a cheap print is an original painted by a great master. Look at the signature down at the bottom right-hand corner. Can you just imagine how overjoyed you’d be to discover that instead of owning cheap print, you are the owner of a valuable art work.

So in this world that devalues us all the time, in this world that says we’re only valuable if we conform to it’s illusory and false standards of success. In this world where they would have us believe that we are a cheap print, a poor copy at best. What is it that we don’t want to leap with joy when we discover that it’s just not true? What is it that we aren’t over the mood to realise we’re an original? How do we know that? Because the fact that you and I are made in the image of God, in His likeness, means that we bear His mark as an original just like the old master’s signature at the bottom of His painting.

You and I are valuable in God’s eyes beyond any measure. Is this sinking in your heart? When God looks at you His heart skips a beat; when God looks at you and sees you struggling through life, tears come to His eyes; when God hears your prayers; when He hears you come to Him in humility and love and appreciation a joy unspeakable fills His heart. Do you get it?

You and I are worth so much to Him. You and I are worth so much that in fact He let His Son die to pay for our sins so that we could have an eternal, rich relationship with Him. The value of all the shares on all the stock markets in the whole world added to the value of all the gold and silver and diamonds on the planet don’t hold a candle to the value that you have in God’s heart. That is the absolute truth.

 

A Sense of Destiny

Have you ever wondered where your life is headed? Whether it’s really going to count for anything? Whether you have a future, a destiny? Whether there’s something really to look forward to as the days as the weeks and the months and the years slip by. Well of course, the answer to that is, yes! Being buffeted around on the stormy oceans of life. It’s no fun. Eventually we want a sense of direction, a purpose, a hope for the future.

So far today we’ve been looking at the fact that you and I are so incredibly valuable because we are created in the image of God. Often we don’t feel valuable, often the world wants us to believe that we’re just a cheap copy, not the original, and yet God is so clear on this. He’s created you and me in His image, we’re His children, in His likeness we’ve been created and that’s what makes you and me more valuable than any other living creatures on this earth. It’s that simple. And if you and I are indeed made in the image of God, than pretty obviously something’s gone badly wrong here.

If God made the sorts of mistakes that you and I make in life, man, that would be downright scary, wouldn’t it? The thing that’s gone wrong is that you and I rebelled against God. At some point we went our own way and so often we suffer the consequences of that. Some people don’t like it when I say that, but it’s true. It’s just the way it is. It’s called – wait for it – sin. The original that we’ve been created in has been kind of attacked by a graffiti vandal and it’s become marred and distorted.

Now we’re going to talk a lot more about that next week on the program because no matter how badly the original image has been marred, no matter how much it’s been obscured by the muck and the graffiti of life, the thing we need most to discover in life is exactly how God is going to undo all that. So we’re definitely going to talk about that a whole bunch more. Because if it’s a new life we’re life we’re after – a better life – then that’s where the rubber hits the road. What is it that God’s going to do to turn things around?

I guess, before we do that, I kind of want to jump to the end and see how it all turns out, because here’s the thing, I think a few people today need some hope. I was chatting with a counsellor just the other day. He works with people who have deep-seated issues in their lives – addictions, hurts from abuse, a sense of rejection that goes back to childhood, whatever it is. And he said something interesting, ‘One of the first things I ask people is, what do they believe about their problem?’

He was telling me, for instance, about a man with alcoholism. The man loved God, loved his wife and family but over and over again he would get drunk, beat his wife and then when he sobered up, he’d be sorry, he said he wouldn’t do it again – true remorse. And yet a few months later it would happen again.

So the counsellor asked him, ‘What do you believe about your addiction?’ And what came out was this. ‘My father and my grandfather before me, they were alcoholics, they died with liver disease, and I’m pretty much convinced that eventually that’s how I’m going to end up too.’ You see this man believed in God, this man was sorry for what He’d done, but deep down he believed he could never escape the clutches of the addiction. And it wasn’t until that was dealt with that he was able to escape the addiction and it’s consequences.

But there is some of that in all of us I suspect. We kind of imagine that there’s this one thing in our personality, this one little thing from the past that has a hold over us and this one thing, whatever it is, it’s never, ever going change. I’ll never be able to escape the clutches of this black can of spray paint that keeps graffiti-ing my true image, the image of God in me. It’s just never going to get any better.

Let me make me a bold and direct statement here – that is simply not true!! It’s complete and utter rubbish. Let me ask you this. If God is God, if He created you in His image, if in fact you are worth more to Him than all the tea in China, if He loves you so much that He’d send His Son to die for you in the face of all that evidence, do you seriously believe that nothing’s ever going to change? Do you seriously believe that lie? And it is a lie because God’s Word is the truth and this is exactly what God has to say into this lie in your life today. Romans Chapter 8 verse 29:

For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn within a large family.

What’s God saying here? Well, we started our being made in God’s image, sin – sin crept in and graffitied that image, it destroyed the image, completely obscured and marred it and robbed it of it’s original beauty and pleasure and joy that it would give to other people when they experienced it. But God’s destiny for those who love Him is that they would once again become conformed to the image of His Son – that they would end up looking like Jesus again.

Now this ‘conform’ thing is not some straight jacket. The original Greek word that’s used here and is translated as “conformed” is the word “summorphos” from which we get the world “morph” or to be transformed. I had a look at the word “morph” in my dictionary, it means literally, “to change smoothly from one image to another by small, gradual steps.”

See, it’s an incremental process of transformation. It’s a little by little lifelong process of being transformed. It’s having the horrid black graffiti cleaned off this part of our lives … and then that part of our lives … then over there … and then this bit … and bit by bit we start looking more and more like Jesus.

My friend, the whole thing about image and self-image is so important. Knowing who we are, that we’ve been made in the very image of God, that by rejecting Him, sin has marred the original image, sometime beyond recognition. And yet the plan of God for our lives is to transform us back into His original image. Back into the image of Christ Himself.

For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed into the image of His Son.

Just stand back. If that’s the true meta-story of our lives, if that’s what truly going on here, doesn’t that change the way you see yourself? Doesn’t that give you a sense of value and purpose and identity and hope? Doesn’t it give you a sense of destiny? Doesn’t it make the things we’re going through right now, while some of them may not be what you would have chosen for yourself, doesn’t that make them okay now that you know what’s really going on?

Come on! You have been made in the image of the living God and your destiny in Christ is to be transformed back into that original image. That’s fantastic.

Sometimes we come to the realisation that our lives … well, maybe they’re not quite where they’re meant to be. Maybe actually, things are in a bit of a mess. And so often there’s a reason for that. It’s about image – the false images, the mirages we’ve been chasing after.

 

The Golden Calf

People worry an awful lot about their image. We express who we want the world to think we are through the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, how we speak, walk, the restaurant we eat in. The list goes on. A new restaurant was opened recently near where I live. And let me tell you, it’s a very expensive place to eat. People go there to be seen. It’s the cool place to hang out. It’s all about image.

And companies, companies spend a lot of money on image. They tend to call it branding, but again its about constructing an image in our heads that we really like, an image that will cause us to buy from them. Think of all the big clothing labels for instance. A lot of their advertising isn’t so much about selling us this product or that, it’s about growing and reinforcing their brand image in our heads so that when we are ready to buy, we’ll buy our clothes from the. Image is a big deal in this world.

But there’s nothing, absolutely nothing new in that. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks talking about the fact that we, you and I, have been made in God’s image. In fact, do a search in the Bible on “image” and we discover that “image” is a huge, huge thing to God too – but from a slightly different perspective. Before we dive in and take a look at what image means to God and why He sees it as being such an important thing in our lives. Let’s ask ourselves what an image is, because knowing that really helps us understand God’s perspective on image. Really.

So let me ask you, what exactly is an image? Well, an image is when we use one thing to represent another in such a way that people see it and it impacts them. A logo’s a good example. The moment you see perhaps the most recognised logo on the planet, the Coca-Cola logo, what springs to mind? Coca-Cola! The moment you see the Golden Arches what springs to mind? McDonalds! Right? An image is a powerful representation of something else. And so it’s not rocket science to figure out that if an image can have such a powerful influence over our behaviour it can be a good thing or an incredibly bad thing.

Images can influence us positively or negatively. There’s mounting evidence that imagery in violent computer games is impacting at least some young people in an incredibly negative way. There’s a reason why they use images of happy, well-balanced families having breakfast to sell us everything from orange juice, to muesli to margarine. There’s a reason why they use young women in bikinis to sell holidays in the sun. There’s a reason why Apple is so careful about the design not only of its products but of the packaging it comes in. It’s all about image. And images are influences. Let me say that again, because it’s a powerful truth. Images are influences.

We get a strong hint on the role and the power of an image from the New Testament of the Bible where the original Greek word that we translate into theEnglish word ‘image’ is the word ‘icon’. We all know what an icon is. It’s a representation of something big through something small.

Now how seriously does God take image? So seriously that the first two of the Ten Commandments are based on the right and wrong of use of images. Have a listen to this. Exodus Chapter 20 beginning at verse 2:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them and worship them for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God punishing children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now the word “idol” literally means “image”. You shall not make an image of anything in the form or in the likeness of anything in the sky, or on the earth or under the ocean. Why? Because God knows that images are influences and before you know it we’re bowing down and worshipping the image instead of our God.

Not only will you not make for yourself an idol or an image, says God, but you will not bow down and worship it. How easy is it to idolise an image? How easy is it to idolise a look, a brand, a style of clothing, a restaurant scene, a brand of car, of shoes? In fact, it’s almost a natural thing to do, isn’t it, because images are designed to be seductive. And they seduce us away from God.

When Moses was up on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from God, what were the Israelites doing down in the valley? They broke the first two Commandments. They gathered together gold, melted it down, created a golden calf – an image, an icon, an idol (is it a coincidence that each of those start with “I”) and they worshipped it. So what was God’s take on all of that? This is how Moses recounts what God said to him. Deuteronomy Chapter 9 verse 12:

Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up and go down quickly from here for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them. They have cast an image for themselves’.

God knows, the moment we chase after other images we end up with a distorted image. We worship the wrong image and our self-image becomes distorted and then marred and then almost completely unrecognisable. You and I, we were made in the image of God, de mago dai, as they say. We are icons of God. We are in “small” what He is in “large”. And His plan is for us to have the real thing. His plan is for us to know His love but you and I are so often seduced away by the image of this world.

You and I so often become like the Israelites. They had to sacrifice their own gold, their rings, and their jewellery to make this image of the golden calf. And I sense that that’s exactly what we end up doing, sacrificing the most precious things of life to chase after false images.

Let me say it again, the reason this is so dangerous is because images are influences, they become idols, they supplant God from the number one position in our lives. And that ends up ruining our lives. It breaks the most important link of all – the link between us and the one in whose images we’ve been created. And when we worship those false images – false idols of money, success, position, brand, whatever our golden calf happens to be – we end up being remade in the image of that false idol.

You see, that’s what mars us, that’s what scars us, that’s what makes the original image – the image of God in our lives – unrecognisable. And that right there is the central problem, the central malady, the central disease of humanity. Forsaken the God in whose image we’ve been made and remaking ourselves in a false image.

Let’s talk some more about that after the break, because as it turned out, it was still going on centuries later as we’ll see again in the Apostle Paul’s account. And truthfully, tragically it’s still going on here and now a few thousand years on after Paul ruining a life, robbing many a man, woman, child of all that God has planned for them. It’s truly tragic, but God … God has an awesome plan.

 

Distorted Image

Now, before the break we were chatting the importance of the images in life that we chase after in determining whether you and I have a healthy self-image or a distorted self-image. The majority of people on this planet have a distorted self-image. Truly. The arguments, the conflict, the fear, the misguided lives that are being led. Much, if not all of that, finds it’s genesis in a complete misunderstanding of who we are and what our identity is.

Images, as we saw, are influences of a brand, an ideal, a lifestyle, whatever it is, all comes from this seductive imagery. Before long we are chasing after these illusive images through which we are seeking to define ourselves. Isn’t that the truth? We end up with a distorted self-image.

I was listening to a man – a rather wealthy man, a God fearing man. He was speaking about himself recently and he said that a few years ago he realised that although he believed in Jesus, he ended up defining himself through his wealth, through his big house, through his flashy car. So what he decided to do, (just listen to this) he decided to sell his company for a rather a lot of money and make a full-time job of using his resources to support and fund God’s work around the world.

That, as it turned out was much more satisfying than trying to live a life chasing false images which lead only to a distorted image of ourselves. And that’s the crux of what we’ve been chatting about so far in this series of messages that I’ve called, “Meet the New Me”. The old “me”, the “me” that chases after false images of success, the “me” that bows down to false idols, can never be satisfied, will always be marred because that old “me” was missing the whole point of life, for one – made us we are in the image of God.

The only place of satisfaction is in fact, when we connect back into the one whose image we bear. The Apostle Paul, having been run out of a few towns for having telling people about Jesus back in the 1st Century, finds himself in Athens, a place full of false images, false idols, that people were worshipping. And rather than being repulsed by it, his heart aches for these people. Acts Chapter 17 verse 16:

While Paul was waiting in Athens he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.

So he goes and he tells people about Jesus, argues with them both on an intellectual and philosophical plane and then more deeply in the heart-knowledge of who they are and what God has planned for them. As he’s wandered through the streets of Athens he’s come across one idol, one image that’s labelled, “To the Unknown God”. And it’s to this unknown God that he now goes and tells them. Have a listen to this. I’m reading from the Book of Acts Chapter 17 beginning at verse 22:

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Friends, I see how religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked at the objects of your worship I found among them an altar with the inscription “To the Unknown God”. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, He who is Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t live in shrines made by human hands nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

‘From one ancestor He made all nations to inhabit the whole earth and He allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the place where they would live so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for Him and find Him – though indeed He is not far from any of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are His offspring”. Since we’re God’s offspring we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone – an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.

‘While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now He commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day when He will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.

See, what Paul does here is, he reaches into their culture of idol worship, this worship that’s reflecting a search for someone or something to worship, a built-in impulse that we all seem to have, and says, ‘I realise you are looking for God. I know that. But here’s the mistake you’re making. The real God created everything, the whole shooting match. And He doesn’t live in little shrines as though He’s made by us. He’s not a man-made image. In fact it’s the other way around, folks. We are made in His image; we are made in His image; we are descended from Him. Since we are God’s offspring we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, the image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. And there’s a reason He made things that way, a very specific reason He made us. From one ancestor He made all nations to inhabit the whole earth and He allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for Him and find Him – though, indeed, He is not very far from any of us.’

So here it is. The Athenians had a distorted image of themselves and the world because they had the idea of worship completely 180 degrees the wrong way around. They thought that what you did, you made something with your own hands – an image, an idol – and that’s what you worshipped. We’re still doing that today, aren’t we? But Paul says, deep down we’re all searching for this unknown God and He’s the God in whose image we’ve been made.

He made us with the purpose of finding Him and connecting with Him and knowing who we are in Him. It’s time to come and discover this God – the one true God – the one God who can and does deliver on His promises of a resurrection from the dead and an eternal life that starts the moment we put our faith in this one man, Jesus Christ His Son.

Here’s the staggering thing. People were getting this wrong 1500 years before Paul in Moses’ day when they made and worshipped that golden calf. They kept on getting it wrong right through until the 1st Century AD. That’s a millennium and a half later. And here were are, another 2000 years on another 2 millennia on and we still think we can get satisfaction and find our place in this earth by creating images … icons … idols with our own hands and then sacrificing our lives to them. And then we wonder why things aren’t going so well, when all along God’s speaking the truth for us but are we listening? Proverbs Chapter 19 verse 23:

The fear of the Lord is life indeed. Filled with it one rests secure and suffers no harm.

Do you know what’s exciting about all this? The Athenians had things completely wrong and yet God in His grace sent Paul to tell them the truth. Of course, not all of them listened. And over the coming weeks we’re going to be unpacking this same truth because God wants each one of us to know who we are in His image – to realise our sin and what He’s done to deal with that and then to discover the new man or the new woman – the new me – that God will make possible through Jesus Christ His Son. I guess that’s why they call it the Good News.

 

Images in Your Life

You have been hearing about what God has to say on who we are – made, as we are, in His image – and the way in which that image has been distorted. I wonder whether you’ve been thinking about how this might apply to your own life because this isn’t a theory lesson, this isn’t about someone else. This is about you. This is about me. I wonder if you’ve been getting the sense that God is trying to deal with some of the false images, the man-made images that you have been worshipping. Now some people might find that assertion a bit on the direct side, a bit in your face, but can I tell you, I’m constantly being challenged by God about the images that are trying to seduce me into this world.

Near where I live we have a car dealer. They sell new cars, a really up-market brand. In fact I used to own one of these cars many years, when I wasn’t in ministry, when I was in business and I had the money to own them. And I constantly walk past their front window and I look in at the latest model. They are sleek; they are so shiny; they are so up-market; the showroom is so crisp.

You know, I just think back to when I had more money and I had my IT career and I had all this stuff and now I’m in ministry and I used to drive one of them but I can’t now and so often as I walk past, I find myself wishing I still had one, thinking about how I might buy one. Can I tell how plainly ridiculous that idea is on my ministry salary. I might as well wish that I could flap my wings and fly to the moon.

But in any case, even if I had that sort of money, wouldn’t it be better keeping my much smaller, cheaper, less impressive but perfectly good car that I have now and using that money for God’s purposes. Do you see how easy it is to be seduced by images. I’m just being honest here, I’m being blunt here. So often we want to sweep this stuff under the carpet. So often we want to pretend that somehow we’re super-spiritual and holier-than-thou and none of this stuff affects us. Come on! That is complete rubbish.

You and I are human, you and I have flesh, nothing good in and of itself dwells in that flesh, that’s what the Bible tells us and you and I are susceptible to the seduction and these images. Do you see how easy it is to be seduced by images? And sometimes we’re drawn away by things we’re doing on God’s behalf. I’m always taken by this particular passage of scripture. Jeremiah in the Old Testament, Chapter 1 beginning at verse 16:

… and I’ll offer my judgements against them for all their wickedness in forsaking me, for they have made offerings to other gods and worshipped the works of their own hands.

Do you know what? The easiest thing in the world to do is to work hard at something for God. Like, I guess, like I do in ministry; like, I guess, the things that you may do on behalf of God; and before you know it, that thing that we’re working on, ostensibly for God, becomes more important than God Himself. Can I tell you how many people I’ve seen labouring away at something in a church, and you know when God’s into something and it’s blessing people and it’s anointed by God and it’s all going well. But everything has it’s time, everything has it’s conclusion, everything has it’s end.

I’ve seen people hang on to ministries and programs and things that they do and organs that they play, or whatever it is, beyond the time when God was finished with it. And it’s terrible. You can see that the thing that they are doing is the image in which they’re re-creating themselves and the thing that they’re supposed to be doing for God has in fact far more important than God, because if it wasn’t more important than God they’d be listening and saying, “I think it’s time for this to be over.” We lose sight of the fact that the thing we’re working on has become more important to our hearts than God Himself. We spend more time on that than in prayer to the Lord.

The test for me is always: if the Lord made me give it up, if He came and said, “Berni, it’s time for you to finish up at Christianityworks”, how easy would that be for me to do? Have I started to worship the work of my own hands. Do you see how easily we allow things, images of success – even if they are success in the Kingdom of God, rise up and put themselves above the head of the Lord our God in the pecking order that we’ve established in our hearts.

That’s a couple of examples from my life. Let me ask you something. What are the images in your life that can so easily supplant Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life. What are the aspirations, the hopes, the dreams, the things that you would struggle to lay down and set aside if that’s what God wanted you to do? Because if there are some in particular that you know you are struggling with, it’s time … it’s time to take them to the Lord and to lay them down.

As I’m praying for the ministry of Christianityworks I’ll often say to God, “I love what I’m doing here, with You and for You, but if and when my time is up, please let me know, because I never ever want to stay doing something that’s no longer in your will.” That is not an easy prayer for me to pray. Can I tell you? I love doing what I do for God. It’s not an easy prayer to pray. But here’s the question, here’s the crux – does God come first or not.

I had a house that I once owned and I really, really loved that house and I prayed often that when the time came the would give me the courage to give it up. Well, you know something? The time came and giving it up was simply not a problem. God was gracious. When we submit these images, these things that could so easily become idols in our lives, these things that we like so much that we can so easily end up worshipping ahead of God. If we constantly submit those to Him in prayer, His Spirit works in us so that our hearts bow down willingly to His will, to His plans, to His purposes.

The past is ruining so many people’s present and robbing them of their future – it’s time to lay hold of God’s plan. I mean really. You in your life. Me in mine. The moment, the very instant we believe in Jesus we become a new creation. Hmm. But is it really true? Can it really work?

 

So What’s the Plan

It’s fabulous to be with you again this week. Over the last few weeks on the program, if you’ve been able to join me, we’ve been chatting about our identity, our understanding of who we are and where we fit which is something that concerns each one of us at different times in our lives. And right up front you and I were created in God’s image. Literally, according to the Bible and this is the Greek word that’s used in the New Testament for “image” literally we’re icons of the Living God. Genesis Chapter 1 verse 27:

So God created human kind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.

But then, then we rebel against God. We all do at some point, Adam did, Eve did, you did, I did. And before we know it that original image … well, its as though a graffiti took to it with a can of black spray paint. Before we know it, that original image is totally unrecognisable. And one of the greatest maladies of this age, perhaps the greatest of all, is that people have lost sight of who they are, made as they have been, handcrafted in the very image of God Himself.

Had someone bail me up once, a so-called contemporary Christian communicator, and berate me for using the word “sin” on this program. “Oh well, it’s not something people use or understand, it’s the wrong word.” And sure, “sin” has become a four-letter word but that doesn’t change the fact that when you and I rejected God, when we went our own selfish way, it’s like the Devil graffitied the image of God in us. So totally has he obscured the truth, the reality of that original image, that in many a man’s life, in many a woman’s life, that original wondrous amazingly beautiful and creative and filled-with-potential image is totally obscured.

And so many of us wonder round half a life-time even a whole life-time knowing that life isn’t working, knowing that something’s not quite right, knowing that something’s missing, but we can’t quite put our finger on it because our sin has put a black, opaque layer of muck between us and our original image. God Himself. Took me a half a lifetime to figure that out and I know that there a many people who are at the point today where you know that, you believe that, you’ve come to grips with that, you may even have put your trust in Jesus but you just don’t know what to do about it.

And so today we’re going to discover exactly what God has already done and what His plan is to deal with the mess we find ourselves in. First His plan. We’re going to come back to something we chatted about briefly last week. God has an amazing plan and it’s a plan that gives me a huge sense of hope about the future. Here it is. Romans Chapter 8 verse 29:

For those whom He foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn within a large family.

And as I observed last week on the program, what God’s saying to us here is that God’s destiny for those who love Him is that they should once again be conformed to the image of His Son. That we should end up looking like Jesus. This is not a straight jacket meaning of this word “conformed”. The actual Greek word that’s translated here as ‘conformed’ is the word “summorphos” from which we get the word “to morph” or “to be transformed”. If you were able to join me when we chatted about this you will recall that the dictionary definition of “morph” is to change smoothly from image to another by small, gradual steps. It’s an incremental process of transformation.

It’s a little-by-little life-long process of being transformed, having the horrid, black graffiti cleaned off this part of our lives … and then that part of our lives … then over here and over there … a bit here and a bit there. And all of a sudden we start looking more and more like Jesus. “Ah, but Berni, I feel so rotten with this mark all over me, I feel so unworthy, I feel … ” Well of course you do. That’s natural. Whenever I’ve been covered in muck in my life it’s felt awful.

I remember when I was in the military and we’d been out on an exercise, we wouldn’t get a shower or bathe for weeks on end. It was horrible being dirty and smelly all the time. After a while, you know something, we started to get used to it. You didn’t notice the smell so much. It’s funny how it works. But after weeks of that it was totally the most amazing experience to come back to barracks and to step into that hot shower and wash yourself clean. It was the most unbelievably liberating feeling.

And that’s what happens, my friend, the moment, the very moment we put our faith, our trust in Jesus. The moment we realise how dirty our sin has made, the moment we admit that to God, the moment we realise that there is absolutely nothing we can do to wash ourselves clean except to believe that dying on the Cross Jesus paid the price for our sin – Jesus took our punishment so we can be clean, totally pure, totally clean in God’s sight, totally forgiven in God’s heart – the moment we believe that in our hearts it’s like that shower after weeks, months, years of being dirty. We are clean.

It’s the most amazingly unbelievable feeling to know that in God’s sight we are clean. In God’s heart we are forgiven because we put our faith, our complete trust in Jesus. The truth is simple, pure powerful. I’m going to read to you from God’s Word now. Just drink it in, once and for all, starting at Romans Chapter 6 verse 3:

Don’t you know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death. So in effect we have buried with Him by baptism into death, so just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we’ve been united with Him in a death like His we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was in effect crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to it.

So bottom line, if you’ve died like this in faith with Jesus, you are freed from sin. And if we’ve died with Him we believe that we’ll also live with Him. The death He died He died to sin once and for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God, so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ.

Dead to the old marred, graffitied image of who you were once were and alive, walking. Here are Paul’s – God’s exact words: “Walking in newness of life”. Do you see why I called this series of messages, “Meet the New Me”? The whole point of Jesus becoming a man, dying to pay for our sin and rising again, is because God knows that you and I are guilty, that we feel guilty and we can’t do a thing about it.

And so when we put our trust in Jesus, believe with all our hearts that through his sacrifice we are made clean, that we stand on the threshold of a new life, a new me, a new you. That’s the beginning, that’s the start of the new life. But then we need to go into rehab. Old habits die hard sometimes. That’s natural. We’re going to talk about that some more next week on the program. That’s the morphing we were talking about earlier. The life-long process of change, growth and maturity.

That’s a fantastic plan. And the fact that we don’t get it all right in an instant is normal. You see how knowing and understanding God’s plan sets us free? It’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s like … a new life.

 

A New Creation

I wonder sometimes whether you and I really realise how valuable we are in God’s sight. We work so hard for God we lose sight of how precious we are in His sight. Just imagine you’re a gifted artisan and years ago you created you made this amazing violin. It’s sold, someone bought it and for years you haven’t seen it. And then one day you’re at a second-hand auction and to your complete and utter surprise that old violin comes up for auction. To everyone else it’s just some old violin, but to you, well you made it. You recognise it instantly despite the layers of dirt and dust. What would you do at that auction?

‘Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
“What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried,
“Who’ll start the bidding for me?”
“A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?
Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?”

“Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;
Going for three…” But no,
From the room, far back, a grey-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loosened strings,
He played a melody pure and sweet,
As a carolling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said: “What am I bid for the old violin?”
And he held it up with the bow.
“A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two?
Two thousand! And who’ll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,
And going and gone,” said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,
“We do not quite understand.
What changed its worth?” Swift came the reply:
“The touch of the Master’s hand.”
And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scarred with sin,
Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd
Much like the old violin.

A “mess of pottage,” a glass of wine,
A game — and he travels on.
He is “going” once, and “going” twice,
He’s “going” and almost “gone.”
But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd
Never can quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the touch of the Master’s hand.

Beautiful poem that, the touch of The Touch of the Master Hand by Mira Brook Welsch.

And doesn’t it tell a story of what God wants to do in your life and mine. In our own eyes were worthless, in the world’s eyes were worthless and yet after years of neglect, Jesus sees a beauty and wonder of the original creation in us, made in His image. And so when God touches our lives again, when He gets involved again it’s as though we become a complete new creation. Not new at all. It’s more a case of back to the future. It’s more a case of rediscovering what was there. The potential, the artistry, the incredible wonder of who God made us to be beneath the muddy scarred layers of sin. And that music of who we are is only released, that new creation is only born when we’re touched by the Master’s hand.

Now let me make something quite clear here. This is not Berni waxing lyrical here, this is not about getting swept up in the emotion of that wonderful, as beautiful and profound as it is, this is about unlocking the truth of how God sees us and what God has to say about us. Here it is from His own Word, from His lips as it were:
2 Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 17:

If any one is in Christ, there is a new creation. All the old things have passed away, everything has become new.

I remember someone once saying to me, “You’re not one of those born-again Christians are you?” and my response to them was, that according to Jesus there is only one sort of Christian, a born-again one. John Chapter 3 verse 3:

Jesus declared, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they’re born again.’

The only sort of Christian is one who is a new creation because the moment we believe in Jesus the old “me” the old “you”, all the old things that had a hold over us pass away – the sense of reproach, the regret, the hurts of the past. The moment we put our faith Jesus we are a new creation. All the old things have passed away and behold … look … take a good hard and close look … everything is new.

The moment the Master lays hold of us our lives start playing a new tune, the tune we never thought possible, a tune the rest of the world never thought possible, a tune that is born out of the great value we have because we are made in His image and we place our lives in the Master’s hands.

The fact in Christ I am a new creation is the truth on which my whole rests. I look back on who I was. I look back on the work in progress that’s brought me this far to who I am. I look forward to who I’m going to be more and more morphed into the image of Jesus Himself. And all of a sudden my weakness, my sin, my failures, my inadequacies as well as my gifts and abilities and talents, all of a sudden I get them in the right perspective. I don’t have to feel guilty anymore about the past.

I don’t want to forget it, I never want to go back to it and I don’t want lose the lessons or the experience or the consequences of those mistakes again, but I don’t have to carry the burden of guilt around with me any more, because according to God I am a new creation. I’m born again. The old “me” died with Christ on the Cross when I put faith in Him.

The new “me” was born again, risen again through the newness of life that the Holy Spirit has brought and is still bringing to my world. My friend, this is why they call the news about Jesus “the Good News”. And we can go on living our lives believing that the past still has a hold over us, we can go on living our lives believing our circumstances or we can make a choice here and now, today, to start believing what God says about us. We can live the rest of our lives believing the truth that we are a new creation.

For if anyone is in Christ, there is a new Creation. Everything old is passed away, everything has become new.

So what’s it going to be?

 

Is It Possible?

Okay, so the Bible says that when we believe in Jesus we’re a new creation. We’re born again. All that old stuff has passed away, all the new blessing of God becomes a new reality. So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old is passed away, see, everything has become new.

But come on! When we give our lives over to Jesus it’s not like he waves this big magic wand over our lives. It’s not like all our problems evaporate, it’s not like we instantly change on the inside. You wake up the next day and all that stuff, it feels like it’s still there, and it might go on for years. So what’s going on here? Is God for real, or is this some “pie in the sky” religious bunk to put backsides into pews of churches and rip them off some money.

I’m calling it the way it is here. And this is how I used to see the world and this is how many, many people still see the world. And to tell you the truth I actually don’t think that those are particularly unreasonable questions to ask because in 99% of cases God doesn’t wave some magic wand over our lives. Do I know people who have been instantly set free from drug addiction when they gave their lives to Jesus? Yes, sure I do. But I also know someone who loves Jesus passionately, who tries her best to honour Him, who serves Him, who suffers from agoraphobia and alcoholism. It doesn’t matter what this person has done, for years their hasn’t been a breakthrough.

For me, understanding this apparent disconnect between what God’s Word says and what many people experience has taken a bit of learning and understanding. I mean, when I gave my life to Jesus, I was going through a really, really difficult time. And I gave my life to Him, but in one sense there was no magic want. I saw plenty of tough times ahead and took some years. I can I tell you, even today my life is anything but a bed of roses. There are always challenges, there is always opposition to what I do in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus. It never stops. And yet in another sense, in a very real sense, things started to change from the inside out.

I think sometimes we live too much in the world of the here and now – McWorld, the all-beef-patty, special-sauce, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun kind of world where we expect things to happen in the twinkling of an eye. What do you mean there’s a two minute wait on my hamburger. Isn’t it amazing how impatient we’ve become. So is this new life possible?

When you hear some joker like me on the radio talking about becoming and being a new creation, about the old things having passed away, about everything being new, can it be true?

You know, I don’t think there is anything new in this. The realities of life were the realities of life even back in the 1st Century when the Apostle Paul was writing this stuff. In fact, he was writing to Christians in Rome many of whom were being persecuted: thrown to the lions literally. Maybe this stuff was even harder for them to swallow than it is for you and me, with the realities going on in our lives. Listen very carefully to the way Paul puts it. 2 Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 17:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old is passed away, see, everything’s become new.

Notice please how he finishes off this amazing assertion. “See, everything’s become new”. That word “see” literally means “Look, just take a look, get a grip on this, do you see everything has become new.” That’s the meaning here. He’s emphasising, he’s convincing, he’s challenging us to take a closer look, take a deeper look at what God is doing at bringing us a new life. This is “rubber-hits-the-road” time says Paul. Get a grip on the reality of what’s going on here. Everything has become new.

I said earlier that when I gave my life to Christ I was going through some tough times and that in one sense in the sense of the reality of my circumstances, there was no magic wand. But can I tell you, in another sense, in the sense of what was going on inside me, in the sense of what I felt and experienced, everything changed. Everything truly was new. I was living through the consequences of my mistakes, my sins. And those consequences were tough and painful. But the day I gave my life to Jesus, from the moment at around 11.15 am on the 15th October 1995, from that moment I began to look back on the old Berni as almost someone else.

Reality, the journey from the old Berni to the new one that I am now, well it’s been a journey. And there’s the rest of my life here on earth to go. But as much there was so much change ahead of me, so much cleaning up my act, so much transformation, so much morphing to start looking more and more like Jesus and speaking and seeing and behaving more like Jesus, in that instant I knew that the power of the past over me was broken. I knew that I was a new creation in God’s eyes. And ever since then everything has been a completely new dimension to me. A new perspective, a new outcome.

Is there still a way to go? Is there still a day to day reality? Yes, there still is. Do I still have weaknesses and sin that God’s dealing with me over in my life? Yes. Am I perfect yet? I’d like to think so, but sad to say, the answer’s “no”. Do things come and hit me out of the blue? Difficult things; things that don’t fit with my limited ideas of what success is in the Kingdom of God? Of course they do. That’s the reality of life.

But I guess the thing that’s really new, is that the old Berni, that the Berni that demanded success and recognition and all that stuff, you know what, that Berni is pretty much dead. I don’t much care truthfully whether anyone thinks I’m wonderful or not anymore. I’m free now to be happy and content and satisfied with much or with little because I have Jesus.

Whether things are going well or whether things are tough; whether it’s a bright sunny day or whether the storm clouds are gathering on the horizon; whether my emotions are up or whether they’re down; the thing that’s new is that I get to sit down with God over a cup of tea early in the morning and just rest in Him and know that in His eyes, in His heart I am so precious despite the stupid things I may have done in the last 24 hours.

You know what, if you put your trust in Jesus it’s exactly the same for you.

God promises us a new life the moment we believe in Jesus. A completely new life. Slate wiped clean. All the old rubbish gone. And He gives us two things – two amazing things – to make that life come to pass.

 

The Spirit of Life

Hey, it’s great to be with you again today. And today is the last message in a series of four that I’ve called, “Meet the New Me”. It’s all about who we really are when we believe in Jesus Christ. What our true identity is, what our destiny is. God has some awesome things to say about those things. Really, He does. And last week on the program we were chatting about trying to make sense of the apparent yawning gap between the stark realities of our hear and now and God’s assertion in His words through the Apostle Paul:

If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old is passed away, everything is become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

And as I’ve been trying to live out that promise, the promise of completely new life in Christ, the conclusion that I’ve come to is that all things are not new because the world around me has changed, all things are now new because the old me – the little tyrant who demanded recognition and success and his own way – has gone, and the new me is learning little by little to delight myself in God and relegate all those other things that used to be so incredibly important to much lower down the pecking order.

I guess the reason I’ve been sharing that experience with you these last few weeks, is that, if you happen to be sitting there looking at your reality, seeing your circumstances on the one hand, and then this new creation – “all things are new” promise from God – on the other and wondering, “Hang on they don’t fit.” I just want to share with you that they do. God is in the business of renewing us from the inside out. Does he change our circumstances sometimes too? Yes, He does. Sometimes. But sometimes He doesn’t.

The most important thing is that He’s changing us and equipping us to experience peace and joy even when the externalities don’t fit with the world’s template of success. The sobering thing for me is the amount of suffering that even Jesus, the Son of God, went through, then all His Apostles after Him. Then all those other Christians we read about in the New Testament that were persecuted and all those since then. In fact, did you know, that more Christians were martyred, more Christians died for their faith in the 20th Century than in the nineteen centuries before that all put together.

Listen again to the powerful truth of God’s Word because I believe that He means for you today to lay hold of that truth in your heart and live every day for the rest of your life in this truth. If anyone, if you are in Christ then you are a new creation. All the old stuff’s passed away and look, everything has become new. It’s time, it really is time for you to meet the new you. Because it’s the new you that’s meant to be living out God’s amazing plan for you, this newness of life that He promises.

Now, I know that there are still a few that may not be entirely convinced. How is this possibly going to happen? Does God really, really mean for this new life to happen for me? Does God really, really mean for there to be a new me. Can I tell you, I completely understand why people struggle with this. I’ve struggled with it and some days still today the enemy still wants to come along and whisper doubt into my ear. And my hunch is that that’s why the New Testament, God’s own Word is replete with arguments and encouragement to lead you and me into this new life because a new life, a new creation, a new me, a new you, is exactly what God has planned.

I want to take you on a hike today into what some theologians refer to as the Himalayas of the New Testament – the absolute high point and pinnacle for some. And again I understand why they say that. It’s Romans Chapter 8. Just gather round the Lord’s table and feed your soul and your spirit on the Bread of Life, the Word of God. Romans Chapter 8 beginning at verse 9:

You are controlled by, not by the old sinful nature but by the Spirit. If the Spirit lives in you. And if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ he doesn’t belong to Christ, but if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you.

Therefore we have an obligation, but it’s not to the sinful nature to live according to that, for if you live according to that sinful nature you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. You didn’t receive the Spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you’ve received the spirit of Sonship and by Him we cry. ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. If we’re children then we’re heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ since indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

Isn’t that a powerful passage. And it speaks directly into this tussle we often feel between the old sinful self – the old “me”, the old “you” – and the new reality. Once the Holy Spirit enters, and that happens to everyone who puts their trust in Jesus, a new life starts to happen. And God’s saying to us here, through the Apostle Paul, of course you feel the old nature pulling at you, don’t you. You feel the old “you” still tugging at you, even though in my eyes the old “you” is dead, sure the old “you” will still raise his or her ugly head trying to drag you back into the past.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Do you believe in Jesus? Have you put your trust in Jesus? Then you have the Spirit of God in you. And when you have the Holy Spirit, when you live according to Him, when you connect to Him, when you listen to Him, when He tells you that you are a child of the living God, believe Him. Yield your life to Him instead of falling back into the slavery and fear again as you lived when that sinful nature, the old “you” had complete control. Instead live like a child of the living God. Know that you are heirs, co-heirs, joint heirs with Christ, and the life ahead here and now and the life eternal with Jesus, with God, are yours.

Are you going to suffer along the way? Yes, you are. Absolutely. That promise is there too, by the way. Did you notice it or did you try and skim over it and ignore it as we would rather do? Let’s go there again, because the new life and suffering, according to God, are bedfellows, strange as that may seem to thee and me.

Now, if we are children then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs of Christ if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.

You see, this new, abundant, rich life that God promises us isn’t an alternative to suffering it happens right alongside in the context, in the reality of suffering. Lay hold of that truth, that powerful truth, and all of a sudden we stop doubting that the new life is really for us. Stop falling for the old trick of the devil, that the moment we feel a bit of pain we believe him when he whispers, “See, see. That new life was never for you.” Because we can turn around and say to him, that the glory that you and I are going to share with Jesus, that the glory happens through, because of, and in and on the other side of the suffering we share with Jesus.

Suffering’s a fact of life. It just is. And I for one, I want the new life that Jesus died and rose again to give me right in the middle of that suffering because that’s where it’s the greatest blessing and benefit to me.

My friend with all that I am, I want to encourage you today, to know, to believe, to live your life in the truth that you have a new life in Christ and that the sufferings we may experience along the way simply don’t compare to the glory and blessing of that new life. Now and for eternity. They just don’t.

 

The Power of God

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older but it seems just like a day or two ago that we started off this series of messages that I’ve called, “Meet the New Me”, and here we are, we’re coming towards the end of the series. Now, I truly love doing what I do. Getting to spend time in God’s Word and unpacking it and sharing it with you. I just love doing that. But this series, “Meet the New Me”, is one that I really, really enjoyed researching and writing and sharing. It’s been such an incredible joy because with all my heart I know that there are so many people who’ve lost sight of the fact that they are so incredibly precious in God’s eyes because they have been created in His image.

God said, Let us make humanity in our image, according to Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the see, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over the wild animals of the earth. Over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humanity in His image. In the image of God He created them, male and female He created them.

And the reason we’ve lost sight of this wonderful truth is that sin has covered that original image, the image of God, the imago dei, just like a graffiti attack on a great art work, we’ve marred and covered the beautiful image.

Now, over the last few weeks and before the break we were chatting about is the fact that for many that’s so hard to swallow, for many there’s one particular sin, one particular thing that keeps coming back to rob them of this new life; one particular sin that keeps shouting at them, ‘See, this new life is never going to be for you. You’re always going to be trapped’. What we need, what you and I need desperately to live this new life is power. The sort of power that, in our own flesh and bones we just don’t have.

We’re going to discover that power today. But before we do, can I say this? If you’re in this place right now, condemnation is the last thing, the very last thing, that you need to be or should be feeling, because this isn’t some shock or surprise to God. He’s not sitting there condemning “… for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans Chapter 8 verse 1. God always knew that we couldn’t work our way into His favour. We couldn’t pay the price of our sin except at the cost of our lives. Which is why He sent Jesus to die on our behalf so that we can be forgiven.

And, my friend, God always knew that we couldn’t eradicate the ongoing sin our lives as well. God always knew that we wouldn’t be able to lay hold of this new life on our own. And that’s why sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us the moment we put our trust in Jesus, to make us holy, to set us free. God’s plan is to give us forgiveness through the death of His Son and new life through the resurrection of His Son. Let me say that again: God’s plan is to give us forgiveness through the death of His Son on that Cross and a new life through the resurrection of His Son. It’s not just me saying that, it’s God. Romans Chapter 5 verse 10:

If, while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more surely having been reconciled we’ll be saved by His life.

See, new life. And I know that you probably have one sin, one Achilles’ heal, that’s robbing you of that new life. In fact, so common is that, that I’ve actually written a book called, “Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and for All”, for God sent Jesus to die and rise again to set us free from every sin, even the most persistent ones. In fact, especially the most stubborn ones. And to do that He’s given us the power that we don’t have. To do that He’s given us power from on high. And like Paul the Apostle, my prayer for you is that you would today lay hold of the power that you already have over your sin today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not in half a lifetime’s time but today!

The way that’s going to happen is that the Holy Spirit is going to take His Word, God’s Word, as I share it with you now and He’s going to write it, as He promised, on your heart. You’re just going to know that you have victory over the sin that’s robbing you of this new life; the new creation that God promised you would be. That in fact, if you believe in Jesus you already are. Are you ready? Are you ready to receive His Word? Do you have your heart open? Well, here it is. Listen to this. Drink it in. Ephesians Chapter 1 beginning at verse 17:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him. So that with the eyes of your heart enlightened you may know what is the hope to which He’s called, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us who believe according to the working of His great power. God put this power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that’s named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

Oh man, there’s so much in that prayer of the Apostle Paul for his friends in the church at Ephesus. And this same prayer is my prayer for you today. Bottom line … bottom line is that you already have the power!

Paul is praying that the more they, we, you, me, get to know God, the more the eyes of our hearts are opened and enlightened, the more we would come to know the certain hope that we have, the more that we would lay hold of the riches of the inheritance that we have in Christ, and the more that we would know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us who believe. The very same power of the Holy Spirit that God put to work to raise Jesus from the dead and to seat Him at the right hand of the Father and have rule and authority and power and dominion over absolutely everything forever.

Do you see how great this power is? It’s huge. And Paul’s praying that you and I would come to know the immeasurable greatness of this power in our lives, that we already have. It’s time to stop praying for power, we already have it. It’s time to start praying with power.

It seems that we have little problem believing, many of us, that Jesus died to pay for our sin, so why is it that we have so much problem believing that He rose again to give us a new life? How come we have so much of a problem believing that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him above everything, that very same immeasurably great power is the power that you and I as believers in Jesus already have been given. To have victory over the things that would rob us of the newness of life that Jesus rose again out of the grave to give us.

My friend, you are a new creation. All the old things have passed away, look, everything in your life’s new. You have forgiveness, you have a new life and you have the power to live that new life. It’s time. It’s time for you to meet the new you.

 

Too Good to be True

That’s powerful stuff, isn’t it, just to realize that you and I already have all the power we need to live this new life. See we live in a world full of scams. How often do you see on the evening news some elderly couple has been ripped off from all their savings by the latest scam. Something that sounded too good to be true. You know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. And I know that perhaps some people listening today, maybe it’s you, feel a little bit like that about God’s claim of a new life. Its radical, its outrageous, it seems too good to be true, that God’s Word says that we can have a new life.

If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old is passed away, see everything is become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

A completely new start, so new that we become a new creation with all that old stuff from the past, everything from the past that’s been impacting our lives – the mistakes of our parents that have found their way into our lives, hurts, regrets, even abuse. Everything old is gone, and look, everything has become new.

Let me ask you, when you look at your life, do you have trouble believing that? Even having heard what you’ve heard today on the program, do you still have trouble believing that? Well, if you do, if you’re struggling you won’t be alone. And I think that’s because we weigh God’s promises by the world’s standards. Let me say that again: I think we weigh God’s promises by the world’s standards.

You see, we are so used to scams, we are so used to things claiming to offer one thing and then not delivering. We’ve all been there, seduced by advertising. If we spend our money on this one thing is it going to make us happy? And it never did. We’re so conditioned by false promises we can’t help it. We struggle believing what God says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, that if we’re in Christ we are a new creation. We put God’s promises in the same bucket. We can’t help it. We just have to struggle in believing its too good to be true.

So I want to finish off this series with this thought. God’s promises are nothing, absolutely nothing like anything on this earth. We simply can’t judge God’s promises by the same low standards that we’ve come to judge the world’s promises by. Have a listen to this. John Chapter 2 verse 23:

When He was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival many believed in His name because they saw the signs that He was doing. But Jesus on His part would not trust Himself to them because He knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone. For He Himself knew what was in everyone.

See, Jesus knew this. He was a celebrity, they all flocked to Him, but He knew how fickle public opinion was, He knew how fickle success was, He knew how fickle people are. And if Jesus had relied on them He would have been swept away by His celebrity status which in the end completely evaporated. Jesus, get this, Jesus didn’t dance to the world’s tune. Jesus didn’t judge things by the world’s standards. And again in those dark days just before He was crucified, when He was explaining to His Disciples, that despite the danger, despite the fear that they were experiencing they could have peace. He went to great lengths to explain that His promises were nothing like the world’s promises. John Chapter 14 verse 27:

He said, ‘Peace I leave you, My peace I give to you. But I don’t give the way the world does. Don’t let your hearts be troubled, don’t be afraid.’

In other words, My promises are nothing like the world’s promises. You can actually trust My promises, you can actually rely on my promises. My promises are true. If I say I’m going to give you something, I’m going to give you that thing. If I say I’m going to give you peace, you are going to receive My peace. And even though it took the Disciples a bit of time to figure it out, eventually, you read the Book of Acts, eventually they discover that Jesus’ promises could be absolutely relied upon.

So can this promise of a new life, a new creation, complete freedom from the past, can it possibly be for you? The answer is, absolutely! For Jesus doesn’t promise the way the world does.

So, if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, look, everything has become new.

My friend, with all that I am, I want to tell you today, I have been praying about this and thinking about this, I believe God wants you to know that truth. I believe that one thing that God wants you to take away from this series is that He has given you a new life already in Christ. He has given you the power through the Holy Spirit to live that life. All you and I need to do is to step into that life with the smallest amount of faith. Just faith the size of a mustard seed. That’s all we need.