All Things New

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

If we haven't gotten a chance to meet yet, my name is Roland, and I get the honor and privilege of serving as our church's youth director.

Uh thank you guys.

Doesn't that make you want my job?

Uh anyway, well, like we said, it's really fun to kick off the new year together, and it's no secret right after this weekend uh that we made it to 2022.

And yeah, alright.

And with it comes all the typical New Year's traditions, right?

The ball dropping, maybe some small get-togethers, uh reminiscing on the last year, maybe new gym memberships, or a new fitness watch.

Uh but really what I love about the new year and any like typical American holidays is all the like pithy sayings and all the cliches we say around this time.

Uh here are a few, right?

Like new year, new me, right?

Everyone knows that one.

Uh I'm going to be more serious about working out.

Or like I'm gonna start going to church more this year.

Um, or this is gonna be my year, which I think we stopped saying in 2020, right?

No one says that anymore.

Uh but this one's my personal favorite.

Uh this this one goes like this May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions.

Amen.

Amen.

And I'm poking fun at it, right?

But our language around this time, it typically revolves around wanting change, uh, about new rhythms and goals and resolutions, um, which I totally get because I think around this time we we all start to catch the bug, but but I caught the bug a little bit earlier this time around.

Uh I wanted all that back in October.

A few things lined up just right in September.

Um, first thing, right, I had to go to my first in-person seminary class for the first time in like during the pandemic.

And if you've ever been to Western Seminary's campus, you know you have to go up these flight of stairs.

So I had like my three like small textbooks, and I walked up the stairs, and I got to the top, and I was huffing and puffing, and then I remember, I remember getting to the top before I opened the door, I was like, oh no.

I'm tired.

Like, that was hard.

That same month, right, September.

Uh, Awakening Youth is just like kicking off.

So we're getting into the full swing of things.

And I think what had happened is we ate a lot of pizza that month, and I was really starting to feel it.

It was not good.

But the kicker was uh in that towards the end of that same month, Ari, right, my wife, she showed me uh that someone had completed a perfect fitness month on their Apple Watch.

And if if you don't know like how an Apple Watch works, what it does, is it does a few things.

It try when it comes to your fitness, the way it displays all that is it tracks like how long you stood up, uh how much how much time you spent exercising and how many calories you supposedly burned.

And Ari showed me someone that completed it for like a whole month straight.

And my competitive nature and myself is like, oh, I I can do that.

In fact, I think I need to do that, but more importantly, I can do that.

So October came, right?

October came and I set out to reverse some of the damage that I had done to my body that I blamed on the pandemic, not my own doing, it was all the actors around me.

So for 31 days, I became a little bit obsessive.

I started going on runs at like 10 p.m.

My mom came to visit and I was like, hey, I think I'm gonna go on a run.

I'll be back in like six miles.

Uh I started doing jumping jacks in our living room to like trick my watch into thinking I was working out.

Um I hate to admit this in front of my bosses.

I was at the office and I would like take more bathroom bakes so I could get those standing hours in.

All the all these things I had to do to get a perfect month, but you know what?

I did it.

I did it.

I got 31.

Don't don't cheer yet.

I did it, I got it all done.

But the second November 1st came, you know what happened?

It all went down the drain.

It all just was all for nothing.

Because, truth be told, once November 1st hit, uh I hate to admit this as well, but I can count on less than one hand how many runs I've been on since.

It was bad.

And the only thing that really kept me pushing through that competitive nature of me, sure, was really though to have a sweet Instagram post at the end of the month.

And a sweet Instagram post I had.

Um, but through all the sore stress and silliness, that that's what happened.

And I'm being silly about it, right?

But after making and breaking resolutions, right, that whole month that I had, that's typically how a lot of our New Year's resolutions go.

We're happy that it lasts for a week, a couple weeks, a month, and for the really like studious, like maybe a couple months.

And I'm being silly, but after making and breaking resolutions for decades now, I know I'm older than I look, I've become somewhat hardened to the idea that these things really have like everlasting change.

Right?

We set out the new year and we have all these wants and desires for a new me, a new better, a new and improved version.

We see the all the like flaws, and we're like, okay, we need to work on that this year.

And what's happened, right, is I think I've become pretty cynical to the idea of making resolutions around this year because usually, like my fitness month back in October, they don't last.

And I know it's true for all of us.

We we all want to see growth, change, joy, career advancement, purpose, right?

That's what we all want.

We we want to learn, improve, create a plan, be better.

And yet, like the new Apple watches, the gym memberships being renewed, all the promises we make to ourselves, all of our planners and all that, we're often constantly met with disappointment, right?

Or we we strive and strive and strive, but we throw our hands up in the air because of how unsustainable that pace is or that grit becomes.

And I know it's only January 2nd today, and I know most of us are still strong on our New Year's resolutions.

But what happens when we don't feel that same way at the end of the month or in February or March?

What's really worse, or what what's really problematic, I guess, is that disbelief about change in our life.

Uh, that that disbelief about seeing change that'll last in the things that we want to see happen in our lives, that that actually seeps into our discipleship to Jesus.

Right?

It happens in the weightier things, the deeper things, the things that we really care about.

Uh as we think about being more generous or compassionate and loving, gentle, and kind.

Some sometimes, and dare I say, oftentimes, when we s when we set out on these really noble and godly things, we find ourselves in a rut.

Right?

Maybe we go strong for a little bit and we find ourselves stuck.

We go to group, we come to church, we try reading our Bibles in a year, and yet there's no change.

Right?

We we try to muster all that we have inside of ourselves only to make it all fizzle out.

As hard as we try to make our lives look like Jesus, and it's like our New Year's resolutions, right?

They just fizzle out.

And we feel stuck and we start to think, maybe I'm the one that God can't change.

Maybe it maybe it's just me.

Maybe I'm the like exception for God to change my life.

Do you ever feel that way?

Do you feel that way about when you follow Jesus that it's just hard, that you feel stuck, that you ever feel in a rut, that things just aren't changing despite your best efforts?

I know it's true in my life, and probably true for you, if you follow Jesus long enough, that would be true at some point for you as well.

Well, today, church, as as as we celebrate the new year and take communion together, there's good news.

There's good news if if you feel like you're stuck in your spiritual life.

If you feel like you've tried everything to make make God-honoring change, uh and a month from now you can't keep all of it.

There's good news for you.

There's good news if there's these resolutions that you've made that you can't keep for more than a couple weeks.

There's good news as we open up our scriptures together, uh, if you feel the need for maybe something new.

Uh if you've got your Bibles, what we're gonna be doing is this morning we'll be turning to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

But as you get there, um, what's going on is the Apostle Paul is writing this letter.

And in it, where we're gonna start is he's having found this new life in Christ, he writes on kind of this discontent that we feel towards the end of the month, or around this time, or when we start to break some of these resolutions.

He talks about this discontent that we have, and he offers us some truth in the midst of trying to change.

He actually gives us some hope.

Right?

And often during the new year, we feel like we just need new rhythms or a clean slate, and often we take that same mindset and try to apply that to our spiritual lives.

We just need new rhythms and maybe just a clean slate.

But when it comes to our sanctification or this like fancy theology word uh for becoming more like Jesus, when it comes to that, uh the apostle Paul he writes that instead of instead of maybe that just new slate or new rhythms or just this happening or this like lining up the right way, he says instead through a new perspective, a new reality, and a new activity, we can find our hope anchored in Jesus.

So in this passage of scripture, Paul, what he's doing, right, he's reflecting on the power of Christ, of Jesus in our personal change.

And in these verses, what he's doing is he's helping, he's he's exploring the hope that we can have in Jesus and not just wish for change, not just like hope for change, but expect it in our lives.

So if you're you've turned there with me in chapter five, we'll start in verse 16.

This is what he writes.

From now on, therefore, and the therefore that Paul's talking about, uh, he's referring to the death and resurrection of Jesus and the controlling power of Christ's love in his life and how it's changing everything in him and affecting the way he lives.

That's the therefore he's talking about.

Therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

So when it comes to transformation in Jesus, where does Paul start?

Right?

For Paul, he says the salvation found in Jesus, what that has done, it has ceased him, it has stopped him altogether from making these superficial outward judgments about people simply based on like the exterior or their appearances.

Right?

Because of this, Paul can say, we regard no one according to the flesh.

And when he's saying this, right, what does that really mean?

Well, what he's what he's saying is social status, physical fitness, money, even charisma, uh over-emphasizing all of that, it it's putting all of our value in things that don't last or don't really matter or should be lower on the totem pole.

They're all on non-lasting things.

And essentially, right, he's saying that the things of this world is not what we should ascribe worth to.

Social status, etc., what we just said.

And that's not new for most of us to hear, right?

We we cut if you've come to church long enough, you've heard that and you know that.

But the insidious thing, the easy thing for us to do in this new year is to forget that, uh, is to try and make these new resolutions and find our worth in them, to use uh our goals as a measuring stick uh in January around this time.

If we aren't losing the pounds, if we're not making the right amount of money, if we're not reading the number of books we set out to read, we feel like we're failing.

But what Paul says, right, is when it comes to our resolutions and even our godliness, that we must first put our worth uh in who Jesus says we are.

That's where we have to start.

And the best way I can explain this is how someone's explained it to me.

Has anybody ever seen a$100 bill?

Some of us, one of us.

The worth, right, of a of a$100 bill in the US, it's not determined by its shape, size, or color.

And concurrently, right, or at the same time, the the uh$1 bill, it has the same shape, size, color as the$100 bill.

And in the States, right, we know that if you want to know the value or the worth of a certain dollar bill, what matters is whose image is on it, right?

So if you have George Washington's image on this little green piece of paper, you know you have a$1 bill.

And if you have a Benjamin Franklin image on your little green piece of paper, then you know you have a$100 bill.

So how how do you determine your worth, right?

It's you need to know whose image you bear.

With uh with the money analogy, right?

How much is a crisp, clean,$100 bill worth?

$100.

How much is a crumpled, dirty, maybe a little wet, you found it in your couch, I don't know who does this$100 bill.

Also worth$100, right?

Why?

Because the image might be hard to see, might need a little bit of cleaning, but the image is still there.

It's still worth the same.

It's still worth$100.

And the same is true for us.

How much more for us who follow Jesus, who bear Christ, who bear the image of God, that is where our worth starts.

So what Paul is telling us with these opening lines as he starts this passage, he says our value is based on what?

The righteousness of Jesus alone.

It's not based on our own merit, our own righteousness, our accomplishments, our perfect attendance at church.

It's not on that.

It's on what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives.

And this is true of how we view others as well, right?

It's true of how we view others, but also how we see ourselves.

Our success, our lack of success, uh it doesn't define our worth.

Um, like no matter how much we pray, how much we read our Bibles, whatever amount of gym like membership, perfect attendance that you have, it doesn't change a thing.

Our value is still based on whose image we bear.

And the good news, right, of Jesus' gospel is that uh we can we don't have to worry about those things anymore, right?

We don't have to like have this record of this is how much I'm worth today, or this is how much I was worth last week.

It's all the same because of whose image that we have.

And that's the new perspective that Paul wants us to start with.

But he goes on, right?

He he in this new perspective, Paul goes on though and says that in the same way, we also need a new perspective on who Jesus is, right?

This new attitude towards who we see Jesus as.

And what Paul is trying to do is he's saying we need to move away from seeing him, right?

When he says we need to not regard him according to the flesh anymore.

We need to move away from seeing Jesus as just some good teacher or some religious leader.

Because, right, when we do that, he's just some teacher with good ideas, right?

Some teacher that just wants to make our lives better.

But instead, what Paul's saying is we need to see Jesus as God become man, right?

Regard him no longer according to the flesh.

We need to see him as the long-awaited Messiah that we just celebrated Christmas just a couple weeks ago.

See, if if we regard Jesus according to the flesh, then he's just some teacher with axioms or or values for us to maybe inherit and make our lives better, maybe some advice to take.

But if we shed that and take on the perspective Paul is offering us, then we remember that Jesus doesn't just have uh some some good advice, but he has the power to make a dead body alive, and the same power uh is available to us as we try to change and look more like him.

So with this new perspective, right, Paul's like, take this new perspective.

No longer regard anyone according to the flesh, Jesus included.

You need to see that your value is not in in what you can or cannot do, it's in Jesus, in God alone.

With that, he moves, he leads us to a new reality, right?

A new reality.

So verse 17 and 18, it goes like this.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Verse 18.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Paul says, right, for for all those who follow Jesus, we can have hope.

We can have hope.

Why?

Because with our perspective changed on who Jesus is and where our human value comes from, we don't just have to have this wishful hope.

We have this anchored hope, this strong and sturdy hope in eternal glory.

Right?

He says the old has passed and the new has come.

And where does it all come from?

It comes from God above through Christ.

The same yesterday, today, and forevermore, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

It's the one true living God that we have hope for new creation.

And sometimes I forget this, right?

Sometimes I when when it comes to hope for change in my life, I forget this.

But this is really important, awakening church, for for us to get this because uh when I go to the Father and I ask him to transform the jealousy or the greed or the bitter bitterness in my life, when I seek for a more loving and giving heart, that I can actually ask with certainty.

I think far too often when I approach God with these things, I approach him more like a slot machine.

You'll learn about what that is some other day.

We often approach him like a slot machine.

I know I do, right?

Is that we just throw prayers up and then we kind of just pull this lever and hopefully, maybe it'll all work out.

Right?

That's usually how we go, right?

We we go to this thing and we're like, maybe I don't have much hope in this, but it would be nice if it worked out.

That's often how we approach God when we lose uh this reality.

But that's not that's not the God of the Bible, right?

That's not how we are to approach the God of the Bible.

No, we go to the Fa we don't have to go to Him with that New Year's cynicism that I have.

We we can come with great expectation that the old is past and the new has come.

And when it comes to new habits and attitudes in our life, Paul reminds us elsewhere, right, he that he who began a good work, right, is faithful and just to complete it.

And right, when I think of that, time and time again, every single time, I will take God's faithfulness over my own.

And that's what Paul's inviting us to do, is would you take God's faithfulness even when you can't be faithful?

This is what I know to be true, at least, right?

That Jesus, Jesus finds a way.

Jesus finds a way.

That when it comes to changing our lives, there's usually some kind of desire underneath it, right?

There's something when we when we make resolutions and goals, or even when we make godly like wanting to like be more sanctified and more look more like Jesus, there's often this desire that's underlying all of it.

And I know to some degree that Jesus, right, wants to take care of each desire of our heart.

But let me be clear when I say that Jesus wants to take care of each desire of our heart.

Don't get stuck on the outcome.

Jesus doesn't want to make everything that we want in our hearts to come true, right?

Because that would be silly.

That would actually be a bad idea.

But what he does want to do uh is take care of those desires.

Some examples, right?

Maybe behind that desire for finding a life partner is really a desire for deep companionship, right, which which Jesus offers in his church.

Maybe that desire for career advancement or climbing the wrongs on the company ladder is really a desire for purpose, which Jesus can give us.

Maybe those desires for those fitness goals or whatever it is, uh, is really a desire to be admired.

And there's nothing like finding admiration from our Heavenly Father.

Don't get caught up on the specific outcome.

Instead, be expectant on how Jesus wants to meet those desires.

Have you been expectant on Jesus' promises this year, this last year?

Where in your desires to reach certain goals and resolutions in life can actually be found in God, in Jesus, in his church, in his people.

Where have you lost hope where God says, find hope in me?

To trust me, to trust my faithfulness.

I love what the late, great pastor and author Eugene Peterson says in one of his books about hoping.

He says this hoping does not mean doing nothing, it's not a fatalistic resignation.

It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.

He goes on, it is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality.

It's the opposite.

It's the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying.

And hoping, he goes on to say, is not dreaming, is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain.

It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do.

It is imagination put in the harness of faith.

It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect.

Telling him both how and when to do it.

That is not hoping in God, but bullying God.

Oh man, doesn't that just hurt a little bit?

But Paul, with Peterson, he reminds us that we can trust and hope in what God is doing.

With a new perspective and a new reality, Paul he he goes to the last part of our scripture with this, verse 20.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.

Paul, what he does, right, is he ends with this new kind of activity to take over our lives.

No longer are our strivings just for personal gain, no longer are our achievements just so we can be better.

Instead, when we inherit this new reality, this new perspective, the things that happen in our lives, uh it has this communal, this corporate effect.

Right?

When we no longer regard people according to the flesh or the outward appearances, when we're expectant of Jesus to work in our lives, to make all things new, when that happens, we become better representatives of Jesus' miracle working.

Miracle working in our lives in a world desperate to see miracles happen.

Paul's saying that God's plan for redeeming people is through people, through you and through me.

And that's really good news.

I think that's really good news, especially for us sitting in church right now.

Because if it's not that, if it is not Jesus changing our lives and in turn changing others, then it's just this my this personal activity.

It's just religious in nature.

It's just these things that we do.

But if our new activity is rooted in Jesus and His power to change our lives in the places where we don't expect it to happen, where we often don't expect it to happen, then it's dependent on His commitment to us and no longer our commitment to ourselves.

And it's been in our youth ministry where God has really reminded me about this, right?

This new perspective, this new reality, uh, and this new activity.

Uh years ago, when I started as our youth director, uh we had this student start coming around to awakening youth.

And I'm not sure how much experience or how much time a lot of you have spent around youth groups, but you know, there's sometimes that student who's super fun, who's really cool, who's great to be around, but is really just showing up because their parents are making them come, right?

That's not true anymore, but this was back in the day.

Well, one of these students, right, was was coming around and years passed until eventually they graduated high school and moved on from my youth ministry.

And again, maybe it's just the New Year's cynicism that I have in my heart and the lack of expectation that I had from God.

But this student became one of those people uh that we all have in our lives that we just don't think they'll ever have a saving faith in Jesus, right?

We do we all have that kind of person in our life?

That's the kind of student that this person was.

So again, a couple more years passed as they graduated, and a few months ago I got this text out of the blue.

And in this text from this student, he said he suddenly became more interested in Jesus, in spiritual things, in fasting, and reading his Bible.

And what he wanted was some help and some guidance on what to do next.

And with all of that newfound stuff that he had.

Doesn't that blow your mind?

Like, think about that.

Someone that you know that you never expect to know Jesus, let alone desire to know Jesus, years go by, and all of a sudden you get a text like this.

Ain't that amazing?

Isn't that incredible?

Oh, I share this story, right, because I think it's at that moment where that this sermon kind of made sense to me, right?

I was reminded of the ability for God to do more than I could ever expect or imagine.

And more than that, right, we're in this new kind of activity.

God didn't just do something in someone else's life to change their life.

That activity in this former student's life encouraged my own faith, challenged me in my own, in what I was doing, right?

Because as this former student shed the old humanity, embraced the new, the new perspective, new reality, a new activity, all the more I wanted to seek those things in my own life.

And I'm gonna invite the band up now, but what we're gonna do next is we're gonna take communion.

We're gonna take communion together because I can't think of any better way for us as a church to celebrate Jesus' commitment and power to change us and our lives and celebrate the new humanity that we have in Him than taking communion together.

Because at the end of the day, uh this term it doesn't lead us to wanting to accomplish our goals.

It doesn't uh lead us into wanting to make more resolutions or to try harder to keep all of them, spiritual or not.

The reality is that we'll all fall short as we make these goals for our lives, as we try to follow Jesus, as we try to become more like him.

We're all gonna fail, we're all gonna mess up at some point.

But in that failure, we are reminded of Jesus' victory, right?

Of Jesus' victory over sin and death.

And instead, this passage should lead us to the communion table.

Paul writes later on in 2 Corinthians, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you procla you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So at the communion table, uh what we remember is that a new perspective and a new reality was made possible because of Jesus' commitment to his people.

Commitment and obedience that led him to a cross, to bear death.

But it doesn't end there, right?

It ends in resurrection and a new life, a place for us to find ourselves in Christ, in union or in step with him.

In Christ, we get to identify with him, and that's all made possible by his blood, death, or his death and resurrection.

In all our hardships, our ruts, our worries, Jesus walks with us.

He equips us, he powers, empowers us, he gifts us.

So would communion today lead you to a new perspective of the world, a new reality in Jesus, a new activity that points to him.

And what I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna pray for us.

Uh, Robbie and the band, they're gonna lead us in a couple songs.

I want to invite you to remember this as we take communion together.

Join me in prayer.

Father in heaven, God, we um, man, we we owe our lives to you.

We owe all the things that uh we have, it's it comes from you.

Uh as we start the new year with the fervor we have for for change and um for resolutions to be kept, uh, for us to look more like your son Jesus, we pause and say that our best efforts uh are pale in comparison to uh what Jesus has already done for us.

So instead, God, would you help us to experience grace and peace?

And would that empower us uh to be your people, to live the way you've intended us to live, to love others and to love you the way you intended us to love.

God, we need your help to do that.

Would your spirit help us?

Would your spirit remind us of this grace that you offer all people?

Uh so Father, as we take this communion together, uh, would we remember your son Jesus as a church?

All of God's people said, Amen.

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