But God

This past week I had a birthday and I had a blast hearing from a ton of people on FaceBook. Many of the people I heard from were people who were part of my and my wife’s student ministry when they were in mid school and high school. I have not seen most of them for twenty years or more. I had a vision of what they looked like and who they were. But when I looked at their FaceBook page I was made aware that was not what they looked like and not who they were any longer. They had changed.

The same is true of each of us who have surrender our lives to Jesus as Lord. We have changed, or more correctly ,we have been changed.

In Ephesians 2:1-10 Paul tells us who we were before Jesus, what Jesus did that changed us, and who were are now.

Ephesians 2:1-3
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

We were DEAD!

Before Jesus, we were not:
Sick
Hurt
Incomplete

No! We were DEAD!

Why were we dead?

We were dead because of who we were.

We were transgressors and sinners.

Transgress means to step over a line or step over a boundary.
Sin means to miss the mark.

We were dead because we had missed God’s standard and because we had stepped over a God-established boundary.

We may not have intended to do either one of these things. The fact is that according to Romans 3:23, all of have sinned and according to Romans 6:23, it has led to death.

We were followers of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, and the spirit of disobedience

Jesus’ invitation to Peter and Andrew, to James and John, to Philip, and to Matthew was FOLLOW ME.

In Matthew 4:10 Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy and says, “Worship the Lord and serve Him only.”
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says that you cannot serve God and money. You cannot serve God and anything else because God demands our exclusive allegiance.

We cannot follow Jesus and follow anything else.

We lived to gratify the cravings of our sinful nature and we followed the desires and thoughts of our sinful nature.

1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world , the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the boasting of what he has done - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and it desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

If we follow the cravings of our sinful nature, it means God is not in our lives and it will lead to death.

We cannot follow the desires and thoughts of our sinful nature because these desires and thoughts don’t come from God.

In Isaiah 55:8-9 we are told that God ways and thoughts are not like ours. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours.

When we follow the desires and thoughts of our sinful nature, it leads to death.

We were objects of wrath.

We were in rebellion against God. God has to deal with our rebellion because He is a righteous and just God. God deals with rebellion by pouring out His wrath on that rebellion.

God loves us and His overwhelming desire to pour out His love on us, but He will pour out His wrath on our rebellion and that leads to death.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is recognizing who we were before Jesus.

Ephesians 2:4-9
But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.

Then we have BUT GOD. Those are awesome words - BUT GOD.

It means that all that has been true of us no longer has to be true.

We are now:
Alive with Jesus, not Dead in Sin
Raised to be with Jesus, not Stuck in the World
Seated with Jesus, not Outcast from God’s Presence

God has done this so He can show all creation His incomparable grace and kindness.

God has done all this by His mercy and grace made real in our lives by our faith.

God’s mercy is God not giving us what we deserve - death and hell.
God’s grace is God giving us more than we could ever deserve - forgiveness and heaven.

God’s grace and mercy are always present just like electricity in my house. Faith is the light switch that, when it is turned on, allows the electricity to cause the lights to come on. When I surrender my life to Jesus as Lord and trust Him for my salvation, I pass from death to life.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is recognizing who we are in Jesus.

Ephesians 2:10
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

God moves us from who we were before Jesus to be all He created us to be.

We are God’s workmanship or God’s masterpiece.
We are created to do good works or things that honor God.

God created us for Himself.

God does not want us to live only to die. He wants us to live so we can really live.

God accomplishes all this through His love, mercy, and grace.

According to Romans 2:4 it is this very kindness of God that leads us to repentance.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is allowing God’s mercy, grace, and love to change us to be who He created us to be.

By God’s Grace and Mercy Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls
                                                          Joe