Set Apart by Death

 

In John 17 Jesus prays, and in this prayer, we see the heart of Jesus. He prays for Him to glorify the Father, for His followers to be in unity with Him and the Father and each other.

 

In verse 19 Jesus prays, “For them I sanctify Myself, that they too may be sanctified.”

 

In verse 17 Jesus prays, “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.”

 

Jesus says that He sanctifies Himself so that His followers can also be sanctified, and what sanctifies is God’s Word because it is truth.

 

Sanctification means to be set apart. Jesus is saying that He is setting Himself apart so that His followers will also set themselves apart. Sanctification, the setting apart, is accomplished through obeying God’s Word because God’s Word is truth.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living being set apart for God’s purposes by God’s Word.

 

In John 12:26 Jesus says, “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am there will My servant be also. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.”

 

If we are really going to follow Jesus and serve Him, we must be where He is.

 

And where is Jesus?

 

He is teaching the crowd and feeding the crowd.

He is healing those with no other hope.

He is loving the immoral and dishonest.

He is socializing with outcast and sinners.

He is focusing on people, not rules.

He is doing the Father’s will by building the kingdom of God.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being in the world doing what Jesus did.

 

In another prayer that Jesus prayed on the night that He was arrested, He prays in Luke 22:42, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

 

This is Jesus following through with His prayer John 17 that He sanctifies the Father’s will by going to the cross and dying for our sins.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is accepting that it is only through Jesus’ death that we have forgiveness of sin, by nothing we can do.

 

In Luke 9:23 Jesus says to all, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

 

Jesus sanctifies Himself by following God’s will and dying for our sins.

We are sanctified by denying ourselves and taking up our cross every day (dying to self).

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is dying to our will and being born to and living out God’s will.

 

Following Jesus and serving Jesus is what we were created by God to do. We do that by being sanctified, being set apart, to do God’s will.

Doing God’s will means we die to our will and live doing what Jesus did.

 

Following Jesus is about being where Jesus is, and Jesus is where the lost, the outcast, and the hurt are.

 

Sanctified by Jesus and With Jesus,

Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk

 

In Revelation 12:11 it says that they overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony and by not loving their lives but being willing to give up their lives.

 

Recently I was asked how was the best way to share Jesus with others. The person was expressing a concern because they didn’t know scripture as well as they should. I told them that the best way I have found is to share what Jesus is doing now in our lives and show Jesus to them.

 

Our verbal testimony needs to share with others what God is doing in our lives right now. Many times, we share about our salvation experience and that is in the past, for some of us decades in the past. People want and need to hear about Jesus in our lives in the present, not the past.

 

In Galatians 5:25 Paul tells us that if we live by the Spirit we will keep in step with the Spirit. Letting the Spirit give us life means we allow the Spirit to work in us and through us daily. Jesus has to be a present reality in our lives, not just a past event.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having a vital spiritual life being empowered by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus is a present and powerful reality in our lives every day.

 

In addition to a verbal testimony, we have to have a life testimony. Our lives have to back up our words.

 

Acts 2 describes the early church. Acts 2:42-47 says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

 

The early church grew because they backed up what they were proclaiming with what they did.

 

They proclaimed that God loved people, and they shared with others by giving up their material possessions and providing for others.

 

They proclaimed that there was one God, and they showed that by their devotion to Him and their unity with each other.

 

They proclaimed that Jesus gives His followers joy, and they received everything they got with glad and generous hearts.

 

What they proclaimed, they lived.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is backing up our words with how we live.

 

The word hypocrisy means two-faced. It comes from the Greek theater. Actors were only men, so when they portrayed a female, they wore a mask and thus they were two-faced.

 

Hypocrisy means that I say one thing but do another. I am two-faced. I am a hypocrite when I proclaim a truth about Jesus but don’t live that truth out. We are to proclaim Jesus and live Jesus through the empowering of the Holy Spirit.

 

Proclaiming and Living Jesus By Raising the Roof

and Removing the Walls,

Joe

Resting in Jesus

 

We have just finished a weekend of very physically demanding ministry. So, I am writing this after Sunday worship, which was great but also physically demanding. I am thus physically tired.

 

Matthew 11:28-30 says, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

 

Jesus invites the tired to come to Him.

The Physically Tired

The Emotionally Tired

The Mentally Tired

The Spiritually Tired

 

Jesus invites the discourage, the disheartened, the stressed, depressed, and the hopeless to come to Him.

 

Jesus did not come to call those who think they have their lives all figured out and together. He came to those who know they are broken and bankrupt without Him.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is coming to Jesus and admitting your needs and trusting Him to meet all of them.

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Jesus describes Himself as gentle. He is meek and shows mercy and grace to those who are broken and bankrupt. He knows we are not perfect and does not demand perfection from us. He will, because He is gentle, use everything, even the “bad” things, for our good.

 

Jesus also describes Himself as lowly or humble. He does not condemn but is patient wanting everyone to reach repentance. His grace is more powerful than our rebellion and sin.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing Jesus as meek and humble and letting that truth lead us to live in obedience to Him.

 

The yoke He puts on us is easy and His burden is light.

 

We think of a yoke as some heavy restriction that God wants to lay on us. The yoke of Jesus is one which allows our lives to yoke with Him so that He is doing the heavy pulling and we are cooperating with Him. That makes the burden that we share with Jesus – light.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is joining our lives with Jesus so that He is the authority and power of our lives because He is Lord.

 

The promise Jesus gives us is rest. A rest that is really restful and is present even when the circumstances of our lives are not restful.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing the rest of Jesus every day.

 

So, if you are tired, weary, overburdened, and hopeless, come to Jesus. Let Him lift your weight and rest in Him.

 

Resting in Jesus and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                            Joe

Sinners Not the Righteous

 

In Matthew 9:13 Jesus says that He had come not to call the righteous, but sinners.

 

In Luke 15:7 Jesus says, “That there is more joy over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

 

Jesus indicates in these verses that there are people who believe themselves to be righteous and have no need of repentance or change in their lives. Jesus didn’t come to call those people who see no need for Him and no need to repent. He did come to call people who recognize their sin and acknowledge it and are willing to turn from it.

 

When we recognize our sin and see the need to repent and for Jesus to transform us, what do we do?

 

1 Peter 5:6-8

Humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

 

You humble yourself under God’s mighty hand.

 

To humble is to recognize our position in relationship to God. He is Lord and when I recognize that, let Him be the sole ruling authority of my life, I have humbled myself.

 

Humbling myself is not putting myself down, seeing myself as of no value or believing that I not loved. It is simply knowing that Jesus is my Lord.

 

When I humble myself under God’s authority, He exalts me. And when God exalts me, I am not going to fall from that exaltation.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is humbling ourselves under God’s authority and letting Him exalt us when and how He wants.

 

Cast all anxieties and sins and failures and hurts and wounds on Jesus.

 

When Jesus died on the cross, He carried all of our sins, all our fears, all of our failures, and all of our diseases and bore them for us.

 We can cast them on Him because He cares for us. Jesus loves us and His perfect love for us casts out all fear.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is casting everything upon Jesus because we know that He loves us and will take it all.

 

We need to be sober-minded and alert.

 

We need to live every day being alert:

By keeping our focus on Jesus

By knowing that God is for us not against us

 

We need to be sober-minded and alert because we have an enemy, Satan, who wants to destroy us.

 

We should never under estimate Satan’s hatred of us and that he is stronger than we are.

We should never under estimate God’s love for us and His power over Satan.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living alertly to the attacks of Satan and the power of God to overcome him.

 

When Jesus says that He came to call sinners, not righteous, He is saying that until we acknowledge that we are sinners (all have sinned) we will never see and acknowledge our need for Him. We will thus never turn away from how we are living and repent and turn to Jesus.

 

We all have sinned and come short of God’s standard. So, I am not to judge you. I am to acknowledge my own sin and allow the Holy Sprit to empower me to turn from my sin and come to Jesus, knowing He will accept me.

 

In Humility and Repentance Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                                  Joe

Do as Jesus Did

 

In Luke 4 Jesus goes to His hometown of Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue. He reads from the book of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus is proclaiming at the beginning of His earthly ministry what His ministry would be all about.

 

In Luke 7 John the Baptist hears the reports about Jesus and he sends two of his disciples to ask Jesus if He is the Messiah.

 

Jesus responds, “Go tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.”

 

Jesus is saying, “I am fulfilling what the Father sent Me to do”. Jesus lets what He is doing, His action, show the world who He is.

 

The church needs to see this as the example that we are to follow.

 

The church needs to be empowered by the Spirit to help the bind receive their sight. The physically blind and the spiritually blind.

 

2 Corinthians 4:4

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

 

People don’t naturally know God. People don’t come into the world with a knowledge of God. People are unblinded by what they say. They come to see the truth, see Jesus, who is the truth when they see Jesus in us.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living the truth so that people can see Jesus and allow Jesus to transform them by enabling them to see and believe.

 

The church needs to be empowered by the Spirit to help the physically lame and the spiritually lame to walk.

Galatians 5:16

But I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

 

God will heal those who are spiritually lame when the church shows them how to walk by the power and guidance of the Spirit daily.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is walking by the power and guidance of the Spirit daily so that others can see Jesus and learn to walk with Him.

 

The church needs to be empowered to cleanse the physical and spiritual lepers. Leprosy has a lot in common with sin.

 

Leprosy and sin both start small but end up affecting the whole person.

Leprosy and sin both separate (leprosy separates from people and sin separates from God).

Leprosy and sin both contaminate (leprosy our bodies and sin our spirits).

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being cleansed from sin and helping others to come to experience Jesus’ blood cleansing them from sin.

 

The church needs to be empowered to enable the physically and spiritually deaf to hear.

 

Romans 10:17

So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God.

 

People are transformed by the word of God so our speech needs to be filled with the word of God and our lives need to be filled with the word of God.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is filling our speech and our daily lives with the word of God.

 

The church needs to be empowered to enable the dead to rise.

 

Ephesians 2:1-2

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Every person that has not come to faith in Jesus is spiritually dead because of our sin. Jesus through His death paid for our sins, and our faith in Jesus makes us alive. The church is to proclaim that truth in our words and our actions.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is proclaiming that life is found in Jesus.

 

The church needs to be empowered to proclaim good news to the poor.

 

The word poor here is the same word Jesus uses in Matthew 5:3. It means bankrupt. The church has good news to share with the morally bankrupt, the spiritually bankrupt, and the hope bankrupt.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is sharing the good news of Jesus’ love with those who have no hope.

 

Jesus is the head of church and what He did we as the church are to do.

 

Doing What Jesus Did, Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                            Joe