Untitled Sermon

*COME IN LATE WITH BAGGAGE*

Students, some of you tonight are missing opportunities in your purpose because you are too busy carrying around the old ways of your old life. You got saved, Jesus forgave you of all your sins, and you have been set on this new path. However, some of you have not entirely laid down all the weights that are holding you back from living as an ambassador for Jesus in your generation. Your eternal destination may have be changed, but your habits have not. You are still scared of what people might think of you. You are still afraid to be different than your peers.

Now before the voice of shame tries to condemn you, let me be clear:

Salvation happens in a moment, but Sanctification is a journey.

Romans 10:9–10 “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” (Salvation)

Ephesians 2:8 “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” (Salvation)

Philippians 2:12–13 “Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” (Sanctification)

Until you lay down the old you, the new you will never impact beyond you.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

PRAYER

Paul states in V17 that those who belong to Christ have become a new person (new CREATION)

That means…

The new isn’t based off of the old, it is completely different (there are NO remnants of the old left)

The old can affect the new if we do not do away with the old

Luke 5:36–39 “Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment. “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.””

*Explain what would happen with the old wineskins with new wine*

New wine was offered, but it came at a price.

It came at the price of becoming something new to carry something new.

V39: We can get so content with the old that we forget that something new is offered.

What if God wants to give you something new to carry, but you are too busy lugging around your old stuff?

Wine represents LIFE, JOY, BLESSING, and PROSPERITY

God wants His ambassadors to overflow with NEW LIFE in Him, NEW JOY found in Him, NEW BLESSINGS from Him, and NEW PROSPERITY from Him.

What if the very life, joy, blessings, and prosperity you have always dreamed of is on the other side of your surrender to God?

2 Corinthians 5:18–20 “And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!””

You must understand: all the life, joy, blessings, and prosperity I told you that the Word of God said is yours doesn’t come by easy. It comes by through going through some stuff.

Life isn’t always going to be grand. You will have to fight for your joy. You will have to see the blessings in the middle of a mess. You will have to believe prosperity is coming even when you are in a dry and poor season. You may not see it right away, but even in the middle of the mess, the sadness, and lack, you can find all these things in a relationship with Jesus. A real, personal relationship.

If you didn’t go through some mess, you wouldn’t have a message of reconciliation.

To be reconciled means you’ve been exchanged something better than what you had. You experienced restoration and a “wiping away” of what had happened prior to the exchange.

So you have “the great exchange” to tell your families, friends, strangers at school, etc. God wants you to use your voice to shake the grip of darkness off of people’s hearts and lives.

You get the opportunity to plead God’s great exchange to a world that was tied to sin the moment they were born.

However, we cannot tell of the Great Exchange if we don’t exchange our fears, worries, anxieties, stresses, and so on about what people might say about us. This is what we need:

Isaiah 11:2 “And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

Wisdom: to know what to do in a given situation

Understanding: to pay attention to and interpret

Counsel: to know God’s will

Might: strength to achieve

Knowledge: discernment

Fear: reverence, honor

Until you lay down the old you, the new you will never impact beyond you.

ALTAR