Why Your "Fresh Start" Isn't Working
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If you could be anyone at all, who would you wanna be? Hmm, let's think about that. Don't say lens. Okay. That's not, not about, yeah, I believe this is an easy question to get wrong. You know, like we think we wanna be that image in our mind, but all the time God actually has. Selected already the exact you that he wants you to be.
So we wanna unpack that a bit today and explore it a bit more. Okay. I want you to meet Martin, he's not in the room, but he reached his bragging point with Melbourne in the gray winters, the relentless pace of his corporate gig and the same old social circles that felt more draining than life giving.
And he convinced himself that the city was the problem. So he sold his car, quit his job, chased a fresh start on the Gold Coast, who's ever been there? Yeah, so he imagined himself as a new man. Sun rise surfing. And relaxed coastal office, stress-free existence. And six months later, sitting on his balcony overlooking the Pacific Martin realized something unsettling.
Even with the sand between his toes, he was still feeling the same deep seated anxiety, that restlessness he thought he'd left behind on the Monash freeway. Martin had swapped his puffer jacket for the board shorts, but on the inside he was carrying the same internal character, the same internal person.
And so he discovered that a change of sign is just a new backdrop to the original character. And so our question about Martin, it applies to all of us, is are you trying to change the view? Or are you willing to change the person inside? I'll just leave that and go now. Thank you very much. Easy questions, man.
This is deep. It's hurtful, isn't it? What does it actually look like? We're talking about resurrection and Easter. What does it actually look like to have a resurrection life? That's weird language even in Australia, A culture like ours, how will that change me on a Tuesday or a Friday? Am I going to be different because of a resurrection happening in me?
And how could that possibly be the case in this series? Good news, we're going to figure out how to realign our hearts or recalibrate them to see ourselves and the truth of who we are in Christ Jesus and talk about this resurrection. We're going to look at our lives through a different lens. Asking what really happens when a person stops just getting by and starts becoming fully alive?
Are you ready for that? Ooh, this sounds good. Yeah. But let's begin by looking at how we are present. We've started this with the Slido. What identity labels are you wearing? We all carry them. You know, unwanted unrequested. Labels the image we get fed back to us from others, significant others in our life, or some insignificant people.
Yeah. We still take it on as though it's real. It could be online, it could be all sorts of places. We're hearing messages about who we are, and we think that they're true. We all carry them. Labor's like, um. You know, think about some of the labels we put up there, lazy, fat, too short, you know, a bit of a tomboy, whatever it is.
They're not really who we are. Some of us wear labels like success and it kind of gives us a little step in our, you know, skipping our step. But in the end, a bit like Martin, we may be chasing that. As a who I am when in fact we're not that at all. For others, it's, um, failure, shame, words like divorcee, you know, oh, that doesn't, it carry a bit of a, a sting to it, and yet all the time it's not really who you are.
It's an experience you've been. And who you really are can change. We wanna talk about that today. Whether it's pride or a loss of self-esteem, or just that noise of everyone else's opinions. These labels start to feel like the truth, but they aren't the truth about who you are. Let me ask you this. If every label that's been put on you by a parent or a spouse, or an ex or a sibling.
Is stripped away is what is left enough for you taking away everybody else's opinion. What do you think? You know, Jesus met people with labels. There was a cripple, a blind man, a tax collector. Whoa, don't like those guys. You know, working for the, the enemy. There are all kinds of zealots and you know, religious people.
And they were labels that he met all the time. And still the good news was that Jesus had an answer for every one of them. He had a change in mind for every person that he encountered, and when they truly encountered him, something changed in them. I like to be that person. I like for us to imagine that we can also be that person.
And it's almost impossible for us to think that way sometimes. But let's exercise that thought. Here's the point. As a church, we know that Easter happened, but do we know that the Resurrection life continues to change who we are, who we really are, not just who we think we are. And that's part of our experience.
We're gonna focus on three passages of scripture today. And they look at, uh, the new creation. What has God got to say about that? Baptism, some of us have experienced baptism recently and the resurrection that's associated with that experience and what it means to be raised and seated with Christ.
That's a bit airy fairy way out there, heavenly thought. Let's see if we can bring it down to ground. So I wanna look at this, uh, time machine for a moment. Classic. Alright. Just get yourself into a time machine for a moment. We're gonna dial back to 27 ad. That's just around the time when Jesus is almost ready to start his ministry, but not quite.
And we go to the city of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee and we're in the fish markets. It smells great. And as we're going around, we're saying to people, I wanna meet Peter. Can you show me Pete? I say, Peter. You know, the one that walked on water, uh, you know, the one that he, he hadn't rocked, like faith that Peter, and they say, no, there's nobody like that around here.
You see, Peter doesn't exist yet. He's only known as Simon or CEUs in the RA. He's a person that hasn't yet become anything. And then there's Paul. We go 30, 83, 3 years forward, we're hanging around the temple and we're walking through the, the shadow of the Great Temple and there's religious people there and we say, oh, can you tell me about Paul?
And you know, Paul, the apostle, the one who's rewriting how we do life. Yeah. No. Never heard of Paul. You see, all they know is soul. A man with a temper, a man to be feared. A man with a an agenda's gonna take people and lock them up. He's really zealous for that. He's not Paul. He's a whole different person.
And I want you to think about these in the, just let it sink in. We live in the New Testament as Christians and think they were already like they are, they were not. And so give yourself a break. If you're not there already, you may be the free example of what God has in mind. Yeah, right. God is going to develop you to one day people can write about your story.
Lemme tell you about Neville. Neville Tan. They called him the Iron Man. When he was just 17, he was put away for murder in Singapore, one of the 10 most wanted people. Now this man, I know him personally, he's been in my house. He taught me how to cook rice. It was after he was a murderer.
But let me tell you a story. It's, he's 17 and a half. He's put away for the term of his natural life, or until they decide to be lenient to him, and he's in this angry state. He was afraid. He was afraid of being put in solitary because his claustrophobic and couldn't imagine anything worse than It's like being put into a, into a coffin, you know?
And here he is struggling with the these thoughts. And then he remembers from a mission school that he went to that somebody talked about Jesus and he found these pieces of the Bible that another inmate had given to him and he was gonna wrap them up and use 'em as cigarettes because they're not nice cigarette paper, you know?
And as his, in his desperation, he thinks, oh, what have I got to lose? He starts reading it. And he sees the story of this woman who's, um, Elizabeth and she's old and she's getting pregnant and having children. What a strange story he said to himself. And then he goes further and there's an angel talking to somebody named Mary and saying to her, she's gonna get pregnant.
He says, oh, I better not read anymore. I might get pregnant. He was a bit scary, but then the angel said, but you'll call his name. Jesus and something sparked in Neville's mind back to his mission school days where the, the teacher had, you know, she was frustrated with him, but said, one day you'll know that anything you ask for from Jesus, he will do for you.
So here's this murderer sitting in the cell and begins to say, I'm gonna hold you to it. I'm gonna ask in Jesus name, get me out of this cell. Every day when he woke up. God, I'm holding it to your word in Jesus name. Get me out of the cell. Day 13 comes nothing. Day, 14 comes, nothing. And then on day 15 against all logic or reason, the door opens and is released from that part of the prison.
To the other part, and the guys say, how did you get outta solitary? He says, ah, you know, I threatened the, the governor of the, the jail. And if he didn't do this, and it was really in his heart, he knew I'm lying. I said, in Jesus' name. And it happened. And if he began a journey for him, and in the end he gave his heart to Jesus Christ, he was a new man.
If you met Neville Tan today, he's been the, a man that started churches and and planted missions, went back to the prison to tell his prison mates. You can be the new person. So whether you're a Paul, whether you're a Peter, whether you are the new Neville Tan. Yeah, God's got his purpose for you. Isn't that good news?
I, I think it's, it's more than just about labels. It's about becoming somebody else. When we re encountered the resurrection, we didn't just give, get a new mission, we get a new DNA. Think of it as a, a restructure inside of you. Even the thoughts become different thoughts. I am not saying it's overnight suddenly happens, but in one sense it is immediate because God said it and it's true.
What if we're not living out what we already know about ourselves? We've heard God say things to us and we're afraid if I actually do what he just told me, I'm gonna stand out. I'm gonna get a new label. That freak, you know, Bible person, Bible bacher, God, botherer. No, you'll become exactly what God wants you to be.
So it's more than changing our names. It's about discovering our real soul. They have been recalibrated these guys to match the reality that isn't obvious. It's something going on in the universe that we don't always see in God saying That's it. Zero in focus on that. So let's look at what this Simon, the new Peter actually said right over here.
I've got my handy marker there in first Peter, new name verse Peter. All right, chapter one verse three. Praise be to God and sorry to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in his great mercy. He has given us new birth into a living hope through the rec resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
So Peter has found something out about himself. He's gone from being that angry fisherman to being a person who is now new in Christ. He's found New Mercy. He's found new hope. He's no longer dead and his trespasses and sins, there's a technical term for you. Just means doing the wrong stuff. That doesn't kill him anymore.
It's renewed in him. Simon became Peter because of his experience of the new birth through the risen Christ. Right. What about Saul? Where is he now? How has he changed? Well, I do have another marker for that. Paul over here in Second Corinthians. Yeah, real bible, the second Corinthians chapter five, verse 16.
I like this. Paul, the new guy, no longer sa, he says this. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. He is saying, I've changed my mind about how I look at myself and everyone else I meet. Something's shifted. I used to hate that Jesus character never had much to do with him, but I hated him anyway and I'd lock people up because they followed him.
But I don't look at him the same way because I've met him. He's risen. He's alive in me. And then he goes on, this is our part. Okay. He says the next verse. Um, so therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that means they put their trust in him. The new creation has come, the old has gone. The new is here. Whoa. See, this is our part.
This is our part where we get to be the new person as well. And, and he's saying to us, I'm not trying to work this out. It's not like I'm gonna be new. He's saying it's already happened. There's some things that God says about you that you haven't seen the full result of yet. Like we were saying before, we've gotta believe it, trusted and then move into it.
And this is one of those things. You are a new creation. You're not gonna become one. Once you put your trust in Jesus, you are there. Already it's happened. Heavenly Switch has been switched over and he now accepts you as one of his family, one of his kids, and things begin new. The old has gone. Behold, all things are new.
This is what we call the big exchange. When Christ was raised, the old version of you stayed in the grave. Now, when I was a young Christian, I used to love the saying, oh, I'm, I'm not perfect. I'm just forgiven. It sounded really clever. I thought it was fun, you know, nice thing to say. But it sells short, really short, too cheap, the exchange that Christ has done.
I'm no longer just a reformed sinner. I'm actually a new creation. I've moved. Whether I know it or realize it or not, I've moved in him and that's where he wants us to live and stay. We're not just reformed sinners, we're new creations. We're not just a better version of ourself. We're not just doing the self-help experience.
You know, some people think that's all church is is about being a better you. They, they look at the result and think that's the thing. The result is because of the thing. You are new in Christ. Does that make sense? And that new creation isn't just a renovation of an old house, it's a whole new building.
It started over again. It's kind of an aha moment, I think for Paul when he gets to these passages. It's got one more for us. And, and this one comes from Ephesians. All these letters are written to real people in real time. In Ephesians chapter two, he says this, 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.
He doesn't wait for us to be good enough. You will not be good enough. Some of the labels we've put up there, not good enough. Fantastic. That's the sort of person God loves. 'cause if you think you're good enough, you're missing the whole point of why we need a savior, why we need a redeemer, why we need a spirit that can move us on and build us up and make us new people and not be just a, a new version of what we used to be.
You know, I used to think as a young Christian, all it is is about keeping the rules, you know, pleasing God, he'll smile at me. Nah. It's about me trusting him to overlook who I was and keep bringing out of me the new. It's already from him. I love the stuff. So we read about that and it says, you know, in Christ we aren't just forgiven, which is amazing enough.
But we've actually been brought to new life. In him. It is an act of God's great love. He looked at us and said, you need me and I want you. So he came to us and redeemed us and made us new in him. When was the last time you felt fully alive? I'll just let you think about that for a moment.
When did you last feel fully alive? Hmm. Can we actually live in that place where we're always feeling fully alive? Scary thought, but maybe think about this right now. Right now you are seated with him in heavenly places. You've shifted from just being an earth dweller. To being, having a position, an inheritance in the heavenly places with him.
As Christians, we get afraid of terms like saint, right? What are saints? They're those statues that stand on Catholic buildings, aren't they? No axes. That's not what we find in scriptures. The same people that Paul had trouble with in Corinth, he starts off his letter saying to the saints that are in Corinth.
And they're not there yet, but he says, I recognize you are new CRE creations. Every one of you, you're having struggles in your Christian life. That's normal, but that's not who you are. You are saints. And you know, I want you to think about that sometimes just if you even dare to close your eyes for a second and think about the people around you.
Can you look at them differently and say, you know what, that person is my, even, it's my spouse, my child, or somebody else in the building. You know? And you think, I've never, never really stopped to think just who you are in Christ, you know? Wow. We look at each other differently. Our expectations are different.
Our labels are gone, and we're not just talking about changing labels, we're talking about peeling them off. Completely. Whoops. Sorry about that. Just totally changing the surface so that they can't stick anymore. Does that make sense to you? I hope it does. I hope you're getting a heart for what God is, has in mind.
Your identity is not tied to where you're from. It's tied to where you are spiritually. It means that our past mistakes, I've got many, our rebellion. The things that we're ashamed of that people would find out. They no longer tell you who you are. You are new in Christ right now. Your true position is sitting right there with him.
And Paul finalizes this in, uh, Romans in chapter six. We're just gonna watch a little video now because I love what people are saying when they're about to be baptized. And we'll watch a bit of this on a video right now
Speaker 2: before, I wanna say a lot more stressful, a lot more tumultuous, I think would be a good word for it. And just all over the place. Uh, very chaotic and not really grounded in anything.
Speaker 3: Like we were very much on a spiritual path, but it just didn't, it felt like Ro was pushing up a hill and it felt like. It was a lot of resistance.
Like everything we did our endeavors, we always had pushback.
Speaker 4: I don't really have a religious background, like in the terms of my family. Uh, you know, I've got some Catholic family members, but for the most part, I just had this, I don't, I don't know how to describe it. Just like an a knowing sense of faith.
Like when I was six years old, I asked my parents for the Bible. It was not something that was discussed in my household growing up. Uh, but. I just always kind of lean towards it and it, it's just happened very naturally for me.
Speaker 5: I, no one really taught me how to have a relationship with God. They just taught me to go to church and go to catechism and do all these things, but that was where it ended.
And so I ne when I, um, me and Danny met, it was never something that I shared with him or it wasn't really important to me, but I always knew that I was like, directed by God.
Speaker 4: Last year we went through some hard times and you know, Charlie asked me, he said like, how are you so calm through tough situations?
Like how do you have so much faith that things will get better? And you know, I said, you know, it's my faith in God. You know, everything always works out the way it should. You know, God has a plan for us.
Speaker 3: I was driving along the freeway to, um, drop my car at the mechanic and. It was slowly moving. It wasn't backed up or anything, but it was slowly moving, and then I just had this urge to turn left and there's just this church on the side of the freeway and it says, Jesus loves you.
And I was just like, okay, like I'm having too many, too many things happen at once,
Speaker 2: even when facing any sort of adversity. Now we're just very, very calm and knowing in the fact that things will be okay and that uh, God has a plan for us and it just works out. It always seems to work out
Speaker 6: fantastic. We're gonna really do wanna pray for you guys.
We,
Speaker 4: um. Oh gosh, we don't have any like, family up here. Um, you know, we just felt like this was what was calling us, you know, our home and we went with our hearts. But when you do everything on your own, it's, it's really, it has, its very difficult moments and. You know, sometimes we don't know what to do. So it's just really nice to know that we've got like a sense of like church, family, like it's, um, I don't know.
It just feels very supportive.
Speaker 5: The community's been amazing. It's
Speaker 3: been huge. That's
Speaker 5: been huge part of our journey for sure.
Speaker 3: Going back to that, um, analogy of like the, the house built on the sand and like our house has just like drifting well all the time and collapsing now when all this, the tide's coming in, it's just bouncing back away and that is it.
Like even though we are getting tested. Um, I feel like our faith is so strong that it's just conquering it so
Speaker 5: it
Speaker 3: doesn't impact us, which has been a massive thing for me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Massive importance.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's really good to like, have really good role models, like positive role models around. You are the five people or so that you hang around. And so just being around people that share similar values and uphold those values. They don't just say one thing and then do something else. They actually live what they speak.
Um, I think that's just had such a major impact both individually on us and our relationship. So it's
Speaker 3: like having him by our side are just like, he's carrying the weight, but we're just walking with him.
Speaker: Yeah. Fantastic. So, as I said, I love to hear the testimony because it's your experience of something that's happened in you.
It's not just a new, new experience of our community. That's part of it. It's not just a, a deepening of religious life, but it's actually a change. We're gonna see how that comes through in the scripture right now. Okay? So we're looking again at the scripture of Paul, the new Paul. From Saul and now in Romans, he's gonna say something to us in Romans.
Romans, Romans chapter, ah, chapter six, verse four. That's one. Yes. Okay. So it says here in my little Bible that, um, we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that. Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live our new life. Hey, it keeps coming out everywhere.
This guy's leaking the stuff. Every scripture you read from Paul has some reference to how he used to be and what God has done to him and how he's changed him forever. Oh man. I get enthused by that, knowing that it's not just an old 2000 year old story, but one like Neville's, you know, very close to us.
Someone we can know. And maybe it's your story too, but here's the big thing, and sorry if it spoils you today, but you can't raise what isn't dead.
The hard part of being Christian is the dying part.
You know, we have to sacrifice ourself. We have to. There's no half Christian. You're not the son of a Christian. You're not the daughter of a Christian or grandparents. With Christian. You either have died to yourself and trusted Christ for new life in you, or you're nowhere. You're just playing games. And I love that we're a part of a community where we're discovering that over and over again, and people are getting baptized and coming up new, right?
We joke about holding them down if they've sinned a lot, you know, we'd all be down the bottom still. I'd be long gone, but God raises us up just like he was. He was the forerunner, the first of. Of what it means to be made new as a human being. He was a human. He became fully godlike. So your value is a finished fact, not a goal that you are still chasing your value.
Your label is the finished thing in God, because Christ lives in you. You aren't defined by how well you perform, but by the fact that he is present. We may have started mistaking the masks that we wear, like online or in our home or business or wherever people think things about us. And we encourage the ones that are positive, you know, and we think they're true.
But in fact, know if you are in Christ, you are a new person. It will affect everything you do. How you mother, how you partner, how you live your day to day life. You know, our skill level is one thing. Our personality in Christ is the main thing. So this week, every time you catch yourself saying things like, I'm just that kind of person who gets angry, you know, or I'm just that kind of person who has to have it my way, or I'm just that kind of person that finds it difficult.
Stop. So I'm just that kind of person that's new in Jesus Christ. How about that? Circumvent the whole argument and put it back to where it belongs. For all Christians, all Christ followers will be saying, I'm that kind of person. I'd like to be the old person. Sometimes it's easier, but God says no. Move on.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting we just need new labels. The resurrection doesn't just peel off the label. It destroys the surface of the label is stuck to, maybe this seems impossible to you, but many, many years ago, God inspired a, a prophet named Zacharia to write these words. He said, it's not by ma, it's not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.
So the impossible part is dealt with. He makes all things possible. Including your new self, the new Life in him. Later in the series we're gonna focus on, uh, what it means to be alive in Christ through the spirit of God, how he has an interaction with us. So let's sum this up. We're coming in for a landing Now.
Remember, you don't have a new life. You are a new life. This is a finished work. You don't earn a new identity. You inherit one. The moment that Jesus stepped out of the grave, you became something new. We started earlier with this question. If you could be anyone at all, who would you be? And I'm hoping that by now you're starting to think, you know what?
I could be the person that God wanted me to be fully alive, full of hope and joy, full of abilities in him that I didn't have before enough to be enough for myself and my family, and certainly in relationship with him. So I hope that's the answer we're getting as the, uh, I invite the worship team just to come to us.
They're gonna sing a beautiful song in just a moment, which ties in really well with what we're talking about. And let me just finally say, we, we can take a breath and accept the truth about ourselves. Isn't that a lovely place to be? Accept the truth about yourself, that God knows you and loves you, and he has a new life.
For you. The resurrection isn't just about life after death. It's life before death. Not after, but during. Before. So every Easter wasn't just a moment to celebrate. It's an invitation to live a resurrected life every day. So what has to change? What has to change? Honestly, it starts with letting go.
Surrender the lead actor role in your life. To a whole new person. The person in charge is now Christ. Give it over to him. How about this? What if we stop asking each other, oh, what did you do this week? Or, what do you do for a living? And start asking questions like this. Frame questions that are like, what has God been teaching you about yourself lately?
Or, how did your experience, did you experience God's grace in a moment? Where you usually would've felt anxious or angry, ask each other. What is one area where you feel the Lord is currently refining you or changing? You see their resurrection questions inspire one another to keep rising in our new life.
In him as a community of faith, we're more than just a group of people. We're a family. Where each one finds our real purpose in one thing, becoming fully alive in who Christ wants us to be, and then helping others to discover that in their life as well. You don't have to settle for just getting by, but he's calling you to be fully alive at him.
So what about you? Are you ready to die? I can say it with a smile, but are you ready to lay it all down and take up what Christ has given you and celebrate it with him? Let's pray. If you're ready for that and you pray and pray something like this, Lord Jesus, we know you are alive today. A help us to move from merely knowing about your resurrection life to actually living in it, to amen.
Thank you for listening. Bless you.