Let me open with this.
If there is no intelligence behind the universe, then nobody or nothing designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely the by-product of some atoms within my skull. If so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? And if I can’t trust my own thinking, I can’t trust arguments leading to atheism and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought; so, I can never use thought to disbelieve God.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
2 Corinthians 5:17
These verses tell us that you can be different, transformed into the person that will have a home in heaven.
Your life can change, be different. Paul the writer of the book of Corinthians is telling the people of Corinth and us, how we can change our relationship with Christ Jesus, from open hostility toward God, Jesus, and the children of God, to one who has been reborn, reconciled to Jesus. Paul knew this all too well, as he himself had experienced dramatic change in his life. This dramatic change was the result of an encounter with Christ Jesus on the Damascus Road (tell story of Saul of Tarsus – wrote 14 of the 66 books of the bible. Acts 7:58; 8:1; 9). Let’s look at the changes Christ can make for you and to you.
1. He Can Change Your Status
a. Alive or dead in Christ
b. Everyone stands someplace in relation to Christ.
i. With Him or against Him
ii. Knowing of Him, but not trusting in Him
iii. Wanting to accept Him, but looking for a reason why
iv. Flat out rejecting Him
c. Notice what happens when you accept Jesus.
i. Pass from death to life. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. 1 John 3:14
ii. Pass from darkness to light. I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. John 12:46
iii. Pass from condemnation to justification. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John 3:18
2. He Can Change Your Destination
a. Sign on the roadside: “Where will you spend eternity?”
i. The bible answers this clearly for all mankind. Heaven or hell!
ii. Satan tries to confuse you about this.
1. Explain these:
a. Purgatory
i. Some churches teach that there is a temporary holding place or place of temporary punishment that a person goes to if they are not entirely free from their earthly sins. Only by dealing with the lite punishment of being in purgatory, and prayers by those on earth can help those in purgatory.
(don’t read scripture but expound on it)
Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:39-43
b. Reincarnation
i. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation. Hebrews 9:27 -28
c. Oblivion
i. But the bible is very clear that those who are dead in Christ will be raised first along with those believers who are still alive. For those who are dead apart from Christ, it says that the earth, sea, and hades would give up its dead, and all those will be tossed into the lake of fire.
d. Some even say that everybody goes to heaven.
2. He tries to keep you from salvation. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4
b. Jesus changes our eternal destination. (don’t read scripture but expound on it) In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:2-3.
3. He Can Change Your Purpose
a. What is your purpose in life?
i. Is it just to have a good time?
ii. Is it to keep the world revolving? Without you the world would stop spinning.
iii. Or do you have a purpose at all?
b. Jesus gives you a real reason for living.
i. It is to please and glorify God.
1. To understand this, think about the time when you were young. And how you wanted to please and glorify your parents so that they would be proud of you. So why should that be any different for our Father in Heaven.
2. In last Sunday’s message I talked about taking up your cross and following Jesus, and in taking up that cross how He wants you and I to help people find their way out of darkness, into the marvelous light of Jesus. Is that an awesome purpose or what?!
ii. You are an ambassador for the King of kings. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:20
iii. An ambassador presenting Lord Jesus to all who do not know him.
4. He Can Change Your Outlook
a. Jesus gives us a better quality of life. John 10:10, The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Let me leave you with this true story about someone who was openly hostile to Jesus, and how along his road of hostile acts against our Lord and Savior, like that of Saul of Tarsus who was transformed.
Lew Wallace, governor of New Mexico, was writing a book against Jesus Christ and in the process was converted to Christianity. He told a friend how it happened.
“I had always been an agnostic and denied Christianity,” Wallace said. “Robert C. Ingersoll, a famous agnostic, was one of my most intimate friends. He once said, ‘See here, Wallace, you are a learned man and a thinker. Why don’t you gather material and write a book to prove the falsity concerning Jesus Christ, that no such man has ever lived, much less the author of the teachings found in the New Testament? Such a book would make you famous. It would be a masterpiece, and a way of putting an end to the foolishness about the so-called Christ.’”
Wallace went home and told his wife about the project. She was a member of the Methodist Church and did not like the idea. But Wallace began to collect material from libraries all over the world that covered the period in which Jesus Christ should have lived. He did that for several years and then began writing. He was four chapters into the book, he says, when it became clear to him that Jesus Christ was just as real a personality as Socrates, Plato, or Caesar. “The conviction became a certainty. I knew that Jesus Christ had lived because of the facts connected with the period in which he lived.”
So, he asked himself candidly, “If he was a real person, was he not then also the Son of God and the Savior of the world?” Gradually Wallace realized that since Jesus Christ was a real person, he probably was the one he claimed to be.
“I fell on my knees to pray for the first time in my life, and I asked God to reveal himself to me, forgive my sins, and help me to become a follower of Christ. Toward morning the light broke into my soul. I went into my bedroom, woke my wife, and told her that I had received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
“‘O Lew,’ she said, ‘I have prayed for this ever since you told me of your purpose to write this book, that you would find him while you wrote it!’”
Wallace went on to write a famous book. Every time I watch the epic film Ben Hur, based on that book, I wonder at how it was written by a man who wanted to disprove that Jesus ever existed and instead became convinced that he was the greatest man who ever lived.
So, I ask you, are you willing to let Jesus come into your life and change you? I am asking this question because it must start with a willingness on your part to put away the hostility. Now you may be wondering why I keep labeling resistance to accept Jesus as hostility. Well, that is because that is what the bible says it is.
Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James 4:4
Are you willing to let Jesus change your inner being from darkness to light? Altering your character to one that is loving and forgiving. Or will you allow the devil to make you believe you are good enough?
Are you willing to let Jesus bring you a life of abundance, as opposed to a lifetime of struggles? The Christian will have some struggles, but Jesus helps us through those struggles, and we are better off in the end. For this to happen, you must be different.
Are you willing to let Him change your destination from eternal death to an eternal life, or are you going to follow Satan and his path to damnation? The choice is yours.
