Everything - Jesus Changes Everything
Notes
Transcript
Jesus Changes Everything
Series passage 2 Corinthians 5:17-22
Everything – Week 1
Mark 12:28-31
Series Slide
Good morning and welcome to worship today! This is the day that the Lord has Made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Amen?!
I want to welcome all of you to our new Church wide series, Jesus Changes Everything! Ladies and Gentlemen, Nothing stays the same when we encounter Jesus… at least it shouldn’t.
As Shaefer, Alex, Lillie, Landon, and I have worked together to consider what God has for us in this passage, numerous scriptures have risen to the surface. One of them is kinda the theme verse for the series… 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Many of us know this one by heart from the King James version, but I like to make us think about the verse we read so I pull some other version, usually the New Living Translation. Here is that verse in the NLT:
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)
OK, that one sounds a lot like what we learned from King Jimmy and his boys. When you translate word for word from the Greek to English you get this meaning… that when one of us gives our life to Jesus, we are changed… the old is gone and we have been made new. I love that. The fact that Jesus changes everything about me. When we encounter Jesus Christ, we are made new. That is good news, Amen?!
But did you know there is another way to translate from language to language. What you do is look at the meaning of the phrase and translate it to another language. I think Renee calls this ‘Glossing’ when she takes a phrase in English and translates it to ASL. When you do that, you get a different meaning than just going word for word. Think about the idiom “All Ears.” If you are translating from English to say, Swahili, and you tell them that you are “All Ears,” they may look at you a little funny, but if your translator tells them that you are ready to listen, they know what that means.
Scripture translation works the same way.
So, here is that same verse, 2 Corinthians 5:17 in the New Revised Standard Version
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being.
Or look at it from the New International Version
2 Corinthians 5:15 (NIV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
In the one translation we see a personal change… I am made new, but when we translate the meaning of the entire phrase, we see that it means that EVERYTHING is new. When YOU are in Christ… when YOU become like Christ… when YOU live your life as a follower of Jesus, yes, YOU are changed, but that change also affects everyone around you. Your change affects your family, it affects your work, it affects your interactions at social events… and that affect on the others around you impacts them and that impacts the people around them.
It’s kinda like the Butterfly Effect – the scientific theory that small changes can have huge impacts on the whole of a system… In other words, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Africa can cause a hurricane to hit Texas. I know, we can’t prove that a butterfly caused Hurricane Lee floating around in the Atlantic right now, but we do see the impact of a minor change having a major impact… you know like the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”
What I’m saying is that, when Jesus changes you, Jesus changes everything!
You have a huge impact on the world. Jesus changes everything through you, as an individual and as the church, the Body of Christ. And as we think about the impact we have on the world around us, we need to remember and never forget that Eternal, Life Changing transformation only happens through Salvation in Jesus Christ.
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I want you to hear for a moment from someone in our church, a young lady who has dealt with adversity that many of us can’t comprehend, from the story she will tell, to the 2nd Cancer battle, and yet her faith and her witness have been made stronger because Jesus Changed Everything.
Ashley Video
What an amazing young lady. Jesus changed everything… she has been and is being made new.
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Ok, now that we have that established that Jesus changes everything, let’s look at this from a different angle.
Turn with me to some of Jesus’ words on being transformed, changed, made new. Flip over to Mark 12. Jesus has been being questioned by the Religious Authorities, they are asking about paying taxes, the resurrection, and it comes to a question of Scripture and the laws of the Old Testament. Let’s pick up at verse 28.
Mark 12:28-31
<Prayer>
In 1956, Missionary Nate Saint initially made contact with the violent and vicious warriors of the Waodani Tribe in the Amazon region of Ecuador as he flew his plane over them, dropping and even receiving gifts with and from the Waodani people. The Waodani people had been decimating their own people through the act of revenge killing. They believed that it was through killing and avenging the death of a loved one that you became strong enough to “cross the great boa” when you died. This cycle of killing was leading to fewer and fewer families of the Waodani people.
Nate and his family had been in contact with one of the Waodani girls, Dayumae, who had escaped and ended up living with the missionaries. As they learned more and more, Nate became obsessed with sharing the Gospel with these tribes.
He developed a plan and returned with 4 other missionaries: Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Yoderian.
Before they left the mission compound, Nate and his son Stevie were talking about the opportunity to share the gospel, and Stevie asks, “If the Waodani attack, will you defend yourself? Will you use your guns?” To which Nate replied, “Son, we can’t shoot the Waodani, they’re not ready for heaven… we are.”
It was almost a foreshadowing of what was to come. What at first seemed to be a peaceful exchange and meeting of the Waodani tribe soon turned ugly. The warriors misunderstood what was happening and they speared all 5 missionaries to death on the banks of the river. Nate was speared to death by the warrior chief Mincayani, quite possibly the most violent of the men of the tribe.
In a showing of amazing grace, the wives of these men met some of the Waodani women and returned them to the tribe along with Dayumae. They then live with the people, treating them for Polio. Slowly, person by person, the Waodani people began to change. First it was Dayumae, then Kimo, and then more. The revenge killings stopped. Slowly but surely, Jesus – working through the missionaries - was changing everything. The missionaries, including the wives of the slain men and Stevie the son of Nate return to their mission post and left the tribal village, but they continue to work together. Stevie grew into Steve and went off to college and built a life in the US, returning years later for the funeral of his aunt. It is on this trip that he found out that it was Mincayani who speared his father. Mincayani has been dealing with the grief all these years… he knew that he killed an innocent man. He knew that he killed a good man. He knew that he killed Steve’s father. And so, he took Steve back to the sandbar where it had all happened. He showed Steve the bits of the plane that are left and told him that he was the one who killed his father, he tried to get Steve to kill him out of revenge. He even put a spear in Steve’s hand and puts it up to his chest… and says, “Do it! I killed your father! Do it!” The anger burned in him, but eventually Steve pulled the spear away and throws it down, telling Mincayani, “No one took my fathers life. He gave it.”
What does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength? What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?
No, It doesn’t mean that you have to be speared to death in the Ecuadorian Rain Forrest. But it does mean that you have to be willing to be transformed. It does mean that Jesus can change everything in you, that you can become a new person.
That day on the river banks two men were transformed because of the sacrifice of one. Nate was willing to die that others may live. The life of hate, and vengeance, and killing could have continued in the anger of Steve as he was given the opportunity to avenge his father’s death, but instead, he forgave. Rather than take life, he gave life because he had been changed by the one who freely gave his life for another.
Ladies and gentlemen, 2000 years ago, Jesus changed everything when he left the glory of heaven to come to earth and teach us how we are to live and love. He taught us how we are to be in relationship with each other and with God the Father. Jesus changed everything when God became flesh and walked among us, then allowed himself to be arrested, tried, and convicted of crimes he never committed.
He could have called down 10,000 angels on that day and stepped off the cross. No one took his life. He gave it, freely and willingly that you may live… that you may be changed from who you were to who you were created to be. You, and everything around you can be made new.
2 Corinthians 5:15 (NIV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Amen…