Love Reigns Over Our Past – Love Reigns, part 2
Does your past hinder you? Out with the old and in with the new! This message teaches us how to be free of past failures and poor choices. It encourages us to allow God’s love to reign in us for a better future.
Will you allow God to demolish your past and make room for your future? When God’s love reigns in us, we are made new. Your testimony is powerful. You are invited to simply receive the love of God and allow it to reign in your life.
Discover the ways that God’s amazing love wipes away our past, redefines our present, and gives us hope for the future. We have been given an opportunity to embrace life and a new way of living that changes everything.
Out with the old and in with the new!
About this Series
In this series, we will be discovering all the ways that God’s amazing love wipes away our past, redefines our present, and gives us hope for the future. Jesus died because of love. He rose three days later and defeated death. Love has won. And today, He lives in you. We have been given an opportunity to embrace life and a new way of living that changes everything. When we put our faith, hope, and trust in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we will be saved. This is why we celebrate Easter.
Thank God for New Beginnings
Jesus demonstrated his love for humanity by sacrificially giving his life on the cross and rising from the dead. Because of this incredible act of love, every person in Christ has become a new creation. All of our past mistakes and sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus. Our past no longer has the last word or the final say over our lives. We have been given a fresh start because of our faith in Christ.
We have been reconciled to God and we, in turn, can give hope to others by making an appeal for them to seek Christ and embrace the truth of God’s forgiving love that is available to them as well. Every person needs to know Jesus loves them and that forgiveness is available for whoever will believe.
Please understand: your past does not need to define you. You are more than your past actions, mistakes, and sins. The thoughts that echo in your consciousness of who you were have no power over who you are in Christ. Do not allow the heavy burden of your past to weigh you down any longer.
Decide today to get past your past by confessing your sin and placing your faith in Christ and believing in the forgiving love of Jesus. Know for certain that God’s love reigns over your past.
Last week, on Easter Sunday, we began this new series: Love Reigns. We celebrated together the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ. His victory over death is proof enough that he is the true King over everything. We committed once again to live under the reign of Jesus’ love so we might become more like him.
Today, we continue in the series Love Reigns, as we consider the ways that the love of God reigns over our past. It is only because of Jesus’ work on the cross that we do not have to be controlled by our mistakes, sins, or poor decisions that happened long ago. Rather, we are forgiven and we are new creations in Christ.
Do you believe that your past hinders your present and future?
That can be a heavy burden to bear when you feel weighed down by previous choices.
There are many supposed legends of bad luck based on the past, such as the Boston Red Sox’s 86-year drought in World Championships. For 86 years the Boston Red Socks and their fans bore this burden, believing that they could never get past their past.
You may know of one yourself or you may feel that bad things happen because of past actions and decisions. Some of us can probably point to a decision or two that we might have trouble living down. Some decisions are simply honest mistakes that have no consequences, while others can have devastating effects that last for years.
We cannot change our past, and yet many would love to. However, we can ensure that our past does not control our present or our future when we place our faith in Christ, accept His love and forgiveness, stop living in the past, and live a life in Christ.
The New Testament often speaks about the transforming power of Jesus’ selfless sacrifice on the cross and His triumphant resurrection from the grave. The gospels are full of stories of individuals with shady pasts who experience a fresh start because of their interactions with Jesus:
Peter denying Jesus three times and yet Jesus reaffirmed his love and concern for Peter by asking Peter if he loved him three times as well.
Paul persecuted Christians and yet Jesus reveals himself to Paul and God calls Paul to preach and write a majority of the New Testament. Saul, whose name was changed to Paul, once persecuted believers and became an Apostle and preacher of the gospel of Christ that he once sought to destroy.
Then there is the woman at the well; someone Jesus offered love, forgiveness, and redemption to even though she was considered an outcast and had made many poor choices. (John 4:1-42).
Also, the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed Jesus’ feet with an expensive ointment.
Jesus said that he would be with one of the thieves on the cross in paradise.
Each of these, and millions of us, have all sinned and have made bad decisions and yet each one of us has an opportunity to receive forgiveness and experience newness of life because of Jesus and His death and resurrection.
When people placed their trust in Jesus, they were different, they were forgiven, and they were made new. It is the greatest news of all that all our decisions that have caused such guilt and shame can be nullified by Jesus’ love.
Paul speaks of this truth:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV).
Paul knew this to be true better than anyone. His life, mission, and heart changed 180 degrees from how he once lived. Paul became a follower of Christ after his encounter with Christ. Paul sets up this verse by bragging on God’s amazing love that would offer Jesus’ life to rescue ours. This is where we find this word “therefore”.
It is because of God’s love, that we who are in Christ are a new creation. When we are united with Jesus because of our faith in him, we experience a transformation that makes us new. For this newness to be a reality, the old must then be removed.
So, out with the old and in with the new. The love of God removes all the old sin, shame, guilt, mistakes, and failures from your life. They have no power over you anymore, so don’t let them hinder you.
Will you allow God to demolish your past and make room for your future?
When God’s love reigns in us, it overpowers the hold that all the old things used to have in our lives. However, it must be cleaned up, and space made for the new things God wants to do in us. The language, the old hangouts, the old sinful habits and ways have no place in the believer’s life any more.
Have you ever watched a home remodel show that takes an outdated or sad-looking place and gives it new life? In many cases, rooms are gutted and walls removed; the old is taken away and new, fresh designs and items fill the space. The remodeled kitchen and bath look nothing like the original. But none of this could ever be possible without first removing the old wallpaper, the rotten wood, and the cracked linoleum floors.
Chip Gaines made the phrase “demo day” famous in his show “Fixer Upper”. Demo Day is when a remodel begins and everything old is torn out and removed, often by brute force, and not with much care, in order to make way for the new materials. The remodeler needs to have a vision of what the house should look like when complete and then begin to remodel for a total remodel both inside and out.
When God comes into our lives, he does not simply overlook our sinful past. Instead, he forgives and removes it, so it does not have power over us anymore.
When we place our faith in Jesus and confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When we accept Christ and turn from our past lifestyle, we experience his forgiveness; we experience God’s love, grace and mercy. When we accept Christ and confess our sin, we become new creations in Christ.
To confess means to agree with God. When we confess, we acknowledge the old sinful ways as just that, old and outdated sinful ways. When we confess, we agree to allow God to replace those sinful ways with godly ways that are new and better. We go from telling lies to speaking truth, from being selfish to being selfless, from spreading gossip to offering encouragement, and from burning with anger to being filled with joy.
In remodeling a house, it is important to remove all the old and rotten materials and replace them with new and fresh materials, because if you do not take out the old rotten parts, they are destined to come back and affect the house.
When we try to live as new creations while holding on to our past vices, we will end up becoming spiritually frustrated. Our relationship with God will suffer, our relationship with others will suffer and we will find ourselves turning our backs on God and back into the spiritually immoral pig pen again, only this time in a worse mess than before.
We must allow God to remove it all. We must turn away from a life of selfishness and sin. We must focus on Jesus and start fresh with a renewed heart, and develop within us, a desire to live for him.
The Bible says it like this:
“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11-12).
The east and west never meet. If you are a Christian and a disciple of Christ, you can be confident in the fact that you have been forgiven, and your sin has been removed as far as the east is from the west. You should not walk around defeated and full of shame anymore. You are a new creation.
Your past does not control your present or your future.
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
God has given us the gracious gift of reconciliation with and through Christ. It is all from him. We cannot overcome our mistakes or make up for our sins by doing good things. We cannot get past our past on our own. God has reconciled us to himself through Christ. Though our sin broke our relationship with God, his love reigns over our sin and makes us right with him.
Let me try to illustrate:
A 6-year-old told his father a lie about something he had eaten. He was not supposed to have candy that day because he had already had his limit for the day.
However, the child located a bag of Halloween candy that had been put away. The dad knew something was up and asked the boy if he had eaten any candy.
The boys response was, “no. Not me.” It was a lie, and the father knew it. The father had found the empty candy wrapper in the trash. The boy was busted.
When the father confronted his son with the evidence, he continued to deny that he had eaten any candy. The father told him that he was disappointed that he was not truthful, and that the boy had sinned, and he had hurt their relationship.
After only a few minutes, the child went to his father and apologized. He said he was sorry for disobeying and for lying about eating the candy. The father told his son that he loved him and that he was forgiven. All was forgiven, and that they were reconciled.
Love reigned over that relationship.
When we confess our sin and receive God’s forgiveness, we experience a restored relationship with him. God’s love reigns in us and we are made new. Not only that, but we can become conduits of this reigning love for others around us.
God loves you and God’s love can reign through you as you allow the love of God to shine bright through your life each day. God desires the entire world to be reconciled to himself. He does not want anyone to live a life weighed down by a sinful past or shackled by shame and guilt.
Because of his love, God extended grace to us through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Because of God’s love and forgiveness of sin, every believer is to be an ambassador for Christ. As believers, we are to implore others to confess their sin and be reconciled to God as well.
Share the freedom you’ve found!
Love for God is better caught than taught.
People need to see it and people need to see you live it out. The world is watching to see if what you say is how you live. We can tell people all day long about being a Christian and what it is like to have our past wiped clean. However, people do not want to have someone lecture them, they want to see you live it. They want to see that it’s for real.
When people see the joy in you that comes from knowing God and the freedom from being united with Christ in your life, then they will desire to have a reconciled life with God as well. A love for God is contagious. Your testimony is powerful.
People want to hear that it means something to you.
It is easy to share a story about something bad, funny, or amazing that happened. It’s easy with a friend. But have you ever spoken to another person you have never seen before while standing in line? Both positive and negative stories are shared but at times we may have deep reservations because we do not know how the person will respond.
However, when a person really loves something or someone, they can’t help but tell other people about it. It just oozes out of them. When we really love God and his love truly reigns in our lives, talking about him and celebrating his love for us should be second nature. Tell your story; share how your past has been forgiven. Let people know who you were before you met Jesus, how you met Jesus, and who you are now since he has changed your life.
Jesus wants to make his appeal to the world through the way we live and the things we say. It has been made possible through the person of Jesus Christ.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Jesus took on our sin, mistakes, brokenness, and past shame and nailed them to the cross. He became sin on our behalf, even though he was perfect and sinless. It was an act of love for him to die for us, even as we were still sinners. Our unrighteousness or wrongness is replaced by God’s righteousness.
There is an incredible exchange that took place at the cross of Calvary. Jesus took upon himself our sin and our wrong way of living, and we were given the righteousness of God.
The Greek meaning behind this righteousness is the idea that we are approved in the eyes of God. His righteousness is his divine approval.
Maybe some of you need to hear this today. If you are united with Christ, if you are in him by your profession of faith, then God does not see your sinful past. He looks through the blood of Jesus Christ and sees you as forgiven. I know it may seem too good to be true, but that is the good news of the gospel.
I heard a story about a company that made cake mix to sell in grocery stores. They expected to be wildly successful because their ingredient list and instructions were so simple. All the public had to do was add water. To their surprise, sales slumped. They did not sell as they had anticipated. After doing some research, they found that their customers were uneasy about buying a cake mix that only required water. It seemed too easy, and therefore it must not be trustworthy. So, they changed the ingredients and instructions to include a single egg. Sales spiked, and the cake mix was very successful.
The truth that God has forgiven us of our past by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is too good to be true and far too simple to trust. Many might think we have to add to it somehow with penance that is not required or by trying to earn something that is priceless. Not true, we are all invited to simply receive the love of God and allow it to reign in our lives. Then, and only then, will we experience the joy and freedom of new life.
Suggested Praise and Worship
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Matthew 13:44-46: What does your forever—your eternity—look like? As hard as it is to imagine, God has already promised us a priceless, personal treasure. All we have to do is say yes to Jesus and He will help us get there.