Resurrection 5 Are You a 'Fixer Upper?'

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection 5 Starting the New Life

One of my favorite shows on TV is Fixer Upper. A couple in Waco, Texas have a home remodeling business where they take old houses and give them a new look, a new identity. They interview the buyers and get a feel for their hopes and tell them what can be done with the old house. The first thing they do is inspect the foundation. Then they survey the rest of the structure to make sure the project can be done.

The husband gathers a crew to rework the structure and the wife does the design. His favorite day is the first one he calls the 'demo' day, the day they get rid of all the bad wood, old cabinets, out of date appliances, faulty wiring and begin reshaping the interior based on the needs of the people buying the home. And they redo the exterior land around the house as well.

The wife's favorite time is really the night before the buyers come to view the finished product. She spends it arranging the furniture, dressing up all the rooms and giving the house its warmth and a feeling of home based on their perception of the owner's desires.

The next day they have a huge two section picture of the old house on wheels joined in the middle in front of the renewed house. The buyers are brought before it with closed eyes. When the wife asks them if they want to see their 'new' house, they open their eyes and see the picture of the old house. Then they are asked, “Do you want to see your 'fixer upper?'” The two sections are rolled apart and what appears? The real new house, the 'fixer upper'... and, as usual, the buyers are overcome by the transformation.

We, you and I, are in the 'fixer upper' stage. Just as the remodeling couple approach an old house, we allow the Lord to enter our 'temple' which starts us on a new road. He is the 'Fixer Upper.' We look at our past foundation, exchange it for Him as our new foundation. Then we begin to envision what we can become in Him, tear out the old decaying stuff, look at the way Jesus approached the world He lived in and how we become a 'fixer upper' by faith in Him. We realize we are in need of a 'demo' day but it starts with where are hearts have been and where we need to go as we face every next moment. We need our relationships redone with God, within ourselves and with others. The blueprint, the road map, is Scripture and letting the Holy Spirit use it to rebuild us. It's being a disciple of Jesus, following Him day by day the way He lived. This is why we look to Scripture to follow the pattern He lived for us.

Scripture records the way Jesus started, His baptism and its reason, the things He taught as He modeled the life He wanted to share, the people He chose to follow Him, the vision He had for people. Everything was all wrapped up in Him. This is what He demonstrated. He was the Son of His Father in Heaven. That was His identity. He knew exactly who He was and whose He was. His relationship with His Father was His foundation. Everything He said and did was built on that foundation. Therefore, His desire to do the will and Word of His Father. The Father in turn made Jesus the focus for all humanity to be like Jesus, to find their identity through Him. Jesus' death on the Cross was the fulfillment of His identity, the Resurrection its proof and seal. Thus His call to take up our cross is faith in Him for our every next moment. The Cross that was death for Him is life for us, our new life, resurrected in Him.

The Resurrection of Jesus gets us to look at the life He lived while He was in a human body on earth. The Resurrection is not just about the moment He overcame death and left the tomb. The Resurrection is about the person, the life He lived, the way He dealt with people, His life, all that He taught and did. His daily relationship with God and others, the whole of what was recorded about Him in the Gospels, that is what was resurrected. It was the complete Jesus from His birth to His death, His mind, heart and Spirit, that was raised from the dead. If we want to really understand the Resurrection of Jesus we need to see the content, the substance, the completeness that made up who Jesus was because that is what was resurrected.

This may have sounded repetitive. Well it was and is...for emphasis. It is God the Son who has come to be our personal 'fixer upper.' Who He was, what He said and what He did is the foundation for what God intended humanity to look like and become like. That means each of us, you and me, our personal humanity. That's why we start where He started His place amongst us, His baptism. Notice how the Gospels don't delve into anything in His early life other than His birth and an appearance at the Temple when He was a boy. That's it. What God is emphasizing here is that it is the life He lived and the accounts of who He is and the effects of His life on the world. They are what make up the foundation for the rebuilding project He has going on in us.

This is also why we start with Matthew's account of Jesus. Matthew spends his first three chapters setting the stage for who Jesus was by recalling His genealogy and the prophecies about Him. Matthew's basic concern was establishing the identity of Jesus to verify His Messiahship, His spiritual royalty. Identity here is the key. In fact all four Gospels zero in on this theme of identity. If that was where Jesus started then it must be where we start as well, our identity, how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. What is the foundation we chose before Jesus? Does some it still remain? Do we still have the lingering mold of class, social, economic identity symbols beneath the surface? Have we really set our rebuilding on the shoulders of Jesus? It's not easy shaking the vestiges of our worldly identity.

Identity is the primary struggle in everyone. We will see how Jesus met that struggle, first in His baptism and secondly, in how He dealt with temptation in the wilderness. And identity carries with it our deepest need, the need to be right. Watch the sequence: “Who am I?” After that comes the “Where am I?” Then the natural “What's my destination, the reason I'm here?” “Where am I headed and how am I going to get there?” The ultimate question we struggle to answer along the way, “What is the right identity, the one that has quality and lasts beyond death?” It comes down to what is right, having the right confidence about who I am, the right way to live, the right way to be in relationships with God and others, the right principles to guide in being right. It's not just about this world with all its status, social and economic identities, its trophies, wealth and the acceptance of whoever and whatever are the 'right' people. If we have our spiritual identity in place the rest will begin to recover.

Matthew recorded the 'right' person who is the 'right' way, the 'right' truth and the 'right' life. You read Matthew's account of Jesus and you can feel the impact Jesus had on him. You get that sense in all of the Gospels. Jesus sets the pace, the course and lives it for all of us. This is the 'why' of the Resurrection.

What Jesus showed is that identity and being right starts with baptism. Having the right identity is the foundation for every choice and decision we face spiritually, personally and relationally. Being right needs the Spirit of right to distinguish right from wrong. Baptism is the recognition of Jesus being the source of right because He is the right life and a relationship with Him begins our return to being right. We, fixer uppers, choose to follow Him, the “Fixer Upper.' Our identity is being an image of God, a disciple of Jesus and through Jesus, a child of God (John 1:13). He gives us the Spirit of right, the Holy Spirit. Water is the sign of being cleansed from what prevents us from having a right identity and living a right life with God and that is sin. Sin is trying to be right and live right without God.

Let's spell that out:

Sin is being self centered, self protective, self defensive, self offensive and self promoting at the expense of self and others. Sin is the devil's personal spirit he initiates in the world to make carbon copies of himself. The devil's goal is to separate everyone from God and each other. Sin produces conflict within.
It attacks the mind by tempting us to justify ourselves apart from God.
It attacks the heart by seeking a feeling of self satisfaction apart from God.
It attacks the spirit with fear to imagine by looking for an excuse not to act, afraid to make a mistake and if one is made, look for someone to blame. That's the work of sin. Ultimately sin is self deceiving, self denying, self deluding, self worshiping and finally self destructive. This is not just a play on words, it is reality.

Sin is three things: the spirit of separation, dissension, division. Sin is the anti personal seeding of self doubt, indecision, reluctance and indifference. Sin is anti relational and seeks to prevent honest sharing of heart and mind keeping communication shallow and superficial. Spiritually, sin is from the devil whose goal is separating us from God and others. Personally, sin is self centering. Relationally, sin is manipulative, seeking to keep the self elevated above others. Sin breeds distrust, suspicion, revenge, need to control, self protective attitudes, defensiveness, aggressiveness, usually through compulsive, impulsive and irrational responses. Sin operates in our aloneness reacting in fear and pride. Sin is anti individual uniqueness and works to make us all equally afraid of being different. It is the devil's spirit. Jesus describes the sinful heart's condition, “...evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly (Mk.7:21-22).” Sin is the weakness in human nature that makes us vulnerable to evil spirits the devil sends to aggravate that condition. They attack us where we are weakest. They agitate and appear when our tendencies to react defensively surface. Without Jesus as Lord, our minds, hearts and spirits are open to their invasion.

The conclusion to all of this is the good news the Lord Jesus brings when we accept Him. He gives us His Holy Spirit as the One and only Spirit that offsets the multiplicity of spirits the devil throws at us. We don't get healed all at once. But the good news is the patience of our loving God. As Paul says so conclusively, there is nothing in Heaven above, not in the earth below, not height nor depth nor anything can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:38-39).

So much of what the world built into our life prior to our acceptance of Jesus needs undoing. Attitudes, strongholds and speculative ideas formed the platform upon which we constructed our identity. It is a work He came to do in our minds, hearts and spirits. John puts this condition in its proper perspective when he writes, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work (1Jn.3:8).” Baptism is the work of the Holy Spirit who brings Jesus into the heart of the believer. It is a spiritual work that begins the new life in the believer and the believer is spiritually reborn. What starts with recognition continues with the realization of receiving the new life by faith and being reborn. From renewal to recovery to restoration. From aloneness and fear to relationship and faith. Actually, if we are disciples of Jesus we are 'fixer uppers.'