Resurrection 6 Being Fixer Uppers

[HKHaugan]

Resurrection 6 Being Fixer Uppers

One thing we want to keep before us about Scripture: it's not written by people who are giving their impression of what God is saying. It's God giving His impression of what has happened to His Creation and how to fix it. It is what He is inspiring the writers to say. God is using 100% of the writer's faith and personality to express 100% of Himself; “All Scripture is God-breathed...(1 Tim.3:16).” Just as God created 100% of the universe to express Himself and Jesus is 100% man and 100% God, the same follows with His Word. The problem in understanding Scripture is not God's. It is ours.

Last time we used the 'fixer upper' analogy to describe how salvation is really God fixing us up from being sinners to being right. Being right is what righteousness is all about. It started with the foundation.

Let's elaborate.

The foundation God has created in each of us is being created in His image and likeness (Gen.1:26). His image is the self-conscious copy of 'I Am' in each of us. We are equipped with a mind, heart and spirit. His likeness is our capacity for thought, attitude and behavior. They operate through belief, trust and faith. This is our spiritual being. Every human being is born with these basics. But there is one other reality that ties them together. We are, each of us, unique. There will never ever be anyone like us. We are unique persons. Of course there are similarities, like in appearance, attitude, emotion and intellect, but never the same as. Not even twins are ever the same.

The problem with our humanity is sin. The basics we were born with have been diverted by us taking all our Godly attributes and using them without God's direction. How's that working for us? You're right, not very well. We need to return to Him spiritually, personally and relationally. What possible foundation is there apart from our Creator's?

This points us to God's own uniqueness, the Holy One in Three, the Three in One---Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The perfect picture of God is the One He sent us, His Son, Jesus. He is the exact definition and image of God and the exact definition of man as God intended. In Jesus we have both. He is the complete God and the complete human. No one has has ever been like Him nor will anyone ever be like Him. He is unique, singular and stands alone as the way to live, the truth to live by and the life to experience.

But this uniqueness is also quite true of us as well.

He states this quite clearly to Mary Magdalene at His tomb after the Resurrection when He tells her “Go instead to my brothers and tell them “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God (Jn.20:17).” “My” and “your” distinguish how personal God is with each one of us. Jesus stands alone as God the Son, Messiah, Savior, Lord and Redeemer. And there is something more. He is the spiritual, personal and relational expression of God the Father and the Holy Spirit eternally living in perfect unity, the Holy Family, the unity with each other God desires for us as human beings. This is what He intended in Jesus, to bring us all together in Him, to reconcile us first to Him and then to each other through Him. This is why He went to the Cross and rose from the dead. He is the Fixer Upper who came so we could be His personal 'fixer upper' project whose new life is dedicated to bringing others to Him to become a family of 'fixer uppers', the Body of Christ.

Returning to our sequence, Matthew has presented Jesus' identity in his first three chapters through His genealogy, prophetic fulfillment and the Father's endorsement at His Baptism. Jesus, aware of His identity, knew His mission: to fulfill all righteousness (3:15). To put a lock on His identity He faces the deepest of challenges, temptation. Temptation is the internal challenge facing of our humanity, God's will or mine? It is the valley of decision (Joel 3:14) where we are faced with good and evil choices in every next moment.

Jesus and His Word are the means to exercising the image of God in us to its fullest intent and extent. He reverses what Adam and Eve did. They looked at the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thinking apart from God they saw that first, it was good for food. Second, it looked good. Third, it was desirable for gaining wisdom (Gen.3:6). Then they chose to act them out apart from God. They started looking at the physical, the horizontal and forgot the spiritual, the vertical. They reversed their identity from being God's to being self-serving and making their own identity. That's when sin came in and separated them from God in their mind, heart and spirit.

Jesus, on the other hand, reversed their process by starting spiritually, quoting God's Word. What He came to do was show us we are spiritual beings in need of God's Word. We need to be saved from our sin oriented self-centeredness. All other means fall short of reaching our potential in mind, heart and spirit. Jesus' Resurrection proves it. It proves that the way Jesus dealt with temptation, facing right and wrong choices, making a decision and then acting on it is the substance of our every next moment. Being right within and without is first spiritual, then personal and determines our relational action and reaction. When we start spiritually everything else falls into place.

When we choose Jesus we are not just choosing a nice historically proven guru whose principles we follow to feel good and promote an acceptable image. This is not reality. Reality is the need for an internal living personal relationship upon which we can rely even in our sleep. Our mind, heart and spirit don't function properly without that. We are made, built, shaped, to be spiritual, personal and relational. The Resurrection shows Jesus is the only One who can provide that not only for us but for others. When we have a vertical relationship with Him we are able to have real meaningful horizontal relationships with others. These are not typical worldly relationships that are shallow, dishonest, ultimately meaningless, but real, open, heart-sharing and lasting. The difference is that ultimately a spiritual personal relationship is eternal, unchanging, loving, and offers a deepening in every next moment. World based relationships are terminal meaning they are imperfect, subject to separation and totally self-centered approaches to self-satisfaction. Finally a physical body dies. But what happens to the spiritual person? Jesus came to give us the answer. He died and rose from the dead to be the answer.

Matt.4:12 is a transitional verse. It describes the last prophet, John, as being in prison. Prophecy is in the prison of doubt until it is fulfilled which is one reason Jesus came to fulfill all prophecy and all righteousness. That is being right with God which makes us right inside and then right with others.

Matt.4:12-16, Jesus takes the first step in being the fulfillment of Isaiah 9:1-2, to be the light in the world's darkness after which He preaches repentance because the Kingdom of Heaven is near (vs.17). He then chooses disciples and brings them with Him as He heals the sick through out Galilee and Judea (vs.18-25).

What Matthew has done in these first four chapters is to basically face three of our deepest needs, the need for identity, the need to be right, the need to face temptation. That identity has to be spiritual, personal and relational. It has to be right, right with God, right within and right among others. It has to be able to deal with temptation when our mind, heart and spirit have to make choices between right and wrong ideas, attitudes and behavior. The arena for being human is belief for the mind, trust for the heart and faith for the spirit.

Jesus fulfills the triple challenge.

He has the right thinking, His Father's will and Word. He has the right attitude; He trusts His Father regardless of circumstance. He has the behavior; His action is always faithful. He is the perfect balance of all three. His identity is what His heritage declares; He is the Messiah for the Jews and salvation for all.

Jesus now gives us the new foundation for our spiritual rebirth, a relationship with Him. It starts with repentance. Repentance involves dissolving our old foundations by replacing them with Him. What we used to use to have an acceptable identity, to make an impression, to have friends, raise a family, live the so-called 'good life' has to give way to Him. A relationship with Jesus begins the reconstruction project and changes the way we relate, the way we make decisions and shift from 'common sense' to Scriptural sense which is the true common sense.

The remarkable fact about all of this is that being a 'fixer upper' is an internal makeover not an external cultural and social adjustment. The 'Fixer Upper' named Jesus is the internal relational experience Who becomes the foundation for our identity and brings the Holy Spirit to do the remodeling by reshaping the mind, heart and spirit. He provides us with a confident ability to be real with others and a light for them to see the Lord as their possible 'Fixer Upper.' He returns us to what He designed us to be. What is seen when we fold the old tent is the new 'temple' with a new attitude---His.