All Things Are Possible

Dr. Bernie Miller: You know you watch the bottom line. You know you don't write a check if you don't have the money in the bank. If you watch the bottom line in your bank, why don't you watch the bottom line in your spiritual life? You ought to be ready for Christ's coming. That ought to be just as important to you as the bottom line in your bank.

Announcer: New Covenant Fellowship Church. In-person worship Sundays at 10:30, 1326 North Moore Road in Chattanooga. New Covenant Fellowship Church, a place for every race. Now, from New Covenant Fellowship Church, All Things Are Possible. At New Covenant, we show and grow people in Christ and glorify God. It's what we believe. To say it another way, if you're looking to worship in a place without having to worry about what to wear or a plate being passed for money, come to New Covenant. Every Sunday morning at 10:30, you'll enjoy great music and solid teaching from the Bible. You'll find us on North Moore Road in Chattanooga with directions right to our door at ncf.church. New Covenant Fellowship Church, we are a place for every race. And here's Pastor Bernie Miller.

Dr. Bernie Miller: We bless him. We speak well of him. When he blesses us, he's doing something for us that we need, that we don't know that we need, but he knows all things, and so he blesses us. I saw some old pictures of me. Have you ever seen those before-and-after pictures online? You can go in there, you can put in the before, and then you can kind of do a little something and make it look better than it was before.

Before, you had this wild hairstyle and bloodshot eyes. Only God knows why. You were probably doing something you had no business doing. Mama told you to come home, and you didn't. I've gotten off my message. You've got on this outdated outfit, and you try to hide that picture.

Then, lo and behold, one of your kids or one of your friends finds that picture and posts it up on Facebook or Instagram. You're trying to take it down, but you can't. Then the after picture. It's all flawless. Nice hairstyle, everything is crisp. Bright eyes. Overall, you look like you're in your resurrected body after meeting Jesus.

You're asking yourself, "That can't be the same person." That's what salvation looks like. It has a before and it has an after. Before, you were broken, bound, bankrupt. After, you are blessed. New behavior, new walk, new talk. I'm talking about what it means to be blessed.

Some of you don't need a filter, you need favor. You need a "but God" in your life with a comma. Commas are very important when you're writing. They're very important when you go to the bank. I like those digits that have commas in them.

You can go and put 100 dollars in, and there's a period there. You know that's all you've got because that period stops it. But if you add another zero, you put that comma in there, and everything changes. That's the way it is with God.

In Ephesians chapter two, he gives us a laundry list of who we were, and then it says, "But God, comma." Whatever comes after "but God" is worth something. Your value has changed. Your spiritual bank account has just increased. You didn't realize how valuable you were until you saw that "but God".

Only God can take our before and restore and rewrite our after because only God can put a comma where a comma belongs. But God. Some of us had hairstyles, clothes, and attitudes that needed deliverance. When I saw some of my before photos, I asked myself what I was thinking. Leave me alone, Flo.

But now, I don't just look different, I am different. I think differently. I've changed. There is a "but God" in my life. What I was is not what I am because of the "but God". "But God" changed everything. I was spiritually dead. But God.

Now I'm spiritually alive in Christ Jesus. He died for my sins, and that's why I live solely for him. When my cell phone is at 1%, you know what I do to save power? I switch to low-power mode. If you have an Android, you have a setting that says battery saver function.

Both cell phone users panic as we look for chargers when it's losing all the power. When we find one, we sit by the wall socket like it's the ICU. We act like our whole lives are on our cell phones. Seriously, it really is for some of us because you don't remember anybody's phone number anymore. You don't have to.

Then you switch to a new phone. That's the worst thing in the world because you have to trust that everything is going to carry over onto your new phone. I was talking to one of our members, and they said, "Pastor, I got a new phone, but they didn't get me all my contacts. I lost some of my stuff."

When God does a transfer, what you think you lost, God says you really didn't need. He's going to allow you to gain more than you ever lost. Did you realize that the ICU has a special phone so they can get direct information immediately for a patient that's in there? It's called the ICU phone.

I never knew that until I started studying. Like an ICU phone that bridges data between two different systems, "but God" used the gospel of grace and the spirit of truth to bridge the gap between us who were spiritually dead and unaware of our spiritual conditions and made us alive together with Christ.

When we get connected to Jesus, we're on a different system altogether. The old system is antiquated. There's no way that you can operate on it because it's null and void. We are not who we were, but who God created us to be by his grace.

As we continue our series on our identity in Christ, we're going to look at several things here. One, our condition: we were dead. God's compassion: he made us alive. Our confidence: we're saved by grace. Think about the condition we were in, the compassion, and the confidence.

Mother's Day is coming up, and we're going to probably buy our mom some flowers. If you realistically look at it, in order to give Mom a bouquet, you've got to cut the flower from its life source. Really, you're giving Mom a bunch of flowers that are dead. They just don't look like it yet.

A lot of us are not connected to God. We look like we are spiritually alive, but we're dead. Paul says we are dead in our sins and our trespasses. When we decided that we would not receive Jesus as our personal savior, there was a clipping going on. It has rejected everything that I've sent its way.

Ephesians 2:1 says we were all dead in our trespasses and sins. The word dead means spiritually lifeless. Those flowers look beautiful, but after a week or two, they're going to show you that they're not connected to the power source, which was the ground, the water, and the nutrients in the soil.

If you're not connected to God and grounded in him, you are dying. Spiritually, you are wilting away like a flower that's been cut from the source of life. You have no ability to respond to God. That's what dead means. No ability to respond to God on our own if you're dead in your sins and trespasses.

Trespasses mean deliberately deviating from a path to choose sin. Sin means missing the mark. Some people think they can work their way to heaven. You don't even know where heaven is. Show it to me on your Google Maps. You're so smart, show it to me. I want to see it.

If you try to work your way there, how do you know what's needed to hit the mark? You don't, but God did. He sent his son, and he hit the mark. Because of our sins, we miss the mark. One is stepping wrong, and the other is aiming wrong. Together, it means we weren't just doing wrong, we were totally off course.

Have you ever ignored the GPS directions? My wife and I were going somewhere yesterday, and so she put the thing on so it could get us there. We were told to make a left and then make a right. We made a right and then made a left because we knew better.

What the GPS was trying to tell us to do was to go around the way. We know our neighborhood. So all they were wanting us to do was go left, then go right, then go right again. We know better. We went right, then we went left after half a block, and then we went right on the street that the GPS is trying to get us to go on.

Some people get the GPS directions and it says "Turn left," and you go right. "Make a turn," and you keep going. Recalculating. After five wrong turns, it doesn't argue. It just re-routes. That's grace. You didn't follow the route, but God didn't cancel our destination.

Some of us have been ignoring God for so long our lives sound like a GPS recalculating. You miscalculated the path, but God kept the master plan. Ephesians 2:2 says you were dead in your sins and trespasses in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Sons aren't just biological children. It means those who reflect the nature, the character, and the pattern of whoever is their mama or their daddy. They're controlled by whoever rears them as a child. As long as you're under my house, you're going to do what I tell you to do. As long as you live in this house, you're going to clean up your room.

When you get old enough and grown, you can get out there and live any kind of way you want to. Some parents hate to go to some of their kids' houses after they leave because they know how they lived when they were with them. They know if they walk in there, they're going to walk into a mess.

Moms and dads go over there and start nitpicking. "That's out of place." "You want me to fix this for you?" "No." "You want me to clean this?" "No, that's the way I like it." Then you have to back up because it's their house. They're paying the rent here. I'm just a visitor.

That's how it is sometimes with the spirit. He's trying to direct you in the right way, and you just keep going in the wrong direction. You know it's the wrong direction because you're born again. If you're not born again, then you are reflecting the nature, character, and pattern of the one who's controlling you, the spirit of disobedience.

Sons of light act like light. It's not that we slipped, it's that we settled on darkness. Before Christ, we didn't just sin sometimes, we sinned all the time. Disobedience was our lifestyle. We disobey not because of lack of information, it's because we reject godly instruction.

It starts at home. When you start disobeying your parents, you're headed down a path of disobedience to everybody in authority. The reason why you don't like to follow your boss's instructions is because you didn't want to follow your mama's instructions or your daddy's instructions, and you think you know better.

How are you going to know better? Here's a person that's been there. They got to where they got to because they listened to their mama, to their daddy. What we need to do sometimes is listen to God so we can get on the right track and stop making it hard on ourselves.

When you reject godly instruction, you're in a dangerous place. Who's your daddy? Are you walking in the wrong direction influenced by the prince of the power of the air? If you are, you are the sons of disobedience, children of wrath. That's your identity. "Walk" means a lifestyle, behavior, or habitual conduct.

Sin wasn't occasional, it was your pattern of living. "Course of this world" is a system opposed to God, and it's powered by the prince of the power of the air. It just listens to whatever the devil tells them. You think it's your thought. It's not your thought, it's the devil controlling you because he's the prince of the power of the air.

When you turn on a TV program and you like it, he does something to capture your attention. You start liking it and you get into it. It's a series, and you start watching it. When they get past the first episode in the series, the second episode gets just a little bit more raunchy. Have y'all noticed that? They hook you with the first one.

Then they start going left field on you and going into some places you didn't want to go. But it's too late because you want to see how it's going to end. So they hooked you. That's how the devil does. He is the prince of the power of the air, or you might as well say airwaves.

We weren't just lost, we were lifeless. "Conducted ourselves" means a way of life. "Lusts" means strong desire, not just sexual. "Flesh" is a sinful nature drawing away from God. "Children of wrath" deserve judgment by nature. We weren't just doing sin, we were driven by sin.

It's like cruise control stuck at 100 miles per hour. We didn't just speed, we were controlled by the system in our car. I'll cheat a little bit when we're on the highway. If it says 70, I'll go 75. My wife, if it says 65, she goes 64.

She had an episode one time. Her son told on her to the Chief of Police who used to be here. Chief Dawson said, "Zack, you don't want to tell people those kinds of things." When you are controlled by a system, it controls everything you do. But God, comma.

I was dead in my sins and trespasses, controlled by the prince of the power of the air. But God. Being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. That "but God" there means a whole bunch because "but God" are two of the most powerful words in scripture. "But God" is a divine interruption.

It interrupts our past with his richness in mercy and compassion towards those who are guilty and deserve judgment. The word rich means overflowing abundance of God's grace and his great love. Made alive together means to bring to life together with Christ. We are co-resurrected with Christ.

Our life is tied to his resurrection. While we were still in that condition, God didn't wait on us for improvement. We didn't revive ourselves; God resurrected us with Christ. Spiritually, we were seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus the moment we were given faith and grace to be saved.

Have you ever seen someone try to fix something broken with duct tape? You've probably got some duct tape at home. You probably got some in your car trying to keep the seat together. I didn't mean to bring up your business. Duct tape on a car's bumper means "stay back".

They've been through this before. When I see duct tape on somebody's bumper, I slow down. I don't get close to nobody with any duct tape on their car because I know they've been down this road before, and chances are they've been looking for somebody else to pay for the bill.

I'm not going to be that sucker. I'll take another route. Duct tape can fix a lot of stuff. It sticks. We have a small fluorescent light under our cabinets, and it kept flickering on and off. I turned the light switch off and then I turned it back on.

All the lights underneath come on, and then this other one comes on and then it goes off. Duct tape isn't going to work on this. It's not the solution. This here is electrical. I had to get a new bulb. When something is dying, it flickers. That bulb was at the end of its life.

But all the other lights underneath there that were put there the same time as this other one were still alive. Among us in here, there are some of you who are flickering. You think because you come to church and connect with people at church that you're connected to God.

But you're not connected to God, you're flickering. If you're not careful, you're going to die and be replaced because they're always making babies somewhere. One dies, somebody else comes to life. That's how it is in this life.

If there's some flickering going on in your life, it's God trying to tell you that you're at the point where you are about ready to get out of here. But I want to save you before you go. I want to give you a place to go to besides the dumpster. I want to give you new life because I'm the only God that can give you light.

When I give you light, it doesn't flicker. You can't repair that light that flickers all the time, you've got to replace it. Some of us have a flickering spirit because it's the devil. The devil is darkness, and God is trying to connect you to light.

There's something in you that keeps flickering, and you know it's the right thing to do, but you haven't done it yet. If you don't do it now that you hear my voice and know that you're flickering, you may not be able to have another opportunity. This may be your last chance. I hope to see you again.

But we who are believers have life and God's son's light. He says let this light shine before men. God has placed in us a light, and it doesn't flicker. Sometimes we try to snuff it out, but we can't. You can quench the spirit, but you can't get rid of the light.

There are many "but God" moments in the Bible. For instance, Joseph in Genesis 50. They meant evil for Joseph, but God meant it for good. He was betrayed, but God promoted him. They threw him in a pit, but God set him in a palace. That's the God I serve.

David in First Samuel 17. A young shepherd boy facing a giant. No armor, no experience, but God. The giant was bigger, but God was greater. Daniel thrown into the lions' den. Should have been eaten, but God. They closed the den, but God shut the lions' mouths.

Then there are the three Hebrew boys in Daniel 3. They were thrown bound into a fire heated seven times hotter than normal, but God. They went in bound but came out without a singe of burn on them. They didn't even smell like smoke because "but God".

Lazarus in John 11. He died. They had a funeral for him. Put him inside the cave where they buried them. Four days later, but God. Jesus came and said, "Lazarus, come forth!" Then he told them to remove the stone. Now, if Jesus told him to come forth, Lazarus could have moved that stone out of the way.

But God wanted some skin in the game. He could have walked through that thing; he could have defied the molecular structure of the stone. But God wanted other people to play a part in the miracle. So he said "Remove the stone." And he came out, and they were amazed. He said "Take all that stuff off of him. He doesn't need that. He's alive."

Some of you who are alive are still wrapped up in your traditions, wrapped up in your old ways, and you haven't changed yet. God is asking me and some of your friends who love you to loose you because you need to be set free.

God didn't save you to be tied up. God saved you to be loose and free. God wants you to be a light and a beacon for him. He wants you to go and tell other people what he's done for you. If he called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, you ought to let your light shine before men so they can see your good works and glorify your Father who's in heaven.

Then there's Paul in Acts 9. He persecuted Christians, killed believers, and was opposed to the church. But God. While he was walking, minding his business on the way to do some more damage, God shows up. Today you walked in, you didn't realize why you came.

Some of you came in today thinking you'd hear a nice little message, and maybe the pastor will whoop for us. I don't do the whooping. But when you walked in today, what God wanted you to know was you walked into the word of God.

God wants you to understand he has something more for you than talking trash to other people. He wants you to talk the gospel to some people, but you've got to be born again to do that. He wants to give you an assignment.

You know what happened to Paul? He was blinded, and somebody had to take him somewhere safely. Then God talked to Ananias and said, "There's somebody over there named Paul." He said, "Oh no, that man, he kills." God said, "I know that, but I want you to go over there because he needs to see what I've got in store for him."

Do you realize that if God hadn't stopped in Paul's life, many of the epistles we have, we wouldn't have? But God. He wanted us to know something about him that the disciples didn't know. They were not learned men, but Paul knew a lot about his traditions. God chose Paul. The disciples chose Matthias to take the other guy's place. What was his name?

God is saying to all of us, "Do I have to show up and blind you? Do I have to show up and give you a disease? Do I have to show up and cause wreak havoc in your life before you give your life to me, or will you listen to me now?" You've got pretty good health. It could be a little better. If you knew me, you'd know how to live better.

I'll teach you some things about life, and then when you get my spirit in you, the spirit of truth, there are some things that'll happen in your body that medicine can't do. Only the spirit of God can do certain things. If you didn't know that, why do you go to the hospital and ask people to be well?

He's no doctor. You go in there and you pray for them. Why are you praying? Because you've got the spirit of God in you and God told you to pray for them. I was a fool when God finally got my attention. I was saved, but I was kind of like a guy in the circus.

You know how they ride two horses, one foot on one, one foot on the other? Riding around on the horses. That's good in the circus. But God had me in New York City. It was like one horse was on the sidewalk, the other horse was in the street. I'm trying to ride both of them. I'm trying to ride the world and I'm trying to ride God.

But they have a lot of light poles on those sidewalks. I'm trying to ride, and God had given me notice after notice. "You need to give me your whole heart. Love me with all of your heart." I just kept playing around with the prince of the power of the air and still trying to love God.

God says, "Look, I've taken your job. What else do I need to do?" I hit that light pole. You know in the cartoons they kind of slide down and flatten? That was me. I hit that light pole and just kind of slid down. He said, "Do I have your attention?"

God does those things to get our attention. I'm trying to keep you from having to go through all that and just go and give yourself to Christ. Then there's one more person: the thief on the cross in Luke 23. The man is a criminal. He's guilty. He's about to die. He couldn't come down from the cross.

No time to fix his life, straighten it up, or do good works. But God. He realized this about Jesus compared to his buddy who was dissing Jesus. He says, "Wait a minute, man. He hasn't done anything wrong."

Then he said, "Jesus, will you remember me when you come into your kingdom?" He said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." God is saying to you, those of you who don't know him, you're kind of like that thief on the cross.

There's one dummy and then there's one that got it right. I hope you're the one that's got it right. If you know that you don't know Jesus Christ, there's a "but God". No matter what you've done, there's a "but God" who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us.

Ephesians 2:5: "even when we were dead in our sins and trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved." But God. You need a "but God" in your life today. Take it. Don't walk out of here.

That comma put in a strategic place can give you the riches of heaven. But when there's a period with two zeros at the other end, you ain't got nothing. You've got 100 dollars period. God wants to give you the kingdom.

He wants to give you a mansion in his Father's house. He wants to give you the riches of his glory, and you're settling for a period. He wants to give you a comma. The thief on the cross got it right. Now I've told you about Joseph, David, Daniel, the three Hebrew boys, Lazarus, Paul, and the thief on the cross.

Now you. If you are lost, there's a "but God" for you. If you are broken, there's a "but God" for you. If God did it for them, he will do it for you. My past condition had a comma because "but God" added a comma. He's been my confidence.

Ephesians 2:8: "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Grace means unearned, undeserved favor. Saved means rescued, delivered, and made whole.

Faith means trust and reliance. Gift means something freely given. Grace is the source, faith is our response, and salvation is the result. Not by works; it's by faith through grace. We didn't earn it or achieve it, and we didn't deserve it.

Imagine someone wants to give you a brand new car, the kind that you've always wanted. Someone says, "I want to give this to you as a gift. It's already paid for. You don't have to worry about nothing." You say, "How much do I owe?" They say it's a gift.

You say, "Well, let me at least wash it and clean out the inside." This is new. It's already been prepped. I used to work at a dealership, and I had to prep the new cars. I had to take all the plastic off of everything and get it ready for the person that had purchased it.

I know that when you buy a new car, it's already ready. You don't have to do anything but receive it. You don't have to pay anything to get it. If someone gives you a gift, accept it. But some people say, "Well, let me do something." No, you can't pay me back. It's a gift.

That's how some people treat salvation. They try to pay God for what was already paid for and provided. If we could earn it, it wouldn't be grace. We were dead, now we're alive. We were bound, now we're set free. We were condemned, now we are forgiven.

Not because of who you are, not because of me, but because of Christ you are who you are. We are not a better version of who we were, we are a brand new creation because of Christ. Bible says if any man is in Christ Jesus, he's a new creature. Old things pass away, behold new things come.

The word rich means overflowing and excessive. Do you realize that's what's in your account in heaven? You have things that, whatever you need, Jesus said, "Go to your Father." If you need bread, go to your Father. You need clothing, go to your Father.

You need something more than that, go to the throne of grace where you can find grace and mercy to help you in time of need because the Bible says God has given us everything we need for life and godliness now. We have every thing we need.

I love the word mercy. Mercy means God withholding what we deserve and compassionately removing all of our spiritual misery. God doesn't run out of mercy. The Bible says his mercies are new every morning. So how is he going to run out of it?

It's a compassionate removal of misery. If you did something yesterday, you wake up in Christ today and say, "God, I fall on your mercy. I come to your throne of grace because that's where my mercy and grace are, and I need it today."

God says, "I've already done that. I did it while you were asleep. I took care of everything for you. You're waking up into a new grace and new mercy." God doesn't run out of mercy when we run out of options.

I was a "but God". My story was headed one way. Sin wrote it, death signed it, but God stepped in. He rewrote it and sealed my life with his rich mercy with which he loved me even when I was dead in my sins and trespasses.

By grace, he made me alive through faith and that not of myself. It was a gift of God. Not my effort, not by my self-improvement, not by my duct tape, but by his great love.

Announcer: All things are possible from New Covenant Fellowship Church. Connect with us anytime at ncf.church/connect or on social media @NCFChattanooga. Worship with us every Sunday morning at 10:30 in person at 1326 North Moore Road in Chattanooga or online at ncf.church/messages. New Covenant Fellowship Church, a place for every race.

Dr. Bernie Miller: Hate the sin, but don't let the hatred for the sin carry over to the sinner. They can be forgiven of that sin because that's why Jesus came, and you just need to take care of your own house.

Announcer: New Covenant Fellowship Church. In-person worship Sundays at 10:30, 1326 North Moore Road in Chattanooga. New Covenant Fellowship Church, a place for every race.