All Things Are Possible

Dr. Bernie Miller: Jesus, he was defamed. They said he was a sinner. They accused him and found him guilty. They defamed his character. So, if you have been defamed, you are in good company. New Covenant Fellowship Church, in-person worship Sunday mornings 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 is what we believe. To say it another way, if you are 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 will enjoy great music and solid teaching from the Bible. You will 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 is Pastor Bernie Miller.

How many of you, when you get ready to go on a trip, pack more than you need? You go for two days and you pack for seven. We have all been there. I do not understand it, but I pack as if I am moving in somewhere instead of just visiting. I am just visiting. We are just taking a respite somewhere, and I pack for every possible emergency, just in case.

I bring a heavy coat down in Florida in the summertime, just in case. Shoes for weather that is not in the forecast. The cost for checking bags is almost half the cost of a one-way ticket. Most folks carry stuff on the plane because the airlines charge for overweight bags. Life charges even more for overweight emotional and spiritual baggage.

I do not know how you came into the new year, but I want to help you navigate through it. The heaviest bag most believers carry is guilt. My new series is how to travel light. We do not have to be burdened with the bulky baggage of guilt. Over the next four weeks, we will keep asking the question: what sinful emotion, spiritual, mental, and physical baggage are you still carrying that God has disposed of in the sea of forgetfulness?

Have you ever been to a carousel and the bags are coming down and one looks like yours? You go and you grab it, and then you realize that it is too light. Mine was heavier than that. The person comes running up behind you saying, "That's my bag." Yeah, I know it, it is not mine. We sometimes mistakenly pick somebody else's bag.

In life we are carrying our own bags and they are heavy. There are some things that we have not really emptied ourselves of and we are still carrying. God has forgiven you of it but you still will not forgive yourself. You cannot walk freely in what God has prepared while trying to pay the baggage fees for the guilt and sin of the past that Jesus has already paid for on the cross when he said, "It is finished."

The Greek word means "paid in full." It means "completed." It means "accomplished perfectly." This was a victory shout. It was not a cry of defeat when he said, "It is finished." From Genesis to the cross, God had been working the plan of our redemption. He promised a seed in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15 after Adam and Eve sinned.

The Passover lamb he exposed in Exodus chapter 12 signified that you have got to have a blood sacrifice. An animal has to die for the sins of the nation. Every day they had to kill an animal for their sins because they sinned every day. Some of us think that we have got to do something to pay for the sin that we committed today or yesterday. You do not. You cannot pay for it. It is already been paid.

It is like trying to pay your credit card when there is no balance. How are you going to pay the credit card when there is no balance? It does not make any sense. God is saying, "Why you trying to pay for your sins that I've already paid for?" It is empty. There is nothing. You owe me nothing. Everything you thought you owed me was taken care of by the Passover lamb in Exodus 12 and the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.

The old covenant was completed according to Matthew 5:17 by Jesus Christ. He says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Everything that the Old Testament demanded, a blood sacrifice and a perfect sacrifice, Jesus satisfied. He did it all for us.

Hebrews 10:8 says, "Then he said, 'Here I am. I have come to do your will.'" This is Christ speaking to his Father. He sets aside the first to establish the second. First he said, "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them, though they were offered in accordance with the law." By that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

There is no other sacrifice that is needed. He took care of it all. The shadow is over because the Old Testament was just a shadow of what was to come. Jesus was the one who fulfilled the Old Testament promises of what was to come. The shadow is over and now the substance has come in the Lord Jesus Christ. No more blood of the lambs because the Lamb of God was our sacrifice for sin.

There is no need for us to pay anything or to offer anything for a sacrifice for sin because it has already been taken care of. The law was satisfied in Christ. Grace replaced rituals. Faith replaced ceremonies. There are people that do some crazy things in church even today. My wife and I were at some place and they were telling people to do stuff that is not biblical.

They were teaching things to people that I never heard, and I have read the Bible through. In fact, we all went through the Bible in 90 days. We went through the whole book from cover to cover, and we took chunks and studied each chunk every Wednesday night for those 90 days. Some of the things that I hear people saying do not make any sense to me because they are not in the Bible.

That is why some people put guilt on people. When they want something, they make you feel guilty. They tell you, "No, well, you ought to do this or you ought to do that." You do not have to do anything that God does not tell you to do. I do not want to pressure you into giving anything or to doing anything.

If God has told you to do something, there is nothing that I need to do to try to get you to do it because if God cannot get you to do it, I am surely not going to be able to get you to do it. I leave it all up to God because that is his business. Our sin account was paid in full, but some of us are carrying a baggage of guilt that is not even ours anymore.

It was checked at the throne of grace when we believed in Christ as our personal Savior and received him as our personal Lord. Many believers live life waiting for the baggage of guilt to come down the carousel, like at the airport. Each day they wake up with this guilt and they put it on themselves. Guilt testifies, but grace says case closed.

Guilt is like a historian. It reminds us of what we did, when we did it, who saw it, and how we should still feel about it. Grace is the judge and jury who determines the case is closed. Guilt says you should have known better, but grace says you are set free now, walk in freedom. If you are carrying guilt, God says, "Cast all of your cares over onto me." Why? "Because he cares for you."

God has never wanted us to carry a heavy burden. That is why he tells us to cast all of our cares over onto him. But some of us are dragging baggage Jesus never told you to pack or to carry. It is like lost luggage. When Jesus forgives us, he does not leave the suitcase half full. He empties the entire suitcase filled with guilt and shame.

That is why I love Romans chapter 8 and verse 1. We looked at it last week, but I want to go back and look at it just one more time. It says, "Therefore, there is now, presently, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." That word "in" means a permanent position of rest. So if you are in Christ Jesus spiritually because you have been born again and saved, there is now no condemnation.

Because you are positioned in him, God does not hold anything back from you. He still takes care of you because you are his child. He knew before you were born you were going to sin. He knew before you were born all the sins that you would ever commit. He knew before you were born when you would get saved. He knew before you were born how you would act after you got saved.

He paid your sin debt. He paid mine: past, present, and future. I talk to my wife and she said, "Yeah, that's the same thing he did for me." I bet if I talk to you, some of you may not believe that. Some of you may think that he forgave me of my sins when I got saved, but what about what I did yesterday? Well, that was the past.

What about what I did today? That is the present. What about what I am going to do tomorrow? That is future. If God did not forgive you of all sins—past, present, and future—then he has got to come back and clean it up. He does not have to come back to clean up anything. God took care of all the cleaning when he came the first time.

Paul does not start Romans 8 with a suggestion. He starts with a declaration: "There is now no condemnation." "Therefore" really points backwards to Romans chapter 7 where Paul says, "I wanted to, I tried to, I wanted to do right, I tried to do right, the flesh in me just wouldn't let me do it and I just kept doing wrong." Every time I thought I was holy, I realized that I was not really as holy as I thought I was and I failed.

We confuse conviction and condemnation. Condemnation cripples; conviction corrects. Conviction says that that is not who you are. Condemnation says that is all you will ever be. In Christ, I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, and that is why I walk in freedom. Some people say, "Well, you ought not do that, you ought not put that on." Look, I put on what I want to put on. Unless the Holy Spirit convicts me of it, I am not going to.

My wife may say, "Well, I don't know about that." If she tells me that, then I know God is speaking to me through her. That is my helper. She is not going to let me walk out of the house crazy because I represent her. I love what Paul says. "There is therefore now no condemnation." Freedom does not deny our sin; it delivers us from the guilt of our sin.

I love what Jesus told the woman in John chapter 8 and verse 1. It says, "Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them." The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.

How did you see her caught in adultery? Were you peeping through the window? Did you set her up? Did you have a buddy that you knew was loosey-goosey? Somebody got set up because she got caught in adultery. Voyeurism, something was going on. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"

They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Jesus. Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. I do not know what he wrote, but whatever it was, it got their attention and it convicted them. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."

Then you heard some loud thuds hit the ground. The stones fell out of their hands. Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first—because I believe they set it up—until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there.

Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman"—by the way, this is a term of endearment, it is not an insult—"Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." What he is saying is very easy to understand. He knows she has been doing something on a regular basis, and he is saying stop doing that.

He is saying leave your life of sin. That means I am giving you a second chance at life. If you are willing to go a separate way, repent, and follow what I command in the Bible, then you are going to live a life that you are going to love. As she left and told everyone else about how Jesus had forgiven her and did not condemn her, can you imagine how other people felt?

How many of you have ever done something that you have felt condemned about? Do not raise your hand, I do not want anybody to know your business. I will raise my hand because I do not mind telling on myself. When God looks at me, do you know what he sees? No sin. How is that? Because he looks at me through the filter of Christ's blood.

Photography used to be a hobby of mine. You would put a certain filter over the lens in order to get a certain kind of effect. God put a filter over our lives so that when he looks at us, he does not see the sin in our lives. He sees the holiness of his Son whose blood is the filter over our lives. We are now clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Clothe yourselves with Christ and make no provisions for the flesh. I am clothed with him. Suppose one day I make provisions for the flesh and I just go in and do something crazy and sin? First John 1:9 says if you have sinned, confess your sins. If you confess your sins, he is faithful to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

I thought I was forgiven of sin when I gave my life to Christ. That is sin to save you. You need to be sanctified every day. That is a different kind of forgiveness because you need to be getting your prayers through after you have sinned. If you sin and walk around as if you did not, then the communication lines are going to be clogged up with sin and you cannot communicate with God.

I mean we have been 33 years, honey? 33, a little bit more? Wait a minute now, you are not that old. When we get dirty because we did not follow God's law, we go and confess our sin so that we can be cleansed of that sin. If we are not confessing it, we are clogging up the lines of communication so that when we want to get a prayer through, we cannot because we have not confessed the sin.

God saved us, that is the first sin. The first sin that we committed was rejecting Jesus. Once we received him, that sin is taken care of. Everything is fine. Now the other sin is the sin that causes the lines of communication to be clogged up. Sometimes I can say something in the wrong way and I can tell I have done it the wrong way because Madeleine will look at me and I go, "Oh boy, I am in the doghouse on this one."

I have got to go clean it up. I have got to go clean it up so that we can have communication again because without communication, a lot of things are not going to happen in the house. You have got to communicate. You all looking at me like you do not know what I am talking about. You know good and well that if Mama is not happy, nobody is happy.

You all know when you have done something wrong because you can tell all of a sudden there is a chill in the air. You go, "Oh Lord, I better do something to get this thing heated up again." God is saying, "I know that you were going to sin. I paid for that sin, but don't walk around as if you hadn't done anything. Confess your sins."

God says then you can unclog the lines of communication and then I will hear your prayer and then I will take care of whatever situation you need me to take care of. Everyone else had stones; Jesus had mercy. He did not say, "You're okay, keep living like you're living." Nor did he say, "You're just a disgusting woman."

He said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." Grace does not excuse sin; it extracts the shame of sin out of our lives. If the voice you hear offers no hope, no mercy, no redemption, no forgiveness, it is not the voice of God because the enemy is the one who blames us. He is the one that comes alongside us and says, "God will never forgive you for that."

All God says is come boldly to the throne of grace and find mercy and grace to help in your time of need. He never reminds us of our forgiven sin, but Satan does. He is an accuser of the brethren. He accuses us night and day before God. He accuses us every time we think something wrong, say something wrong, or do something wrong. He is right there telling on us.

Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. Because he is at the right hand of the Father, all he has to do is say, "Paid for. Right here, right here, paid for." Better yet, let us go to the mercy seat because that is where the blood was applied. All of our sins are taken care of. Jesus was our Lamb of Sacrifice. We do not have to do anything to pay for our sins.

There is nothing that we can do. If someone is accusing you, if it is conviction, it is the Holy Spirit. If it is condemnation, it is the devil. There is a big difference between conviction and condemnation. We all still sin. If you do not still sin, raise your hand because I want the people that are around you to move away, just in case something comes down from heaven because you are in here lying.

We all still have sinful thoughts or acts. Sometimes we can just be so nasty to people and we do not mean to be, but it is that flesh in us. One day it is going to all die and we will be in a new body and we will not have to worry about this anymore. My sin explains my story, but it does not define my standing in Christ.

Now means freedom is present, not postponed. There is now no condemnation. It does not mean after I fix everything on my own, after therapy, or after another year. Grace is immediate. Here is what Jesus meant: no more sacrifices, no more blood of the lambs, because the debt of sin was already accounted for and was stamped paid in full.

That is what messed up all the people in Romans beginning with chapter 1 all the way to chapter 7 because he was talking to religious leaders and those religious leaders were stuck on stupid. They did not realize that Jesus came to die for their sins, and they thought that they had to continue to offer sacrifices. Jesus was trying to say that is going to end because I am the end of that.

I am ending all of those sacrifices because the sacrifices of animals can never take away sins and it cannot cleanse your consciences from dead works to serve the living God. But I can. That is what Paul was trying to tell them. Jesus is the one who cleanses your conscience from dead works. You cannot do it. He is the one who does that, and he does it bit by bit.

Sooner or later, you will notice that there are certain things you do not do anymore and you do not even like to do it anymore. It happened because of your relationship with God. Paul was trying to tell them to stop trying to satisfy the law. You cannot satisfy the law and consider yourself holy by doing all of those commandments that God told the Old Testament to do.

Jesus said here is the new commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Then love your neighbor as yourself. He says that is it. It is all about you loving the Lord your God with all your heart. If you do that, then you will love your neighbor as yourself. If you are not loving your neighbor as yourself, you cannot love God with all your heart.

The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts. If it has been put in our hearts, then I have the capacity to love the way God wants me to love. If you are not loving people the way God wants you to love them, something is wrong with your love. There is nothing wrong with the Holy Spirit; something is wrong with you. You have either missed salvation or you are quenching the spirit.

I am glad that we do not have to bring lambs and sacrifice them to pay for our sins because the debt of sin in my account was stamped paid in full. We need to stop paying baggage fees for the guilt Jesus paid for on the cross. You need to let go of that baggage. There are certain things in our lives we need to let go of in order to grow in grace and to walk by faith in Christ.

In order to let go, we need to grow in grace. We need to know what is really inside our heart and our motives. Some of you have not really did a spiritual survey of yourself in a long time. Every 6,000 miles or every six months, I get a message from Ford telling me I need to get my automobile checked. There ought to be something going on in your spirit to let you know you need to get something checked in your life because everything is not right if you are living like this.

There is something inside our spiritual suitcases maybe that you do not know that you have. Paul identifies seven behaviors believers need to grow out of. Ephesians 4 and verse 31 says to get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger. If you are born again, you ought to be just like your Heavenly Father, not like your earthly daddy.

Get rid of all brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you. If you are walking around not forgiving other people, then do not even go to the throne of grace and ask God to forgive you because if you are not going to forgive other people, why should he forgive you?

Believers need to get rid of all bitterness, rage, brawling, slander, and every form of evil and unforgiveness. We are to get rid of every last one of them. If not, our emotions will explode, killing relationships. When something is dead, rigor mortis sets in. When something is dead and decaying, it smells. People smell you a long way away. They can smell a phony and a fake.

People are saying they want to get saved, but not the kind of salvation they have. If you are the first one to slander someone or the first one to burst out and get angry with somebody, maybe you are not really who you say you are. The Bible says you cannot blame the sin on your parents, so you cannot even use that as an excuse. It is not because of your mama.

You are born again by the blood of Christ. If you are carrying those emotions, you smell putrid, like dead skunks. Carrying those seven behaviors in our lives is like trying to board a flight with forbidden carry-ons like explosives, flammable liquids, firearms, and toxic substances. When we go through the baggage area where they do the search of your whole body, that is invasive. I do not even know what they are looking at.

We have to choose to forgive in order to be kind, tender-hearted, and loving toward others. It is a choice that we have to make. Some of us hurt people because we are hurt people. Hurt people carry slander, bitterness, rage, and anger. Hurt people are argumentative, making it hard to forgive others. Jesus says whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.

A transgression is like a trespass. If the sign says no walking on the grass, we automatically want to walk on the grass and touch the paint to see if it is really wet. Forgiveness means to send away. It means to leave alone. Forgiveness does not say it did not matter; it says it will not master me. No one is going to master me. God is my master. Do not allow any person to master you.

Do not let someone who has hurt you carry that stuff around because if you do, you are letting them master you. Let God be your master and do not let people have the authority over you and what you think. There are some things that people have done to me and I let it go because it bogs me down thinking about it. I have just decided I am not going to be the dumpster.

I am going to empty it out and whatever feeling I am having, I am going to take it to the Lord in prayer. If we release it, then God will release holding things from us. He will release whatever blessing he wants to give to us because we are doing what he has told us to do. Some things God does not bless us with because you are walking around in disobedience.

Forgiveness frees us physically, mentally, and spiritually. David wrote in Psalm 32, "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I did not hide. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' and you forgave the guilt of my sin."

When did he get a release? When he confessed his sins to the Lord, that is when God forgave the guilt of his sin. That is when he felt the heaviness lifted off of his spirit physically, mentally, and spiritually. David does not say I sinned and God crushed me. He says I hid and he crushed me. The weight was not punishment; it was pressure for him to confess.

God wants to relieve the pressure, but you must confess the sin. David said the moment he confessed, God forgave his guilt. If you have been forgiven, carrying guilt is forbidden. If God has forgiven it, you are not allowed to keep carrying it. It is like walking out of court and you have been declared not guilty, but you go past the bailiff and you ask him if you can keep the handcuffs on just in case.

If God does not bring it up, you do not have the authority to keep letting it be brought up in your life. Stop bringing it up. When a debt is paid, it ceases to exist. When a sin is covered, it is removed from us as far as the east is from the west. To continue to hold on to guilt after receiving no condemnation is to reject the gift of God's mercy, forgiveness, and compassion.

When sin is checked at the counter of grace, it becomes lost like some of our luggage. We went on several trips and every time we would come back through Atlanta, our baggage always seemed to get lost. This guy at the airport used to find our bags and bring them to our house. God wants to lose the baggage, but we want to find it. Stop trying to dig up sin.

Are you burdened with the baggage of bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, guilt, and every form of evil and unforgiveness? Let it go. The Holy Spirit will detect it and he is going to stop you. He is going to convict you. God pats us down spiritually and he says, "No, what is this? Why you carrying this guilt? Let it go."

God has cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea. Hebrews says he will remember their iniquity no more. What do you need to let go of? He has new mercy and strength through old pains that you are trying to get rid of. God knows everything. He sees the grief that you have tucked away. He whispers hope in your spirit. Hope is the anchor of our soul.

All things are possible from New Covenant Fellowship Church. Connect with us anywhere at ncf.church/connect or on social media at NCF Chattanooga. 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.

Those who are in the faith have the fragrance of Christ, an aroma of life. But Second Corinthians says those who are fakers of the faith have an aroma of death. Aren't you tired of being a little stinker? New Covenant Fellowship Church, in-person worship Sunday mornings at 10:30, 1326 North Moore Road in Chattanooga. New Covenant Fellowship Church, a place for every race.