Everything is Different

 Zephaniah 3:17 

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

If you are in Christ, the God of the universe sings over you. He sings loudly and lovingly over you as a proud, faithful, and very happy Father.

If we know who God really is, and if we’re honest about who we really are, that should be absolutely stunning.

Because of our sin, we do not deserve to be spared by God, much less to be loved and even prized by God. 

We’ll never truly understand God and the gospel until we understand just how little we deserve from God.

Before we were saved, we were enemies of God, earning His awful, unthinkable wrath with our sin.  

Every day that we lived for ourselves, and not for God, we were falling deeper and deeper into a debt we could never repay.

Although we didn’t yet know how serious the situation was, we were thoroughly and eternally helpless and desperate. There was nothing we could do to remedy our rebellion, and so we were headed to a place of everlasting punishment. 

But now, based on nothing we did on our own, God is singing over us. Instead of spending eternity crushed by His wrath, we’ll be forever wrapped in His loving kindness.  

And because He is singing over you, everything is different.  

Before our life in Christ, we were dead - no life in us at all. Sin had robbed us of abundant life with God, and left us alienated and hopeless (as Ephesians 2:12 clearly affirms).

Before, we were aggressively and recklessly trying to find life and happiness in the things of this world. 

Before, we couldn’t see Jesus for who He is, God himself - our Lord, our Savior, and our Treasure. 

We were like the crowds that came to Jesus looking to see signs and wonders. (John 2:23–25), or like the Pharisees who missed Jesus because they were looking for power, fame, and influence.

Then - Jesus came into our life and everything was different - and everything about us changed. We would never be the same person again. 

Now, as born-again believers we are no longer slaves to sin, to serve its destructive desires.

We are completely, utterly, and eternally free, in Galatians 5:1, we're told   

"It was for this freedom that Christ set us free [completely liberating us]; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery [which you once removed]."

You see, the Spirit inside of you is fighting with you against sin’s lies and undoing the hold it has in your heart.

The war is over. Sin has lost, and Christ has won. When He walked away from death and ascended into heaven, His life, righteousness, and freedom became ours.

Now, you and I have full, lasting, and unshakeable joy. 

In God’s presence, ransomed by the blood of his Son, we are able to experience “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). 

Lots of things promise happiness in this life, but nothing can deliver like the gospel.

We were born to enjoy Him above all else.

Jesus for all that He is... “[He] is the radiance of the glory of God.”

Not reflecting, but actually embodying the holiness and worth of God.

Listen to what Hebrews 1: 3 says, “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”

You see, Jesus upholds and sustains the universe with words from His mouth and He is the Savior of the whole world - from every tribe, and from every tongue, and from every nation (Revelation 5:9).

He’s not just a good role-model, or a miracle-worker, or a wise teacher. 

He is the God who was and is and is to come.

And He is our life and He rejoices over us with singing. Because in Christ, everything is different!