Living Surrendered to God – Living Made New

Brandon Werner   -   May 4, 2025

Living Surrendered to God

Pastor Brandon Werner  |  Together Church

May 4, 2025  |  Series: Living Made New

SERIES INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the other side of IMPACT Month at Together Church!

• If you’re just joining us, at Together Church, April is IMPACT Month.
  • IMPACT is an acronym…
  • This is a time of year where we intentionally focus on our commitment to reach the lost.
• In March, our church started praying together for people in our lives who don’t know Jesus or who do not go to church.
• In April, we did our part to deepen our relationships with these people, share the gospel with them, and invite them to church and special events where the gospel would be shared.
• Our sermon series for IMPACT Month this year was Made New. At every service, we told people the good news of Jesus and what He has done so we could be Made New in Him!
• We ended every service with a clear invitation to believe on Jesus and be baptized.

That’s what we did for IMPACT Month. What were the results?

• In April, we celebrated 10 baptisms as part of IMPACT Month!

You know, that is just a snapshot of what God has been doing…

• So far in 2025, we have celebrated 21 baptisms together!
• And in just over two years, since the beginning of 2023, we have seen 105 people follow Jesus in baptism!

Let me ask you in this room…

• If you are one of the people who has been baptized here at any point in the past, would you raise your hand?
• Now one more time, if you have ever followed Jesus in baptism, whether here or somewhere else, would you raise your hand?

Give glory to God! We are united with Christ in baptism.

Today, on the heels of IMPACT Month, we will start a new series that builds on the last. The last series was called Made New… this series is called Living Made New!

Here’s the heart of this series: you’ve heard the gospel, you’ve been saved, and Jesus has made you new… now what? What does it look like to LIVE made new?

This series is important for new believers, but it is not just for new believers. Living Made New is something every disciple of Jesus must constantly pursue. The Apostle Paul put it this way…

Philippians 3:12-14

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Being made new is a work of God. It is only possible by grace through faith in the all sufficient work of Jesus Christ. This is the picture of baptism! (Old life dead with Christ, raised with Christ – Made New!)

God doesn’t just want us to be made new—He wants us living made new;  continually growing, maturing, and becoming more like Jesus every day.

INTRODUCTION

If God wants us living made new, what does that look like?

To answer that question, we will end up looking at Acts 2, which contains the story of the first people who were made new by Jesus and what they were directed to do.

But before we get to that passage, let me tell you about something that happened recently…

A couple weeks ago in my small group, Paige Miller said something that really stuck out to me. She said, “I just haven’t heard or been able to find many sermons that tell people how to live a life fully surrendered to God.”

This stood out to me. Paige has an incredible story of how God has made her new. She wants to live made new! As she learns new truth, she is understanding that living made new means living a life completely surrendered in obedience to the will of God.

Paige’s comment came right after Good Friday.

If you came to the Good Friday event, you saw Lew Sterrett riding on horseback while sharing really deep truths about our relationship with God. Specifically, Lew really focused on the concept of surrendering ourselves completely to God. He called it “alignment with God”. Lew used his relationship with his horse to illustrate our relationship with God and the importance of surrendering our will to Him.

• It is incredible what a horse and rider can accomplish together once the horse has surrendered its will completely to its master.
• A wild, unbroken horse is not worth much. All it does is satisfies its own appetites and fights with other horses for dominance.
• But when a horse is broken, it becomes powerfully productive.
• There are many ways for a horse to be broken, but the best way is what Lew does – Lew builds trust with the horse so that the horse’s trust in him is greater than its fear.
• Living made new is becoming like Lew’s horse – it is learning to completely trust God and surrender to Him in full obedience.

As I thought about Lew’s message and Paige’s comment, I realized how this message of surrendering our will to God’s will is being lost today, even in the church.

Honestly, from a cultural perspective, “surrender” is becoming an ugly word to many people. It’s up there with “obey”, “yield”, and “submit”. (Oh man! “Submission” is really a bad word to a lot of people!)

But regardless of how the world understands surrender, when we look at Jesus, we see the perfect example of a life completely surrendered to the Father.

• Jesus said He didn’t say anything He didn’t hear the Father say.
• He said He didn’t do anything unless He saw the Father doing it.
• He told His disciples to pray to the Father like this: “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done…”
• He was obedient to the Father to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Then, in the garden, we get this incredible insight into Jesus’ total humanity and total deity. Jesus knew He was about to face the worst kind of suffering, the most intense physical pain, and bear the shame of our sin and the wrath of God on our behalf!

In His flesh, Jesus dreaded the task in front of Him. He prayed…

Luke 22:42

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.

But in His Spirit, Jesus was delighted to submit to the will of His Father. So He continued the prayer…

Luke 22:42

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Surrender is a powerful concept. Jesus was characterized by perfect and complete surrender to the will of His Father.

Now think about this – if Jesus is the perfect example of living completely surrendered to the will of the Father, whose life is the perfect example of the exact opposite? Whose life is lived in complete rebellion and disobedience to God? Satan.

• Satan was cast out of heaven by God due to his rebellion.
• In the garden, Satan tempted the first man and woman to rebel against God and do what God had explicitly forbidden.
• In the wilderness, Satan attempted to convince Jesus do his will rather than the will of His Father.

If Jesus is the perfect example of a life lived in complete surrender to the will of the Father, Satan is the perfect example of a life lived in complete rebellion to God.

Put this together – when we surrender completely to the will of God, we are acting like Jesus! When we rebel against God and do not surrender to His will, we are acting like Satan.

Here’s the truth…

Before we were made new, we were once all of our father, the devil.

Jesus uses this phrase in John…

John 8:44a

44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

What’s going on here? Why does Jesus call these men sons of Satan?

In this passage, Jesus is speaking to Jewish men, religious Pharisees. These Pharisees believed their way of living was right. They saw Jesus as a threat to their lifestyle, authority, and power. They did not believe what Jesus said. So, their solution was to seek the execution of Jesus! They wanted Him dead.

Jesus knew their intent. More than that, Jesus knew what their intent revealed about them. These men pretended to be children of God, but they were not children of God at all. Their resistance of Jesus was evidence of their resistance towards God. So, Jesus told them…

John 8:41-44a

41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

They were not surrendered to the will of God. They wanted their own will, not His. Both Satan and the Pharisees in John 8 are examples of lives lived in rebellion towards God.

Now, if you’re taking notes, here’s the big point…

Living made new is living completely surrendered in obedience to the will of God.

The word “surrender” is a term adopted by theologians to help capture a biblical concept. This word was popularized in the late 1800s and early 1900s by preachers, authors, and evangelists like DL Moody, Andrew Murray, and Oswald Chambers.

The song we still sing called, “I Surrender All” was also written in this time period by Judson Van DeVentor. (QUOTE IF TIME)

Surrender is a theological term that captures focal biblical concepts:

• Yield your members to God (Rom. 6)
• Offer your body as a living sacrifice to God (Rom. 12)
• Submit to God (James 4)
• Lose your life (Luke 9)
• Take up your cross (Matt. 16)
• Crucified with Christ (Gal. 2)
• Walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5)

All these biblical concepts are captured in the theological word “surrender”. And there’s another one… REPENT.

BODY

And that word brings us to this passage in Acts 2.

To repent literally means to turn and go the other way. For believers in Jesus, to repent means to stop living the way you were living and start following Jesus. In other words, repent means to surrender your life completely to God.

In Acts 2, the disciples—eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection—were all gathered together in one place. Why? Jesus had told them to wait for the Holy Spirit to come.

Suddenly, the Holy Spirit came and filled the room they were in. The Spirit empowered these first followers of Jesus to go out and proclaim the good news with boldness.

One of the immediate signs of the Spirit’s work was that they began to speak in other tongues—actual, known languages—which allowed people from different nations to hear the message in their own native languages.

This miraculous moment drew a crowd. Peter saw the crowd and the Holy Spirit empowered Him to be His witness. Peter had the high honor of being the first person made new by Jesus to stand up and preach the gospel so that others might be saved.

In a way, what we did during IMPACT Month echoes what happened in Acts 2—Peter shared the good news clearly and powerfully in a way that connected with the people God brought near. His message led the crowd to recognize their sin, their unbelief in Jesus as Lord and Messiah, and their need to repent and turn to God.

What happened next? Scripture tells us…

Acts 2:37

37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

God was moving their hearts to surrender. They could see the way they were living wasn’t right, and they wanted to know how they should respond to this message about Jesus.

Peter told them.

Acts 2:38

38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

1. Notice! What is the first thing Peter told them to do? REPENT!

Turn from living your own way. Stop following the ways of this world! Start following Jesus!

When most Christians hear the word “repent”, they typically think about stopping sin in their lives.

Repentance includes the killing of sin! When we sin, we are not doing the will of God, we are doing the will of Satan.

But that understanding of repentance alone is way too small.

In the context of Acts 2, the call to repent was not just a call to stop sinning… it was a call to turn from unbelief and believe the truth about Jesus! Peter wanted them to repent of living like Jesus was still dead or living like Jesus is not Lord of All!

If you go read Peter’s sermon, those two points are extremely clear. Peter’s preaching aims at convicting them to believe that Jesus is alive and that He is God!

Too many people have walked some isle somewhere, prayed some prayer somewhere, even been baptized for whatever reason – and they are not living like Jesus is alive and Lord of all.

In fact, many never intended to follow Jesus as Lord.

They were not looking to surrender their way of life to embrace Jesus’ way of life. When they made some religious response to God, they fully intended to keep doing exactly what they were doing. If you were honest, maybe I am talking about you.

Why would someone do that?

Because they didn’t really want Jesus, they wanted what they thought Jesus could give them. They had hopes of mixing Jesus into their lives so that He would make their lives even better!

Let’s throw some Jesus in there…

• When money is low and I need a boast
• When my kid is sick and I want him better
• When I’m wanting something to go well for myself

And let’s especially throw some Jesus in there when I die so that I don’t have to go to hell, but I can go to heaven.

There are way too many people who claim to be Christians who have no intention of surrendering their lives to the will of God at all!

It blows me away that so many Westerners think they can be a follower of Jesus without actually following Him. That just doesn’t make any sense.

When Peter called them to repent, it wasn’t just repentance of sin, it was repenting of mastering their own lives. They needed repentance as badly as those Pharisees who Jesus said were children of Satan. The truth is, we all need to repent for ways we have not surrendered to God and withheld our affections and obedience to Him.

To surrender to God means to repent of unbelief. It means turning from a life that is self-seeking, self-serving, and self-promoting. Living made new means surrendering your life in repentance – turning from your old life and following Jesus.

2. The next thing Peter told them to do was to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

After celebrating over 100 baptisms in the last couple years, I hope we understand the significance of what baptism means!

EXPLAIN (water like a grave).

What we are literally saying is that our old life is DEAD WITH CHRIST AND BURIED WITH CHRIST! Baptism itself is an act of surrender!

When I hear about someone who says they believe in Jesus, but they aren’t going to get baptized, do you know what my first response is? My first response is to get to know them and seek to understand. Specifically, I want to find what they know about the gospel and about baptism.

Once I get to know them, if I find out they understand the gospel and know that Jesus commands them to be baptized but they still don’t plan to be baptized, do you know what my second response is?

I tell them the idea of an unbaptized follower of Jesus is completely inconsistent with the Bible. (ILLUSTRATIONS)

When the Bible talks about believers, it assumes they are baptized…

Romans 6:3

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptizedinto his death?

Paul ASSUMES believers WERE baptized and HAVE BEEN baptized. If we would have brought some of our American arguments to him about not getting baptized it would have been totally foreign to him. In fact, I think he would assume that a person unwilling to repent and be baptized is a person who is not saved because they have not surrendered to Jesus as Lord.

It is incredible to me that someone would think they are a follower of Jesus when they know what God says and have been unwilling to surrender to God in this first step of obedience.

After telling them to repent, Peter told them to be baptized. Baptism itself is an act of submission to God. It is the first step of obedience for those who have truly believed in Christ.

3. The third and final thing Peter told them was that they would receive the Holy Spirit.

Peter got it. In that moment, he understood something he never fully understood before… without the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to live made new!

Here’s the bottom line…

Left to our own power and abilities, none of us have what it takes to live our lives completely surrendered in obedience to God.

But God knows that! He doesn’t expect us to do it in our power. Holy Spirit promises to give us His power so that we can do the will of God.

When a person is saved, the Holy Spirit does so much more than just save them from sin. The Holy Spirit comes inside to make us new! He gives us the power we need to live our lives fully surrendered to God.

Because of the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live made new!

CONCLUSION

Peter told them what Jesus did so they could be made new in Him! When they heard, they were cut to the heart and wanted to know what they should do. Peter told them…

1. Repent (surrender)
2. Be baptized
3. And you will be filled with the Holy Spirit

Jesus did not JUST die so your sins could be forgiven…

Jesus died and rose again so that you could be MADE NEW and LIVE MADE NEW through the power of the Holy Spirit!

Living made new means living a life completely surrendered in obedience to the will of God.

And here’s the truth – if you’ve been made new, it is your nature to LIVE MADE NEW! Living made new isn’t just something you do; it is who you are in Christ.

The nature of someone who has not been made new is to live for self. There’s that Proverb – as a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to their folly. The nature of someone who is not saved is to continue in sin, continue to live out of alignment with God.

Receiving the Holy Spirit and being born again is what makes you a new creation.  It is your nature to surrender your will to God.  Living in rebellion against God, is contrary to your nature, and it makes you miserable.  After you’re born again of the spirit of God, it is impossible to be comfortable living in sin.

Response team forward.

Let me ask you…

INVTIATION – I Surrender All

• Are you made new? If not, your nature is to live for yourself. Before you do anything else, the first thing you need to do is come to Jesus and be made new (GOSPEL INVITATION).
• Have you already been made new? Then are you LIVING made new? As a new creation in Christ, it is your nature to completely surrender to the will of God. Are you? Or have you been holding something back? (God, you can have anything in my life except ____________.)