This morning, we’re starting a new message series entitled, “Elevate – Rise Above.”  This world, fallen due to sin, is full of challenges for us. 

Before sin, we worked hard, but our work was a joy and very fruitful.  After sin, our work is now cursed.  It is now painfully opposed with thorns and thistles.  Beyond this curse of the consequence of original sin, the devil and a third of the angels were also cast down to earth after their rebellion and now oppose us.

Though we face hardships and challenges every day of many different kinds and severities, we have something greater as well.  God, Himself, chose to lower and humble Himself to become just like us.  He faced all of the challenges that we face, but overcame them all.  Jesus took our curse on Himself and He who was sinless took on the punishment of sin.

Since Jesus lowered Himself in this way, the Father exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name and full authority over everything in Heaven and all of creation.

Though we face challenges in this life, Jesus elevates us and rises us up above it all.  He broke the curse of sin and death and freely gives us life.  He is enthroned over all and invites us to rise up and come boldly before His throne of grace.  Through Jesus, we can elevate and rise up above the challenges of this world!

Even before Jesus chose to do these things, David wrote this of God:

Psalm 40:1-3

1 I waited patiently for the Lord;

    he turned to me and heard my cry.

2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,

    out of the mud and mire;

he set my feet on a rock

    and gave me a firm place to stand.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,

    a hymn of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear the Lord

    and put their trust in him.

To this very day, the Lord is still picking people up out of the slimy pit of mud and mire of this world and elevating them up onto the solid rock of Himself.  He is still today saving and healing and delivering and restoring and reconciling and making all things new!

Paul explained it this way:

Romans 8:18-24;31-39

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able