Sharing the Good News

Scripture text this morning comes from the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Be reading verses 11 through 21.

As many of you know, we are in a sermon series this month, a life of anticipation, anticipating a growing richer prayer life.

Can you see that in 2020?

I hope you can.

A growing faith, a growing prayer life.

Do you have a vision for using your gifts in new ways in 2020?

Identifying your gifts if you haven't.

Thanking God for your gifts.

Thanking God for the opportunities that He gives you to use your gifts to serve the body of Christ, maybe in some new ways in 2020.

This morning we're going to look at something that ties in with the evangelism seminar yesterday that Randy Newman led.

Can you anticipate a growing opportunity, perhaps, but certainly a growing vision for sharing the good news with people that don't know the good news?

That's what this sermon is about this morning.

And the text is from Paul, beginning in verse 11.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.

We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance, and not about what is in the heart.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.

If we are in our right mind, it is for you.

For the love of Christ controls us.

Because we have concluded this that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake ye made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And this is the word of God.

Will you please join me in prayer?

Father, take your word and bless it.

Take your word and plant it deep in the hearts of each one of us.

And use your spirit to accomplish that.

Father, we confess it'll never happen if your spirit is not searching us, convicting us, convincing us of these truths that you want us to live out in our lives.

May it be done according to your word.

Amen.

Sharing the good news.

How many of you went to the seminar yesterday?

Because I wasn't there.

We had about a hundred people there yesterday.

You know, I'm just being honest with you.

That's pretty good for an evangelism seminar.

It really is.

That was encouraging.

A lot of us were at City Hall instead.

So I don't know what Randy said, but I trust that God's going to use it and use this message to reinforce what you heard yesterday.

To understand this passage, you need to know a little bit more about Paul's relationship with the Corinthians.

Paul really invested himself in these people.

Some pastors invest more of themselves and their people than others.

That's a given.

Paul really invested himself in his congregations.

You can read about it in the book of Acts, chapter 18, and other places, and especially in the Corinthian epistles.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

Paul cared deeply and personally about these people.

And he uses some of his strangest language in describing his relationship with these people.

You see that really in the first paragraph printed in your bulletin.

Verse 11, what we are known is known to your conscience, and we are not commending ourselves to you again.

That's an interesting word.

Paul has apparently felt like he's needed to go above and beyond to prove to them that he really does love them, that he really does care for them.

You might be thinking, well, why?

Because his ministry was being attacked by false teachers who had infiltrated the church at Corinth.

And they were calling into question his motives.

They were attacking him at every corner, trying to discredit his ministry.

So that's why you see Paul in these Corinthian letters going a little above and beyond what he usually does.

Those who boast about outward appearance, those are the false teachers he's referring to.

There are people in this world today, just as there were in Paul's day, there are ministers as well.

There are false teachers as well.

There are people today who care more about what they look like on the outside than what they are on the inside.

That's exactly what Paul's getting to.

He's referring to that here in that first paragraph.

What he's saying is, these false teachers really don't care about you.

They really don't love you from the heart.

They're concerned about their reputation in the community.

What they care most about is what they look like to other people.

And what Paul's saying is, you know that's not true about me.

And you as you read through the letters, you get the very clear sense that the vast majority of them knew that.

Yeah.

You're right.

You're right.

Some of us have gotten off track.

Some of us have been deceived.

But you're right.

That's what he's talking about.

Verse 13, if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.

Let me paraphrase.

If I'm saying some strange things, if I'm trying too hard, do you ever try too hard?

If I'm trying too hard to convince you of that the gospel that I gave you is the real gospel, forgive me.

Forgive me for trying too hard, but I care that much about you.

I'm going to go maybe the extra mile.

I think some of you can relate to that.

Paul was a risk taker for the sake of the gospel.

He often lived out of his comfort zone.

I want you to hang on to that phrase.

Are you a Christian who's living out of your comfort zone?

Or do you work very hard to always stay in control?

Do you work very hard to work within the confines of your comfort zone?

Because that's very relevant to the meaning of this text.

You're never going to have significant impact for the kingdom of God if you don't learn, if you're not willing, to live out of your comfort zone.

That is clearly in this epistle.

Paul was maybe the ultimate risk taker.

I don't know if he had a comfort zone.

I really don't.

And he says, for the love of Christ controls us.

If you're controlled by the love of Christ, you will find yourselves in many risky situations.

If you are controlled by the love of Christ, you will become more and more aware of being in situations or outside of your comfort zone, and you're going to be okay with that.

Because it's the love of Christ that's controlling you, not your ideal of who you should be, not your ideals of what you want other people to think about you.

For the love of Christ controls us.

And you see where he says this?

Because we have concluded this.

Because we have concluded this.

That one has died for all, therefore all have died.

And he died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who, for their sake, died and was raised.

Have you come to that conclusion yet in your life?

Only you can answer that.

Have you come to this conclusion the kind of life you want to live for the rest of your days on this earth is you want to be a gospel risk taker because the love of Christ so compels you, because the love of Christ has so grabbed you, because you understand what you were before you came to Christ.

You don't forget that.

And your heart just continues to grow in gratitude for what Christ has done for you.

And that's growing.

And because it's growing, the love of Christ is seizing you and grasping you and controlling you in new ways that you say, you say, I'm not gonna live for my own comfort.

I'm just not.

My friend Tom Terrence gave me a recent George Barna poll, and I I'm not gonna share the results today.

I don't want to depress you.

But I'm serious, like it's really bad.

According to George Barna, who studies, well, I'm gonna give you one, okay.

According to George Barna, who studies churches and professing Christians in this country, you know what percent of church goers in this country say that they are willing to sacrifice all for Jesus Christ.

They're all in.

If you're at like 50%, you're not even in the game.

What was that old TV game show?

Prices right, higher or lower, lower, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five.

Three percent.

Three percent of people who go to church say that they are all in.

That they want their life, they want to live their lives for Jesus Christ.

And they're willing to do that, whatever that looks like.

What conclusion have you come to at this point in your life?

What conclusion have I come to at this point in my life?

What I want to do with the rest of my life.

This is actually part of, this is all part of, I think, that first paragraph I just read.

Christ's love for him, for him, Paul, motivated him for these priorities in his life.

He wants to evangelize and witness to all that he can.

But he says in verse 11, he wants to do this with a right mind.

The reason that Christ died and was raised is so that we may now live for him and no longer for ourselves.

You see that?

That's right there in verse 15.

Paul says, I want to be a man of God who lives a life no longer for myself, but for him, for Christ.

And he states the reason why.

What Jesus has done for him.

He says, I give up my rights.

I give up my rights.

Because every day I see, I look back to see what he has done for me.

Isn't that where we want to be?

Even if we're not there.

Come on, isn't that where we want to be?

How do we get there?

He tells us.

He talks about two motives: the fear of the Lord and the love of Christ.

He says in verse 11, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, Paul knew the fear of the Lord.

This is not a cringing fear or terror.

This is not being afraid of God like this, okay?

This is actually quite the opposite.

Biblical fear is not cringing.

Oh, I don't even want to look at him because it would be just horrifying and destroy me.

Biblical fear is actually not cringing away from him, it's actually looking more toward him.

Biblical fear is seeing God as he truly is.

It's seeing his holiness in new ways, his glory.

It's saying, God, I get it more and more.

You created me.

You know me.

You love me.

And you you are a God of vengeance, but I understand that your wrath was poured out on Jesus instead of me.

And I know that there's gonna be a judgment one day.

And I know that I will stand before you.

And I want to give a I want to give a good accounting.

I know I'm saved, but I want to be able to look at you with confidence.

I want to be able to look at you and say, Lord, I did.

I think I did.

The best I could do?

Or, you know, we're not, it's not exactly that.

We all know we're not gonna do that, but you know what I mean.

I really tried in a right way.

The fear of the Lord, and secondly, the love of Christ.

So we're looking at two things just briefly: the message of reconciliation and the ministry of reconciliation.

The message of reconciliation, verse 14, for the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all.

You see, he uses this word all.

He likes the word all, especially in the book of Romans.

One died for all, that's Jesus Christ.

All have died, all men have died in Adam.

That's his theology in Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

All people, when they were born into this world, died spiritually because of the sin of Adam.

The Bible's very clear in teaching that.

We were all in Adam.

And yet he says, all who become Christians will live because we are in Christ.

Once you become a Christian, you're no longer in Adam, imputed his sin.

You now, once you become a Christian, you are now in Christ.

And he's going to unpack this, what that means.

It's this double dying, one scholar, Paul Barnett, put it.

One who has died that all might be reconciled to God, and all now have died in Christ to themselves, and now daily they are learning how to die to themselves daily.

And then he gets to verse 17.

I know this is like a favorite verse for some of you.

It's a great verse.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Oh, I love the words.

If anyone, you know, that could be you.

Anyone.

You don't have to be a Jew.

Back in that world, you didn't have to be a man.

You don't have to, you don't have to be a freed person, not a slave, because they had a lot of slaves.

Paul wrote this to Corinth at the time.

There were probably about 250,000 residents who were free, probably about 400,000 slaves.

I mean, Corinth, like many of the cities in ancient world, were had more slaves than free.

That's why Paul says in Galatians chapter 3, verse 28, therefore in Christ, it's not male nor female, free or slave, Jew or Gentile.

Galatians 3:28

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

This word creation is a powerful word.

It's the same word that was used in the Hebrew Old Testament, for you know what, you know what, what?

The creation of the world.

It's the old word in the Old Testament for creating.

Creating.

You've seen God's handiwork in creation.

Whether it was the Grand Canyon, whether it's the stars on a beautiful night out in the country.

Whether it's Niagara Falls, you've seen God's handiwork in creation.

You know what he can do.

But you also know that you are his creation.

That he created you in his image.

But if you're a Christian, he has recreated you in Christ Jesus, Paul says.

And you are, once you become a Christian, you become a new creation of God.

Isn't that exciting?

Really?

Like even today.

The old is gone.

In the Greek, this is in the heiress tense.

Done.

Gone.

The old is gone.

And you may be thinking, well, it doesn't feel like the old is gone.

It feels like the struggle's still going on.

Well, the struggle is still going on.

When he says the old is gone, he means the old person that you were in Adam.

Done.

Dead.

Not dying.

You've already had the funeral.

Alright?

And did you miss your own funeral?

The day that you became a Christian, the person that you were in Adam died.

Never again to live.

The new has come.

Well, that's not in the heiress tense.

That's in the perfect tense, which in the Greek means that there was a point.

That point, and that point is the day you became a Christian.

The moment you became a Became a Christian at that point, God made you a new creation with continuing results.

It continues to take root in you, it continues to grow within you, this new life.

It started, it started then, and it continues.

And then he says, What?

All of this is from God.

Praise God.

All of this is from God.

You didn't do this.

You didn't do this.

All of this is from God.

Praise God.

Who through Christ reconciled us to himself.

These two key moments.

Another way to think about it is as Paul says in Galatians 2.20, for I have been crucified with Christ.

You could say, I have been co-crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live.

Yet not I, it's not my life.

The life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

What a beautiful verse.

What a beautiful truth.

The death of Christ, but also first brings death to you.

That's what he's saying.

The day you died in Adam.

The day that that changed and you started a new life in Christ, because you received by faith that gift that he offered you, you started your new life.

That's why he says, for anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.

Jesus is the only substitute who will make things right between you and God.

The word reconciliation means alienation, estrangement.

And if you didn't understand this, let me tell you today, until you come to Christ, you're not at peace with God.

You may think that you are.

You may think, well, I don't have a problem with God.

Well, he's got a problem with you because of your sin.

This is why these words are so precious.

The moment you come to Jesus Christ, God lays down his arms, his sword.

The battle, the fight is over.

Because Jesus Christ became your substitute and he makes things right between you and God.

Verse 21, for our sake, God made him to be sin.

The one who never sinned, Jesus Christ.

For our sake, God made him to become sin, to become a sin offering, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.

This is the beauty of the gospel.

Is the diamond dazzling today?

Is the gospel becoming more beautiful to you this morning?

You say, well, yeah, I've done this for years.

Okay.

Is the gospel becoming more beautiful to you?

Is the gospel changing your will, your mind, your heart in new ways?

That you're not going to live for yourself, that you're going to live for Christ in new ways, that you're going to be a gospel risk taker?

Verse 19, when God receives you in faith, when you say, God, I believe this.

God, I understand, I believe this, and I accept the gift that you're offering me.

He says in verse 19, your sins are no longer accounted to you.

Your sins are now accounted to Christ.

Jesus died to say, charge those sins, charge your sins, Tom Holliday, to me.

That's what it means to become a Christian.

Jesus says, charge your sins to me.

And I will give you my righteousness, my perfection instead.

Philip Hughes, the commentator, said, as it is on Christ that the full force of judgment against sin has fallen, so it is in Christ that we find shelter from that judgment.

The disease is measured by the cure.

And if the cure was nothing less than the death of Jesus Christ, what must our disease be?

This is the message of reconciliation.

As our my dear friend Jack Miller would have said, cheer up.

You're worse than you think.

But cheer up.

You're more loved and forgiven and accepted and delighted by God than you ever imagined.

That's the good news.

And you say, well, Tom, I thought you were going to preach a sermon on evangelism.

I think I am.

You're not going to be much of an evangelist if this gospel message isn't capturing your heart in new ways.

You're not going to be much of an evangelist if the love of Christ is not compelling you in new ways.

So let's talk about the message, or excuse me, the ministry of reconciliation.

From now on, Paul says we regard no one according to the flesh.

You know what that means?

From now on, when I see somebody, I don't see a body.

I see a soul that's going to live for eternity.

From now on, we regard no one according to the flesh.

Every person you see has a soul that's going to live for eternity.

Every person, every person you know, every relationship that you have is somebody who's going to live forever and ever and ever.

They're either going to live with God in heaven or they're going to be separated from God in hell.

The Bible's very clear about that.

Christ's love compels us.

Okay, hang on to this, all right?

Here we go.

God gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Notice what it doesn't say.

God gave the ministry of reconciliation to the pastors.

It doesn't say that God gave the ministry of reconciliation to the elders, to the deacons.

Who did God give this ministry of reconciliation to?

Everyone in this room who's a Christian.

God gave us this ministry of reconciliation.

Two things in closing.

First of all, don't do it in the flesh.

And secondly, don't do it alone.

Don't do it in the flesh.

Like everything else in the Christian life, we can either do in the energy of the flesh or we can do it in the power of the Spirit.

The new has come.

Because the new has come, there is divine power available to us.

Are you living in this power?

Ezekiel promised in Ezekiel chapter 36 he saw the day coming when Christ would come.

Ezekiel 36 · chapter mention

Because Christ would come, he would give us a new heart.

He would take away the heart of stone, he would give us a heart of flesh.

He would sprinkle us clean.

He would give us a new power to live by.

Christian, you have that.

Jim Boyce believes from his studies of the book of Acts that every time being filled with the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the book of Acts, it's always with reference to the proclamation of the gospel.

The filling of the Spirit is not about, in the book of Acts, is about proclaiming the Word of God.

With boldness, with urgency, with love.

The filling of the Spirit is not just for you.

If you think it is, you're not filled with the Spirit.

You're not.

The filling of the Spirit is to go out to other people.

Paul says, the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, living it by faith.

I'm going to take the time to read, just turn back to Acts chapter 18 for one minute.

Acts 18 · chapter mention

You need to hear this.

This is Paul in Corinth.

And I think it has application to us in Alexandria.

Acts chapter 18, verse 9.

Acts 18:9

And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent.

Well, there's some application for us.

For I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.

So he stayed a year and six months.

He stayed 18 months, teaching the word of God among them.

I want you to hear this.

The same God who said to the Apostle Paul in the city of Corinth, I believe, would say to the people of Alexandria Presbyterian Church, I still have many people in this city who have not yet heard, who have not yet believed.

And how are they going to believe unless we tell them?

How are they going to hear unless the word of God goes out?

He wants to save.

The question is, is do you want to be part of it?

Do you want to be part of the process?

I'm not saying you have to be an evangelist.

But do you want to be part of this?

The second point, don't do it alone.

What's the it?

Evangelism.

Don't do evangelism alone.

Let me give you a word picture.

Think a net, fishing net like they had back in Paul's day.

A fishing net, not a fishing rod.

I'm convinced that the reason a lot of us are so intimidated by evangelism is we think we you get issued a fishing rod.

And you have to stand there on the pier and cast it off by yourself.

It's all up to you.

Are you a really good fisherman?

I don't know.

I'm a lousy fisherman.

I know.

Think net.

Think like five, ten, fifteen, twenty people pulling on the same net because that's how they fished.

You can do it with other people.

You can do it with your CFG.

You can do it in community.

It takes a village, somebody said.

You know what I say?

It takes a net.

It takes a net.

Where we are praying for this for some of the same people.

We're saying, would you pray with me for my friend?

Are you doing that?

I'm serious.

If you're not, come on.

This is where it begins.

Do people in your life know who you're praying for who don't know Jesus?

Are you praying with them, for them, or are you just privatizing all this?

If you're privatizing all this, you're probably not even thinking about it that much.

You maybe aren't even praying about it.

Come on.

If we understand the message of reconciliation, we will be involved in the ministry of reconciliation.

Don't do it alone.

Community.

Are you praying for God to use you?

Don't do it out of guilt.

Do it out of gratitude.

If the gospel is renewing you, you will not be doing this out of guilt.

If the gospel is renewing you, you will more and more say, thank you, Jesus, for what you've done for me.

Now, Jesus, use me.

Give me a community.

Give me opportunities by the Spirit, not by the flesh.

Pray with me.

Father, please help us.

Help us, change us, grow us.

Father, I pray even this morning that perhaps someone has come to Christ even this morning.

As they've heard of your offer of forgiveness, as you would take their guilt, as you would take their sin and place it on your Son Jesus.

Perhaps even some of us have awakened spiritually, have been become new creations this morning.

But Father, for all of us, may the message of our reconciliation drive us into a ministry of reconciliation in new ways.

We pray, Lord Jesus.

Amen.