Risk of Compromise

There we go. I'm here. And my special thanks today to our worship team. It was a little light today. You might have noticed that our worship leader is not here. She is getting better.

So I think the first wave of some sickness may have hit. Looking a little light out there. But you are here. I'm here. And I'm excited to be with you. If you're not able to be with us, if you're on the live stream today, we welcome you. We miss you.

We hope if you're worshiping right now with us, go ahead and send me a text. No, don't. Don't do that. That'll be distracting. Now somebody will.

But I would venture to guess that if you're here right now, you're one of two types of people. I'm going to describe them. You think about which one you are.

Some of you feel a strong sense of urgency about the season that's upon us, right? Some of you feel like you need to get ready for the holidays.

From shopping to the Christmas list to all the food you're going to need to prepare to feed all the people. The big gathering. And the urgency builds.

And if you have anxiety about that, I'm not helping any right now, am I? Others of us, we won't take a show of hands, are absolutely clueless.

We are on the other end of the spectrum. And we think about putting up decorations like maybe the week before Christmas. Or we want to put up our Christmas tree, maybe if I had my way, the day before Christmas.

And then take it down right away. And then you think about shopping. You're like, well, that's what gift cards are for. So what am I worried about there?

And as far as all the food, well, they have a big store over in Mishawaka called Costco or Sam's Club. And you just go there and it like prepares itself and appears on the table, right?

That's the other half of us. Thank God for the first half. I know in our marriage, I know which one feels the urgency. You're not looking at that member of the Nichols household.

And you know what the other one says? The other one says, oh, you're crazy. One feels the urgency and the other thinks, you're crazy. I bring that up today because if you could like amplify that maybe a thousand fold,

it might give us a sense of what is going on here with the Apostle Paul and the church at Corinth. One party is feeling the urgency. The other is saying, you're crazy, literally.

We have Paul today. He is the urgent one. The Corinthians are the ones saying, Paul, we think you're literally out of your mind. And what's really triggered this and kind of brought this to the head is, of course, the arrival of these new leaders in the church at Corinth while Paul is away,

the so-called super apostles. New leaders who are quite gifted and very cool and successful and calm and confident. And they've got their impeccable credentials, letters from all the right people.

And they are not hurried and they are not haggard like Paul is. In fact, they are downright well-liked around town. And for Paul, it's beginning to feel like it's a case of yesterday's news.

The haggard half-dead Apostle Paul hasn't been here for a while. You know what? He really needs to calm down. And the same goes for his urgent, oftentimes ominous-sounding message.

He's crazy. And you know what? The gospel he keeps talking about? That kind of sounds a little crazy too. And just like that, the gospel was at risk.

It was at risk of being diluted and compromised because inasmuch as the man who had originally brought them the gospel was being challenged, the gospel itself was being challenged.

We're in 2 Corinthians today, chapter 5. I hope that gives you a little context for what we're about to read together. 2 Corinthians 5, and we're ready to pick up today.

At verse 11. And we're going to read through the end of the chapter. So you can follow along with me as I read for us. 2 Corinthians 5, 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's in the heart.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we're 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, 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, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Would you pray with me once more?

Heavenly Father, again, we think of those who can't be with us today. We pray for your grace. We pray for your touch and your healing. Father, we think about those of us that have difficulties and different kinds of trials going on in our lives right now.

Father, we know that you are aware of them. We hand them to you. We lift up our brothers and sisters in these ways. And Lord, we pray that as we look into your word, as we look into a situation that you saw fit to record in your holy word about a church that is at risk of compromising the gospel,

will you awaken us today to the dangers, to the risks, and help us to hold on firmly to the heart of your gospel. And we pray this in the name of your son, in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

So, look at how Paul starts out. He says, because we know the fear of the Lord. You say, well, is he scared of God? No, it's not that kind of fear.

What Paul's talking about is that sense of awe. Remember, the fear of the Lord is also a sense of awesomeness. Paul, just a few verses earlier from our passage here, last week we heard him talk about how we're all going to appear before a judgment seat and be accountable for what we've done.

And so, Paul knows he too. He's not going to get a pass or a get out of jail free card. Well, he does get that. He's not going to be judged for his sins.

But he is going to be judged for his works and for his faithfulness to his call. He knows he has an awesome responsibility before the Lord. And he says, in light of that, we seek to persuade others.

See, we have to remember that Paul has two eternal realities in his mind. Heaven and hell. And this is part of what compels him to be devoting his life to what he's doing.

Trying to win people, trying to persuade others, he says, persuade people to accept the work of Jesus, to join the people of God. You see, it's not enough for Paul simply that he himself on the Damascus Road was met by Christ, that he's saved.

Paul's not someone that said, okay, good. I'm good now. I love Jesus. I'll sit back. No. He's answered the call God's given him on his life.

He's running around this empire and he's forming churches, planting new works of God. And that's not even enough for him because here he is, after he's already done quite a bit of journeying on his missionary travels, planted quite a few churches, and he still says, you know what?

It's not enough because Christ died for all. And he wants everyone to accept the atonement that is offered. And so he makes an appeal to this in verse 11.

He says, God knows how sincere we are. He knows what we are. And our hope and prayer is that you Corinthians would also know how sincere we are.

We hope your conscience knows. Verse 12. You should know that we're not the kind of people that run around commending ourselves, telling you about our credentials, puffing ourselves up.

At the same time, we still want you to take pride in us. We want you to boast in us in the sense that we want you to identify with us apostles and value us as the Lord's servants.

Because this is the only way you're going to be able to stand against the so-called super apostles and their diluted message. They're about superficial things.

You need to be able to answer them, those people who want to boast about superficial things. You say, well, what superficial things? We might want to ask Paul.

And he would go on to tell us, he does, people take pride in things like outward appearance. What Paul's talking about is the desire to have a good reputation and be well respected in town.

To have a ministry that looks good, that sounds good, that is well received by everybody. You see, Paul says to them, what those super apostles and false teachers in your ranks are trying to tell you and what they're trying to make your church now is something that the world will respect.

Something that the world will like. Outward appearance in a good reputation with the world. They're not about the internal matters of the heart.

And what's going on with the human heart? And it's standing before a holy God. That's what really matters. So yeah, we might seem a little crazy to you.

In verse 13, he says, if it seems like we're out of our minds, then I guess it's for God's sake alone. It's for God's glory. We glorify him in our faithfulness.

But if you are actually able to see us as men who are in our right mind, then it's for you. It's for your benefit. But however you see us, it really, either way, we want you to know it doesn't change what's true.

And this is where Paul goes in verse 14. What's true is that we do what we do because we're controlled by the love of Christ. Some translations say that Christ's love compels us.

That it propels us. And sometimes at great risk and loss to ourselves. But here's the thing. And this is what we are all about. This is what being a Christian is all about.

This truth, this message, he comes to it in verse 14, that one has died for all, then 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.

Now we know that is, of course, Jesus. He's the one who died and was raised. But please understand that when he says that Jesus died for all and therefore all have died, please understand Paul is not teaching universalism.

Universalism is the idea that everybody goes, everybody makes it. No one's left out. Somehow, automatically, everybody just gets saved. I want you to understand a key difference here.

There is a difference between universal or sometimes it's called unlimited atonement and universal salvation. They're not the same thing. I know that there are some folks in theological traditions that may not agree with me here.

And I respect that view, but I don't agree with it, especially not in light of this text here. It says that one died for all. Unlimited atonement.

But again, just because the atonement is unlimited, just because the sacrifice of Christ is universally available for everyone, it doesn't mean, sadly, that it's universally applied.

Salvific provision can be made and, sadly, not sought out and accepted. I want you to remember that God at one time called a whole nation, the Israelites in Egypt, didn't he?

He called them out of slavery. He brought them all out. There were not any Israelites who were left behind. They all went as a whole nation.

And with the full intention, God wanted to bring them to the promised land. But you know what? I don't know if you know this. Not everybody made it to the promised land.

All the Israelites came out. They all had opportunity. But not all of them made it. In fact, quite a few did not. A whole generation did not.

Here's what Paul writes about in the first letter, 1 Corinthians chapter 10. He says this in 1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 to 5. He says, For I do not want you guys to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers, he's talking about the Israelites,

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention 1 Corinthians 10:1–5

were all under the cloud, all passed through the Red Sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Look at what he's doing with these metaphors, talking about, you know, salvific terms.

You know, they were all kind of given this atonement, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock, capital R, that followed them, and that rock was like Christ.

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. In other words, promised land available to all, but not all got there.

Lots and lots fell and died in that wilderness. And Paul, what he does, is he uses this as a metaphor for Christ's atonement and our salvation.

Besides, what would be the point of what he goes on to say at the end of verse 15, where he talks about those who live. He's talking about those who avail themselves of the atonement that's offered to them.

He's talking about those of us who are believers, who have repented of our sins in Jesus' name. Who've responded to and accepted his work by calling on his name.

You realize that at some point you need to do that. You need to pray, Lord, I know that I am a sinner. You know my sins, and I cannot pay for them, and I'm guilty before you.

But I believe and trust that what you've offered to me in your son can atone for me. And so, Lord, I confess my sins, and I receive the work of Christ.

That's what you need to do to receive the atonement. And notice what Paul says about those who do, those who are truly believers. He says it changes you.

You no longer live for yourself. They no longer live for themselves. And we kind of wonder, is that a jab at his high-flying opponents, who are in fact doing just that, living for themselves?

He says you don't do that. You now live for him who, for your sake, died and was raised. You live for Jesus.

Paul goes on in verse 16, and what he basically says is, this is why we stop evaluating everything from a human perspective. We regard no one according to the flesh.

What he means is, according to worldly standards or a worldly worldview. I mean, if we were still doing that, Paul says, if we were going to stay back in that kind of thinking, worldly thinking, listen, it was in my worldly thinking as the Apostle Paul that I was led to once persecute our kind,

our brothers and sisters, before I came to Christ. Remember, Paul was a vicious persecutor of the church, and the Lord met him on the Damascus Road.

He says, I myself once regarded Christ according to the flesh, but I don't do that anymore. I have left that way of thinking behind, because it's a blinded way of thinking.

Isn't it ironic that the Lord actually blinded Paul to show him that his way of thinking was blinded? Whenever someone comes to Christ, look at verse 17.

What happens? If anyone is in Christ, therefore, he is a new creation. The old is past. Behold, the new has come. Those are interesting words that Paul chooses to use here.

Actually, scholars tell us that these are words that come from the Old Testament, from both Isaiah and also from Genesis. In Isaiah 43, God talks about the former things, the things of old, compared to the new thing God is doing.

He's redeeming his people. And of course, any language about a new creation echoes God's original creation, back in Genesis 1 and 2. What did he do in Genesis 1, in the original work of creation?

He separated light from darkness. He brought order to a watery world of chaos. And that's how it really is with our lives now. That's a good way for us to think about, what is the new creation in my life as a Christian?

What does that mean? It means that you understand that without Jesus in your life, you're stuck with worldly standards. And worldly standards are chaos.

Worldly standards are dark. And you need God to come in and to separate the light from darkness and show you the light.

It means we are brought into a new age and our lives are now controlled by a new reality because we belong to him. We don't live for ourselves.

We don't live for the flesh, meaning we don't live for just the material world and just simply chase after things that our warped desires want.

The old is past.

But understand the true faith, real Christianity, is going to change you. It's going to make things different for you. You know, there are times that you hear people criticize Christianity.

I don't know, maybe you tune into a podcast or you pick up a book somewhere and you hear people say things like, you know, Christianity has done so much bad in the world.

I remember years ago, there was kind of a little splinter push within Christianity for certain people to go on college campuses, kind of like a Charlie Kirk, but different.

They would go to college campuses and set up a booth and they would apologize for the Crusades. They would apologize for different things that happened under the banner of Christianity.

But do you realize that Christianity has been a force for so much good in this world? It has been, Christians have been at the forefront of all the advancements of medical care.

How many hospitals and clinics around the world were first established by believers? True Christian faith, listen, true Christian faith brings healing where there's hurting and brings order out of chaos.

Do you remember that many of the founding documents even right here in our country are rooted in biblical principles? Now, I'm not saying everything's perfect and they were all just devout evangelical believers.

I know that that is not necessarily true, but you can't deny what's written in many of our documents printed on our currency. We live in a country where we say that all men, all people are created equal, that they have equal worth as image bearers.

We are a nation under God. That means under God's sovereignty. Now, I know what some would say. They're going to say, well, didn't we mess some things up pretty big early on in our country?

And I would say, yeah, you have an evil institution like slavery. That one wasn't good. It endured for too long. But even the abolitionist movement, if you've read any about that or been taught in school, you know that it was undergirded by principles of what?

Christian brotherhood and sisterhood. The image of God in every person. Do you realize that it was because of believers like the Harriots? Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a very influential book called Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It changed opinions about slavery. Harriet Tubman. She did more than write a book. That woman was a warrior to see slaves released from slavery.

She herself undermined and really her works led to the abolishment and outlawing of slavery. Praise God.

And we say that the new has come. Of course, we know it hasn't come all the way yet, has it? There is something better waiting up ahead. Sometimes we lose that message in our world.

We maybe even give people the impression, I think you see this more in the mainline churches maybe, where it's just about, you know, bring heaven to earth now.

Make things a little bit better now. And we forget that there is an actual new heavens and new earth and a glorified body free from sin that we will one day inherit.

And then the new will have fully come. And all this happens how? We ask ourselves, does it happen because we just wake up one day and decide to embark on a program of self-improvement?

Does it happen because we get up tomorrow and decide, you know, I can do better. I can live better. No, no. It happens because we recognize that we have been restored before the Father.

We have been made right in our relationship with God. Paul calls this reconciled. Reconciliation. And that is where he goes here in the close of this chapter, these last several verses, we find Paul here delving deeply and very theologically

into what we would understand to be the heart of the gospel. The gospel, which is about cosmic reconciliation. Our good news is that God in Christ lovingly executed a plan to reconcile the world, a sinful world,

to himself by offering us his son. Verse 18, he says, all this, after talking about new creation, all this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Verse 19, that is, in Christ, God was reconciling himself, not counting their trespasses against them. Please understand, God is the major actor in this plan.

Other places, like in the book of Romans, do you realize how many times you find Paul talking? Yeah, he talks about wrath, and he talks about sin and judgment, but he talks even more about the love of God.

It's not as if God is some angry deity, and Jesus is the one who loves us. No, God in his love gave us Christ. Christ, God the Son, was willing to follow the Father's plan, because in some mysterious way, we have trouble understanding the two are one.

The three are one. This is the heart of what reconciliation is. This is what it's based in, that our sins are not counted against us. We are not held responsible to answer for our sins or to pay for them,

which we would have to do with our death, right? Because Romans 6.23 tells us, that's what sin earns. The wages of sin are death. And if you're wondering how this can be accomplished, how is it that God can not hold our sins against us?

What happens to that guilt? Paul tells us in verse 21. He tells us it's because God did something wonderful in the gospel, and it's this, verse 21.

For our sake, for our benefit, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. God made the sinless one, Jesus.

Scripture is very clear that he never sinned. He had an historic temptation, but he never sinned, not once. And because he was sinless, he was able to become the once-for-all sacrifice, Hebrew says.

Once-for-all sacrifice for all of humankind's sins. And he took our sin. He took it to the cross so that we could receive, so that we could, as Paul says right here, become the righteousness of God.

This is more than just transactional. Sometimes you hear those terms in theological circles. Is there a transactional element to reconciliation?

It is. There is an element of that. Sins are paid for, but there's also a transformational element, too. Remember, we are new creations. New creatures on the inside.

New creatures who have been made righteous. Is that righteousness imparted to us? Theologians like to use their terms. Is it imparted to us, given to us from without?

Or is it imputed to us, like created within us on the inside? And the answer is yes, both. Both are true. And so this leads Paul to say in verse 20, therefore, because of this, in light of this, what are we?

We're ambassadors for Christ. You know what God's doing through us? He is making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God.

That's our mission. We plead with people to do that. We implore people. We try to persuade people to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

Because there's no other way. But in Christ and through Christ alone, like we sang, this is what we try to persuade others to do. To be reconciled to God.

Listen, I want you to understand, Paul was not out there putting his life on the line to start after school programs. Paul was not exhausting his life, pouring out his life to solve world hunger.

You say, are those good things? They are. They can be implications of the gospel. They are not the gospel. Paul was not an apostle of suffering, and that's what he was, so that the new Christian faith could have a seat at the table in intellectual Athens, right?

No. He wasn't preaching Jesus so that Christianity could get a seat in the powerful chambers of Roman government. He was doing it. He was doing it, and being seen as a crazy man doing it, being seen as someone out of his mind by some,

all to see people reconciled to God through the substitutionary work of Christ. The one who knew no sin ever was momentarily made to be sin on the cross so that in him and through the power of his resurrection,

his people could become the righteousness of God. Now let's try to bring a few things home from all of this. Let's be applicational for a minute.

What's Paul doing? He's defending his ministry, right? But I think we understand he's doing even more than this. Paul's defending the gospel.

His ministry is all tied up in the gospel. They are one and the same. Inasmuch as the Corinthians are being led by the super apostles to reject, to jettison Paul, they're also leading them to reject and jettison his gospel.

And he does it with this incredible theological exposition that if, I don't know if you've noticed, but it kind of builds like a crescendo to verse 21.

This incredible clear verse that's one of the most succinct statements of the gospel right here.

But I think the heart of what Paul was getting at, I think the heart of what the church needs to hear, and I mean not just the Corinthian church, but again and again, every church on down through the centuries, I think what we need to hear is this.

Don't compromise.

Don't compromise the gospel. Don't compromise the message that's at the heart of the gospel because it is a message of reconciliation.

I think the Corinthian church was at risk of doing this. As we know, they've been infected and infiltrated and were being tested right now. And to some extent, they had been compromised.

Bad leaders had come in, bringing bad examples and bad teaching with them. And how were they bad? We asked, how were they trying to compromise this church and this ministry?

I see three ways. And I'm going to share those with you because I think the enemy works the same way in our day too. So in the time that remains, let me highlight three ways that we can be at risk of compromising the gospel.

Here's the first way. Compromise number one. When we place a high regard, high value on the wrong things. When we place a high regard, high value on the wrong things.

My friends understand, this is exactly what the Corinthian church was doing. Many of them were. They were placing a high value on the old things that had passed away or were passing away.

They were worrying about things like outward appearance and not what was in the heart. They were wowed by big credentials. They were impressed with worldly standards.

The wisdom of this world. The credentials of this world. The accolades of man's empty praise. That's what they were being seduced with.

Now listen, I don't think it's wrong to have strong credentials in this life. Some of us have gone to school to get an education. Gone through job training.

I don't think that's wrong at all. I think that's actually very good. I myself went to school for a while. Neither do I think that in terms of appearance that you should slop your way in here, right?

I think it's okay to get dressed up. I don't think we necessarily have to, I don't think there's a correlation between a dress or a suit and holiness.

I think we've accepted a more relaxed approach today. I think you can tell I'm a little bit more relaxed than probably how I grew up dressing.

I don't think it's wrong to get dressed up for church and look our best. I don't think it's wrong to beautify our buildings. We've tried to do a little bit of that here or want to create a good first impression for folks when they come in.

But here's what I do think. I do think such things can become a snare. They can become a problem for us when we place too high a value on them.

When we're more worried about how we look when we walk in than how the state of our heart inside looks.

Outward things. Outward appearances. Listen, I am personally looking forward to having a bigger, more functional foyer and certainly some updated bathrooms, hopefully soon.

But I want to do these things with a mind toward serving people, right? Serving people, not impressing them. Who's impressed with a bathroom anyway?

The Corinthians were all caught up in these things. Outward appearances because of the super apostles and their influence. And the problem is when you're impressed and have a high regard for certain outer things, for the wrong things, other things inevitably suffer.

internal things. I can think of churches where this is true. They have put so much attention on the outer things, the appearance, impressing people, that what's happening or what should be happening on the inside is suffering.

Listen, I don't know if you know this, but Paul suffered. Paul suffered a lot in his ministry. He is rightly called the apostle of suffering.

And I don't know if you know this, but suffering is not particularly attractive to people. People are not drawn to suffering. Suffering is not glamorous.

And I think this is why it's very tempting for us in the church today to say, hey, let's be positive all the time. Let's have a positive and uplifting message and give people a positive, uplifting experience in church.

Jesus makes it all better, right? Jesus wants you to live your best life now. But that's the kind of false teaching you inevitably get when you place too high a value, too high a regard on the wrong things.

When you focus on ease instead of struggle, comfort over adversity. Even while we know as Christians that it's through struggle and adversity, which are a part of life in this fallen world, but it's through those that God uses those as the primary means to grow us.

That's one way, I think, that Paul warns the church here against compromise. Here's a second way. Number two. Compromise number two. When we believe that faithful people are out of their mind.

Go with me on this. Faithful people are out of their mind. This again is our Corinthian church, right? This is what was happening. And I would argue that part of the reason they were calling faithful people like Paul out of his mind is because they were regarding him from a worldly point of view.

According to the flesh, you might say, which is actually what Paul does say. Listen, I'm sure calling Paul crazy was easy. He probably looked crazy.

Or at least, I'm sure, a lot worse for the wear.

You know, you maybe don't see this so much now in our day and age, but I remember being a kid and growing up and we would have missionaries come visit our churches.

And those missionaries that would come, you know, they'd visit our church and a lot of them, you could pick them out in the parking lot. You could tell.

That must be the missionary. How? Because they didn't look very normal. They walk into your church and they are probably not wearing the latest fashionable clothing.

They're probably not glamorous, dressed to the hilt with the trends. I mean, they've been out of the country often for a few years at a time.

You get a little behind on the styles, the glasses, frames, the clothes, all those kinds of things. You could pick out the missionary. And you could also probably tell it was a missionary because they drove the oldest car.

Somebody just loaned the beater to them for the furlough that they were here for. And yet, I know many of these missionaries to be highly capable people.

Highly capable. Many of them have a very solid education. Not only that, but they've gone into foreign cultures and they've learned to improvise and adapt.

They are familiar with adversity.

You know, I think sometimes if they had remained in the states and done secular work, they would probably do well. They're problem solvers. They're probably good at sales.

They would do well in business, I'm sure, but they don't. And their far away labors that they do, they don't get paid real well for them. I know one missionary couple that made quite an impression on me recently where the husband is a very talented surgeon.

He's been trained in elite schools. Well into his mid-30s because he did these extra residencies and fellowships. He could be making big bucks right now as a surgeon, right?

But he's not. He's in Africa. He's in one of those left-behind, impoverished nations operating on people who can't so much as pay for a visit to the clinic, let alone for their surgery.

Is he crazy? Are he and his wife out of their minds? She's a physician's assistant, by the way. Together, they could be doing quite well in the States.

Are they out of their minds? Yeah, for Jesus. Maybe they are. But according to Paul, this is a badge of honor. Listen, once you start evaluating the world around you with a worldly value system, you start to think that faithful servants

of Christ are out of their minds. And even for us regular Christians, right? Those of us who do live here in the States, you realize that you can still, as a faithful Christian, be seen as out of your mind by unbelievers?

You mean you tithe your income? How much is that? Tithe means 10%? You mean to say you give 10% of your income right off the top? Have you ever stopped to think about how much money you've given to the Lord

over a five-year, a ten-year period? I don't know, maybe you shouldn't.

If you're like me, maybe, you know, you think about that and you think about like, oh, I probably would have put that in a high-yield interest account.

Do you realize how much more fun in this world you could have with that money? Do you realize the upgrades you can make in your life? Are you crazy to give that away?

Or not just money, how about time? You mean to say you get a limited weekend like everybody else and you come and give like, what, half your Sunday to a church?

Some of you do it every week, even during good golf weather? You serve voluntarily after you've worked all week and taken care of your family or worked outside the home and you go and serve at your church and they don't pay you?

We don't pay.

You hold your kid out of sports because the schedule conflicts with Sundays or with youth group. Are you crazy? How are they going to compete?

How are you going to raise winners? Your kids are going to miss out on the American dream. You're going to pay extra tuition or maybe for college twice the amount of tuition to send them to a Christian college.

Are you crazy?

A second way that we in the church can begin to compromise is when we begin to react and say the very same things that the Apostle Paul was no doubt hearing.

But we do the so-called crazy. Not for our own sake. What's Paul say? It is for God. What he means is we do it to glorify God. What some call crazy, we do it because it honors the Lord.

And here's the benefit. When we do it for fellow believers who understand why we do it and they appreciate us and they understand why, then we do it for their benefit too.

Because it's easier for me to think about being sacrificial when I think about my missionary friends, the doctor and the PA and what they've given up.

It makes my sacrifices feel pretty minuscule in comparison. It's for my benefit to see how they sacrificially serve. That's what Paul's saying here.

He's saying forget what the world's idea of crazy is and answer the call that God has on your life. Forget what society says you need to do with your kids.

Society says a lot of things. And let's raise our families in the fear and understanding of the Lord. Let's pay no heed to what the world tells us we deserve or we should be able to keep or what we're entitled to and let's faithfully steward our resources in a way that pleases God.

So those are two compromises Paul would warn us about. First, in what we value and secondly in how we evaluate people. But there is still a bigger compromise out there and this one's really at the root of everything.

This one touches on the heart of our message. Compromise number three is this. When we assume or diminish or forget the heart of the gospel message.

what's the connection you ask between the first two compromises and this one right here? Well this last one gets to the very heart of our message and what we are all about.

Our very mission and purpose in this world is a mission of reconciliation. To see people be reconciled to God. We ask ourselves why did Jesus come?

Why did Christ come into the world? Did he help people when he came? Did he serve people? Did he heal people? Yes he did. Did he come to teach people about a moral life?

The righteous life? Yes he did. Was Christ a positive influence in the world? Yes he was. But none of these things please understand none of those things were his fundamental mission and he was very clear on this.

He spoke this. He taught this. He said my fundamental mission it's to come to serve you in this way to give my life as a ransom for many. Mark 10 45 God sent his son into our world a world alienated and overrun by sin to reconcile it to reconcile it to himself.

For our sake God made his sinless son to be sin. Get this in the father's plan God the son took upon himself the sins of the whole world God literally made him who knew no sin to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And so is what we're all about as Christians simply helping people in their suffering? It's not simply that. Is the gospel primarily about behaving better?

Well it does help us grow but it's not primarily about better behavior. We will never meet God's righteous standard on our own. Is the gospel about being a positive influence in this world like the Corinthian super apostles were saying a do better be better kind of thing that the world will stand up and applaud

and thank us for? Not hardly. Remember they've got a different value system a worldly according to the flesh value system. the gospel is about reconciliation.

Our message is be reconciled to God and that message has been entrusted if you are a believer to you. That message has been entrusted to me.

I am Christ's ambassador and so are you. I don't have the connection to people that you have in your life. You if you're a believer are Christ's ambassador and God is making his appeal to lost people around you through you.

This morning I want you to remember that we in the church whether back in the ancient Corinth or right here in our area right now we are going to be tested in this and we will always be tempted to compromise our gospel and what it's all about.

So let's be careful that we don't place a high value on the wrong things and the wrong priorities. And let's remember that while faithful people might be seen as out of their minds by some we're in our right minds for Christ and for each other.

And let's always remember that we cannot assume or diminish or compromise or forget the heart of our message because it's first and foremost and always a message of reconciliation.

Let's pray as the team comes.

Heavenly Father Lord for the person who is struggling here right now who who has maybe grown blurred in what they see as the fundamental reason we are your children we are Christians who's maybe read something or heard something or come to think a different way that

maybe that's not what it's all about. Father remind us today that this is the heart the heart of what you want to do to reconcile a lost world.

And Lord we are so humbled by the thought of how you've done it that you would send your very own son that he Jesus Christ would willingly come and that he would allow you to make temporarily make him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.

We are humbled. And Lord we are appreciative because we know that through that act we now can become your righteousness. And so Lord we have that righteousness because of your son those of us who know you.

Help us to live that out. Help us to manifest that in our decisions. In our priorities. in the ways that we evaluate this world and the people in it.

In the ways that we evaluate our own selves. Help us Lord. And Lord remind us that we are indeed your ambassador. And that we may be the one through whom you are making your appeal to someone in our circles.

So help us to represent you well. We know that by your spirit you will help us to do just that. So we pray this in the name of our Savior, our Reconciler, our Redeemer.

In Jesus name. Amen.