Ministry of Reconciliation

I'm amazed that God would allow me to be at this church in this moment in your history after being invited over a year ago and just getting confirmed in the last few months.

Last time I was here a few months ago, just worshiping as Dr.

Rice Brooks was uh uh before he was ministering, the Lord began to speak to me very clearly about the church, his love for the church, the future of the church, and that there would be an outpouring of his spirit in this place.

And at this very altar, we would see miracles and an expression uh in the spirit that this church had maybe not seen at that level before.

It was overwhelming.

And he said it would be evident to all, and it would even alter the way you do things.

I didn't know what that meant because you do things so well.

Um, so I was anticipating the Lord to do something great.

And secondly, uh God began to speak about the evangelistic gift that is on your pastor, that ministry of reconciliation on him, that is transferred to this body, that you're going into your greatest season of gospel presentation, where the least likely to come will come at the simplest of your invitations.

And when God says something extraordinary to you like that, you've got to be ready to respond and says, I agree with you, Lord.

It is a simple old church song we used to sing that will help you know what your response should be to this message all day long, every time you hear something.

Yes, Lord, yes, to your will and to your way.

I say yes, Lord, yes, I will trust you and obey when your spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart.

I'll agree, and my answer will be yes, Lord, yes.

Y'all gotta know that.

My soul says yes, yes, yes, oh my Lord, my soul says yes, yes.

See, y'all good, y'all good.

That is going to be your answer to everything God, the Holy Spirit, brings to your attention in this service today.

It may be beyond the words you hear coming out of my mouth, it will be specific, individual, and special and prophetic to you because you are going to reach someone that would not be reached unless you showed up with the good news.

Now, I thought it appropriate to show you a small picture of what our church is like.

To show you a few things that the Lord showed me in the spirit that would be explosive here in this environment.

This church is great.

Dare I say, one of the greatest churches in America, is that all right?

Because I feel I'm a member of Gateway too, so we all great, y'all.

We're not being boastful, we just say who we are.

But uh, Dr.

Rice Brooks, who's my bishop, he's he oversees our one church in many locations.

I'm the senior pastor of Brentwood, but he's a bishop in oversight.

I work with him in partnership.

When I first got to the church 16 years ago, and he was the pastor, um, he was also pastoring in South Africa, a 10,000-member church at the same time he was a pastoring in Brentwood, and uh apartheid had just fallen.

And he seen these um a South African white hand and a South African black hand together.

And there was an image, that that's that's the image.

That's a South African black hand and white hand.

And when I first got to the church and I saw all of the diversity, it was it was a bit overwhelming.

I didn't even know what to make of it.

I thought it was a Vanderbilt experiment or something.

I thought people signed up and it was a case study.

As I said, that's just, you know.

And he developed in an environment where it was just safe, safe to have an expression of who you are without reprisal.

And he created this thing, you know, we could call the cone of silence, where you can bring the cone down and you can have conversations that may be uh ethnically uh questionable, but it was alright to talk about it.

And I remember the first time the cone of silence came down, and I was able to tell my white brothers and sisters, thank you.

You might be one of the things, because they taught me how to go to the beach properly.

You know, I should go through the beach fully clothed, without sunscreen.

Black people burn.

I didn't know that.

Somebody should tell me.

They taught me, they taught me what the flags, but now you might be wondering why that's a big teaching, because my children were recently at the beach, and and there was a school of stingrays or the manta rays, they don't even have the stinger.

Swimming, and my kids saw that, they was in the water, the water's only two feet, and they saw those stingrays, and they ran out of the water like it was sharks, screaming on the show, Daddy, get everybody out, get everybody like Jaws was in there.

And and while that's funny and fun-loving, no matter how silly or how deep the issue were, we could talk about it.

So uh put my picture up of this is a picture of Nate, a statue of Nathan Bedford Forest, this that's uh prominent in Nashville, right on uh off of 65 Freeway, and it was bringing contention in our city, and it was bringing tension uh in the church, and everybody has some type of fleshly solution.

Anger, letters, marks.

And I'm not saying that that they're delegitimize them, but Pastor Rice showed us a more godly way, a spiritual way.

He took those hands from South Africa, and God told him our solution was to raise up a standard against it.

And we put those billboards all over the city and surrounded that thing, and all of a sudden, instead of uh contention, we had prayer for all nations.

Instead of conflict, we had an invitation to all nations, and we crushed it by God's solution and not an earthly solution of complaint and an earthy solution of anger and an earthly solution of bitterness.

We just crushed it with the love of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is the answer for our world.

There's no need to be silent about things.

Your answer and my answer as a Christian is to just speak to the situations of the earth what God has spoken.

Scripture.

This is the ministry of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5, 17.

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

The old is passed away.

Behold, all things have become new.

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 who knew no sin so that he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that we in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Father, in the name of Jesus, help us as we go through this word, think through my mind, speak through my mouth, put the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight.

Lord, you're my strength and my redeemer.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Reconciliation is a theme, and reconciliation is simply an exchange.

An exchange of hostility for a relationship that is friendly.

It is one where where God ends the breach that's between uh Himself and man.

And before you can think about reconciling your vertical relationship, your horizontal relationships, your vertical relationship must be intact and it must be in order.

Now, many of us, when we think about reconciliation, we think about someone's ability to get it right with us.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who has offended you in some way and you're thinking, all right, this is your opportunity to work it out.

And if you say the right things, I'll give you the right result.

But if you stay in your bad behavior, you and I are gonna be unreconciled.

Even though reconciliation is so important to God that he says, if you perceive that your brother or sister have aught against you, you should stop doing what you're doing, lay your gift down at the altar, go be reconciled with your brother, then pick up your gift.

The Bible says that if you have ought against somebody, you should go to them.

They don't hear you bring two or three other people, they don't hear you take it to the elders of church.

This reconciliation is twofold.

It is our vertical and our horizontal relationship, and they are both important.

This is the most primary, and this gives you an opportunity for this horizontal.

Now, what we have to do is somehow go back.

Because the Bible says in the last days, perilous times will come.

Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, covenant breakers, uh having a form of godliness, but denying the power.

This is what an unreconciled life looks like.

Always learning, but always denying the truth.

So before you can think about who you are as a reconciled person, who are you as an unreconciled person?

I remember my life as unreconciled.

And the reason this is important is because I was unreconciled in the place where reconciliation takes place in church.

You see, when I grew up, I brought my pain into church.

Instead of getting delivered from my pain, I just kept my pain.

My father abandoned us or we ran away from him when I was four years old in the middle of the night.

I remember my pajamas being on because they had the feet in them, and I was sliding across the uh little cement.

We went to my grandmother's house to try to find a place uh of safety.

We stayed there for a moment, but she said we couldn't stay there long.

We found ourselves living from place to place, homeless at times.

And and when I was enrolled in school, I was enrolled under another name.

Most of my life I thought my name was Kevin.

No, seriously.

Kevin.

Hey Kevin, okay.

People in my house, they still call me Kevin.

But it's pain.

When you grow up in some level of a broken home and the authority of your home is displaced, you begin to look for some level of a substitute.

And you know, some of the first men growing up in Detroit, Michigan, that I saw standing up as a substitute that looked, you know, dignified, looked manly, they wore suits, had bow ties on, you know, and they was always selling a nutritious meal, some fruit or some bean pies was the nation of Islam.

Who Lewis Farrakhan was their leader.

Now, just so you know, I don't ascribe to any of the tenets of Islam, and I don't know, I don't believe you should listen to Lewis Farrakhan.

But when you're a young man trying to figure out who you are and something's missing, you take the the shiniest object that is in front of you.

And he was there.

And his message was off from day one, but you somehow allow yourself to go with an off message just to get something in your own soul satisfied.

Because unless Jesus, the reconciler, is satisfying you, something else will take his place.

And he began to say Jesus was just a prophet, and he also would say something as horrible as all white people are devils, a tenet that he ascribes to even today.

Now you know this is off, and you know it is wrong, and even in my conscience, as an unreconciled person, I can know it is wrong, but doesn't mean I dealt with it.

In my environment, my environment began to be one that allowed me to point the finger at other people, which is unrighteous, and keeps you more unreconciled with God's spirit and other people because there's someone to point at.

It's a darkened condition.

The Bible says we're born in sin and we're shaping in iniquity, and the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life.

The Lord's armor is not too short that he cannot save, nor his ear to dull that he cannot hear.

It is your sins that separate you from your God, and it's your iniquity that hides his face from you.

What is iniquity?

It's a disposition in opposition to the will and word of God.

So somehow, in my unreconciled condition, I was able to hold on to thoughts and paradigms that were inconsistent with the will of God.

Have you ever been in that unreconciled condition?

Now, I got invited to Christian school, and I thought Christian school would solve the darkness in my heart, but it only amplified it because I found out you could be in Christian school and some of the you, you know, in you know, just do all kinds of things.

And instead of getting closer, I began to get the information about the kingdom without the revelation of the kingdom.

But I was in the right place.

You might be in here in the right place, but you have not met the reconciler yet.

And so one day, in this unreconciled condition, but thinking I myself was reconciled, carrying the title of Christian, carrying the title of believer, carrying the title of confirmed, alterboard, all that's anything is God.

I was signed up as the guy, but I can lead the parade in every sin that anybody wanted to do.

One day I was at my friend's house, and God is beginning to bring confrontation with the reconciler, and a church mother named Miss Peterson was there as me and her son, her sons and I were getting ready to go to a party.

She said, Can I pray with you guys before you go?

Sure.

She said, Oh hand.

She said, Father, in the name of Jesus.

I pray these boys don't die tonight.

Lord, I know if they die, they're gonna bust hell wide open.

Amen.

I'm thinking, Lord, did Ms.

Peterson, did the Lord speak to you?

You know something?

Needless to say, I didn't go to the party.

I stayed there, they went to the party, I stayed there talking to the church mother.

But you know what's amazing?

When you're in an unreconciled condition, you will hold on to those paradigms, hold on to those perspectives because it's just a moral choice at the moment.

It's not based on a revelation of who Jesus is as Lord or who is as judge or who is as righteous or who is as holy, or who is as pure, or a peacemaker.

It's just based on your limited perspective of a moralistic moment.

And I found myself in college forgetting all of the conviction that came to my heart.

Have you ever forgotten the convictions of the Holy Spirit?

Have you ever heard the whisper of what you should be and what you shouldn't be, and somehow agreed with it in the moment and then suppressed it when you left that moment?

That was me.

But I'm headed toward a confrontation with the reconciler.

And I find myself at another party, having forgot my upbringing, my purpose, the word of life, still with my hatred, my racism, my lust, all of it in a matter of party, having a good time.

And I'm making the party great.

I don't know if you've ever seen the guy that makes the party great, but behold.

And we're just having fun doing what we do.

And the reconciler begins to speak to me in the party with the music loud and my hands up, waving them like I just don't care.

And I can hear the Lord saying, Jay.

I'm drawing a line in the sand.

You can no longer know the truth and not surrender to the truth and leave my people wrong.

Jay, get out of this place now.

There's about to be gunshots fired in the house.

The voice stops.

Now, up until this time, I can tell you I had not heard the voice of God before.

Not know what it sounded like.

But in the moment when God confronts you to reconcile and speaks to you, you will have no doubt that it is Him.

You will have no question mark that it's Him.

And even now I can sense by God the Holy Spirit, He is knocking at the door of your heart, even now, be bringing bringing up things in your life that He wants to confront, and you don't need to resist Him because I'll show you what resistance looks like and what it gets you.

I took myself out of the party and sitting on the outside of the party, and all of the girls come on the outside of the party.

I'm sitting in the chair and they're sitting around me.

And they say, Jay, no, what's wrong?

I'm not gonna do the voice.

Because I'm gonna leave the voice alone.

And I just said, I told them what was wrong, what God said.

They said, What are you gonna do?

And here's my response that was puzzling.

I said, I don't know.

And that troubles me even now.

I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do, even though I know I've heard the voice of God.

Have you ever been in that place?

Sat in church, you know the will of God, you've heard the will of God, but your crank, your your answer is not yes, Lord.

Yes, your answer is I don't know.

But I'm headed for a confrontation with the reconciler.

So I walk out of the party, it gets shot up with gunfire.

I'm walking and I'm in some type of rage and I'm in some type of anger, and I see four skin heads harassing an interracial couple.

And I get more angry.

And uh, let me see my name.

And I told my friend, I said, go get me a bat.

Now, where I'm from, I'm from Detroit, Michigan.

We don't talk about fighting, we fight.

When we say we're about to do something, it's going to be done.

And when I asked him to get the back, I was waiting on him.

Everything was coming to a head.

My anger, my frustration, my off paradigm about what the world was like, my off paradigm about Who the enemy was.

And then I got justice comes to my hand.

And I'm gonna take the righteous law of my own hand.

And then in this moment, that murderous intentions fill my heart.

I become the judge and the jury.

I become God.

I become the beginning and the end, the first and the last, and I've taken authority.

Have you ever taken that level authority over your life?

It doesn't belong to me, it didn't belong to you.

And I got that back.

Got myself amped up.

And this is a strange thing.

When you're in an unreconciled condition, you'll risk everything in a moment.

In one moment, you'll risk it all.

You don't even know.

That's why it's not a safe place.

You will risk it all in one moment.

And I took that bat and I ran down this hill and I got it ready, you know.

Right here, right here, right here, right here when I'm about to ruin someone's life and ruin my own life.

The mercy of God shows up.

And I hear this sound.

Woo, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The police get out the car and they got the gun drumming me.

They said, what are you doing?

I said, I'm on no.

I'm on no.

They said, then get out of here.

And I run.

And somewhere running back up the hill that I'll run down, I found myself in a situation similar to Paul, where my whole life flashed before my eyes.

I start getting a revelation of Jesus, fall to my knees, knowing that I was going the wrong direction.

And every revelation I'd ever heard in Sunday school or in church, every false title I had ever put on, all of the gospel message that I had ignored start coming to me in the purest form of revelation, that there was one that atoned for my sins, that is one that's been my substitution, there's one that has justified me.

There's one that loves me with an everlasting love.

There's one that laid down his life to redeem me.

There's one that can get rid of hatred.

There's one that can get rid of bitterness and malice.

And I begin to meet that one.

Felt like for the very first time.

And I I still get emotional about it, but I said these words.

It's emotional when you get to that point where you know you're about to give up everything.

I said, Jesus, I know you're the son of God.

I know you love me.

And today, right now, on this hill, I was on my knees and I was crying.

I said, You are Lord, which means you're always the boss.

You always get everything.

And whatever plan I have for my life up until this moment, I consider it lost for whatever plan you have for my life right now.

And I knew this to be a unique moment.

I knew this to be a divine moment.

Because unlike any other moment, the change began to happen on my heart.

The change that's undeniable, where you don't have to wonder, am I saved?

Did it really happen?

Because there's a joy unspeakable, a love incomprehensible, a peace that passes all understanding.

It begins to flood your innermost being until you're absolutely consumed with the love of God and it turns into what is the will of God the very next day.

I am confronted with the last part of the scripture.

It says, put that third part of the scripture.

I'm confronted with this.

I think verse 20, yeah, it says, Therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ.

God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on Christ's behavior to be reconciled.

Now, this ministry of reconciliation, this message of reconciliation that I'm to embody shows up day one, born again day one.

I run into this Arab girl, this is critical that you understand she was an Arab girl.

Because she was at that party that night when I was and the last person you want to see when you just get saved is somebody you were sinning with.

And I saw her, and here Jesus is.

What are you gonna do about it?

I have nothing.

And he can remind you of your commitment, remind you of your surrender.

Have you been reminded lately that if you name the name of Christ, you have a ministry responsibility to communicate the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

How can I say no?

It was so alive on the inside of me.

Oh yes, Lord.

The weakest presentation of the gospel I can ever imagine came out of my mouth.

Uh say.

He wants us to be with him forever.

She said, you need to pray for me then.

That was do you like that?

I pray for her.

She gets saved.

She started coming to our Bible study called Christ within.

That for four years you couldn't get in our Bible study unless you got there early.

To this day, this young lady is saved, she's married to a pastor.

She's over 27 years, she's been in church, she's faithful with sons that are serving the Lord.

You know, because when you are reconciled with God and you've got your vertical right, church, what descends upon you is the ministry of reconciliation.

You not only can bring people to God, you can bring people who would ordinarily be afraid of each other, ordinarily not like each other, ordinarily judge each other.

And then racial reconciliation happens.

You grow up in church, it's a big Arab population, you know, we don't really mix.

And I didn't think this was possible until I got a revelation of it.

And put this picture up in my church though.

When you get a revelation of it, that's my church.

50 different nations.

You can take it down.

Now, that might sound like something extraordinary to you.

But if I could tell you who you are, it's far greater than that picture.

I just have to give it like God gives it to me.

If you're great, you're great.

You're a great major.

Matchless in many ways.

And in this next season, you'll see many people that are lost come to the Lord.

Many different ethnic groups come to the Lord.

Because your destiny and the mantle on you and the mantle in this church is just great.

So at every campus, and those that are watching by line have a prayer for you.

And you're gonna be one of two people, and you need to agree with this prayer.

Bow your heads, I'm gonna pray for you.

Today you might be here and you've never had a pure confrontation with the reconciler.

Maybe today you didn't even want a confrontation with the reconciler.

You may have had the title Christian already.

Maybe you've never been born again, or maybe you're away from the Lord, but today He is confronting you right now, and you should feel that knocking in the heart.

It might feel a bit emotional, it might feel like you don't even want to respond.

You might even be telling yourself right now, this is everybody but me.

But yet the Lord has come to your seat.

Today, in every campus and online, you will respond.

The second group.

You're the people who have named the name of Christ, but maybe you've lost your way.

You thought becoming a Christian was about just being a good person and having a good life.

And you surrendered yourself to moral living, but you haven't surrendered yourself to ministry, responsibility to communicate the good news about Jesus and be a reconciler.

Oh, today, church.

Today he wants you to say yes to this.

And you need to begin to all over this room raise your hand if you're going to say yes to this ministry of reconciliation.

Just raise it as a quick sign of faith to yourself.

Yes, Lord, I'm going to do my part in my city.

I'm going to do my part in my community.

I'm going to do my part with my neighbor.

I'm going to do my part.

I say yes.

I say yes.

And I'm believing for both groups of people have a transformation and an anointing.

Changes your life forever.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.