00:00: Would you join me in prayer, please?
00:05: God, we come into your presence right now as your people.
00:12: We come into your presence as those who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, rescued from our sin, our guilt, our shame, rescued from the kingdom of darkness and into your kingdom of light, not because of us, but because of Jesus Christ and what he has done for us.
00:35: We come into your presence right now in prayer, recognizing that we are welcomed because of Jesus.
00:41: We are loved and accepted because of Jesus.
00:45: And we praise you for that.
00:45: We honor you for that.
00:45: We worship you for that.
00:45: We love you for that.
00:51: And Father, we ask for you to be at work in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, and even in our midst in this time together.
01:01: Work in us what is needful.
01:06: Work in us that which we cannot do for ourselves and what we may not even want for ourselves, apart from your grace at work.
01:15: Move us from our spiritual slumber into spiritual wakefulness.
01:22: Use us to represent you to the world around us in faithful, obedient ways.
01:31: And even now as we delve into your word, would you pierce our hearts and cause us to see and understand and receive your message to us today?
01:42: In Jesus' name we pray.
01:42: Amen.
01:46: Amen.
01:48: We're pausing this week in our Roman series to take a look at a passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
01:57: So if you have your Bible, open to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
02:01: And as you find your way there, I want to share something that happened to me this week.
02:05: I was driving here in Green Bay, and I was at a traffic light, stopped, and I began to hear sirens, fire engines, and I could hear that they were close and getting closer.
02:17: So I'm looking around, and I spot that they're my left.
02:20: And so as the light changes, I, of course, do nothing.
02:22: I'm not going to go out in the intersection in front of fire trucks, and I wait for them to pass by to get where they're going.
02:29: And I was thinking kind of generically, you know, this is what you do when there's emergency vehicles on the road, and I want them to be able to get where they need to get and help whoever needs help.
02:39: And just thinking about, you know, proper response to emergency workers.
02:46: It didn't phase me very much.
02:49: But as I thought about it, especially in conjunctions with this passage, I thought, what if I had been sitting there, seeing the fire trucks approaching, and I had gotten a call on my phone telling me that my house was on fire, that my family was at home, and that the police or the fire department had been called, and they were on their way to my house at that moment.
03:10: That would have radically changed my interpretation of these fire trucks, right?
03:16: It would have impacted me in a major way, right?
03:20: A way that would have hit me emotionally, a way that would have hit me practically.
03:26: I wouldn't have been continuing on to where I was going.
03:28: I would have rushed home, right?
03:29: It would have changed my perspective entirely.
03:34: And I think that we need to recognize that sometimes there are things that do need to change our perspective in a major way.
03:44: One of those things, in fact, the most significant of those things, is becoming a Christian.
03:49: You see, becoming a Christian is not something where, okay, I know that for eternity, heaven and hell issues, because I'm set when that time comes, and so I can kind of tuck that away for a down-the-road situation of relevance.
04:05: Rather, becoming a Christian needs to impact how we see everything, every single piece, every single moment, every single relationship, and it needs to change it in a major way.
04:20: Look at the way that Paul begins this passage in verse 16.
04:26: Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says, From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
04:33: Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
04:40: See, Paul's talking about himself and his fellow gospel ministers when he says we, and he says, We don't look at people the way we used to.
04:50: We regard no one according to the flesh.
04:54: Now, we don't talk like that.
04:55: What does that mean?
04:56: According to the flesh, in the New Testament, means something like, According to who I am apart from God.
05:02: According to my worldview, my perspective, my wisdom, my earthly, keep God out of it, vantage point.
05:11: He says, That's not how we look at people anymore.
05:13: We don't look at anybody that way anymore.
05:17: And then he confesses, We even used to look at Jesus like that.
05:21: What is he talking about?
05:22: He's talking about the fact that there was a time for them when they had heard about Jesus, they'd heard something about who he was and what he'd done, and they thought about Jesus from an unspiritual, worldly vantage point.
05:36: They thought of him as a false messiah, not the true messiah.
05:40: A false representative of God, not a true representative of God.
05:45: They thought of him as a blasphemer, somebody saying false things about God, not as somebody who was accurately, truthfully, rightly representing God on earth before mankind.
05:57: They saw him as somebody who was cursed by God.
06:00: The Old Testament says, Cursed is anyone who is hanged on a tree.
06:03: And so they interpreted his death on the cross to indicate that he was cursed by God.
06:10: Until they became Christians, and it changed everything.
06:14: And they came to understand that, yes, Jesus was a messiah, but not a false messiah, the true messiah.
06:20: Yes, he said things about God, but they were not false things, they were true things.
06:24: Yes, he was cursed by God when he died on the cross, but not because of anything wrong with him, but because God was punishing Jesus for your sin and my sin.
06:34: He was bearing the curse of God against our sin.
06:37: There was nothing wrong with Jesus.
06:40: And it changed everything.
06:42: When God opened their eyes to see Jesus rightly, they recognized him to be the true God-given messiah, God's own self-revelation incarnated into human flesh.
06:56: But it's not enough to come to the place where you and I have a proper spiritual perspective on Jesus.
07:04: We also need to have a proper spiritual perspective on all the people around us.
07:10: Notice he says, From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.
07:16: So this changed vantage point, this changed perspective needs to play out in how we look at every single person around us.
07:24: I should look at every one of you different because I am a Christian than I would or did prior to becoming a Christian.
07:32: And so also you and me.
07:35: How do we view fellow Christians?
07:39: We see them as people that are forgiven by God, loved by God, welcomed by God, as we saw recently in our study of Romans 14.
07:48: These are people who are completely forgiven, loved, cherished by God.
07:55: These are people with whom we are going to spend eternity praising God as the family and people of God.
08:02: I am going to have eternity before the throne of God, in the presence of God, in the new heavens and new Jerusalem with the likes of you folks and you with me and us with believers from across the globe and across human history whose faith has been put in Jesus Christ.
08:22: That's how we need to see each other.
08:24: That's profound.
08:26: But we also need to think differently about the non-Christians in our lives, the people who haven't come to that place of trusting in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
08:36: And we need to see them from a proper spiritual perspective, which is not, those bad people don't know about Jesus.
08:42: That's not, that's a fleshly perspective.
08:45: A godly perspective says, these are people who need Jesus.
08:49: These are people to whom God wants the message of Jesus brought.
08:55: These are people who will be welcomed and accepted and forgiven by God if they would but turn to Jesus Christ.
09:02: We need to see the people around us as people just like us who haven't yet received that desperately needed gift that we ourselves have already been given.
09:15: We didn't deserve it.
09:18: Neither did they.
09:19: But we needed it and someone brought that message to us.
09:22: They need it and someone needs to bring that message to them.
09:26: They need that.
09:30: Notice how Paul continues in verse 17.
09:33: He moves from the idea of a new perspective to the idea of a new creation.
09:38: He says in 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
09:44: The old has passed away.
09:46: Behold, the new has come.
09:50: You see, becoming a Christian is not adding a Sunday morning addition to your life.
09:56: It's not a Sunday morning add-on.
09:58: It's a radical transformation that changes us through and through.
10:03: A Christian is not who or what he or she used to be.
10:12: Now, I'm not talking about how a Christian lives.
10:16: That's also true.
10:17: I'm talking about who a Christian is fundamentally.
10:22: At the core of who you are, your very nature changes when you become a Christian.
10:31: Now, that has implications for how we live, but those implications are the overflow of who we are.
10:42: And Paul says very clearly, if anyone is in Christ, that is, anybody is connected to Jesus through faith, that person, he or she, is a new creation.
10:53: You are as certainly and as profoundly a new creation as a Christian as you were the moment that you were biologically conceived and you came into being.
11:03: It is that profound a difference.
11:06: Before and after, radically different realities.
11:10: Here, Paul uses the language of new creation.
11:15: In John chapter 3, the apostle John used the language when he recounts the story of Jesus engaging with Nicodemus where he uses the language of born again.
11:25: Theologians call it regeneration.
11:28: The idea is that at the moment when you become a Christian, when you first have faith in Jesus Christ, the kind of repentant faith that saves, in that moment, in that encounter with God, God changes you and you become a totally new person.
11:51: Now, you look the same.
11:53: It doesn't change your hair color.
11:55: You're my age and you come to Christ at my age.
11:57: You're still going to have gray hair, right?
11:59: Or depending on who you're talking to, you might still be balding or have crazy long hair or whatever it might be.
12:05: It doesn't change those outward things, but it changes who we are on the inside in life-altering ways.
12:13: And it's true for anyone and everyone who is in Christ.
12:17: In Christ is this really important New Testament phrase.
12:22: We see it in verse 15, through Christ, verse 19, in Christ, verse 17, in Christ.
12:27: It means, when you see this in the Bible, it means like if you have faith in Jesus, then you're connected to Jesus.
12:33: You have a union with Him that's real and significant and all kinds of stuff comes with that, right?
12:41: Young couple gets married and life changes when you get married and all the married couples say, yup, that's exactly what happens, right?
12:50: And you think you know what you're getting into, but then there are things that happen when you start living together and you're like, what in the world?
12:59: Why does He do that?
13:01: Why does He smell like that?
13:03: Why can't He just share His feelings or whatever it might be, right?
13:08: And it goes both ways, right?
13:11: We get into the situation and we discover there's a lot to it that we didn't see coming, but because that man and woman are united and their union is real and significant, all these things come with it.
13:25: And one of the things that Paul wants us to know is that you are not who you were because you're united to Jesus.
13:31: and that changes everything.
13:36: Now, how does that happen?
13:37: Where does that come from?
13:38: Verses 18 and 19.
13:41: All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
13:50: That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
13:58: what is going on here, this new creation is tied completely, thoroughly to being reconciled to God.
14:10: You see, apart from faith in Jesus, every single person that you have ever met or will ever meet is estranged from God.
14:17: They don't have right relationship with God.
14:19: I don't care what their ethnicity is.
14:22: I don't care what their gender is.
14:24: I don't care what their religious background is.
14:25: I don't care if they're religious or not religious or somewhere in between.
14:30: I don't care if they're new agey or a proponent of this, that, and the other.
14:33: I don't care if they blend religions.
14:35: It doesn't matter.
14:36: Every single person, apart from saving faith in Jesus, is estranged from God.
14:42: They don't have a right relationship with God.
14:45: And only if they are reconciled to God does that change.
14:51: And the only way for them to be reconciled to God is for them to be reconciled by God.
14:57: God has to do it.
14:59: Right?
14:59: God has to be the one to do that.
15:01: And Paul says all of this, this new creation, this reconciliation, all this is from God who, through Christ, reconciled us to himself.
15:11: You can't be reconciled to God any other way.
15:14: Which makes sense.
15:15: If God is the one who created everything including us, designed us, if we are the ones who caused the relationship rift to begin with, we're the ones that have offended him and wronged him, doesn't it make sense that it's only on his terms that that can be fixed?
15:32: Right?
15:33: I can't come to God and say, I know I've ticked you off and I've wronged you by doing my own thing, but I'm going to fix that and you're going to accept the way I fix it.
15:42: That's just more of the same problem.
15:44: We cannot come to God and say, I have the solution that you need to accept.
15:49: Rather, we need to greatly receive what he says is the solution and that's Jesus.
15:57: God is the one who does the reconciling and he wants to reconcile the world to himself.
16:03: This is not just for Wisconsin people or American people or contemporary people.
16:10: This is for the whole world.
16:13: When you read the Bible cover to cover, you get this sense that God is not a local deity.
16:18: The God of the Bible is the God of the entire universe and he has a vision for the entire world to know him, for his glory to reign over all nations, all peoples, all tribes, all tongues, and for the people of God to include all of that variety, all of that good variety that God has placed into the world.
16:40: and it's only possible because God's doing it and it hinges on this.
16:49: Notice the end of verse 19, middle of verse 19.
16:55: Not counting their trespasses against them.
17:00: Trespass is a Bible word that means something like breaking a rule, breaking a law.
17:05: Most commonly today you see it in woods and by fences where somebody says private property, no trespassing, meaning there's a rule, there's a boundary, don't cross this line or you're breaking the rule, you're doing something you shouldn't do.
17:18: Well, that's essentially what the New Testament means when it talks about trespasses where God says, don't cross this line, don't do this thing, don't go there and we say, well, I'm going to go there and we do it anyway and God says, for us to be reconciled, I have to let go of that.
17:34: I have to not punish you for doing that.
17:39: I have to not harbor hard heartedness toward you for that and that happens because Jesus, Jesus steps in and says, punish me, Father, instead of them.
17:49: Punish me for that trespass instead of them.
17:52: Jesus shows up in the divine courtroom and says, yeah, they're guilty.
17:58: Yeah, they did it but I'll take the hit.
18:01: Put it on me instead.
18:02: That's what the cross is all about and it's on that basis that we can be forgiven but not just forgiven in the legal sense, reconciled to God.
18:11: See, this is a relationship thing, right?
18:14: How many of you have had some significant relationship, parent, grandparent, kid, cousin, sibling, marriage, boyfriend, girlfriend where somebody really screwed up and it threw a total monkey wrench into the relationship?
18:30: I'm expecting to see every hand unless somebody has both arms broken, right?
18:35: Like, we all experience that.
18:36: We've all been through that and it doesn't just go away because, well, a little bit of time is passed, it's done.
18:41: No, you got to deal with whatever induced the conflict.
18:45: You got to deal with that but the goal is to fix the relationship.
18:52: The Presbyterians, group of Christians, historically have what's called the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
19:00: It's a Q&A format to describe the main things of the faith and their first question and answer goes like this.
19:08: What is the chief end of man?
19:10: What's the purpose for which people exist?
19:14: Why do people exist at all?
19:16: What's the chief end?
19:16: What's the main reason?
19:18: And the answer is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
19:23: That is your number one reason for existing.
19:28: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
19:31: Now, I love the way that this was phrased.
19:35: What is the chief end, singular, of man?
19:38: And then they give two answers.
19:39: To glorify God and do this other thing and enjoy Him forever.
19:42: Except it's not this other thing.
19:43: Really, it's one thing.
19:45: To glorify God by enjoying Him.
19:47: You can't glorify God if your attitude is, yeah, He's out there and He's amazing and special, but man, I hate spending time with Him.
19:54: Right?
19:55: If your daughter went off to college and she comes back at Christmas time, she says, I found a fellow.
20:00: I've got a boyfriend.
20:01: Tell us about him.
20:03: Oh, man.
20:06: I just, I hate Fridays because I know we're going to have to hang out that evening.
20:12: And it's just the worst day of the week.
20:14: Is she honoring that boyfriend?
20:16: Is she making you sense that she thinks well of Him?
20:20: Is she in any way presenting Him in a positive light?
20:24: No.
20:25: But if she says, oh, I can't wait for Fridays because then I can finally get a break from studies and I can spend time with this guy that just lights up the room and makes me feel like I can tackle what God calls me to be and to do, and all of a sudden that's a different thing entirely, right?
20:43: We glorify God by enjoying Him.
20:46: Which is why here at Faith Chapel we say that our purpose as a church is to worship God by enjoying relationship with Him and one another through Jesus Christ.
20:57: It's echoing the same idea.
21:00: We don't honor God primarily through singing songs or giving finances or helping or serving, though all those things do matter and do honor God.
21:09: we honor Him primarily by enjoying our relationship with God, by enjoying singing His praises that we have that opportunity, by enjoying getting to be part of what God is doing when we serve others, by enjoying who God is for us.
21:29: This is a beautiful thing.
21:31: For God to know our failures, to know our rebellions and our disobedience, to know the evil that we have done, and to know the terrible thoughts that have gone through our minds sometimes, the things that we wanted to do, the nasty things we wanted to say, the way we wanted to retaliate against someone and so on.
21:51: And God to know all those things and say, I love you, I accept you, I forgive you, I don't hold that against you.
21:59: Unbelievably good news.
22:03: And our offenses against God are an order of magnitude more significant than anything that anybody's ever done to us.
22:11: And yet, he still forgives us.
22:14: That's fantastic news.
22:16: And reconciliation can't take place without it.
22:20: But, God wanted this between you and him, between us and him, such that he sent Jesus to make it possible, to make it certain.
22:29: How did he do that?
22:30: Zip to the end of the passage.
22:31: Look at verse 21.
22:33: Verse 21 is one of my favorite scriptures.
22:35: It says, for our sake, he made him who knew no sin to be sin.
22:42: Made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
22:48: For our sake, for people like us who are guilty of sin, he, God the Father, made him, God the Son, Jesus, to be sin.
22:58: Who knew no sin.
22:59: God took sinless Jesus and said, you're going to be sinful.
23:08: For the purpose that being connected to Jesus, being in him, we would become the righteousness of God.
23:18: God took every single failure on your report card and signed it over to Jesus and said, you're going to get credit for Susan's sin, for Dylan's sin, for Darlene's sin, for Autumn's sin.
23:35: And you're going to volunteer to take credit for that.
23:37: And then you're going to sign over to them your perfect glowing A plus report card of perfection so that they get credit for that.
23:46: That's the trade.
23:47: That's the substitution of the cross.
23:49: Theologians talk about what Jesus did as penal substitutionary atonement.
23:53: God punished Jesus at the cross.
23:55: That's the penal, like the penal system, right?
23:58: It's the punishment of God on Jesus who substituted himself for you in order to make atonement, in order to deal with our sins so that God would not count our trespasses against us.
24:10: And we end up with credit for Jesus' perfection.
24:14: That's how this works.
24:15: We have a new perspective when we understand what God has done for us and that we are a new creation.
24:20: We're not who we used to be all on account of Jesus.
24:23: And that changes then how we live.
24:26: God gives us a commission.
24:30: A commission.
24:31: If you wanted a particular piece of artwork, you might go to a painter or a sculptor or somebody who draws and say, I'm going to commission you to do this piece of art for me.
24:44: I want a 10 by 20 canvas of this or that or whatever.
24:48: And then they would say, okay, I'll accept that commission and you would pay them and they would produce it.
24:55: God has called us to something.
25:00: Namely, the ministry of reconciliation.
25:05: It's all over this passage.
25:09: When I think about who Jesus is and what he's done, that's amazing.
25:14: When I think about what that means for us as Christians, that's astounding.
25:20: But then I get to this idea that God has conscripted us to join him in the work of reconciling the world to himself.
25:32: God has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.
25:35: I think, whoa, whoa, whoa.
25:37: Now you lost me.
25:39: The rest of it where you were doing this stuff makes sense to you.
25:41: That's amazing.
25:42: It's astounding.
25:42: But you're going to let this group of people get in on it?
25:46: Not only are you going to let them, you're going to demand that they be part of it?
25:52: People like me?
25:53: People like you?
25:55: Look at how it's phrased in verses 18 to 20.
25:58: It's over and over.
25:59: He says, all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
26:08: reconciliation.
26:10: That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
26:17: That's what the ministry of reconciliation is about, right?
26:20: And entrusting to us, people, believers, entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
26:28: Therefore, in light of that entrusting of the message, we are ambassadors for Christ.
26:34: God making his appeal through us.
26:41: We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
26:50: I'm going to guess that every Christian in this room would say, I love who Jesus is.
26:54: And every Christian in this room would say, I love the good news message of Jesus.
26:59: And then I would ask, do you love that you are God's means of bringing that message to others?
27:05: And you'd be like, a little bit less, right?
27:08: Because that's uncomfortable for us.
27:10: It's inconvenient for us.
27:12: It's going to put us into awkward situations sometimes.
27:15: It's going to suck up some of our time and energy.
27:18: And even at times, finances, as we seek to love the people around us in their times of need.
27:24: But, that is God's commission for you and for me.
27:29: Initially in context, Paul and his fellow ministers of the gospel, but by extension, it's every believer.
27:34: When we think about the great commission in Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 through 20, we see that Paul is calling all Christians to make disciples of the whole world, to make disciples of all peoples, right?
27:50: Years ago, I'm going to estimate seven or so years ago, I went to Africa to visit some of our international workers.
27:58: And I got to visit with Brad and Kendra at the time in southern Africa.
28:02: And I got to visit with a couple, Mark and Leah, that were in West Africa.
28:05: They were serving in Senegal.
28:08: And I spent about a week with them.
28:09: And while we were together there, we went to a church service together, an international church.
28:15: And I met a fellow from Jordan.
28:19: And we had a nice conversation.
28:21: And I discovered this guy was a literal ambassador.
28:25: This guy was, if I remember correctly, the ambassador from Jordan to the country of Senegal.
28:31: And he gave me his business card.
28:33: It was right there on the card.
28:35: And he wasn't playing me because I mentioned it to the international worker.
28:39: He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I know him.
28:41: Yeah, totally.
28:41: That's who he is.
28:42: That's his job.
28:43: He's an ambassador.
28:45: And I tell you, this guy, well, he wasn't special at all.
28:51: There was nothing noteworthy about this guy.
28:53: He was a normal dude.
28:55: If he hadn't mentioned being an ambassador and given his business card, I wouldn't have had a clue.
29:01: Ambassadors can be totally normal everyday people.
29:06: He wasn't driving around with a motorcade.
29:08: He didn't have like Secret Service protection on him.
29:11: He wasn't, you know, in tinted window SUVs.
29:13: He was just a dude showing up for church, talking with a visitor.
29:20: God has commissioned you, everyday normal people, not to be ambassadors for a nation, but to be ambassadors for God's kingdom, to represent God to the world around you.
29:38: You and I don't have the prerogative or the freedom to simply say, yeah, I think I'd like to do that.
29:48: God, I'm going to be the one that represents you.
29:50: No, it's God's choice to choose you and to choose me.
29:54: And he's already made his choice.
29:56: God has chosen you and me for this role.
30:00: And so, our only options are to say, yes, Lord, and to then go out and represent him to the world around us or to disobey.
30:12: So, let me ask you, are you living day to day as an ambassador of Jesus Christ, bringing this message of reconciliation to the world around you or, let's put it politely, not.
30:30: Let's put it not politely or are you disobeying God?
30:34: These are our options.
30:37: Obey or disobey.
30:39: Represent or not.
30:42: I know that this is awkward for many of us.
30:46: How many of you sometimes feel inadequate to that task?
30:51: Yeah, right?
30:52: That's too big a job.
30:53: I can't do this.
30:54: Well, let me encourage you a little bit on that.
30:55: Number one, God knew you and chose you for this task.
31:03: And God has particular opportunities in mind for you to represent him that are perfectly tailored to your distinctive strengths and weaknesses.
31:12: There are people that God is going to reach through Courtney that are never going to be reached by me.
31:17: I don't go around her neighborhood connecting with everyone like she does.
31:22: She has this freaky ability to just woof with all kinds of Courtney energy connect with all these people around her and her community.
31:30: And all her family said, well, yeah, yeah, she does that, right?
31:33: That's who she is.
31:34: I can't do that.
31:35: I shouldn't try to be Courtney in that way.
31:38: But I can connect with some people that would be like, I don't know what she's talking about.
31:42: I can connect with a different group.
31:44: And so also you.
31:47: God has chosen you for the work that he wants to do.
31:51: And notice that our passage says that this is God doing it through his people.
31:56: You don't have to do it.
31:59: God's going to do it.
32:00: You don't have to be effective.
32:02: God's the one who's going to make it effective.
32:04: You simply have to act in faith.
32:06: You have to step out and do your part trusting that God's going to make it effective in situations and the timing that he wills.
32:17: I love the way that the Great Commission is phrased.
32:22: Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
32:30: Absolute sovereign of the universe, Jesus.
32:34: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.
32:39: Therefore, in light of my absolute power and control and authority over everyone, everywhere, in all the universe, go make disciples because I've got the power.
32:52: And then, at the end of the commission, at the end of the make disciples, baptize them, teach them to do everything Jesus commanded.
32:59: He says, and behold, fix your eyes on this.
33:03: I will be with you always, even to the very end of the age.
33:05: As you do this, as you live out obediently, my command to represent me to the world, I'm with you every step of the way.
33:11: I, the one who is sovereign over the whole universe, the one that Satan can't even begin to adequately oppose, I'm with you every step of the way as you do this.
33:22: That's the context in which we are commissioned.
33:26: God's the one that's going to make it effective.
33:28: Jean doesn't have to have her act together perfectly to represent Jesus.
33:31: She just has to say, I trust the one that I'm trusting for eternity.
33:35: I can trust him for the smaller thing of telling people about him.
33:38: And God's going to make it effective in his timing, situation by situation.
33:44: How many of you sometimes, if you're honest, say, I just don't want to be bothered by having to do this?
33:49: Some of that.
33:50: It's a little more embarrassing to say that, but it's, you know, not as many hands, but it's there.
33:59: Imagine for a moment if somebody could snap their fingers and take away your Christianity, take away your faith, so you no longer go to church, you no longer believe in Jesus, none of that's true for you.
34:08: How many of you would object?
34:09: You'd have a real problem with that, right?
34:11: Like, that's a huge part of who we are as Christians.
34:13: In fact, it's the defining characteristic of who we are in our lives.
34:16: What if we didn't have that?
34:18: There are people around us who don't have that, and they're not going to have it, they can't have it, unless someone brings them this news.
34:26: And God wants them to hear this news.
34:29: God has a plan for them to hear this news, but you are that plan.
34:32: As big a deal as your faith is for you, it's going to be for someone else when God transforms their heart.
34:43: Don't you want to be in on that?
34:45: Isn't that worth the inconvenience?
34:47: How can we say, oh, yeah, it doesn't matter.
34:49: No, that's huge.
34:50: There is nothing you can put your time to that will rival that for value.
34:54: That is so worth it.
35:01: How many of you struggle to think that you can explain it well enough or have enough answers?
35:07: Right?
35:08: That's hard.
35:10: I'm going to give you two words of encouragement.
35:12: Number one, you can memorize a very small number of Bible verses pretty easily that tell the whole story.
35:20: In fact, I'm going to have Ronnie put some of these simple Bible verses in the midweek news this week so you can see those.
35:27: Just a few verses, like verse 21 if you wanted, of this very passage if you want them.
35:32: Or John 316, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
35:38: Most of you probably already have that one memorized and that gets the main message right there.
35:43: Just a few verses that you can memorize real quick.
35:46: Or, save them to your phone.
35:48: Hey, I want to make sure I say this right and you pull up, you have it right there on a little note on your phone.
35:53: You do it that way.
35:56: Content, right?
35:57: And, very few of you, if any, are surrounded by non-Christians who are desperately wanting PhD level detailed explanation.
36:09: In fact, most of them don't want that.
36:11: Keep it simple, stupid, right?
36:13: Like, just give me the bare bones basics.
36:15: They're looking for the level of explanation that you're equipped to give them.
36:19: So, keep it simple.
36:23: Keep it to the point.
36:24: And you know what?
36:26: If they ask a question and you don't know the answer, be humble enough to tell them.
36:32: They'll respect you for that.
36:34: Nobody has all the answers.
36:36: I'm a pastor and sometimes I get asked Christian questions and I'm like, I don't know.
36:40: I'm going to have to look into that and figure that out and get back to you.
36:43: That's okay.
36:45: Nothing wrong with that.
36:46: In fact, that can be a helpful part of your leading them to Jesus, saying this person doesn't act like they have it all together, they're better than me.
36:52: They got some things that they got to keep learning too.
36:55: Be honest about it.
37:00: Jesus will be with us as we take his message to the world around us.
37:06: We sang this morning, tell the world of the treasure you found.
37:11: We sang that this morning and unless you got quiet all of a sudden, you sang it too.
37:17: You were in here telling the other people in here to tell people about Jesus.
37:23: Unless you want to be a hypocrite, you got to do it too.
37:28: We sang this morning, we'll spread the news that God is in our land, meaning that God has come into the world to redeem, to reconcile.
37:38: We'll spread that message.
37:40: We sang that.
37:41: See you?
37:41: If you sang that, said that you would be part of it.
37:45: God's plan, you signed on this morning and you're singing without maybe even thinking it through.
37:53: We need to be serious about this as a church.
37:57: And more than that, we need to be serious about this as individual members of this church, whether you're formally a member or not.
38:05: we cannot push this to the sidelines and be a healthy church.
38:10: We cannot push this to the sidelines and ignore it and marginalize it and be who God is calling us to be.
38:17: Some of you may struggle to witness because you don't have a whole lot of interaction with non-Christians.
38:25: That's my biggest barrier myself because I spend a lot of time with you guys.
38:29: I spend a lot of time for work at church doing church stuff and then when I'm doing church I got church stuff and then not a lot of time left.
38:38: Some of you may have that challenge but I'm going to tell you the same thing I'm telling myself.
38:44: I have to be intentional about making time to be with non-Christians.
38:51: I need to find ways to connect with people that don't know Jesus and so do you if you're in that same situation where you're not around non-Christians and I'm going to maybe get myself in trouble here but if you happen to be a youth who doesn't have connection with non-Christians talk to your parents about that and ask your parents where not if they believe is an appropriate context for you to connect with some unbelievers.
39:27: Parents I don't believe you have God's permission to protect your kids from any contact whatsoever with non-Christians.
39:35: Yes to be discerning yes to exercise some safety boundaries but not all or nothing.
39:44: Give your kids the opportunity to represent Christ to the world around them because God wants them to.
39:50: A youth group a couple weeks ago we were talking about 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 12 where it says don't let anyone look down on you for your youth but set an example in conduct and speech and faith and so on and I introed it to the youth by talking about slogans right I'm loving it and they're like McDonald's and just do it Nike and so on and I said what about this new one for youth group youth group because teenagers they're almost real Christians and all the youth are like I'm like no I agree with you guys right the Bible doesn't present youth as second class Christians or not real Christians it presents them as believers every bit as much as the 20 30 40 60 80 year old people who follow Jesus so they're called to the same thing that we are maybe not identical context but they're still called to represent Jesus to the world around them we say at Faith Chapel that our mission is for every believer to become make mature and multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ now the things that we do when we're gathered like Sunday school and youth group and small groups where we're teaching people about Jesus and about God's word that's a key part of it right teach them to obey everything I have commanded you but they have to start somewhere shy of that they have to first encounter the message of Jesus that evangelism piece has to be there too hence the make disciples so when we say that we want to make mature and multiply disciples of Jesus Christ we make means evangelism help somebody to hear the message of Jesus place their faith in Jesus so they can be reconciled to God mature them in that help them to know what God's word teaches so they can follow it and live it out and then multiply help them to then take the next step and invest in others that's where many of you are here today where you have to make that next step into multiplying into investing in others this is not my plan for the future of faith chapel this is God's plan and it's his plan for every church in all the world in all of history we say in our mission that we want every believer to become fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ so let me ask you are you a fully surrendered disciple of Jesus Christ no you're not none of us is but are you pushing in that direction are you surrendered to Jesus as much as you recognize your need for or is there any area of life where you're saying I'll obey you with my giving I'll obey you with my my Sunday mornings and I'll obey you with what I do when no one is around but I'm not doing the evangelism thing Jesus well then you're living in not surrender you're saying I can only trust God's plan this far and after that it gets wonky he doesn't know what he's doing God does know what he's doing and I believe that if and as every man and woman in this room this morning steps out in faith sharing the gospel I believe that we're going to see some stories of God doing amazingly gracious good things I've led up quite a few people to Jesus over the years and every time I'm just amazed it's like this was awesome I'm so glad to be part of it right I'm going to put Katie on the spot you've gotten to see some people come to Jesus any of those times where you're like wasted effort no pretty excited every single time yeah in fact go talk to her after church this morning or go talk to Courtney after church this morning and ask them to tell you about one of the times that they've gotten to lead someone to Jesus or if you're someone that has done this proactively tell someone else the story of how you got to lead someone to Jesus and I'll tell you what you're not going to hear stories of I was super polished and I had it all together and I had it all planned out and God used it because I had it down you're going to hear stories of I was so nervous my heart was beating and I didn't know if I was even making any sense as I was saying it and then God used it the first person that I remember getting to lead to Christ was a lady named Mary I was in college I worked when I was home from college at a steakhouse Ponderosa Steakhouse working as a waiter and this co-worker of mine named Mary knew that I was a Christian and I was into that kind of stuff I said hey Dylan can you get me into heaven nah I'm sorry man it's not something I can do and she then said the most absurd thing she said I guess it's not what you do it's who you know really Mary let me tell you about that let me tell you who you need to know now I didn't say it in that tone of voice but I'm thinking like did she really say that yeah let me tell you about knowing Jesus and I get a basic gospel presentation and she's like I've never heard that before and she grew up Catholic she'd never heard it and I was like do you want to follow Jesus through your life do you want to be forgiven and trust in Jesus she's like yeah so I letter to Jesus right there in the steakhouse I didn't plan on that she brought it up I didn't know how to respond to me getting into her heaven and then she set me up with this lofted it's who you know I guess alright God if you're going to play like that I got to get in on this game right that's the kind of stories you're going to hear even Katie's like yeah I have no idea what I'm doing but God keeps working right yes see I didn't make her say that let's share some stories after church with each other of times that you've gotten to lead someone to Jesus or hear a story from someone who has and be encouraged that God can use the likes of us so that we will step out in faith Hebrews chapter 11 is the hall of fame of faith and it says look at all these folks who've gone before and lived by faith and all the things that they've dealt with that were not easy but God was at work we are part of that let's encourage each other with the stories of God being at work and as you leave here today I want to encourage you I want to plead with you I want to put you on notice for doing something towards reaching out in faith we've talked in the past about praying for at least two people in your life that need to know Jesus if you're not doing that start please maybe you need to make a commitment to connect with a particular person or family that you know in your life and you need to start creating opportunities for that maybe you need to begin praying for and looking for open doors saying God I don't know where this would be can you help me to see where I need to step out can you help me to see who the people are in my life that I might need to begin representing Jesus to ask him to show you and then pray for the the courage and the faith to act in faith to say this is scary but I'm gonna I'm gonna step out and do it all right God is the one who's gonna do it but he's gonna do it through our cooperation with the work that he wants to do let's pray God help us help us to love you and to love the people around us more than we fear awkwardness and uncomfortableness help us to love the people around us that need to know about Jesus more than we love our comfort more than we love status quo I pray that you will burden us even yet this morning with faces and names of friends and family co-workers fellow students maybe people that we run into in random life situations at the grocery store or the bank teller or whoever it might be and would you burden us for these people to come to know Jesus and give us the faith and the courage to step out seeking to be used by you so that these men these women these boys these girls are reconciled to God and become a totally new creation by the work of your spirit we pray this in Jesus name amen