Memorial Day (Sun PM)
Tom Shrader explores 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, emphasizing that God has given believers the ministry of reconciliation - making them ambassadors tasked with both living out their faith visibly and boldly proclaiming the gospel message. He warns against adding extra requirements to the simple gospel message and stresses that God is concerned with obedience in sharing the message, not with the results.
“God saves sinners - that's the gospel. God reconciled us to Himself through Christ on His terms.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: CBCC Memorial Day 2007
Recorded: 2007 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 1 hr 4 min
Themes: reconciliation, evangelism, obedience, service, ambassador, gospel, ministry, freedom, sharing faith boldly, called to ministry, veteran, evangelist, christian witness, new believer, struggling with evangelism, young adult
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, Romans 1:16, 1 John 5:20-21, Colossians 1:20-21, Matthew 5:16
Theological Themes: reconciliation, ministry calling, ambassadorship, gospel proclamation, biblical obedience, spiritual authority, evangelical mission, christian witness
Full Transcript
Good evening! Each session you lose a little more zeal on that. Glad you're here. You will want to be back for the concert, so I'm going to be really brief tonight so we can get to the concert. Did you appreciate Chris over here? That song was the result of hours of practice. Makes me laugh.
One of the things about coming up here that I don't like - and I love coming here - one of the things I don't like about coming up here is I don't have TV. I'm a TV guy. I know a lot of you probably think that TV was invented by Satan, and he may have had a part in it, but I love TV. I love a variety of things. I can watch TV. Susan and I were talking about it - you just come in, and you turn on the news, and you'll have something going just to have it going. But you're up here, and I'm telling you, they could have, Massachusetts could have fallen into the ocean, which probably is a praise to begin with, but you'd never know it up here. I mean, we're going to find out in about a week, but you get out of the loop, and you forget what day it is, and you forget what time it is, and you forget all of that stuff.
One thing really important, and I think you all would remember this, is Memorial Day weekend. It is a time when as a nation, we stop and we thank God for the men and women who have given their lives through the years in the service of the country - not just serving, but especially those who have died in the process of serving their country. 3,500 in the war in Iraq. Vietnam, 58,000, and wars in between. Just to give you that in perspective - there were 58,000 men and women who died in Vietnam. 58,000 men and women died at Gettysburg. Give you the sense of the death in the Civil War. We have Korea, and we have a veteran, Jack on the way in, who served in the armed services in World War II.
Honoring Our Veterans
So we want to, first of all, if you're here and you have served in the service, whatever that's been, would you stand just so we could recognize you all, please, and thank God. Thank you so much. Though it may at times feel like it, your service was not in vain, and we thank you for that.
Let's pray, and among other things, let's thank God for this amazing place that we live in. It's unique, really, in the history of mankind. It is a wonderful country that offers us such freedoms of expression and thought that can be easily abused.
I don't know, honestly, if it'll always be like this. I work with a lot of young guys, and I tell them that I am able to teach Romans 1 with freedom. I really don't know that they will be able to do that in 25 or 30 years. I mean, the persecution - and there is now a law in New Zealand that you must have, all churches must have a gay man or woman on their staff. There are laws all over that are beginning to infringe that to teach Romans 1 is hate speech. So we pray that God would continue to spare us of that.
The Value of Suffering
But honestly, we'd probably in a way be four times better off if - was that rain? Wow. We don't see much of that where I'm from, but you know what? There's something about persecution. As I've always said, suffering is God speaking through a megaphone. But there's something about suffering and pain and hardship, and even persecution, I think, would be good for us. It tends to purify us. It tends to bring us to a point where I think we're more dependent upon God.
I have a tendency to be more dependent. I have a tendency to pray when things are difficult and challenges come, and it might be that just what we need as people, but as a church even, is a really good dose of suffering and hardship and persecution.
This has nothing to do with a lesson, which I'm sure Susan is thinking at this very moment. She hates this, but there's also the trial of prosperity, and we don't talk about that much. So if I say to you, God's going to try you tonight, there'll be a trial. You think of a sick child or a relational separation or economic hardship, but one of the great trials that we face is the trial of prosperity, the trial of health, the trial of stuff, to see how we handle that.
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Father, we thank You first and foremost for this amazing nation that You have given us. To think that You have allowed us to be born and to live here is an incredible privilege. Don't let us screw it up or waste it. God, we pray that we would continue to proclaim Your truth, and we would proclaim it just not just in word, but in word and deed.
We pray tonight now as we look at this message that You would focus us on the reason that You've left us here. Thank You for the men and women who stood just a moment ago, who have served us by serving in this armed services, for those who have died, for those who are in harm's way right at this moment. God, we pray their safety, and we pray that they would sense our gratitude and thanksgiving to them.
Thank You so much for allowing us to be born and to live here, sovereignly placing us here at this time, in this place. God, focus our minds here on what we have before us. We pray that to You now, in Jesus' name, amen.
Our Purpose: Saved for God's Glory
We have said, you all have it figured out now, very important, with zest and enthusiasm, that we are saved. What is it now? We are saved. Very important. We are saved by God, from God, and our emphasis tonight and in the morning is for God.
Westminster Short Catechism, question one: what's the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and then to enjoy Him forever. 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 31: "Whatever therefore you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it for the glory of God." Romans chapter 11, verse 36: "For Him, through Him, and to Him are all things to whom be glory forever."
John MacArthur writes this: "Today's church is confronted by a seemingly endless..."
Memorial Day Sun PM
Part 2 of 9
There is a variety of ministry methods, strategies, and styles. Some argue that the church ought to agitate for social and political change, to force cultural morality, or even help usher in a kingdom. Others insist that the church's message should be inoffensive, upbeat, and affirming, to create a positive atmosphere in which non-believers can feel welcomed and not threatened. Still others believe that their church's primary task is to defend its theological distinctives.
But there is no confusion in scripture about what the church's mission is to be. It is to be evangelism. God left us here for a reason. God left us here for this reason, and that is to fulfill the great commandment and the great commission. To be salt and light in the midst of a crooked and perverse world.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Second Corinthians chapter 5—that's where we're going to hang today, and then tomorrow we'll continue and close chapter 5. "Therefore if anyone is in Christ"—we're a believer, genuinely converted—"we're a new creature. All things have passed away and new things have come." That's where we left off this morning.
"Now all these things are from God who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and then given us the ministry of reconciliation." We could really just stay right in verse 18 as far as I'm concerned.
Now for our consideration, verses 19-21 come as an extension of this: "Namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He committed to us the word of reconciliation." Verse 18: ministry of reconciliation. Verse 19: word of reconciliation. "Now because He's given us the ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation, because that's true, verse 20, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For God made Him—Jesus—who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
All these things are from God. That's the gospel. The gospel is that God redeemed His people.
Learning to Diagram Sentences
When I was a young lad, I wasn't much of a student. I didn't like school much. I didn't like much that happened there other than the social aspect of it. The girls would come home when they were in school and they would need help with their homework. I would say, "Girls, can I help you with your homework?" They'd say, "No, it's math," and I'd have to say no. The next day I'd say, "Can I help you with your homework?" and they'd say, "No, it's English." The next day I'd say, "Can I help you with homework?" They'd say, "No, it's history." Pretty soon they realized that unless they had PE, there really wasn't much I could help them with. I wasn't a student. The first book I ever read was my junior year of college, and it was a sports book on Muhammad Ali. I didn't read. I didn't study. I sure had a lot of fun.
It was Mark Twain who said, "I never let school interfere with my education," and that was my strategy as well. When God saved me, one of the things He did was He turned me into a reader.
I went to Catholic grade school, high school, and college, and I had nuns. You know what an oxymoron is, right? Like Rapid City, South Dakota—that's an oxymoron. But here was something I never understood: I never understood why they called these women Sisters of Mercy. I never was the recipient—I assume they did show mercy somewhere, but I was never the recipient of that mercy. You can imagine what I was like at school. I just felt it was my obligation to add a little zeal to it.
Here's what they made us do: they made us diagram sentences, which I thought was really stupid. They were very precise—you did it with a ruler. I mean, it was very precise. I remember going home to my dad and saying, "Dad, this school's dumb and we're diagramming sentences." He was a banker. I said, "Did you diagram any sentences at work today?" He would just hit me and say, "Just do what they tell you to do." That's how we communicated—nonverbal. We just knew we loved each other.
God Saves Sinners
Well, I'm grateful that the nuns taught us to diagram sentences because I'm going to diagram a three-word sentence for you. If you've ever heard me teach, almost every time I diagram the same sentence because this is a crucial sentence for us. Here's the three-word sentence: God saves sinners.
God is the actor or the noun. Saves is the verb or the action. Sinners is the direct object. I have many times said if I ever have a choice of being in a sentence, I want to be the direct object because there's not a lot of responsibility—you just hang out. I just want to be the direct object. God does the action and He saves sinners. That's the gospel.
God reconciled us to Himself through Christ on His terms. I was talking to a gentleman the other day about our housing market in Phoenix, which has been really weird. I don't know what it's like around the country, but there was a time a year and a half ago when you would literally—here's what they'd do: they'd put a pole in the ground that told you a sign was coming. Then the sign would come up. Then they would take a week. They would take all the offers, take the top three, then call the three in again and say, "Okay, you three each get one more bid." So you'd put your house on the market for let's say $250,000 and you'd—
He sells it for like $295. It's not like that anymore. It's softened very quickly.
So I'm talking to a guy the other day and he's trying to buy a house. I said, "Are you going to buy the house?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "What do you mean you don't know?" He said, "Well, I've made an offer." They were asking this and he offered this. He said, "I lowballed them. I doubt they'll take it. I'm just hoping they'll counter." In other words, they're asking this, he's offered this, they'll come to here, he'll say not quite there, and then we'll come in and eventually we have what we used to call in the business a meeting of the minds.
We do the same thing. I have friends who love to go and buy a car. I would rather have you take me out back and beat me than make me buy a car. The last two cars we bought, I did the whole thing on the phone with a friend of mine. I said, "Here's what I want to do. I don't want to buy insurance. I'm going to pay cash. I don't need life insurance. I don't need undercoating. I don't need anything." I said, "I'm going to come in, I want to pick out the color, I want to write you a check, and I want out of there in ten minutes. I don't want to mess around with it." I have friends that love to go and just negotiate.
Trying to Negotiate with God
A lot of our life is like that, isn't it? Now we come to God and here's what God said. God says, "Here's the standard," and we say, "I'll give you this." Here's the gospel and He says, "I'll give you this." Here are those ten commandments and we say, "You know, six of them I can live with, and maybe I'll add one a year for four years and then we'll get there."
God reconciles us. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a big fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Braden was sitting one night and he has this little—why you would buy a kid something that makes noise makes no sense to me—and he has a book and you open it up and I go "Humpty Dumpty" or "Hi diddle diddle," all this. Well, Humpty Dumpty, and he's playing Humpty Dumpty: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a big fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again." I got that in my brain and all of a sudden I realized—and you've got to cut me slack here—that in a sense we're like Humpty Dumpty.
We Are Broken Like Humpty Dumpty
We live in a fallen broken world and we're fallen broken people. Everything around us is in that condition. Everything around us dies. Everything around us breaks. Nations are at war, neighbors are fighting, families are broken, marriages disintegrate, siblings don't talk, children are abandoned. That's you and that's me. We are broken physically, spiritually, relationally. The heart's depraved and it's evil. We love sin more than we love good.
So I really got into this Humpty Dumpty thing. I googled Humpty Dumpty—which to me always sounds dirty when you say it, but it isn't. Humpty Dumpty was in fact—now there's several stories about Humpty Dumpty, this seems most credible—Humpty Dumpty was in fact a cannon. Humpty Dumpty was a cannon used in the English Civil War and became prominent during the siege of Gloucester. The Royalists were fortified as the Parliamentarians were attacking. The city was a walled city with a castle and several churches. Humpty Dumpty was a cannon that was placed strategically near one of the churches. There was a shot from a Parliamentarian cannon that damaged the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty. He fell to the ground and he was so heavy as a cannon, and all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put him back together again.
That's us. We try to put ourselves back together. This is why we need the gospel. This is us as a lost person, though we can drift there as followers of Christ. We try to put ourselves back together again and the world tells us, "Yeah, you can put yourself back together again with power or sex or education or success or drugs or money or fame."
Even Christians Struggle with Idols
Even followers of Christ—as followers of Christ, we are prone to worship idols. John's played an important role in our study. He pens this gospel that we spent some time in, First John chapter 5. Let me just read it to you, verse 20. He's closing the book out: "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true. We are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life."
Then John ends this letter, First John, in a very odd way. Here's how he closes it, chapter 5, verse 21: "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." An idol is anything that takes a place in our life that only God should occupy—your false god. We can have idols, and some of our idol worship will explain sometimes, oftentimes, maybe all the time, our sinful behavior.
I may be so concerned about what you think that I will act in a way that's driven and motivated by my wanting to please you, that your acceptance of me becomes my idol. I become more concerned about you accepting me than God accepting me. Idol worship.
The Appeal of the Right Equipment
A knockoff—I am going to say I'm a golfer, but it probably depends upon how you define golfer. I play golf and I'm decent but not great. But I am convinced that equipment is everything. I mean, if you don't have the right equipment you're going to be all right, but the right equipment makes a big difference. I really believe that and I've believed that for a long time. Lots of people haven't, but people are radically converting to this idea of the right equipment.
In our town is where Ping golf clubs are made, so I'm a Ping guy primarily because they give me most of this stuff. I was at the Ping factory—it just doesn't get any better than this—I'm at the Ping factory hitting balls and getting measured for a new driver. They will computer generate exactly when I hit the ball the trajectory and launch point. It will calculate the spin ratio of the ball. The entire field that I hit into is computerized.
So when the ball hits, it will tell me exactly how far I've hit that ball. Here's what's really critical—you don't even realize this—the first hop, that first bounce is key. That spin ratio, so that when it hits, BAM, off it goes.
So I'm out there getting fitted for a new driver and I'm hitting these balls. He brings me out, and finally we decide that I'm going to hit a ten and a half degree face on the club. But he brings me out a dozen clubs, all with a different shaft. This may sound really weird to you, but the shaft really matters. The shaft will have a flex point. The shaft will hit, and so I'm hitting these, and I'm just hitting these funky high cuts. I just hate the shot. I said, "I'm going to hit it lower, and I want to—" He said, "Try this." I hit this shot, and when that ball hits, it just jumps forward. I said, "Ooh, now that felt right." He said, "Try this." Didn't jump as far. So we boom—that's it. Now I'm walking out with a club.
The Problem with Knockoffs
I have a friend who said, "I got a new club," and he showed it to me. It was a knockoff, meaning it looked a lot like the Ping, but it wasn't the real thing. Knockoffs—familiar with that term? They usually look very similar, they cost a lot less, they promise similar results, but it's not the real thing. And they never produce.
That's what an idol is. An idol is something we trust. We think, "If I just have that, I will be happy." You've had it in your life: "If I can just get her to go out with me, I'll be happy. If I can just get her to like me, I'll be happy. If I can get her to go study with me, I'll be happy. If I could get her to marry me, I'd be happy. If I could get her to leave, I'd be really happy."
A Personal Story About Marriage and Expectations
When Susan and I got married, it was, up to that point in my life, the happiest moment of my life. Now I'm going to explain to you why. When I met Susan, there were a lot of things that attracted me to her. One of them—I was purely physically attracted to her. But one of the things that attracted me to her was that she was completely different than I was. I tended to be cynical, and she was very naive, and I was attracted to that.
I married Susan, okay? Now this is really weird—hoping she changed me. When she walked down the aisle, I was so happy. We stood before the guy, and he said, "Better, worse, richer, poorer—do you take her?" "I do." And then he said to her, "Do you take him?" And honestly, I held my breath. Even over, standing there, and she bought the dress and all this stuff, I still thought it was a 50-50 shot that she might bail. She said, "I do."
Three months later or so, I came back to her and I said, "I married you to make me happy, and I'm not happy. We're 90 days into this. I married you to make me happy—I'm not happy." And she said, "Well, slick, I married you thinking I'd be happy, and I'm not happy." We're miserable in a very short period of time.
Then it occurred to me about a year, year and a half later what happened. I married Susan—she was everything I thought, and I mean this honestly, far more in a wife than I could have ever imagined, far more of a mother when I was even thinking in those terms, far more of a person than I could have imagined. But I was asking her to do something only God could do. She'd become, really, for me, an idol.
God's Work of Reconciliation
What Paul says in the passage you have before you is that God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ. Colossians chapter 1, verse 20: "Through Christ, He reconciled all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of the cross, through Him, I say, whether things on earth or in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet now He has reconciled you to Himself."
For this precious moment, we've been reconciled—salvation in no other name. Everything other than biblical Christianity is a knockoff. It's a fake. It won't perform the activity that you're trusting it to do, because there is salvation—Peter tells us—there is salvation in no one else, for there's no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
Reconciled—Webster's definition: to restore friendship or harmony. God takes Humpty Dumpty and puts Him back together again. God takes you and puts you back together again. He puts you back together. He does it. God saves sinners. That's the reconciliation. This is the message you begin to take to the world.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Now look at this, and we're going to really now hone in, and this is how we're going to spend the rest of our time tonight and tomorrow. He's given us the ministry of reconciliation. That word "ministry" denotes the idea of serving. Ministry, serve—they go hand-in-glove. They come together. God has given us the ministry of reconciliation that we are to proclaim to a lost and dying world.
Now the verse that we've said is our linchpin for the whole weekend is that we're to let our light shine before men in such a way that they see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. That we make the invisible God visible—that's what we've talked about, right? I want to get to the second part of that: people see your good works and then glorify your Father in heaven.
Making God Visible Through Our Actions and Words
I want you to think about that for a second. How's that going to happen? The only way that they're going to glorify your Father in heaven is if you tell them to. They won't do it naturally. If they see your good works, they're naturally going to ascribe the glory to you. They're going to say there's something special about you. They're going to say, "Well, that's just the way you're wired. That's your nature. That's just the personality that you have." And no—I'm a new creature in Christ.
Get this: they will never glorify your Father in heaven if you don't point them there. So here's what we say—we have to make the invisible God visible and then speak the truth boldly. And those two things are inseparable. If you want more of that, the last time I was here, or the time before, I did 12 weeks, and that was part of it. But here's what we're saying: I have to make the invisible God
visible and speak the truth boldly. Those two are inseparable. If I make the invisible God visible but I fail to speak the truth boldly, I'm a coward. If I speak the truth boldly but I fail to make the invisible God visible, I'm a hypocrite. I can't separate those. That's the ministry of reconciliation that God has saved you for.
Now verse 20 - you are an ambassador. Some of you maybe have been around church for a long time and want to argue about this, so please don't. You're a missionary now. Some church people want to argue about missionary because you begin to define that and there's a whole connotation that it has to be spread out to the world and all this stuff. But here's what I'm saying: you're a missionary to Battleground, Washington. You're a missionary to Vancouver or to Cannon Beach, wherever God has placed you. You're a missionary. You're an alien, you're a foreigner - this isn't home.
God's Plan for Expanding His Kingdom
Paul uses the term that we are an ambassador. This has been God's plan for expanding His kingdom since the death of Christ and the beginning of the church. One of the early church historians writes this: "The expansion of Christianity was accomplished by means of informal missionaries - not guys on staff, not gals being paid formal missionaries - as they lived through the fall and rise and fall of the Roman Empire."
Edward Gibbons writes: "It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to disperse among his friends and neighbors the blessing he'd received." In other words, when God saved someone, their sacred duty was to go right back into the community, right among their friends, right among their neighbors, and to disperse to them the gospel.
James Boyce writes this about John the Baptist: "I suppose the greatest mistake a person can make as he reads about the witness of John the Baptist is to think that he is somehow peculiar - that he's doing something unique. But that's an error and a serious one. Witnessing is every Christian's job. If we are to witness for Jesus, we must first forget about ourselves. We must first think about other people and their need for a Savior."
Your Sovereign Placement
God has called you to this ministry of reconciliation. He has saved you for a reason and for a purpose. John the Baptist was focused on the fact that he was here for one specific reason: to make clear, make straight the way of the Lord.
God has saved you sovereignly. When we talk about salvation, we talk about God's sovereign move - God saves sinners. But understand this: God has sovereignly placed you in the neighborhood you're in and at the job you work. God has sovereignly given you your background. Some of you come from horrific backgrounds. Some of you have a great heritage like Heather had, some of you don't. God's allowed all those things to make you the unique person you are so that you have the ability to speak into the lives of people and talk about how God has saved you. That's His plan to reach the world. God's plan to reach the world is through people. If you look at the book of Acts, every time the gospel was preached, it was preached by a person.
God saved you for a reason. During my old party days, I was one night in this bar and I was feeling pretty bad about myself. I was talking to a friend of mine and I said, "I have really no purpose or reason to exist." He said to me - true story - "You have great value, Tom." I said, "Really, what is it?" He said, "You can always be used as a bad example." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Whenever my wife gets on my case, I always say to her, 'I'm not as bad as Tom.'" I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah, all the guys in the office say that." I said, "Oh wow, I have a meaning and purpose."
The Gospel Message
God has placed you where you are, and if you wonder why, there it is right there in front of you. He's given you the ministry of reconciliation. What I want to do the balance of tonight is talk about the message that you're to give, and tomorrow I'll talk about you, the messenger.
Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, known as the resurrection chapter. At the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul gives us what we've called the gospel in a nutshell. First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 1: "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, by which you were saved."
Here's the gospel that saved you, verse 3: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also."
There's the gospel. The gospel is this: that Jesus Christ was born, lived, and died for our sin. Our hope is in Him and Him alone. Anything else is a knockoff. Our problem in life is sin. We as believers understand the remedy to that is Christ. We are new creatures, born again, born afresh, new creatures - not because of anything we've done, but because of Christ's death on the cross. Now He says because your life's changed, now you go and tell people about it. You become My witnesses. You become missionaries. You take the ministry of reconciliation to a lost and dying world.
Romans chapter 1, verse 16 - Paul writing: "I am not ashamed of the gospel." Paul says I'm not ashamed of those very things we just talked about - Jesus, Lord, Master, Savior, servant, sacrifice, risen, me a sinner. He said I'm not ashamed of that. Why? "For it" - what's the "it"?
The Power of the Gospel
The gospel—it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. It's in the gospel and the gospel alone that we find the remedy to loneliness, to God's wrath, to our spiritual ignorance, to selfishness, to false religion, to the penalty of sin. The gospel comes and it delivers us, rescues us, takes us from death to life, from darkness to light, from danger to safety.
That's the good news, isn't it? It's the message of forgiveness and hope and love and acceptance and security and right relationship. It's significant in that it delivers me from the bondage of my past. It delivers me to freedom so that I can now place myself in bondage to Christ.
You were bought at a price, Paul says. Let me give you some advice: you were bought at a price, so don't enslave yourself to man. What does that mean? It covers a whole variety of things. How would I enslave myself to man? Well, it could be bondage through debt, could be drugs, sex, anything that's enslaving a man. He said you are free—you were bought at a price—don't enslave yourself to man, but do enslave yourself to Christ.
That's how Paul identifies himself frequently, isn't it? Paul, a bond servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Come and join me in His suffering. Enslave yourself to Him. It's in Him and Him alone that you'll find deliverance and hope and forgiveness.
The Gospel Is the Answer to Every Question
The gospel is the answer to every question. I got a call one day from a guy, really successful business guy. I didn't know him; he knew me. So he called me and said, "Can we meet?" I said, "I don't know. Tell me why. Why are we meeting?" He said, "I got your name," blah, blah, blah, "I'd like to get together." I said, "Fine, I'll meet you."
We arranged a time and place. I called somebody and I said, "Do you know this guy?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Can you tell me about him?" He said, "He's a mess." I said, "Okay."
So I go and I sit down with this guy, and he starts this story: "My wife—my third or fourth one, I forget which—is very upset with the fact that I'm sleeping with my secretary. My secretary and I have had it. My wife, my kids are a mess. The daughter who's involved in lesbianism, I have a son who's strung out on drugs." On and on and on. "My business..." I'm not kidding you now—he just talked non-stop for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Then he stopped. He said, "That's probably a lot, isn't it?" I said, "Yeah." He just looked at me. I said, "I don't even know what the question is, but I know Jesus is the answer. I don't even know what you're asking me. I don't even know how to unpack that. I know this: the world comes with all sorts of answers—just close that next deal, just find that next relationship."
The Failure of Worldly Solutions
He had pursued all of the ways of deliverance and salvation that the world had offered. He got another girl and another girl and another girl. He got the money, he got the drugs, he got the booze, he got the travel, he got the car, he got the boat, he got the house, he got the business, he got the recognition in the paper. He got everything the world said should deliver you from your misery, and all it did was bring him more misery.
Why? Step by step, all the human hope he had was being taken away. And that's our message to the world. That's your message to your world.
The Curse of Knowledge
I was reading a book last early spring, and it was a business book on communication. I thought, "I communicate, sort of. I had to read this book." This guy was talking about communicating, and he gave two illustrations. I thought, "Oh my gosh, does that apply to the gospel!" He talked first of all about the curse of knowledge, and then he talked about message creep.
Now I want to make sure I'm clear here. I'm talking about you and me and a ministry of reconciliation and us reaching out to a lost and dying world. What's the message? Christ and Christ crucified.
The curse of knowledge is this: they did this really interesting study. They had listeners and they had tappers. The tapper's job was to take a song that everybody knew and to tap it out. The listener's job was to guess the song. Okay, so I'm going to show you how easy this can be. I'm going to tap, you're going to tell me what this song can be. Ready? *tap tap tap* What is it? Jingle Bells! Well, so they thought, "Okay, we can do this. You've got to have familiar songs which everybody knows."
Here's what they discovered: fifty percent of the time—this is really amazing—fifty percent of the time the tappers thought the listeners could get the song one out of two times. In reality, only 2.3 percent of the time could the listeners get the song.
Now think about that. He identified this as the curse of knowledge. Try it—try tapping a song. That's his point: it's impossible for you to tap out a song and not hear the melody in your mind. You cannot do it. You cannot tap out a song without thinking it.
Here's where I'm going with this. He said the problem is you keep getting mad at the listener: "How can you not get this? How can you not hear 'Happy Birthday to You'? How can you not get that? You've got to know that!" But I don't have any melody—you have the melody. "How can you not get it?" Well, I don't have a melody.
He said the process of reversing this is essentially impossible. There's only two ways to get rid of the curse of knowledge: one, to not learn anything (so some of you've chosen that path); the other is to take all your ideas and change them around.
Applying This to Gospel Presentation
When I read that, what resonated in my mind was how we oftentimes present the gospel. We're so familiar with it, and we're talking to people and they're going, "I don't have a clue what you're talking about." "How can you not see it?" "I don't know what you're saying."
I see this all the time when I do funerals. I'll do a funeral and somebody will come in and say, "We're going to have a lot of unbelievers there. I want you to share the gospel." I'm always mildly uncomfortable—not with sharing the gospel, but this isn't a crusade. Here's what happens almost all the time: when I'm done, all the believers will come up and say, "That was so cool! You're—"
Relating to the Lost Person
When you're teaching, when you're sharing, when you're presenting the gospel, you've got to climb into that person's skin. Can you remember when you were lost? The first time that I remember really hearing the gospel, Susan and I were invited to a couple's house. I used to work with this guy. In fact, this is really weird because his son played at one of our services last Sunday.
So they invited us to their house for dinner. We go and have this wonderful dinner. We walk in and it smells good. It was meatloaf. What's your favorite, Tom? Meatloaf. I love meatloaf. Do we have meatloaf for Thanksgiving this year? Yeah, we have meatloaf for Thanksgiving this year. I make a turkey and let all those slugs eat the turkey, and I'll eat the meatloaf. Meatloaf and scalloped potatoes and a lot of cheese. Let the cheese get a little hard and crusty, and then some good bread. What would you like for dessert? Brownies. I like the corners and ice cream.
We walk in and we're eating, and all of a sudden these guys start talking. He's got this cute little wife, and they start talking about faith. I don't know, I don't have hardly any, but Susan has no background at all. Susan had never been to church except to her sister's wedding. She'd been to church twice in her whole life, and then our wedding. She went for our wedding, which I thought was kind of cool.
I said, "Well, we don't really believe much, you know." So this gal starts: "Well, you're sinners." I'm going, "Yeah, I got that, you know. Give me some ketchup. This needs ketchup." So I'm eating away, and now she's starting to present the gospel and the solution to our problem.
The Offense of the Gospel
Susan's offended by it, but I'm eating. Susan's offended by it, and Susan says, "We're out of here." I said, "We haven't, but they got brownies. Just listen to her a little longer. They got brownies and ice cream. Look at that ice cream, and I like caramel over that. They got caramel and brownies."
We're going away and we're walking to the car, and Susan was very mad, very offended. I was too, but my whole life was people telling me I was a sinner, so I was used to it. I can remember my response. When I'm sharing the gospel with people, I don't have this cursory knowledge. I try to go back and understand how difficult it is.
Again, I can make this very human. I'm not trying to make this so human that I take God out of it, but I'm saying God always works through people. He left you here for a reason, and part of this ministry of reconciliation is clearly, lovingly, graciously articulating the gospel in such a way that it's at least clear enough that the non-elect know what they're rejecting.
Feature Creep
The other thing these guys talk about is what they call "feature creep." An example of that would be a VCR. If you come into our house, we have a VCR that is still flashing 12 o'clock, and we've had 14,000 engineers out there to fix this thing.
I'll give you a couple more examples of feature creep. Your phone. I just got a new phone, and I don't like messing around with anything. My phone wasn't working right, so I called Sharon, an insurance secretary, and I said, "Sharon, I just need a new phone." She said, "What kind of phone do you want?" I said, "Here's what I want to do: I want to call out and receive in. I don't need to take pictures. I don't need to set off my car and start it. I just want a phone. That's all I want."
I have at home another picture of feature creep, and that is my remote control. I want to turn it on, off, channel up, channel down, volume. It's got all of... One of the kids got a hold of the button the other day and hit it, and it's still back there just like a slot machine spinning around.
Adding to the Gospel
Though it doesn't feel like it at this moment, it's really a serious point. We can take the gospel and add feature creep to the gospel. All of a sudden we start saying, "Well, you know what? Jesus died, blah blah blah, and if you really are His, you'll take those earrings out. If you're really saved, you'll get rid of that hair and you'll stop this and you'll do this." Here's what we do, and it just sets me off like a rocket.
Nothing drives me more crazy than to watch God save somebody's life, and then all of a sudden we get a bunch of church people around and we add a bunch of do's and don'ts to it. We take that person out of the very place God sovereignly placed them. Now we clean up your act and get rid of this and wear a long sleeve so we don't have to look at those tattoos, and get rid of this and get rid of that. We move them over here, and there they have no relationship to the people that they were attached to and to their own sphere of influence.
We make them like us and say, "Now go talk to them." Well, you made them just like you. You pulled them right out of this. We add not the gospel, but we add all these other things: How do you dress? How do you walk? How do you talk? You smoke? You're not smoke. What movies do you watch?
All those things... are all those things important? Yeah, it's really important that as God begins to change our lives these things will come into play.
All of a sudden we're adding those on the front end. We're saying if you're really converted, it's not just believe this, but if you're really converted you'll get out of there, stop it. We've changed the whole gospel at that point. We've moved it into very legal terms.
I want to be clear - some of you look like I licked all the red off your sucker at this point. I'm not saying those things don't begin to follow. I'm not saying that life doesn't change. That isn't the gospel.
It was really interesting to me when I grew up my hair. My hair wasn't always like this - three years ago or four years ago, something like that. I have this gal that cuts my hair and she thinks I look awful. She said, "Please don't tell anybody who cuts your hair." I said okay, I'm all right with that. She said, "You got to cut this hair. You're in front of people. This is not good, you don't look good." That doesn't motivate me to cut my hair.
Personal Confrontations and Gospel Clarity
I'm standing one day by the door at church. I'm not very smart but I have a very fast mouth - I can be at times a bit of a wise fellow. This guy comes in who I don't know but apparently hangs around our church a bunch, and he said to me, "If I give you the money, will you cut your hair?" I didn't even think for a second. I just said to him, "If I give you the money, will you join a gym?"
I don't want to make hair the dividing issue, but it was amazing to me how many people - hair was an issue, drums were an issue. I think you could argue the other way and say if it's that big an issue, get it out of the way and cut your hair. I'm open to that. But everything's an issue.
You're giving them the Ministry of Reconciliation. The message is the gospel message. Don't for a second think that they're going to hear you, and you've got to make it clear.
God's Sovereignty in Salvation
This is the beauty of this: I happen to believe that God sovereignly ordains those He's going to save. I think the Bible teaches that pretty clearly. My job is not to save one soul - I can't save anybody. Saving people is God's job, not my job. My responsibility is to proclaim the gospel. That's my only responsibility.
Let me use the illustration I use all the time. Let's say tonight Janet and Susan are not believers and we go out for coffee afterwards. I take one of the Dunns with me - I'll take Landon because I feel comfortable comparing myself to him. So Landon and I go out. I talk to Janet and say, "God loves you, cares for you, you're a sinner separated." Landon says to Susan, "God loves you, cares for you," shares the gospel. Susan believes.
This is really an important question: at the end of the day, is God happier with me or with Landon? Both, right? Why? Because my job's not to save anybody. If I could save somebody, I couldn't live. I could not function if it was up to me whether somebody was saved or not.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
You have the Ministry of Reconciliation, and that does not mean that you go around saving people. That means you go around proclaiming the word of reconciliation, the message, the gospel. In a nutshell: Christ died for your sins, was buried, rose again. Believe and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you'll be saved.
It's our responsibility and privilege to share that, but whether you believe it or not - not my job. There's great freedom in that. God has decided sovereignly that He's going to communicate this word through people like us.
We let our good works shine in such a way that people see them and they'll go, "There's something different, there's something unique about you. What is it?" You say, "It isn't me, it's my Father. Glorify Him. He's the one who gets the glory. He's the one who did the work. I didn't do it."
Grace and God's Glory
I didn't believe - I'm saved by grace. What is grace? Unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor. I didn't do it, He did it all. That's why all the glory's to Him. That's why He's a magnificent and wonderful God. That's why we can share the truth freely, openly. We don't have to argue, we don't have to coerce, we don't have to change the message. We just deliver the message, we proclaim the gospel. Here's what God wants for you, and we're done.
God wants from you one thing: obedience.
Our Results-Oriented Culture
We like results. This morning I got a bunch of stuff done and then I went over to this little restaurant called Seasons - great place, you ought to go if you get a chance. I went over to this little place and got the paper. When I get the paper, I go to the sports. When I go to the sports, I go to yesterday's scores. That's where I go. I don't need a storyline - one to two, you lost one to two. I don't want to hear about it. You lost, bottom line.
I go to the standings. We got a kid from ASU - the kid was hitting 128 playing with the Red Sox, hitting 128 a month ago. He's hitting 271 today. That's all I care about. I'm results-oriented, so are you, right?
The people you work for are that way. I don't want to hear about the one that got away. I don't want to hear why. All I want to know is your sales are going to be up 8% next year. That's all I want to know. Get them there. If they aren't, you're out. If they are, you're in. If you get them up 12%, be careful because we're going another eight on top of that. That's all I care about. I don't care about any of this other stuff - save it for Oprah.
I don't care about the other things. I care about results. Now we come to God and God's exactly the opposite. God says I'll take care of the results. All I care about is the process. All I care about is the obedience. All I care about is you preserving the message to make it accurate, to understand, to love, to care for the whole idea of letting them see your good works and love and something that's irresistible about your life.
They see you and your life is different than every other life. Your family's different than every other family. The way you handle pain is different than everyone else. We embrace it. It doesn't mean we don't hurt. It doesn't mean we don't cry, but we understand that God has a purpose for it.
I mean it is absolutely true that there is a sense in which God does whisper to us in prosperity and scream at us in adversity. His message - now that's the message. It's that simple.
Don't you be adding a bunch of denominational stuff to it. Don't you add anything extra to it. Don't add anything extra to it. Don't take anything away from it.
Now about you as a messenger - we'll talk about that in the morning.
Let's pray together. Father, thank You for the gospel that saves us, that unchanging message. Let us be faithful and true to that message. God, You are concerned about obedience and we pray that we would be people - would be an obedient people. Now as we adjourn, God, I pray that what happens tonight is that we have fun, that we encourage one another, that as the Bean family comes and sings they bless our hearts. As they deliver Your word, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.
Go get your kids.