God Put Us Back Together
Tom Shrader teaches from 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 that God reconciled broken humanity to Himself through Christ, and that this reconciliation should compel believers to carry the message of the gospel to the people around them. Using the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty as an illustration, he explains that sin leaves every person unable to restore themselves, and that Christ alone puts us back together. Rather than treating evangelism as a duty-driven program, Shrader calls the congregation to love people genuinely as God's creations, trusting that a transformed life will naturally open doors to share what Christ has done.
“Jesus is the only master that will satisfy you and not exploit you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: God's Definition of Love
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: reconciliation, evangelism, gospel, sin, salvation, sharing faith, brokenness, restoration, feeling broken, new believer, afraid to share faith, struggling with sin, searching for purpose, young adult, new to church, spiritually lost
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:18-21, Matthew 5:16, Philippians 1, Colossians 1, John 9:1-38, 1 John 5:20-21, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Genesis 4
Theological Themes: reconciliation, atonement, soteriology, salvation, imputation, righteousness of christ, great commission, ambassador for christ
Full Transcript
Welcome and Announcements
If you are with us here for the very first time, welcome. It is great to have you with us. We would love to get to know you, but you have to initiate that process. You can do that by completing the registration card and dropping it in one of the boxes as you leave the room today.
As you leave, ask someone by the doors for the information packet and they will gladly give it to you. You can also visit the website, evbc.org — you will find the address in the bulletin — and look through all the different things we offer. The most effective thing you can do, and you will find the information in the center of your bulletin, is attend the Connect One class. We hold one each month, and the next one is March 11th at the 10:30 hour in room 100.
You need to register for that class so we can bring lunch in for you and arrange childcare for your children, since we will be going beyond the 12:30 time. It is really important, if you are at East Valley Bible Church, to figure out quickly whether this is a place where you want to stay and call home. The fastest way to do that is through the Connect One class. You can register by using the card in your bulletin.
Upcoming Events
Ladies, there is a conference for you — the Iron Sharpens Iron Conference, subtitled "A Conference on Counseling." That subtitle may scare some of you away, but here is what we are trying to say: if anyone has ever asked you for advice, you are a counselor. What Elise will do in that time together is share wonderful, biblical truths you can use every day as people come to you for advice and as you respond.
There is one more item from the bulletin, and this came together very quickly. We have been talking for a while with a gentleman by the name of Max McClain. Some of you will know that name, and many of you will have heard him before. If you have an English Standard Version or an NIV on cassette or CD and there is a voice reading it — a voice that sounds, well, a lot like mine — that is probably Max McClain. Last fall, Max and his team produced a version of C.S. Lewis's bestseller *The Screwtape Letters* in New York City. Fifty shows, and all fifty sold out.
We have made arrangements for Max and that same cast to come here to this room on March 23rd at 7:30 in the evening. Tickets are available, and there are probably around 200 left — the rest went very quickly just this morning. We will call him tomorrow to see if a second show is possible, perhaps on a Saturday, but we do not know that for certain. If you are interested, you need to get out and get those tickets after the service. We would recommend no children under age 12, both for content reasons and for noise. Tickets are available in the courtyard after the service.
Entering the Text
Open your Bibles, please, to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. I want to be honest with you: I have something so clear in my head that I am not sure I can get it out and communicate it to you. So if at any point in this you find yourself thinking, "This makes no sense," just know — it is not you, it is me.
Turn to 2 Corinthians 5, verse 18. This is a familiar passage — verses 18 through 21. If you have been around for a while, you may even have it marked up in your Bible. And if you have been around, you will almost certainly have five words circled: *reconciled* in verse 18, *reconciliation* in verse 18, *reconciling* in verse 19, *reconciliation* again in verse 19, and *reconcile* in verse 20. You get a sense, then, that what Paul is talking about in this section is reconciliation.
Here is what he says: we have been reconciled to God, that was accomplished through Christ, and now God has given us a ministry of reconciliation. Let's read it and let it speak to us as we go through.
The Text: 2 Corinthians 5:18–19
"Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation."
The moment we read "all these things are from God," dropping in at verse 18 as we did, it tells us we had better go back and figure out what all those things are. We will come back and do that. But the heart of what Paul is saying here is this: God brought us back together. God reconciled us to Himself. He did it through Christ, and in turn He gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
We Are Left Here for a Purpose
Therefore — what is the "therefore" there for? Because we have a ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation. Therefore, because that has been given to us, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. How? Verse 21: God made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become righteousness, the righteousness of God in Him — that is, in Christ.
Here is what we have been talking about for eight weeks. We have been talking about the fact that we have been saved by God, from God, but most importantly in this study, we have been saved for God — for a reason, for a purpose. That purpose we have drawn out of Matthew chapter five, verse 16: we are to let our good works show. You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world — let that light shine before men. They will be able to see your good works, and when they see your good works, they will glorify your Father in heaven.
It is a two-step process. First, we make the invisible God visible. Then we speak the truth boldly. God left us here for a reason — saved by God, from God, for God. If all God wanted to do was get us into heaven and get us there quickly, He could have taken us the minute we believed. But He left us here for a reason and for a purpose.
All sorts of purposes exist, but chief among them in their broadest sense is to glorify Him and to make Him known. The Westminster Catechism opens with the question: what is the chief end of man? The answer: man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That is why we are here. He left us here to let our light shine, so that people would see our good works, and in seeing a transformed life, they would glorify our Father in heaven.
They would see in you and me something very different. They would see someone who has been reconciled to God through Christ — a life transformed. They would look at Jesus' people and see that there is something different about them, whether encountering us individually in business, at school, at the gym, or anywhere else in the marketplace. They would see it in our lives collectively as well.
The Testimony of a Transformed Life
They would know that we are followers of Christ because chief among all things — what? We love one another. There is this defining sense of love for one another. Seeing this, curious about it, they are going to say there is something different about you, something unique. And you are going to say, it is not me. I do not live like this naturally. I live like this supernaturally.
In the course of life, you will have the opportunity to say to people: what you see in me is what Jesus did in me. And what Jesus did in me — what you have experienced as you have watched Jesus work in me, what you have seen Him do — He can do for anyone who will come to Him in repentance and faith. It is simply a wonderful truth.
Now, let me mention what is coming in the weeks ahead. This week I want to talk about our reconciliation. Mike Pasha next week will talk about world ministries, and clearly part of that is evangelism around the world. Then I will return the following week to close this out and talk about you and me on a mission that God has given us — we are in a sense missionaries to this culture as well. The week after that we will return to John chapter fourteen and complete our study in the life of Christ.
You Know Enough to Share
But I want to make sure I make this point. I do not care where you are in this continuum — you believed here, you will die here. I do not care if you are minutes, hours, or a year from either end. If you know enough to believe the gospel, you know enough to share the gospel. Do not fall into the trap of saying, "I need another class." We provide a great deal of information and many classes, and I am afraid that sometimes we think we need one more class, one more technique, one more method to figure out. No. If you know enough to believe, you know enough to share.
That is not, by the way, permission to remain a spiritual baby or a spiritual infant. Paul calls us in Philippians chapter one and again in Colossians chapter one to grow in our knowledge and love for God and for His Word. So we grow, we deepen our understanding — but the fact remains: if you know enough to believe the gospel, you know enough to share the gospel.
The Man Born Blind
Turn in your mind to the Gospel of John, chapter nine. It is the story of Jesus coming into a town and meeting a man who has been blind from birth. Let me read you the opening verses of that first encounter. As Jesus passed by, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?" That was the conventional wisdom. Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned nor that his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him."
Just like that man, you and I become display cases for the works of God. He was blind physically and could now see physically. We were blind spiritually, and now we can see spiritually — our eyes are open. I encourage you to go back and read that story when you get a chance, perhaps even later today.
What happens to this man is that everyone immediately wants to know what happened. He did not say, "I am going to wait until I have taken a couple of classes before I tell you." He simply said, "I am going to tell you what I know. Here is the deal: I was blind, and now I can see." The Pharisees had a difficult time with this. They pointed out that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath and argued He could not be a man from God. And the man's answer was the same: "It is all I know. I was blind, and now I can see." They called him in a second time, again insisting something was not right, that Jesus was not a man of God —
fell to the ground. And of course all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. It was a broken, destroyed cannon. That's the origin of that rhyme. And I thought, you know what? That's me. That's us. Broken, fallen, unable to be put back together. And yet God put us back together.
What God Has Done for Us
So what did He do? Well, verse 18 says, "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." All these things are from God. I want to make sure we understand that. This is not something we did. This is not something we accomplished. This is not something we earned. All these things are from God. He is the initiator. He is the one who moved toward us. We were broken, we were fallen, and He came and put us back together.
The word reconciled here is a powerful word. It means to restore a relationship that was broken. It means to bring two parties who were at odds back together. And Paul says that God reconciled us to Himself through Christ. Not through our effort. Not through our goodness. Not through our religious activity. Through Christ. He is the means by which the broken relationship between God and man is restored.
Now I want you to notice something. Paul says that God reconciled us to Himself. The movement is from God toward us. We didn't reconcile ourselves to God. We couldn't. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put us back together again. We couldn't put ourselves back together. But God, in His grace and in His love, moved toward us through Christ and reconciled us to Himself.
And then notice what Paul says next. He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. So God reconciles us, and then He gives us a ministry. He saves us, and then He sends us. He puts us back together, and then He uses us to help put others back together. That is the logic of the gospel. That is the flow of what Paul is saying here.
The Message We Carry
Look at verse 19. "Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." So now we not only have a ministry of reconciliation, we have a word of reconciliation. We have a message. We have something to say. God has entrusted to us the message that He is not counting people's trespasses against them, that through Christ the broken relationship can be restored.
I want to come back to the man born blind that I mentioned at the beginning. When he was questioned by the Pharisees, he didn't have all the theological answers. He didn't have a systematic theology worked out. He simply said, I was blind, and now I can see. He must have been a prophet, and He must have been from God, because only God could do something like this. He didn't wait until he had all the answers. He spoke from his experience of what God had done.
And I think that is instructive for us. You and I are placed on this earth for a reason and a purpose. God saves us for a reason and a purpose — to glorify Him, to bring honor to Him. And one of the ways that we glorify Him and bring honor to Him is by living a life that is distinct and different. As your life is transformed, it is transformed by a renewing of your mind and a changing of your heart, a changing of attitude, so that people no longer become objects that you use to accomplish your agenda, but they become creations of God for you to love, so that they might sense the love of God in you, and you have the opportunity to point them in God's direction.
Love First, Then Evangelism
Even in evangelism, we can get this backwards. We can be nice, we can be sharing, we can be doing all the right things — but doing them so that we have the opportunity to evangelize. That turns people into clients. It makes them a means to an end. The right posture is this: I am loving them because they are God's creation, and through this love I will perhaps have an opportunity to evangelize. It is simply letting Jesus love you so you can love others, so that you can share with them His love. That is a marvelous truth.
Motivated by What God Did
Now I want to come back to verse 18 in the passage before us, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 18. Paul says, "Now all these things are from God." The word "these" — if you are reading from the New American Standard it is in italics, indicating it is implied. If you are reading from the NIV or the English Standard Version, it probably says "all this." The idea captured is the same. Paul is referring to what came before — as far back as verse 11, where he talks about us being reconciled to God.
He says in verse 14 that the love of Christ controls us — because we died with Him. He says in verse 15 that we no longer live for ourselves — because we died with Christ. He says in verse 16 that we see people differently now — because we have been reconciled and have new eyes to see. And then verse 17: "If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creature. The old things have passed away, and the new things have come."
It seems very important to make sure that as we think about going and delivering the gospel message, we are reminded of what God did in our own life. If we can get that bigger and more real and genuine in our life, the likelihood that we will go and share the gospel becomes much greater. I went the other night and saw a preview of the movie Amazing Grace. It was a good movie, and I think you would benefit from seeing it. But when you see a movie like that, you cannot wait to tell your friends about it. When you go to a restaurant and have a wonderful dinner, you cannot wait to tell someone. When you go to a play and have an amazing experience, you say, you have got to go see this.
If I truly understand what Christ accomplished for me, sharing it almost becomes natural. So what did He do for us? He forgave us of our sins — I know that. But is there anything else?
Humpty Dumpty and the Gospel
My son Brayden loves this little book. It is one of those books that plays nursery rhymes when you press the buttons — a parent's dream, because you give it to him and he keeps himself busy. He was sitting there playing with it the other night while I was thinking about what I wanted to teach and how I wanted to teach it. And he pressed one of the buttons, and out came this rhyme.
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."
And then the sound of an egg cracking. The end.
And I thought — that is what Jesus did for me. I had fallen. I was broken. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Tom back together again, and Tom couldn't put himself back together either.
Let me tell you a little bit about Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty was actually a cannon used in the English Civil War in 1648. The town of Colchester was surrounded by a wall to fortify it. Right inside the wall was St. Mary's Church, and this cannon rested on the church. When the town was attacked, the church was destroyed and the cannon fell to the ground. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again — because it was a broken, destroyed cannon. That is the origin of that rhyme.
And that is us. Broken, fallen, unable to be put back together by any human effort or power. And yet God put us back together. All these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ — and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
The Broken World We Live In
Like Humpty Dumpty, you have fallen. That's Genesis 3. You are broken, and the world you live in is broken. If you end Genesis 2 with peace and harmony — they're naked, they're in the garden, they're happy — and then you begin Genesis 4 with war, murder, strife, hatred, lying, and jealousy, you have to ask: what in the world happened in Genesis 3? What happened is that we fell. And the world fell.
You look around and you see destruction and pain everywhere. Nations are warring. We don't feel secure as a nation, physically secure. Virtually all of us believe that something like 9/11, only bigger, will happen. We run into people all day long who cheat and lie and steal and murder and gossip.
Families are broken. Marriages disintegrate. Siblings — people who share a DNA chain — don't even talk to one another. Kids are abandoned. Kids hate parents, parents hate kids. Neighbors are suing neighbors. That is the world you live in.
To summarize it: people are sick physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. All you have to do is turn on the radio to hear this. I couldn't sleep last night, so I turned on talk radio. Make a note to yourself — if you have a hard time sleeping, don't turn on talk radio. That is a really stupid idea, because now you are so energized and so angry about everything you hear. People are so desperate that on one show they call in hoping to be connected to the other side, to someone who has died and gone ahead. The world is broken.
The Condition of the Human Heart
But set that aside for a second, because so are you. Your heart is depraved. You love evil more than you love good. You care about yourself more than you care about your Creator. You are immersed in sin. This may be the best description I have ever heard — Tyler used it one night: if sin were blue, we would be a Smurf. Immersed in sin. That is who we are.
And like Humpty Dumpty — and this is really important — there was nothing that could happen to fix it. All the king's horsemen and all the king's men couldn't put you back together again. All the world's power and all the world's resources couldn't save you, nor could you save yourself. Though we go through life trying to find some way to make that work — whether it be power, success, money, fame, education, drugs, or sex — they all seem at times like maybe they could be the thing that would put us back together and somehow make us whole.
But the problem is not financial or educational. It is spiritual. We are not in right relationship with Christ. That is the problem. We need to be reconciled.
What Reconciliation Means
Here is an illustration. If I tell you that Mark and I have been reconciled, and that is all you know, then you already know something important: there was a pre-existing hostility of some degree, because now we have been reconciled — restored. Here is what I am saying to you: God put you back together again. You couldn't do it yourself, and though you may have pursued a variety of things in that process, He is the one who accomplished it.
Turn to 1 John chapter 5, the very end of that little book at the back of your Bible. If you have not read 1 John in a while, it is a wonderful little book. Notice, as you read it, how often you will see the word *know*. John is trying to tell us we can know something. Here is the heart of verse 20: "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 Christ. This is the true God, and this is eternal life." Eternal life is found in Christ and Christ alone.
Then John writes what is a somewhat unexpected close to this letter — 1 John chapter 5 verse 21: "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." What are idols? A couple of study Bibles ago, Larry was teaching on idols and made a comment that has become the definition I use: an idol is anything or anyone that takes the place in your life that only God should have. That is an idol.
Idols and the Quest for Wholeness
Here is what John is saying. If you are trusting anything other than Christ to put you back together again — to sustain you and to continue growing you in Him — anything other than that is an idol. All of our sin is really a quest to keep idols active in our lives, because we start to trust them and think we are going to find satisfaction, identity, or security in something other than Christ.
Susan and I were on the back porch yesterday afternoon talking about a variety of things. It is tax time, so she is very busy. She said that on the schedule we are on, the house will be paid off in a year or two or three, whatever it is. I said I had been doing some work on retirement as well, and everything is exactly what we projected it to be, and barring any huge disaster, we should be in a position at whatever age it is —
Finding True Security
If I'm trying to find my identity in anything other than Christ, if I'm trying to trust anything other than Him to put me back together again, I'm a mess. I realized this when I found myself placing my security in my retirement plan rather than in Him. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a retirement plan, but our real security is only in Christ.
Everybody is going to serve somebody. This week I was listening to a gentleman teaching, and here is what he said — and I think it is a great line: Jesus is the only master that will satisfy you and not exploit you. Whatever we enslave ourselves to will ultimately take advantage of us. That drug that gives a high the first time and seems so much fun for a moment ultimately captivates and destroys.
I was online this morning before coming over, checking the news, and there was a picture of Britney Spears with her head shaved, along with the whole account of what went with it. I don't think it is possible to look at that and not feel deeply sad for her. This is the pop icon who has all the stuff the world says should make you happy. If you ever need an illustration that the world cannot make you happy, just Google that.
The Life of a Missionary Driven by Love
When I understand that if sin were blue I would be a Smurf, and I understand that I could not put myself back together again, and I understand that Christ did all of that not because of me but in spite of me — then whatever problem the world faces, I know Jesus is the answer. I begin to live the life of a missionary in this culture with a great deal of ease, not driven by guilt, but by love. I begin to see people as God sees people and love people as God loves people.
I read part of this quote last week when we were talking about love. Ray Stedman writes this: "Such love is a sign of a new life. It's a love which not only loves those who love you, but who loves those who don't love you. It's a love which does not depend on reciprocal relationship, but a love that loves anyhow. Loving the unlovely, loving the unqualified, loving the ungrateful, and the selfish, and the difficult. When Christian love is born, a change takes place and we begin to see people as people. Not rivals, not friends, not foes, but as people. People just like us. People needing love, having problems, feeling fears, anxieties, experiencing troubles. Now all of a sudden we are able to empathize and sympathize, to enter into their life. This then is the character of true love and it's always evidence that a new life has come, a life born of God."
The Knockoff and the Real Thing
All of a sudden, with that kind of love, you are no longer attracted to a knockoff. You know what a knockoff is — TaylorMade will come out with a golf club, and about two weeks later there will be a club that looks just like it. It is not the real thing. It always costs far less than the real thing, never performs at the level of the real thing, and rarely lasts as long as the real thing.
You might want a Louis Vuitton bag but not want to spend eight hundred dollars, so you get one for twenty-nine ninety-five. Even Louis himself could barely pick out the differences at first. But after about a week it starts to unravel, and after ten days your friends are saying, "Wait a minute — that's Bobby Vuitton, not Louis Vuitton." It looked good originally and gave you the sense it might be the real thing. But following Christ is costly, while the knockoff is cheap, and it never performs and never lasts. In Christ, however, you become a real lover in biblical terms.
Just Be Nice
I was fascinated by the response to last week's message. I have never received more positive response to a message than I got last week. As I traveled around the valley this week, people who do not even attend here told me they had gone online to listen because of all the talk about it. If you missed it, let me give you the message quickly. Here is the life-changing message that shook the valley: be kind to one another, be courteous to one another, smile and say hello. That is it. Just be nice.
Why is that so revolutionary? Because somehow, for whatever reason, we seem unwilling or unable to be nice. I made a list of reasons why. You may be busy — hurrying to the counter to get your badge so you can be a greeter, or wrangling kids as a family just trying to get everyone through the door. A husband checks in one set of kids while his wife checks in another. We are herding cats. We are frantic.
Or you might be hurting — physically or emotionally, so much has come at you that you are really hurting. You might be new and simply do not know anyone on campus. You might be self-sufficient, someone who pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps and does not need anyone to say hello — and so it feels like an inconvenience to say hello to others. Or it could simply be that you are lazy, because saying hello is genuinely hard work. Five or ten of those and you need a nap.
The Gospel as a Way of Life
Whatever your reasons for not connecting with others, notice they are all about you. If you are new, the fastest way to not feel new is to say, "Hello, I'm Bob, I'm new." If you are hurting, the fastest way to get out of your pain is to serve somebody else. If you are lazy, the quickest way to be energized is to interact with God's people and have Him use you in a significant way. All of a sudden, next time you are tired and spent, it is a good kind of spent, because He has been using you in a significant way. If you don't care, you have issues, and if you are self-sufficient, you are deluded. We need one another.
See how simple this is — and yet this is how the gospel comes to life. My sense is that for too long the gospel and the ministry of reconciliation has been something we feel we have to do. "What are you doing tonight?" "I have to go evangelize." Rather than saying, "No, it is just a natural expression of the way I live." It is as natural as brushing your teeth, or saying hello, or talking to someone. It is living it. This gospel is not just the message, the word — it is the way that I live.
It is the simplest things. All of a sudden you develop a habit of being kind, and it carries over beyond the geographic borders of the church. Now you are kind at home, at work, and all sorts of places, and people begin to say, "What in the world happened to you? What is so different about you?" And you say, "You know what, I was never this way until Jesus did something in my life."
"I never realized it, but I had a twin — Humpty Dumpty. He had fallen and he couldn't get up. I had fallen and I couldn't get up. I couldn't put myself back together again, and the world couldn't put me back together again. All the deals and all the stuff just didn't do it for me. Then one day I realized that I am a Smurf, and that Christ died for Smurfs." Now, I wouldn't necessarily use that as a presentation, but do you see how that begins to flow?
Seeing People as People
I want to read this sentence again, because this sentence lights me up: when Christian love is born, a change takes place, and we begin to see people as people — not clients, not statistics, not even souls that are lost. They are people. They are people like ourselves who need love, who have problems, who feel fears and anxieties, and who are experiencing trouble. They are living life just like you, and the answer for you was Jesus, and the answer for them is Jesus.
New Things Have Come
Look at verse 17: *"Therefore if anyone is in Christ..."* What does that mean? It means that for those of us who are Christians, we have identified with Christ. When Christ died, He died for us. He was punished for our sin. If I am in Christ, it means I have hope. It also means that anyone who believes in Him can have hope — that no one is beyond the reach of God. It doesn't matter your lot in life, your position in life, your location or geography. It doesn't matter.
*"If anyone is in Christ, if anyone is genuinely converted, all the old things have passed away."* What are the old things? The old value systems, the old priorities, the old beliefs, the old plans, the old agendas, the sin, the love of sin. The old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come. What are the new things? A new agenda, a new list of things that I love, a new list of priorities, a new list of plans, a new perspective.
Grateful for the New Creature, Not Just a New Location
I had lunch Thursday with four guys I used to work with twenty-three years ago — two of them probably believers, one not, and the other I'm not sure. We talked about people, things we used to do, and an annual trip the company used to take down to Rocky Point that got a little wild periodically. It was good to connect, and one of the guys in particular hung around afterward in the parking lot and said he'd love to get together again, which was wonderful.
As I was driving away, I was genuinely grateful to God for those experiences. God saved me in the midst of all of that sin and stuff. I am grateful for that. But I am really grateful — and more importantly — that He made me a new creature inside. He didn't remove me from there physically; He removed me from my sin.
Some of you are grateful that you got out of a place, and so you think you need to geographically change locations to get away from the sin. Here is the problem: once you do that, you have moved away from all the lost people who need to hear your message. How are you going to have a ministry of reconciliation if you are severing all your relationships with those people?
Think about it this way: when we send people into another country as missionaries, we immerse them in the culture. Here at home, we are trying to get people out of the culture. That makes absolutely no sense. You need to have lost friends. The key is that with those lost friends, you don't act like they do. You don't have to beat them over the head with a Bible or spit Bible verses at them. They simply see something different about you — something compelling — where they say, "That is not how you used to be. There is something different about you now. I don't know what it is, but there is something. What is it?" And you tell them how Jesus put you back together again.
Sharing the Only Thing That Works
There is no end—the end for you and me is glorification with Christ in heaven forever. In the conference room this morning we sang a song with a simple line: "I have nothing without you. All my soul needs is all your love to cover me." And He has done that. He has done that for you.
Shouldn't it be the most natural thing in the world, then, to want to share that message of love with the people around you? I have people stop me all the time and say, "I had a friend who was sick, who had cancer. I know your wife has cancer. This is the doctor, this is the hospital, this is the medicine, this is the treatment, this is the herb, this is the massage, this is the position, this is the exercise." Complete strangers will stop me—people I don't even know—and say, "Aren't you Tom Schrader?" Yes. "Your wife has cancer." Yes. "Let me tell you about..." That is aggravating and frustrating, but they are motivated by love and concern.
Here is the thing, though, and we have said this many times: I don't care if God heals Susan right now. Somewhere along the way she is going to die of something. You and I are facing people all day long who are spiritually sick, and you have the only thing that works—Christ. If they don't receive this, they will be sick not only for their time on earth but for all eternity, separated from God.
You have the only thing that works. The only truth. Everything else is an idol, a knockoff, a false god—but you have the one thing that works. When you begin to pray, "God, make real in me what You have done in my life, so that when I see people I will feel compelled to respond," you will feel a freedom in the midst of that. A desire, not a fear. A desire to say, "Listen, it's not me—it's Jesus in me."
Love Jesus More
So here you go, and you may not like this next part. Now you have this thing that you don't want to do or feel you can't do. What do you do when you don't want to do that? Here is the answer: love Jesus more. Love Him more.
Everybody wants eighteen points, exercises, books to read, and tapes to listen to. We are drowning in theology, and I am not anti-theology—but we are drowning in it, thinking, "I can't possibly begin to share Jesus until I have yet one more class, because somebody may ask me about a dinosaur." Here is a great answer to a question you don't know: "I don't know." You are like the blind man—"I don't know. All I know is I was lost and now I'm found." All you know is that you are a sinner, that was your problem, God showed you that through His Word, and He sent Christ to die so that you can have eternal life.
And it is not then that life gets better, because sometimes life gets more difficult. But you now have God's perspective on your life, not your own. You are not trusting in idols, not putting your faith in knockoffs. You are trusting in the real thing—the truth, the way, the life.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
What God has done is reconcile us to Himself through Christ. How did He do that? Jesus came and died for our sin. That is important. But now He says this must be so real to you that you take this ministry of reconciliation—that message—to your world, the very place He strategically placed you.
Next week we are going to talk about world ministries, which has a great deal of local application—what we are doing and how you can be involved. I want to come back the following week to really finish this passage, talk about that ministry of reconciliation, challenge myself and you to live a life that is distinctive and different, and take those truths into the marketplace. Then we will return to our study in the life of Christ.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for this wonderful truth. Thank You that if we believe in You and trust in Your Son Jesus, we have eternal life and we are a new creature—not remodeled, not reformed, but transformed. A new creature. Those old values and priorities are gone. We still battle, and in that battle, Father, we pray that Your Spirit would fill us and strengthen us. As we begin to live the life we know we are supposed to live, a life of obedience that becomes really common sense, may we do it in a way that brings honor and glory to You.
Father, help us hold a mirror up to our lives and see ourselves as we really are, and ask some serious, penetrating questions. When I look at me, do I see Your Son Jesus? Do I see somebody who is loving and caring and kind? Do I see the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control? We want it more and more in our lives, that people would look at us and be driven to ask, "What is the deal? What is the difference?" And then in humility we can point them not to ourselves but to You.
God, our message is simple: we were blind and now we can see. Help us take these scriptures and learn them and know them, fill our minds and hearts with them. And then more importantly, God, as that exercise takes place, let it transform not just our thinking but the way we live. In spite of our hurt and our pain and our laziness and our selfishness and our apathy and our busyness, let us be men and women who reflect real, genuine, Christ-like love. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.