Deepening Our Concern

Sermon Transcript

Well, it’s certainly been a disturbing week for most of us, if not all of us, and it should be a palpable reminder as to why we need to meet together, physically together, as the Scripture says, “and all the more as we see the Day drawing near.” And there is a good reason for that. And we should be able to tell when the Day is drawing near, according to Second Timothy Chapter 3, because it is prophetically given to us that the day that we are living in should be discernible because of that text. And it wasn’t given just to Timothy, it was given actually to tell us “that in the last days,” as we near the return of Christ, “there come times of difficulty.” That’s how it’s set up in the first verse there of Second Timothy Chapter 3, “times of difficulty.” And then it goes on to explain with twenty indicators of what that will look like, the “times of difficulty.” And just to point out a few of those in light of what we’ve lived through. One that you might not expect to have on that list is the sixth thing on the list. The sixth thing listed of the twenty is that people will be “disobedient of their parents.” Now you look back and you think, you know, that doesn’t seem unique and surely it wasn’t. I mean, the three-year-olds have always been disobedient to their parents and teenagers have been disobedient to their parents. But there’s something about the last days where there is going to be a departure of the generation coming up saying, you know, we reject, you know, what our parents say.

We read in our Daily Bible Reading just this last week that proverbial principle, “train up a child in the way he should go; even when he’s old will not depart from it.” That’s a proverbial principle. That’s a pattern. And you’re going to see in the end days, that’s just not going to be the general case. In the last days you’re going to see this generation, which we can, I mean, we can sketch it out for us today with the kind of university and even community college system we have doing all that they can to detach the generation from whatever foundation they had in a family structure to just to sever anything from what their parents have taught them. It is a mess. And if you haven’t looked at it in the last 30, 20, 15 or even five years, what’s being taught in colleges and universities across our country it is a mess, to put it mildly.

To be in the last days is certainly to see a kind of a young angst and rebellion against any authority that tries to hang on to what we would call tradition, or something that is conserving something from the past, something that would, as we would put it in worldview terms, conserve what would ensure human flourishing. And it seems very progressive, but I think it is, in essence, in old phrases, certainly typified by the phrase disobedient to parents. Later in that list it says an interesting phrase. The old translations I’ve always remembered from my childhood the way it was translated. It takes the word “Storgē,” and it puts in the Greek language, a negation in front of it, “astorgos.” It’s a noun but the old translation said a loss of natural affection. The English Standard Version translates it to be “heartless,” which is not a bad translation because that’s a good way to say it, it’s like you don’t have, you know, a heart, but that’s a euphemistic way or at least an idiomatic way in English to say it’s like a loss of humanity. It’s like you just don’t… storgē is the Greek word for kind of like you would have a natural, you know, human, familial love. It’s like you’re heartless. It’s the kind of thing that you might think of seeing even beyond the horror of someone stabbing someone on a light rail system in Charlotte, North Carolina, it’s worse than that. It’s seeing the perpetrator walk away and having, you know, four or five people sitting around watching a young lady bleed out and then crumple to the ground of that train car and have everyone sit around continuing to listen on their, you know, EarPods and their headphones like it’s no big deal. You’d say, where’s the humanity? Like what’s happening? Nobody cares?

Or people pulling out their phones and recording after someone is assassinated. And to say, you know, this is great. It’s a good thing. Well, I didn’t like what he said, so, well, you know, I hope they kill his widow and his children as well, which I must have heard 20 or 30 times in the last few days. You’d say, where’s the storgē? Where’s the human affection? Where’s the heart? I mean, where’s the humanity? And the Bible prophetically forecasted in the last days you can see a ton of that. The times of difficulty will come because the world, we’re going to see that ramping-up. And there’s one, I think, on that list, 13th on the list, you’d say, well this is something you’d want to describe in the last week, the 13th listing on that difficult times is people will be “brutal.” That’s a good word, a good translation of the problem. People are brutal. It’s like an expression of something that goes like… it’s less than the passivity of saying, I don’t care. It’s like if you get in the way, I’m going to do whatever it takes, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m heartless all bets are off, no holds barred. It doesn’t matter what it takes to get you out of the way. I’m going to do it. And we see that.

I mean, when you start having people use words like fascist or you say, you know, let’s just go back a few years, if you don’t bake and design a cake for my views on morality, you know, well then I have the right to attack you. Or if you’re not proposing that I’m right about my views on what I do in my bedroom, then your silence is violence. If I start using words like that and then I can attack you, or I can break the windows of your business, and I can, you know, I can torch your storefront, or I can burn down your house and you start saying this is brutal. This is brutal. What are you talking about? This is brutality. This is thuggery. And you think, yeah, well, that’s what the last times… That’s why they’re going to be so difficult. It’s going to sound a lot like Genesis Chapter 6, right? When Jesus said, like in the days of Noah, there’s going to be a lot going on that’s going to be pretty brutal. In the last days, there will be times of difficulty because people can be brutal. Near the end of the list, there’s this one Greek word and it’s translated with this phrase, and they’ll be “swollen with conceit.” I guess after watching people be heartless and brutal with their actions and their words, there’s one thing that spills out a lot of things that you think nothing could describe it better than swollen with conceit.

Now you see that phrase in the Bible translating this word but what’s interesting is you see this Greek word used in just the Greco-Roman literature outside of the Bible, sometimes it’s used as a word to describe people who are mentally ill. And I think it kind of blurs the line when you see people so absolutely narcissistic about their views of things. They can say the most illogical things because they are the center of the universe and logic no longer works on them. It’s just that they don’t care. They will not listen to reason because they are swollen with so much conceit that you can’t reason with them anymore. And literally in the first century the word that Paul is using to Timothy there in Second Timothy Chapter 3, it’s the 19th on the list, he says it’s swollen with conceit. You’ve just lost your mind. In the last days it’s going to be difficult. These times of difficulty will come because this is how people are going to be.

The first thing on the list, which really is the predicate, is the foundation for all of them, is something that’s been going on since Genesis 3, but it’s almost like the muffler is coming off. It’s like the muzzle is coming off. It starts this way. “In the last days … times of difficulty” are going to come, right? Times of difficulty will come because people will be, here’s the header, “lovers of themselves.” Now, of course, this is the thing we’re always battling, right? Lovers of themselves. And what’s interesting is that the book ends on this really in Chapter 3 verses 2 through 4, the bookends that you see in those verses when it lists all these things is the one that ends this, in verse 4 at least, is the word, it’s kind of like a reprise of that. It says “lovers of self” at the beginning which was all these things, and I mentioned just a few. And then it says, “Lovers of pleasure,” and then it contrasts it, “rather than lovers of God.” And I think to myself, okay, if I’m a lover of myself, if that characterizes me, then you can start to understand all these things. And this is a great passage logically to kind of sort out and syntactically arrange it and you kind of see how it all works. It’s like, okay, if I’m a lover of myself and I kind of pull off all the restraints, I can see how all those things magnified. And if I just kind of see the acceptance in society where I just kind of don’t care then I can see myself just shooting my opponents, I could see that. I can see standing by watching people bleed out and just not caring. And it’s all about me. And I can see being totally illogical and thinking if you don’t support me then I hate you, or I can kill you. I can see all that. And I realize it’s ultimately about being a lover of pleasure. It’s about I want what I want. And it takes me back to the sixth one on the list, which is I’m “disobedient to parents.” It’s not just parents. If parents tell me I can’t do what I want because it brings me pleasure, well then I’m against you. Not only do I disobey you, I despise you. And if it’s not a parent, if it’s a government or if it’s a pastor or it’s a Bible, or if it’s a religion, if it’s the Supreme Court or if anyone says to me you can’t do it, well then you are public enemy number one. I can see how that works.

Now, you live through a week like we’ve just lived through, and you think to yourself, okay, this is the world that we’re in, and you see it in such dramatic ways, and you get angry when you start seeing these things compound, and then it becomes such a huge thing, and then it’s everywhere you look and it’s in the headlines and it’s everywhere in social media and you get angry. Which, by the way, just to kind of clarify, hopefully this you already know, if you don’t get angry then something’s really wrong with you. As one old-time preacher said if you don’t get angry in the face of wickedness then you’re a fungus, is how we put it. And I’ll just put it this way if you don’t get indignant over extreme wickedness then you’re not righteous. Let’s put it that way. In Psalm 119 alone when David, and I believe it’s David who writes this Psalm about God’s Word; he says it three times. And the most extreme way he puts it in Psalm 119 is this. He talks about a kind of indignation. He says, “hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked.” He repeats it in different ways throughout that long psalm. It’s the longest chapter of the Bible, the psalm. It’s the longest psalm in the Bible. And I even like the verb. It seizes me. There’s no way around it. It’s going to seize you. If you get confronted with wickedness, hot indignation, and even the verb it’s just like, you know, sometimes I’ll tell, you know, my coworkers or my wife or whatever when I’m angry. If I want to add like how angry I am, I’ll say I’m white-hot anger right now, right? So that’s a good adjectival qualifier. I’m hot, like white-hot anger. And wickedness like the variety of Second Timothy Chapter 3 can get you angry. And if you’re not angry, and indignant is a good word, because that’s the kind of the just anger, then you’re not righteous. You have a barometer of right and wrong. You should be indignant.

God is indignant all the time. Psalm 7 verse 11 says you know, God is angry every day. Right? He’s frustrated every day. Why? Because the world is full of anger and he sees it all. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.” Now he’d be happy all the time if all he saw was good but he sees all the evil. So of course he’s angry every day. That’s what Psalm 7 says. So of course we have a God who’s angry and if you’re godly, you’re going to be angry. Now here’s where we’re stuck, because a lot of people sat there in that anger this week. So what do we do? Well, the categories of verse 4 in Second Timothy Chapter 3 are: there are those who are “lovers of pleasure rather than the lovers of God.” And here we are saying, well, that’s not me. I’m a lover of God and I go to my church and I learn how to love God more. And that means I have to deny myself. And I have to say the pleasure that my flesh wants me to indulge in, I have to know to become a Christian, as he teaches me at church and the pastor and the Bible and all the rest, I know I have to, as Luke 14 says verse 33, I’ve got to know that I get to deny all that. I have to take up my cross and follow him which is the beginning of that in verse 25 says, and all the way through verse 33, I have to renounce these things and I have to say no. And as Peter says, the passions of my flesh they “wage war against your soul.” So I’m in that battle. I have to say no to the pleasures that are sinful, and I have to say yes to God because I love God. I’m going to keep his commandments. And so I’m in this battle and I’ve tried to say no to those things and yes to God because I love him. And so I see these two groups and I see the world, they’re reveling in their sin, they’re celebrating their sin, and the wickedness is on display. But I’m over here and so I see that polarization. And when I get angry at sin that is unmuzzled and it’s unbridled you have people over here indignant about it on display and they don’t know what to do. They get to roll up their sleeves and say, well, let’s go to war. And you hear a lot of that this week, and you poke the bear now, now we’re ready. And they’re sharpening their swords. And now what do we do? And I’m just here to say, okay, that’s really what we need to talk about here.

And you thought, well I thought we were studying Second Corinthians 5. That’s what we were here to do. And you’re right. This is all an introduction to Second Corinthians 5, believe it or not. (audience laughing) And I’ll tell you why because if you were with us last time we were studying this that’s exactly where we left off. We were in a passage that dealt with these concepts. Actually, the last two studies led us to where we were. As a matter of fact, let me try to tie all this introduction together with where we were. Second Corinthians 5 verse 15 said this: that Christ “died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Now follow me on this. Does that not sound exactly like Second Timothy Chapter 3 verse 4? That’s exactly what I just quoted. You can be a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God and that’s going to ramp up in these difficult days at the end. Now we’re living in those difficult days at the end. Now no, I don’t know how close, but clearly we’re closer now than we were 100 years ago or even ten years ago and it’s clear because all this is ramping up, right? There’s a day when they said, well we just want to do this. We want to abscond with your institution of marriage and let us do it however we want and a lot of Christians sat on their hands said okay, I guess. Right? And then it was like, if you don’t make us a cake and print us banners and use your artisan skills well then, you know, then we’re going to take you to court. And then it was like and if you don’t support us with your words then your silence is violence, and then if you don’t let us adopt your babies, you know, we’re going to take you to court. And eventually it was like, you know, if you don’t say that men are women and women are men and then you’re bigots and then we’re going to shoot you if you say otherwise. I mean, we’re basically in this quick deterioration of society. And you know we’re at a place where it’s just absolutely accelerating exponentially.

We are definitely in those times of difficulty. I don’t know how bad it’s going to get. I don’t know how bad it was in the days of Noah other than what I read in Genesis Chapter 6 verses 6 and 7. And it’s bad where we thought “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. And God was grieved to his heart over this. So we’re in this bad ramping up period of time. But I know when it says in the passage, “Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” I read about in Second Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 15, that I’m supposed to no longer live for myself, which is what verse 2 in Second Timothy Chapter 3 said, and it plays out by loving pleasure, I’m supposed to say, no, I’m not going to do that anymore. I want to live for him who died for me and rose again. Which means I’m going to be a lover of God and of his Son.

So I know that’s what it’s all about. And the last verse we studied last time we were together on Second Corinthians 5 was this very famous verse in verse 17 which said, “therefore,” which wrapped up everything in front of it, “if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old has passed away; behold new things have come.” We think, okay, that’s great. We can think about the fact that God takes people who were lovers of themselves and lovers of pleasure. And he has made them new creatures and the old things about saying, I’m just thriving on getting as much pleasure as I can, as much as I can get away with or in our day, that people just get as much as they can. And I say to my parents and they say to religion, I say to pastors, and I say to anybody that says, I can’t do it, government laws, whatever, you get out of my way, I’m going to do it. This is no longer who I am. Now I’m going to try to love God. I’m going to restrain my passions, and I’m going to say yes to the authorities that align with Scripture, and I’m going to do what’s right. We said praise God, he’s in the business of making me a new creature. And we said that’s what God does. And we said yeah, that’s great.

What I don’t want to miss as you’re sharpening your swords to go to battle against the wickedness of our society that you can’t forget that is what we’ve been studying, is that people who love themselves and love pleasure we’ve been studying that the whole point is God is in the business of changing those people. And so wait a minute, is it just about drawing battle lines up and saying, okay, we just have two different camps. Here’s what I’m trying to get to. Here’s the essence of what I’m trying to get to before we jump back into Second Corinthians 5. The whole point of the battle, I’m all about the battle, I believe in the battle. I believe in the battle so much so that First Peter Chapter 5 says this: I am supposed to live soberly and watching out because there is an adversary who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” I know that, right? I know that, but he’s identified, right? And he’s elsewhere I’m told. He doesn’t wear skin and he doesn’t have a skeleton; he’s not flesh and bone. I don’t battle against flesh and blood, but “against the spiritual forces of evil,” in other words, principalities and powers. Forces of the cosmic thing that’s going on out there. There’s God, right? And then there are these angelic forces that have rebelled. And so there’s this battle going on, this cosmic battle out there. And all the focus now is on this thing, this material thing where flesh and blood is going on and people are going around here, and there’s all this battle going on. Just read Job Chapter 1. It’s all about what’s going on here. And so the fight for people here is going on.

And so I have to know what’s going on here is for the hearts of people who are directing the flesh and blood. And here all we really have here, notice this carefully, are foot soldiers. That’s all we really have. And here’s the thing I need to know. There is an enemy and there is a conspiracy. It’s not the one you read about on Reddit or TikTok or Discord. The real enemy and the real conspiracy is the one going on that I can’t see. That’s what’s going on that is controlling what’s going on here. Now the control is not complete passivity. I understand there is complete culpability for decisions that people make, right? Judgment is real. Culpability is real. Responsibility is real. Decisions matter. But every foot soldier is a foot soldier, there are no lieutenants, there are no sergeants that wear skin. None. They’re all foot soldiers. And here’s the good news that we are learning in Second Corinthians 5. Note it carefully. Every foot soldier, at least theoretically, can be flipped. Every foot soldier, even the worst of them who dance on the graves of innocent people who get slaughtered for their opinion. Every single one of them with the most vitriolic, vulgar language, every single one of them who hates on Christians to their core, who have posted 40 videos that hate Christians, that hate me to the core. Every single one of them that hate with the worst hatred of all human beings, every foot soldier, every single one who wants every Christian on the planet dead. Every single one of them is a… There are no lieutenants, there are no captains. They’re all foot soldiers. They’re all just infantrymen, every single one. And they all can be flipped. They can all be flipped. They can all be flipped. That’s the whole message of what’s going on in Second Corinthians Chapter 5.

And you have to acknowledge that there’s a war going on and there are two camps. But as you rolled up your sleeves this week and you start talking about, like the seculars talk about, you poke the bear, now you poked the bear, you’ve awakened the sleeping giant. Right? Okay, great. I’m all for us not cowering to the culture war. Absolutely. But we are Christians, and we finally have gotten in God’s providence on the right Sunday to a passage to identify our role. And our role is this: every foot soldier, including the ones who want to take a bolt action .30-06 and look down a scope and figure out what Christian they want to kill next. Every single foot soldier can be flipped. Theoretically, every single one of them. Let me show you one. Can I show you one? Let’s turn to Acts Chapter 26 real quick. Let me introduce you to, as though you didn’t know him, a Christian killer. Can I introduce you to a Christian killer? Do you know who he is? He’s from a place called Tarsus. Tarsus. He was named after an Old Testament king named Saul. He’s going to end up writing half of the New Testament. He’s telling his story, this is the second time in the book of Acts, to the king. He’s unafraid now. He’s pro-Christian now. But he was killing Christians when we met him in Acts Chapter 9. Please listen to what he says because it’s exactly what we’re going to study in Second Corinthians Chapter 5, in the short time we have together this morning.

Acts 26, look at verse 16. Here is what the Christian killer says, who actually is only a private first class. That’s all he is, a foot soldier, and he is going to testify to the fact that he got flipped. Are you with me on any of this? Acts Chapter 26 verse 16. Guess what? The captain, the King of kings, happens to get involved in flipping another foot soldier and he meets him. Hey, “rise and stand on your feet.” There ain’t a foot soldier in the world that isn’t going to obey the King of kings and Lord of lords. “I’ve appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people.” Now the Jews, I know you’re a Jew but here’s the thing, they’re going to hate you. “and from the Gentiles,” I know you’re going to go to them. They’re going to hate you too, not all of them, but a lot of them, “to whom I’m sending you to open their eyes.” Guess what? I’m going to flip you right now. You’re now going to join the other team and your whole job now is going to be flipping people to the other team. You’re going to open their eyes.

Now, this is metaphorical language but guess what God did? And we learned about it back in Acts Chapter 9. God literally shut his physical eyeballs. He got blinded on the road to Damascus as he was going to kill more Christians. So he’s going to kill Christians… he’s a Christian-killer. He’s going to kill Christians. And he’s blinded physically, he’s brought to Ananias, and he’s going to now, a different Ananias than we met in Acts Chapter 6 by the way, a different guy, same name. And he’s going to now get his scales to fall off his eyes. He’s going to physically regain his sight, and he’s going to now get his metaphorical side, his mind opened up to the truth, and now God is going to commission him with that very thing. You’re going to now start opening people’s metaphorical eyes, their minds. You’re going “to open eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light,” notice this: “from the power of Satan to God.” Every single non-Christian this applies to them. They are under the power of Satan. You’ve got to believe that. I know you think they’re all independent contractors. They’re not. They are all under the power of Satan. Does that mean they’re not culpable? Did Mike Fabarez say that this morning? Did he? Nope, nope, nope, nope. They’re all culpable. I get it, they’re all responsible. They all deserve judgment. And they’re going to get judgment if they don’t repent. But they are all under the power of Satan. That’s the Satan. Satan? The same word in Hebrew. The same word in Greek. It’s the same word in English. It’s the same in all three languages. And it means “adversary,” the real adversary of God. He’s got people under his power. That’s why we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. Every adversary of Christianity, every adversary of righteousness, is under the power of the Satan, of the enemy of God.

And what we want is to turn them. I love that line in verse 18, “Open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light.” There’s the metaphor of opened eyes. They didn’t believe it. They didn’t understand it. They spewed folly. Now they’re going to get their eyes opened and they’re going to be freed from the power of Satan, and they’re going to be now under the power of God, “that they may receive forgiveness,” forgiveness, real forgiveness “of sins and a place among those who are sanctified.” Do you know what the word sanctified means? Do you know what the word in Greek is? Holy. They’re going to be set apart, holy, now made righteous, holy “by faith in me,” the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Christ. They’re going to be righteous. And so he says in verse 19, my whole hope for this sermon today, hey, king, I’m giving you my testimony here. “I wasn’t disobedient.” I did it. I went out and did it.

Turn with me to Second Corinthians Chapter 5. That’s what this whole passage is about. In the world’s longest introduction, that’s all setting us up for what we’re here to study, Second Corinthians Chapter 5. Now glance at verse 17. That’s where we ended last time. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Now it’s great to think about it if we thought about it in a mirror. Isn’t it great that we’re new creatures in Christ? That’s a fantastic thing that happened to us. Yay! He’s going to turn this now. Paul had been told you’re a new creature in Christ. You no longer hate Christians. Now you’re one of them. That’s a great thought. But he’s going to flip this really quickly and say, now you’re going to be an agent of that change in people’s lives. Verse 18, “All this.” Now that little demonstrative pronoun right there, the second word in verse 18, “all this,” all what? All this like changing people, turning them around, freeing them from Satan and making them part of God’s family. “All of this is from God.” That’s God’s work. That’s what God does. “Who through Christ,” he did it through the ministry of Christ, the whole point of Christ’s coming was to do this work, “he reconciled us to himself.” Did Christ reconcile Paul to God? Yes, of course. And then here’s the thing. Just like with Peter, James and John, as soon as he reconciles them, he then gives them the mission, and he “gave us the ministry of reconciliation,” Paul says. That’s exactly what he told King Agrippa. I got called to God. I was reconciled to God through Christ. And then all of a sudden now that’s my job, to go out there and start telling other people, hey, we’re going to swap teams here. You’re no longer going to be an adversary of God and to be all about unrighteousness. Now you’re going to be a proponent of righteousness. He “gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is,” think about it, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” Now don’t miss that. That’s not talking about every last individual in the world. The message goes out to everyone. We’re supposed to proclaim this in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth. This is a non-discriminating message. It should go out to everyone. And that’s exactly what Jesus proved in his earthly ministry. We’re going to tell this to everyone. That’s it. But every last person in the world gets reconciled? No, of course not. This is not a universal truth that every single last person gets saved. But it’s all people without distinction in the sense that it goes to Jew and Gentile, Scythian, barbarian, slave, free, Mexican, Canadian, Italian, right? Anybody in this world. Right? We have people from every tongue, tribe and nation as the book of Revelation says.

That’s great. He’s reconciling people from all over the place to himself. “Not,” here’s the beautiful thing, “not counting their trespasses against them,” as we just learned in Acts 26, he forgives them of their sins. It’s an amazing thing. Oh, and if we didn’t get it in verse 18, “and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation,” as soon as he forgives them, hey, now I have a job for you. Now you’re going to move from a foot soldier of hating God and Christianity and being a lover of yourself and pleasure. Now you’re going to join our team. Now you’ve got a message. Now let’s just sum it up with this. “Therefore,” verse 20, “we are ambassadors for Christ.” What Christ was all about, now you’re going to be all about that. You’re going to be an ambassador of him and his message as though, here in verse 20, “God making his appeal through us.” What’s his appeal? “We implore you,” we beg you, we’re saying it authoritatively, “we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” be reconciled to God. What’s the message? “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” There’s the message packed with rich, concentrated theology in verse 21. All that is really is the message, the core message of Christianity, of the gospel, the good news. “For our sake,” he did this for our sake, “he made him to be sin,” he’s going to bear the penalty of sin, “who knew no sin,” he was perfect, “so that in him,” if we’d be in him through repentance and faith, “we might become the righteousness of God.” We don’t bear this sin, Christ bears the sin. We get righteous. We’re accepted, fully accepted. We get out of the clutches of the enemy. Now we become people who love God. We’re fully accepted. Great news! We’ll take it.

Now, if you look at the worksheet and I hope you have the worksheet, at least download it digitally, you should every week before you come to church, get it on your phone. I don’t care what you do, how you get it, but it helps you at least understand. And sometimes, like this week when you look at it and you think it looks like you just put the verses in a blender and threw them on paper. Because if you look at point one, what does it say next to point one, verses 18a 19a 20b. Like what was wrong with Pastor Mike when he prepared this sermon? Well, there’s nothing wrong with me. Well, there are plenty of things, but here’s what I was trying to do. If you look at the breakdown of this passage, you can see him bouncing back and forth, bouncing back and forth. So I want to systematize the concepts here. And the first point is nothing other than really an assignment for you to take what he’s saying here and kind of look for it all throughout the Bible. And I just want to read the first part of verse 18, the first part of verse 19, and the last part of verse 20. Let’s just read those again and see if we can’t articulate and at least you see why I logically articulated the first observation in this passage as a homework assignment. Okay.

Verse 18, first part. “All this is from God.” Now remember what this is, all this changing people, moving them as new creations, new stuff coming. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.” He made peace between us and God. Christ did that. Amazing. God is all about that. Verse 19, “That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting the trespasses against them.” Christ came and he was able to accomplish that through his atoning work of his own life. That’s amazing. Bottom of verse 20, “God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” So he’s using people now to get this message out, and he’s using people to get that to say, hey, get right with God. That’s great. Look at all this stuff that God is doing. What is he doing? He’s trying to get people right with God, forgiving their sins, reconciling people who were alienated, hostile toward God, getting them together. This is what God is doing. This is what God’s about. This is one of the main things God’s about when it comes to looking at sinners and saying, wow, let’s get those people saved. I want you to study that. I want you to carefully study that. So the adverb here at the beginning of number one, I added that. Now let’s get the rest of it. Here’s the verb: study God’s heart. I want you to “Carefully Study God’s Heart.” And we’re kind of catching it in the beginning of verse 18, beginning of verse 19, and the bottom of verse 20, you’re seeing it. God’s all about making people who are all about loving themselves and loving pleasure. He’s really about getting people to fall in love with him by reconciling them and taking their sin and their penalty and getting it out of the way and forgiving them and reconciling sinners to himself, getting them from the clutches of the enemy and pulling them into himself. That is God’s saving passion. This is what his heart is about.

Let’s just start with the Father. The Father loves to save sinners. He is all about it. Think about Genesis Chapter 3. Adam and Eve sin. What God could have done, what God could have done, and what all the enemies of Christianity like to say, they love to say, you know, I heard it just this morning. “You know, if God really were going to create the world, I’d really be into believing in God if the world were a better place. All this sin in the world. Couldn’t God have done a better thing than building a world with cancer in it? And all these people getting killed and it’s just a terrible world.” We call this in theology, the theodicy. Theodicy means justifying the fact that God is good, knows everything, and has the power to stop evil, but he allows it for now. Right? But he’s still the God in charge, knows all things and can stop it. How is it that God does that? And the people, as I saw this morning, very popular people mocking God, blaspheming God and making light of God because God doesn’t stop all that, right? They mock God for that. They dismiss God. They call themselves atheists and agnostics because they think, “Well God has a world with people who have spina bifida in it, people who get killed early in life. What kind of world is that? I don’t believe that there is a God.” Okay, now they mock God, blaspheme God, and dismiss God because there’s sin in the world.

Now go back to Genesis 3. God could have solved the problem. Could he not? He created people to exercise dominion, to exercise all that’s going on in the Garden. Here’s something to prove that we can live copacetically in this world. I’m God, you’re a creature. We can have all human flourishing. Everything can be perfect. We can have the reality of Psalm 16:11 perfectly working in this world, that “at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Just let’s make sure God is God and creature is creature. And they say, no, I’m going to do what I want. Eat the apple if I want it, or whatever the fruit was. They think it’s pomegranates. The Jews thought it was pomegranates, whatever, right? Banana. Whatever you think. Is banana a fruit? I don’t know, but anyway, they sin. And Adam’s dumb enough to go, okay. And when Eve eats it and she has, whatever. You know the problem. I don’t want to talk about that. So all of that goes down. What could God have done? God could have said great, done. God solves the problem of the problem of evil by just destroying them, casting them into outer darkness. We don’t have the problem of evil. We don’t have the problem of evil if God just judges evil instantly. But God doesn’t. As a matter of fact, he introduces evil, introduces death by killing animals to clothe their shame. Then he introduces evil by saying, I’m going to now separate you from the Tree of Life so that you start to corrupt and die. I’m going to shut out the Garden so that you can’t live in it anymore, so that you’re not stuck in a state of sin so that we can start the world over and you’ll read about it later in Revelation 21 and 22. We’ll get to that a long time from now. But you’re not going to be stuck in this sinful relationship. And I should say, a sinful alienationship with me.

So God now creates a world where there are going to be problems. And all of that is based on his desire for redemption and fixing it. God didn’t have to fix it. God could have just been done with it. God takes no pleasure in judging people. Do you understand that? The whole point of tolerating evil from Genesis Chapter 3 all the way to Revelation Chapter 20 is because he is a gracious God, because he wants us to sing the song “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” That is the only reason as God is good. While they sit there and sip their bourbon and smoke their cigars and mock God, the whole reason they can do that is because God has graciously endured the sin so that people will come to repentance. That’s the whole point. And they don’t get it. They’re going to be so terribly embarrassed one day as they recognize the very thing that was the greatest expression of God’s love and mercy and grace was the thing they despise the most. It is a horrific thing. And what we need to do is to point that out. And when we get them to see this is what God wants you to see, this is an opportunity for reconciliation. This is your opportunity to get right with the living God.

God is a God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. I give you some verses on the discussion questions from Ezekiel, which is just a great book that repeats this 3 or 4 times. God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone.” Do you know that God says that? We often picture as we’re sharpening our knives and swords to go to war with sinners we think that God takes pleasure in that. God takes no pleasure in that. He makes that very clear. Ezekiel Chapter 33, Ezekiel Chapter 34. So many passages where he says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” Even the wicked he takes no pleasure in that. That is not what he takes pleasure in. And so for us to take pleasure in it? Jonah, think of Jonah. Jonah is sitting there in Jonah Chapter 4, looking down at the Assyrians and he’s mad at God for being gracious. I just want you to know God is not a God who wants to torch sinners. That’s not the God that we have. Will he? Oh, he will if there’s not repentance. Just know the Father loves to save sinners. Hey, the Son, does he? I don’t know, I think you can think about the second person of the Godhead. I “came to seek and save the lost.” How about the last three verses of Matthew Chapter 9? He looks at people and he has “Splagchnon” meaning “compassion.” They’re helpless like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and he says would you pray with me? There’ll be more people to go out there and represent my message and be ambassadors. Can you please pray to the Lord of the harvest that more people will be thrust out into the field? We need to get people freed from the power of Satan to stop loving pleasure and themselves and become lovers of God.

Do you think the Son, the second person of the Godhead, loves to see new creatures in Christ? Why did he appear to Saul of Tarsus and say, hey, hey, you’re going to be an agent of seeing people freed from the power of Satan because that’s what the Son is all about. How about the Spirit? Let’s just talk about the third person of the Godhead. If God is making his appeal through us, let’s just think about what he really, really specifically, technically means by that. First Timothy 6 says the Father is dwelling in unapproachable light that no one has seen or can see. The Son, according to Hebrews 1, is seated at the right hand of the Father. According to the Bible in Acts Chapter 1, the Spirit of God is coming to the Christians so that they might go out and be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. According to Luke Chapter 12 when I’m stuck and I’m dragged before the synagogues and the leaders, I’m supposed to trust in the Spirit to give me words to say when I’m representing Christ, because he’s going to help me respond when I’m trying to make sinners into saints. So the Spirit is the context making the appeal through me to tell people to be reconciled to God. All three persons of the Godhead desperately want to see. I mean desperate may be too weak of a word if it’s too anthropomorphic, maybe. But let me just say this. All three persons of the Godhead are poised and focused in Scripture from beginning to end, from Genesis 3 all the way through Revelation 19, to see people brought to repentance and faith. You just need to know that is the heart of God, and I just want you to study it. The next time you open your Bible, I don’t care where you’re at, just say where is the redemptive heart of God in this passage? Is there anything here I can learn about God’s heart to see sinners saved?

Now flip this. You have 18a, 19a, and 20b. Let’s just turn that around. What do we see in 18b and 19b and 20a? Well that’s our second point. Let’s look at 18b. He “gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” 19b he’s “entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” 20a, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.” Well, you can see that all weaves together nicely. He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. He’s entrusted to us the message of reconciliation. We are, then here’s a great illustration, “ambassadors of Christ.” Do you see that? Do you see why I didn’t just put these verses in a blender? I mean, this makes sense, right? We should then see that we correspond to that heart or at least we should. That’s why I use the word “decisively.” The adverb there “decisively” I want you to decide that you are going to purposefully connect with that heart. I put it this way. Number two, “Decisively Share God’s Zeal,” and I’ll call it that, because it is a passion. The heart of God is a passion or a zeal to see people saved. And I want you to decide to do that.

Do you ever see Orange County moms who had no interest growing up? Maybe they were prissy little girls with sisters, and they were ballerinas or violin players or whatever, and all of a sudden they have these burly sons growing up playing, you know, travel ball or pony league or whatever, their husbands are, you know, burly men and they knew nothing about baseball. But now all of a sudden, they’re buying $200 aluminum bats for their kids, and they’re sitting in the stands yelling at umpires like they’ve never even learned about baseball before. Now they know better than everybody on the team, including the coach. They are very zealous for the game of baseball as though they created the sport. And I think to myself, how did you get so zealous for this game? Right? You knew nothing about this game a year ago. Now all of a sudden you’re Abner Doubleday, and I’m thinking to myself, how did you get there? How did you become zealous for baseball? You know everything about cleats. You know everything about jerseys and everything about, you know, practice tees. You know, everything about batting gloves. How did you get here? It’s because you love Johnny, right? You love your kid. I know you could say well we’re going to waft into this the more I fall in love with Christ. But I think we have to start with saying I need to learn to love what God loves. And sometimes when you’re looking at non-Christians, just like Barnabas had to convince the disciples, do you know what? You need to start looking at Saul differently here because I know you see him as an enemy, but you have to start seeing not only him as a convert, but the people that he’s trying to convert. You have to see them as people who are helpless and harassed. And you have to have some splagchnon for them, some compassion for them so that we can start sharing the gospel. All I want you to have is a decisive kind of adoption of the zeal to want to see people saved. And that’s why I make this a decisive thing that you’re doing.

Now, this is something you have to take. Someone can give you the message of reconciliation. Or I should say in verse 18, the ministry of reconciliation and it’s like someone giving you a birthday present that you don’t really want, and you kind of walk out of the room, you have to take it, take it, the ministry of reconciliation. Pick it up and take it. Because you can sharpen your sword and just want to go to battle against the evil in our society but your ministry is to bring them to reconciliation with God. So take the ministry as distasteful as it is to you. Your job is to turn sinners into saints, and that is because God is doing that and he wants to do it through you. So you have to take the ministry. That’s the verb in verse 18, “give.” And then in verse 19 it’s the word “entrust,” which means you’re a steward, you’ve been given a message and you’ve been entrusted with that. And that trust, as Paul said, when you’re given a trust that makes you a steward, and if you’re a steward, woe to you if you don’t fulfill the stewardship. That’s what Paul said. He said, if I do this willingly, I have a reward, right? But if I just do it even begrudgingly, well, you know, at least I’m doing my job. Now it’d be much better if you do it willingly. So why don’t you do it willingly? But he said, woe to me, here’s a choice I don’t have, woe to me if I don’t do it. And here’s the reality. You have to see this is a trust, an entrustment, a stewardship. And then he gives us the illustration. “Therefore, we’re ambassadors.”

You have a responsibility as an ambassador. “Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.” You are going to fish for the King. You are to represent the King. You have, as Paul said and I’ll take you to this passage in your small groups, in Philippians Paul says twice, in two verses, I need to speak boldly because I am an ambassador. Now he spoke from prison. He had already paid part of the price. He was going to pay with his head eventually. But he said you know what? I have to be bold because I am an ambassador. And the whole point of boldness and I said this in my video to you this week, we need to be bold as a lion. Proverbs 28:1. You need to be as “bold as a lion” because boldness comes, not because you have a message that you came up with. It’s not like you’re pitching an invention to some investor or something, right? This is not your invention. You’re not coming up with this message. You have a message you’re sharing on behalf of the King. And just like Paul was tapped by the King to be a representative of the message, you come and share a message that’s not yours. And the message is found in verse 21. And I need you to accurately present that. Let’s put it that way. Number three, verse 21 is the embodiment of the message. “Accurately Relay God’s Message.” Accurately.

Now, you’ll often catch me saying this because of the over-sentimentalized way that people have truncated, reduced the message of the gospel, that the gospel isn’t telling your neighbor, Jesus loves you. I’ve said it a million times and I stand by it. The first, even the first words of the gospel aren’t Jesus loves you and he has a wonderful plan for your life. That’s not the way we start the appeal of the gospel. But the first three words in verse 21 are certainly in your mind should be something that motivates the directional disposition of your heart. Okay? What are the first three words of verse 21? “For our sake.” You just need to know when we say for our sake you just need to know the whole point of the gospel is God did this for sinners’ sake. When you’re sharing the gospel, when you think I really need to not see myself as adversarial toward the foot soldiers who can be flipped. I want to share the message with them knowing that for our sake, for humanity’s sake, for people who can be flipped, Christ has done all this.

So I want to think like Paul in Romans Chapter 10 verse 1. He says, “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” I have to start there. So it’s almost for me that I need to say Christ did this because he loves them, right? He died for them “that those who live might no longer live for themselves.” Why did he die for them? “Because God so loved the world that he sent his only Son.” So I do know love is the motivating factor of God in all of this. And that’s what Philippians 2 is all about. He put our interests before his own comfort and is all for his glory. I understand that, that’s where the passage goes in Philippians 2. But you do understand what I’m saying here. If your heart’s disposition is not that this is for their sake, then your whole approach to evangelism is going to be wrong. We’ve got to start with the point in my life, I want to share the gospel with these people not because I’m checking a box or not because I’m increasing their judgment one day and it really is some weird, roundabout way to get at them, right? I’m going to increase their judgment because I’m sharing the gospel, and I hope they get it worse on Judgment Day. No, for their sake God did this. And so for their sake, I want it to be my heart’s desire that they be saved.

So I like those first three words to try to help us through the dispositional motive of my heart. For their sake, “for our sake God made him to be sin.” You wouldn’t understand that. The idea of Isaiah 53, and the words were used in Isaiah 53 about a guilt offering. It says that God was pleased to crush him. Right? And ultimately it says offering him as a guilt offering. The guilt offering concept the first time it is used in the Bible is in Leviticus. And when Leviticus talks, I think it’s Chapter 5, about the guilt offering, in verse 15 when it describes the guilt offering, in that very verse it says, you’ve got to bring an animal and the first animal it lists is the ram. When you bring the ram for a guilt offering it must be without blemish. Okay. Then it was a big deal all throughout. Without blemish, without blemish, without blemish. The symbolic picture of you bringing an animal without blemish, and of course you could see why, if you’re going to waste an animal, which is you could think crassly as a selfish, greedy person, I’m going to go ahead and take this animal to church and get rid of it. Okay, I’ve got to give it away. I won’t be able to sell it; I won’t be able to use it. Well, I’m going to take one that, as Malachi 1 says, is lame or blind or whatever. I’m not going to get much for it anyway. No, no, no, no, you bring the best, you bring the blemishless one, the one with no blemish.

So the picture of the blemishless animal, the lamb, the ram in the case of Leviticus, of the guilt offering. I’m guilty. I’ve done wrong. I know I’ve sinned. And I’m coming to the ceremony to bring an animal that is without blemish. And the picture here is I feel guilt blemished, like I am, like it says in Isaiah, I have this guilt, Isaiah 1, that’s like I’m stained like crimson and I want this guilt stain gone. And so I’m going to take an animal that has no stain and I’m going to, as Leviticus Chapter 1 verse 4 says, I’m going to put my hand on the head of the animal, and there’s going to be this weird kind of symbolic transfer of my guilt to that blemishless animal and the animal is going to die. And that’s the picture of Isaiah 53. God is going to send his suffering servant, and there’s going to be this exchange. The innocent one who is without sin is going to become sin, so that I can go home and be in my own heart and mind through this weird illustration, I’m going to feel like, okay, God’s forgiven me. Now nothing’s really happened in spilling the blood of an animal. But when Christ comes this is the whole point. “For our sake he made him to be sin,” so that the one, “who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” in him. That’s what Romans 6 was all about. I was baptized into his death. When he became sin and died on a cross and the Father said, okay, you’re going to be punished as though you were the sinner then it’s like I had to be seen as “in him.” And by faith I trust in Christ and then the Father says, okay, Mike, you now are being punished “in Christ” and your sin can be settled. And then by faith, if I’m “in him,” the passage goes on to say now I get raised up with him. And raised up with him with all the credit of who Christ is as it says here, I “become the righteousness of God.” That’s an amazing transaction. And that’s the whole, as theologians like to say, the Great Exchange. Christ’s righteousness becomes my righteousness. My sin becomes his sin. He settles it in this transaction. That right there is the message.

Now it is all driven in my mind as I share it, this is for your sake, and I want them to have it. Because they’re not lieutenants. They’re not captains. They’re just foot soldiers. Even Saul of Tarsus was just a foot soldier. And he can be flipped. And everyone you’re watching who makes your blood boil just know we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. They can be flipped. The power of the gospel, right? We shouldn’t be ashamed of it. I know you can get in with the rank-and-file secularist and say, you know, we want to change society. I’d love to change society. That’s great. Right? But what we’re not ashamed of is the gospel, the power of the gospel, right? We’re not ashamed of that. “It is the power of God.” Right? And it’s going to change people’s lives because that’s what matters ultimately. Trust me, I’m not going to dig a hole. And it’s not like we’re trying to hide the implications of this for society. Fine. I’m all about it, right? I’m sure, of course, morality is legislated. It always is legislated. That’s a whole other sermon. Don’t get me started because you’re getting hungry and I am too. (audience laughing) We could go there. Of course there are implications. I’m not a postmillennialist, if you know what that means but I do know there are implications for it. I’m all about it. But I know here’s what matters. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” So what matters is foot soldiers for the enemy becoming new creations in Christ. And I want us to be bold about that, because that is what ultimately matters. So we cannot be silent and we cannot be ashamed and we cannot be afraid.

I was rereading Acts 13. In Acts 13 there was an interesting statement that’s made in that sermon. David is enlisted and trying to distinguish David from Christ in terms of the death and resurrection. But there’s an interesting phrase there where it says, “David, after he served the purpose of God in his own generation,” died, it says, “fell asleep,” died, a euphemism for died, “and was laid with his fathers,” went to his, you know, father’s grave. So here’s that great phrase, right? He fulfilled his purpose in his generation and he died. And of course, we read Psalm 139, there are plenty of passages that remind us that our days are numbered. I just love the fact… I think about David. David lived into his 90s and that’s great. Methuselah into his 900s. Moses lived into his 120s. Jesus lived into his mid-30s. You and I are going to live until our purpose is fulfilled in our generation. Here’s one thing I know for certain: one of the most fundamental purposes of our lives is the passage we just read. Verse 20 of Second Corinthians 5. We are ambassadors for Christ. You represent the message of verse 21. And another homework assignment is to make sure you can articulate the message of verse 21 and to say that is my message. I have to be able to articulate that to the gal at the park, to the guy in the workroom at my job, to my neighbor, to my friend, to be able to say, Christ has done what needs to be done to have us no longer be an enemy of God but be reconciled to God. And we need to persuasively, intelligently describe and discuss that without our blood boiling over, right? Because our energies and our frustrations need to be channeled into the concern that Christ had in Matthew Chapter 9 verses 36 and following to say, we care about the lost, because even the worst of them can be flipped, theoretically. And we pray to God that everyone appointed to eternal life in our generation that we come in contact with will be flipped. And we do that through the message in the power of the gospel. So please, this week don’t be afraid. Be vocal and be an ambassador for Christ.

Let’s pray. God help us all in our day. We don’t want our last-last days but there are certainly indications of an increasing brutality, an increasing heartlessness, an increasing disconnection from the traditional families in which people grow up into where everything goes and our kids go off and get brainwashed in universities and colleges and get disconnected from the foundations they have. And just that’s just a few that compound this love of self and love of pleasure. But I love the contrast there in verse 4 of Second Timothy 3 that we want to be lovers of God. We want to see more people who love themselves and love pleasure to become lovers of God. Because we know in the end the world that we’re going to get to soon enough is going to be one that the amazing pleasure of loving you and loving each other in a new place where sin is no more, is going to be so much better than the best of the rebellion, and the kind of cheap imitations of love and pleasure that people have here when it’s divorced from your will. So God give us a renewed hope and a renewed heart. And as we get through the craziness of what we’ve been through this week and we start looking to fulfilling our own purpose in our generation until you take us home, I pray we would do that well. Run through the tape, finish strong, speaking most importantly accurately about you in our days and in our sphere of influence.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.