Reality 3

The Unexpected Party 2 Corinthians 5:11-20 Cascades Fellowship CRC, JX MI Oct. 3, 2004 Series: Seven Realities of Experiencing God In the Hobbit, the prequel to his epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien spins the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a plump, rather genteel Hobbit, perfectly content to enjoy a sedentary life in his small corner of the world. The story starts with Bilbo enjoying a typical day in the serenity of the Shire, but that soon changes. One by one, a party of dwarves begins showing up at the home of Bilbo, explaining that the wizard Gandalf sent them to him. Bilbo suddenly finds himself hosting an unexpected party of thirteen dwarves. As if this were not disconcerting enough, when Gandalf does show up, he confirms that he did indeed send the dwarves to Bilbo and that he is now expected to go on an adventure. He must leave the comforts home – of the Shire, of all that was safe and familiar – and he was to join the dwarves on a journey to Lonely Mountain. Once there, Bilbo’s task was to sneak into the heart of the mountain and steal a sacred stone from the hoard of the dragon living there. In other words, the respectable, honest and comfort loving Bilbo was to abandon his life as a property owner and take up life as a thief with a mysterious band of dwarves on a seemingly hopeless quest. And despite his objections that he didn’t know the first thing about thieving, Gandalf impressed upon Bilbo the need for his unique presence on the adventure. Somehow the wizard knew more

than he was disclosing – he saw something in Bilbo that the hobbit could not see in himself. Over the past couple weeks we have been talking about the seven realities of knowing God. The first week we discussed the reality that God is at work around us all the time.

God is active in our world and as we deepen our

relationship with him, God reveals to us where he is at work, in, around and through us. The second week we spoke about God as the persistent lover, the one who pursues us even when we don’t want to be pursued. Once God sets his heart upon us, he cannot be deterred. So great is his heart, as a recent song says, he would rather die than leave us in the dark about his lovei. He pursues us relentlessly. This week we take up the third reality of experiencing God – that he invites us to join him in the work that he is doing. In fact, his desire and design is to reveal to the world his love and grace through us. He wants us to be deeply involved in the work of reconciling the world to himself. Now, let’s admit something at the outset. When it comes to joining God in his work, we often feel like Bilbo Baggins – utterly unprepared and totally terrified. We have that sense of being asked to join an unexpected party of strangers and be a significant player in game where we don’t know the rules. We feel terribly inadequate.

But in our passage this morning, the Apostle Paul gives us some hope. In 2 Corinthians 5:11-20, Paul lays out the motivation for joining the work of God, the essential message of God’s work and the means of doing the work. The Corinthian church was the constant heartache of Paul. At one time the relationship between the apostle and this church was so strained that they literally laughed him out of Corinth. They had begun to listen to other voices – people coming in the name of Jesus, but preaching a different gospel. These teachers accused Paul of only wanting the people’s money. They were polished speakers, great debaters and the Corinthians were lovers of reason. Naturally, they began to turn from true Gospel preached by Paul and his companions and started following these charlatans. The problem was that these guys were all style and no substance – in other words, the Corinthians were becoming enamored by what they could see, with outward appearance. So Paul, to reclaim these believers for the cause of Christ, writes them to remind them why and what he is all about.

He actually begins giving his

motivation the verse before our text begins. Look with me at 2 Corinthians 5:10, ”For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” To which Paul then goes on to say, “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.” The first motivator Paul gives us is the fear of the Lord. What is Paul afraid of? Is he afraid that if he doesn’t work hard enough God won’t have anything to

do with him? No. Just prior to this Paul spoke of his confidence in redemption – he knows he is saved.

He knows that his relationship with Jesus Christ is

secure. What he feared was disappointing the Lord whom he loves. The fear that Paul speaks of here is the fear we read of in Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” What Paul has in mind is a reverence and obedience to his Lord. If we were to paraphrase what Paul is saying here we might say it “Since, then, we know what it is to be accountable before someone we love, someone it would absolutely crush us to disappoint, we work hard to please him by trying spread the message. To persuade others to join us under the banner of Christ.” Now, remember that Paul is carrying on this way in response to charges that he is just a shyster – peddling a religion for his own personal gain. So he is clarifying what moves him to preach. It is because I love my Savior, he says. In fact in v.14 he says, “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” So the essence of our motivation for joining God in his work is the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Paul wrote in a previous letter to the Corinthians, “You are not your own, you were bought with a price.” What is implied in this statement is that the love Christ poured out upon the cross should cause our hearts to burst aflame with love for him.

We love

because he first loved us. We serve don’t serve God out some fickle sense of duty. Such feelings come and go depending on how packed our schedule is, how tired we are, or a host of other factors. We serve because we love him – because we have a living, vibrant relationship with him. He died – gave his life up – so that I could live. So that you could live. We serve him to show how grateful we are that he didn’t give up on us, but persisted until we realized how much he loves us. Such love is a compelling motivator. Such love even moves us beyond our own fears of inadequacy because we know that such love will never abandon us. And it is this love that provides the essential message of God’s work. It provides us with a new paradigm to operate from.

The people that were

attacking Paul and his Gospel were doing so on the basis of what the Corinthian culture valued – reason, complexity of thought, abstractions. Eggheads who had good speaking skills came to the Corinthians and began convincing them that Paul was just a money-grubbing bumpkin. Paul was portrayed as a shallow huckster. And by the standards of the world, perhaps he was. They failed to understand that Paul was operating from a different paradigm. Look at v. 16. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” Beloved in Christ, as your pastor I want to urge in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to burn this verse into your brain. Packed into these two sentences is the essence of the Christian life. If we took these words to heart and daily

made every effort to live according to them, the witness of our lives would become so winsome we would see an evangelism explosion like we could hardly believe. Why? Because they represent a paradigm shift – a shift that happens when we love Jesus Christ with our lives. Paul’s point here is that the things we typically use to assess people – their worth, their desirability, their lovability – all fall away when we begin to see them as creatures made in the image of God and for whom Jesus died to redeem. We live in a world where a cult of personality can thrive. celebrity on those who entertain us.

We emulate the wealthy.

We bestow We worship

beauty and youth. We are awed by great intellects. We are mesmerized by the great orator.

We segregate ourselves by skin color, by economic status, by

nationality. Our patience and acceptance of people is often directly proportional to how much like us they are or how much like them we want to be. It is so easy for us to value a person based on what we see or what we perceive about them. A couple of years ago, one of the news programs – 20/20, 48 Hours, Dateline, I’m not sure which one – did a fascinating study. They lined up job interviews for two women – one was a real knock out, the other was just pleasant. In the interviews, it was clear which of the two was more qualified for the position – the not-so-hot one. But guess which one consistently got asked back for a second interview, regardless of the sex of the person hiring? That’s right, the hot one.

To all of this – this favoritism based on appearance or some other external factor – God says: “…regard no one from a worldly point of view…. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sin against them.” Folks, if any of you were the counter-cultural hippy-types, then you recognize what we are being called to here. We are to scorn the value system of the world and regard everyone in the same way Jesus regarded us. We are to view everyone through the lens of his love. When we begin doing that it will revolutionize the way we treat others both inside and outside the church. We will not only proclaim a message of God’s love and grace, but will live it so convincingly that even the hardest skeptic will be forced to admit that there is something real about our faith and relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, we have looked at the motivation for joining the work of God – the cross. The unbridled love and grace of God embodied in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Such love compels us to live our lives for his cause, for his purposes. We have also considered the essential message of God’s work - that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. A message, when fully grasped, alters our worldview, changes the way we see others.

Now as stunning as all this is – that God in Jesus Christ would die so that we could live and that we are then called to abandon the standards of the world and begin to view people through the lens of grace, in my opinion it is still not the most stunning part of this passage. If I may say it this way, the most absurd part of this passage is the means God has chosen to carry out his work. Look with me vv.19-20 of our text this morning … that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

I do not mean to be irreverent when I say this is the most absurd part of the passage. Quite frankly, whenever I read this part of God’s Word I am just so dumbfounded.

The sentence I stumble over again and again is “And he

committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

How in the name of

common sense could God commit something so profound and so eternally important into our weak and trembling hands? We who are so inadequate to the task, who run so hot and cold, who are subject to moods and stress and circumstances. How could he commit the message that he is reconciling the world to himself through Christ to such fragile “jars of clay?” Remember what we spoke about during the first sermon of this series, that God is always at work. One of the things that we noted is that from the very beginning – even prior to the fall – one of the marks of God’s love is that he reveals the work he is doing to those he loves and invites them to join him in that

work. Adam and Eve were told to keep and guard the earth, to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In other words, God was saying to them “Join me in shaping this creation into the perfect reflection of my glory.” When Jesus came, he said that he did only what the Father showed him to do. The Father loved him and revealed all his work to the Son so that Jesus could do the Father’s will. Then Jesus promised to reveal the work of the Father to us, his disciples that we too may join in the work. It is the mark of his love. God uses us, flawed and as inadequate as we are to carry out the ministry of reconciliation because he loves us. In this passage he is revealing to us what he is about and desires us to join him. We are to be his ambassadors through whom he makes his appeal to a lost and rebellious creation, “Be reconciled.” There are two senses in which we need to be reconciled to God – the ministry we are called to has two tasks to it. The first is to tell those who are separated from because of their sin that they can be reconciled to the Creator through faith in Jesus Christ. We need to tell them about the power of the cross and the relationship that awaits them in God’s embrace. We need to be as forthright as Paul and urge them to call upon the Lord while he may be found for today is the day of salvation. Now is the age of grace. Once Christ returns to gather his bride or death overtakes them, it is too late. If you are here and have never trusted Christ or don’t know what it means to have a relationship with God, please see me after the service.

The second sense in which we are to be reconciled is that once we are in Christ, our lives are to be continually reconciled to the life of Jesus Christ. Our lives, our character, our actions, our words, our thoughts, our hearts are to steadily grow to be more like his. We are to be so turned as to regard no one from the point of view of this world, but we are to see them as Christ sees them. People of God, allow me to urge you; be reconciled onto God. Conform your life to his. Pray for eyes to see where he is working reconciliation. He loves you – he proved it on the cross – he will reveal to you where he is at work. Once you see where he is at work, start connecting to the work. Don’t worry about being adequate to the task – it’s his work, he’ll see it through.

When God

unexpectedly invites to his party, don’t hesitate just go. God knows what he is doing, even when he is involving you in his work.

i

Avalon Creed “You Were There” BMG Music, 2004.