Sunday Sermon: The Ministry of Reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Second Corinthians chapter 5, beginning in verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded

Christ according to the flesh, but we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Let us pray once again. Our God and Savior, we thank you for this text, and I pray that you continue to teach us and encourage us in an understanding of reconciliation.

That we would continue to reflect upon even the things that we've read in this particular passage over the last several weeks, understanding what it means that we are no longer the old man or woman that we once were, walking in sinfulness and the depravity of our flesh, but we have been transformed, we have been made new, and are now worshipers of God through your

Son, Jesus Christ. And so as we grow in sanctification and holiness, let us never return again to the sinful ways of our former selves.

But may we walk in righteousness after our Savior and keeping his commandments and desiring to be made holy, to be shaped in his image, until that day comes when he returns and our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

As we read in this passage and others, you are reconciling, you are bringing all things together to be made new through the person and work of your

Son, Jesus. Encourage us in that word all the more this morning.

By your Spirit that is within our hearts and by the name of Christ we pray and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. All through my life,

God has been about the work of bringing me to accept the things that he has planned for me, but I do not have planned for myself.

I have this desire, this idea of things that I want to do, places I want to go, the person that I want to be, and over and over God has thwarted those plans and has opened my eyes to his will and has brought me into it accepting that will and loving that will and desiring that will and therefore hating my own.

He didn't drag me kicking and screaming into it, although there was certainly a time when I was definitely resistant to the plans that he had for me.

I was born in Columbia, South Carolina. My dad started a Christian radio station there on the

Columbia International University campus. At the time it was called Columbia Bible College. He then moved to Pennsylvania, started another

Christian radio station there. We lived there for four years and then it came time for us to move again.

And when he was putting applications in the mail for all of these different radio stations that he was going to help begin, all of these stations were kind of in their beginning phases and that was my dad's niche.

That was his talent. He knew how to take a station from nothing and balloon it into this just incredible successful entity.

So he's dropping applications in the mail to Christian radio stations in places like Chicago and in California and in Orlando, Florida.

And me as a little kid, I'm like 10 or 11 years old at the time, and I'm going, yeah, Orlando, Florida, that's the place that God has for us.

Right there next to Disney World and Universal Studios, this is going to be great. And we had actually just spent some time on the beach in North Carolina as a family, had a little family vacation on the beach.

I was helping my dad pack the car and the last one in the car is me.

So he's putting me in the car and he stops there at the door as he's helping me get in and he says, hey,

Gabe, what do you think about moving to Kansas? And I went,

Kansas? Where is that? The only thing

I knew about Kansas was from one of my mom's all time favorite films,

The Wizard of Oz. I heard somebody say it. So what? Oh, you said it. Okay. So all

I knew about Kansas was there were tornadoes and it was in black and white. That's all I knew. And so far be it from me, though, to decide what

God's will was going to be for me or for my family by that coming December, my mom being six, seven months pregnant at that time, was moving our family to a little place called

Mead, Kansas. I didn't think that was too bad. I was like, Mead, well, they make notebooks there, right?

And not the same Mead. When we cross from Missouri into Kansas, I was pleasantly surprised.

You know, there's still some hills out here. There's trees and vegetation and overall life.

This isn't too terrible. And color, hey, look, it's green. Kind of green.

And it was December, so everything's kind of browning, kind of tan. We get down to Wichita. There's still some life down there around Wichita.

We're traveling west. Things are getting flatter and quite a bit more barren. We get to a place called

Pratt, Kansas. And the moving van broke down there in Pratt. If you're ever driving down that main 54 drag in Pratt and you get to the

KFC, the KFC that's with the stoplight, that intersection, that was where we broke down.

The moving truck crawled across that line there at the intersection when the light turned green and came right into the middle, died, stopping all traffic in all four lanes.

We really announced ourselves when we came to Kansas. So we had to stay in a hotel that night.

And dad said, there are people in Mead waiting for us to unload the moving van. So you and I are going to wake up early and we're going to finish the trip out.

And then mom and the kids are going to join us later. So we got up before dawn. The moving van is fixed.

Now we get in, we start heading west. It's Greensburg by the time the sun has illuminated the countryside.

And I actually lift my head to observe my surroundings. And what I saw coming out the western side of Greensburg was nothing.

I, and I panicked. And I'm looking and I'm, I don't know if you've ever been in a car with a cat and suddenly the cat realizes it's in a moving vehicle and it doesn't know what to do with itself.

And it goes to one window and then another window and then another to see if things are moving by in every plane of glass.

That was what I was doing. I'm looking around and I'm, you know, up in my seat as much as I can and out this way.

And dad said, what's the matter with you? You're so jittery. What are you looking at? I said, nothing. There's nothing here.

And I even started to cry. And he said, what's the matter with you? Why are you crying? I said, there's no trees.

What if, what if we got to pull over and I got to go to the bathroom? Which we're used to on the east coast where there's trees everywhere.

You can go into the tree. Nobody even knows you're out there. But one thing I've learned, one thing I learned living in the

Midwest and the far western side of the state especially is that nobody drives down those roads. You have more than enough time to pull over and go to the bathroom.

That might be TMI. But anyway, just sharing that with you. After a while, I didn't panic so much.

But I thought that God had this will for my mom and dad. It was not

God's will for me. So I'm kind of haphazardly being brought along into Kansas.

And throughout my young adult life, throughout my teenage years and even as a young adult, I was trying to figure out how can

I get out of this state. To make a long story short, all five of my siblings live all over the

United States from Naples, Florida to Portland, Oregon. I'm the only one still in Kansas.

And I'm perfectly fine here. God had showed to me a desire and a will that he had for me that I did not have for myself.

But he not only brought me into that will, but gave me a heart that delights to do his will.

And like I said, this has been a pattern my entire life. I wanted to live somewhere else other than Kansas.

I still live in Kansas. I did not want to be a pastor. Had no desire to do that.

It was my wife when we were dating who said to me, I think God is going to make you a pastor.

You're going to be a great pastor. And I rolled my eyes at her. It was not what I wanted to do with my life.

And yet God used this woman to change my heart, to desire something that I previously did not desire.

But in addition to all of these events in my life that God has changed and has not only brought me into them, but has taught me how to love them and rejoice in his name.

This especially happened at my conversion. And it happened at yours as well. For all of us at one point were enemies of God and we hated

God. But it is through Jesus Christ that we've been reconciled to God.

And we've become lovers of God. We love God and he loves us because of the sacrifice of his son.

And this is what it means to be reconciled. So we come today to 2

Corinthians 5, verses 18 through 20, where the apostle

Paul talks about the ministry of reconciliation. And I've provided an outline for you in your bulletin that we're going to see four things that the ministry of reconciliation is.

And that the gospel does for us when we have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

But first of all, before we continue, it's a good idea to have a working understanding of what it means to be reconciled.

And I've already shared that a little bit with you this morning already. To be reconciled means to accept that which was not previously desired.

Now, at first, when I was considering that definition, and that is the definition that you would find in the dictionary.

But as I was considering that definition, I thought, what about using to accept that which was not previously acceptable?

Because I like alliteration. I like words that sound the same. It's easier to remember.

Might be the same case for you. So how about to accept that which was not previously acceptable?

There's a reason why that definition does not work. And to accept that which was not previously desired is the acceptable definition of reconciliation.

Why is it not that which was not previously acceptable? Because when it comes to reconciliation, we desire

God and He desires us. When previously, when we were in our sinful, dead, depraved, fallen state,

God did not desire us in that state. And we did not desire God when we were walking in sin.

We were not acceptable. So that passes. That which was not previously acceptable.

Yes, we weren't acceptable. But God was. God was acceptable.

He is holy. He is pure. He is good. There's nothing wrong with God.

And so to be reconciled to God means more than just desiring that which was not previously acceptable.

It's to accept that which was not previously desired. In our sinfulness, which is the natural state of every person, as Eliana had so graciously reminded us of this morning, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Since that is the natural state of every person, we are born into the sinfulness of Adam. In that state, we don't want

God. In that state, we want to rebel against God. That's what we want.

That's the natural person. That's the natural man. As it says in Romans 3, 10 through 12, no one does good.

No one has understanding. No one seeks for God. And Paul is quoting from the

Psalms when he states that in Romans 3. We don't want God when we are sinful wretches like that.

And if left to our own devices, that's all we would want, rebellion against God. There is never going to be a time when by our own will or passion or desire, we would turn from the sinfulness that we are in to the righteousness of God, unless God had intervened in our pattern of sinfulness and had transformed, changed our heart from the sinful man who desires rebellion to the righteous man who desires

God. It is a work of the Holy Spirit that Titus 3, 5 refers to as regeneration, that our heart is regenerated.

It is changed. It is different from the old sinful person and has now become a new person who loves righteousness.

We read that last week in 2 Corinthians 5, 17. If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. So as we had considered last week examining that verse and other passages in places like Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, where Paul talks about the same thing, we are told to no longer be after the sin, but instead be after the righteousness of Christ.

And you affirm that you have been given Christ's righteousness when you pursue His righteousness and hate the flesh that has been stained by sin, the garment that is stained by sinfulness, as it is referred to in the

Scriptures. We've been put on new garments, new robes in the righteousness of Christ.

And this is something we will talk about more next week when we consider this passage in 2 Corinthians 5, 21.

We have been reconciled through Christ by the Holy Spirit changing our hearts, by the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

We now desire God when He previously did not desire us. As I've said to you before, to reconcile one of my favorite words in the

English language, because in its definition, there are hints of the gospel there to accept that which was not previously desired.

We didn't want God. He didn't want us. But God in His divine forbearance, as it says in Romans 3, looked past those former sins to the righteousness that He was going to make us into in Christ Jesus.

As we read in 1 John 4, 10, in this is love, not that we have loved

God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Though God's wrath is burning against all unrighteousness, as it says in Romans 1 and 2,

God had passed over those sins and looked toward the righteousness that we would become in Christ Jesus by His sovereign ordination and will.

And all of this is from God, Paul says. 2 Corinthians 5, 18. All this is from God.

Praise be to His name. We do nothing to make ourselves worthy, which is why you have heard, perhaps your entire life, the call of the preacher, come as you are.

It comes from Revelation 22. The spirit and the bride say, come.

Take water without price. All who are thirsty, come as you are.

But as I've shared with you before, though the scriptures do indeed say to us, come as you are, we are not to stay as we are, but we come as the people who are in need of a

Savior that we are, and we are given forgiveness in Christ, and we are made more and more into His image as we grow in holiness.

We will be different people as we grow in this walk of holiness than we were on the day when we first came, on the day when

God, by His calling, brought us into grace by faith through the hearing of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As I shared with somebody recently, this definition of reconciliation, to accept that which was not previously desired, he kind of screwed up his face at me and said, can you possibly give me a scriptural reference that explains that definition?

Because I don't see that definition in the scriptures. How is it that God did not accept us when we were in that sinful state if it says, for God so loved the world that He sent

His only Son, and whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life? So I took him to Romans 5, verses 8 through 10.

God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.

So there was a time for every single one of us when we were actually God's enemy. We had declared war against God.

And the scripture says that God will destroy His enemies. You've probably heard it said, love the sin, hate the sinner.

Have you ever heard that said before? I'm sorry, it's the other way around. Hate the sin, love the sinner, my bad.

So what I get for trying to do two things at once here, flipping to the Psalms and remembering idioms at the same time, that you would hate the sin, but love the sinner.

The reality is that in the scriptures, we are told that God hates both sin and the sinner.

Psalm 5, beginning in verse 4, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness.

Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

You hate all evil doers. You destroy those who speak lies.

The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and the deceitful man. In fact, we have it 14 times in the first 50

Psalms. It said that God not only hates sin, but hates the sinner.

And by our sinfulness, we are the enemies of God. So if God hates sinners, how is it that God so loved the world that He gave

His only Son? And that's the answer that we have, that I've given to you already from Romans chapter 3, that in His divine forbearance,

He passed over former sins. Romans 3, 23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, verse 24, and are justified by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins.

It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

It is because God is righteous and we are not. And God loves a person that we have not yet been made into when

He loves the sinner, though we are enemies of God. He is looking at a person who is going to be made righteous in the image of Christ by the sacrifice that Christ has made for us with His death on the cross, with His resurrection from the grave, conquering death, which is the penalty for all of our sins.

Now, this is what God does in His character, because God is eternal.

You can't look past a person's depraved wretchedness in the present and attempt to see a righteousness that they are going to be given in the future.

You can't do that. Yet we've been called to love everyone and not because they're good people.

You've been called to love them because you were a wretched, filthy person who was not deserving of the love of God and you were given

His grace and love anyway, though you did not deserve it, when you did not deserve it.

And so you must show that same love and affection and grace for others, though they don't deserve it.

Indeed, they are sinful and under the wrath of God if they are not followers of Jesus, but they have been made in the image of God.

And as Jesus helps us understand in Matthew chapter 5, to hate another person is the same as to murder them in your heart, because you are hating something that was made in God's image.

It's the same as if you were to hate God Himself. That's why such a sin is so serious, that we would hate no one, but we would love and desire that everyone would hear the gospel and so repent and be saved.

That is the love and affection that we should have for everybody. If we do good things for others, it would be so that a door might be open for us to be able to share the gospel with them.

We show love and affection for one another in the body of Christ because God told us to.

But may we use all those opportunities to show love and affection for others as a chance to be able to share the gospel, should the opportunity so present itself for us to be able to do so, for it is only by the gospel that someone is saved, not by good works, not by kindness, not by prosperity, not by riches, not by wealth, not by giving things to people.

It is only by the gospel. You were saved by the gospel when you heard it and turned from sin and believed, and so that is the way every person comes to salvation, is by the hearing of the gospel and by faith.

So Paul presents to us here the ministry of reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5.

All of this is from God. All the salvation that we've been given is from God.

Previously we read in verse 14, the love of Christ controls us. Verse 18, all this is from God.

These constant hints, suggestions Paul gives, acknowledgments that he gives to the

Lord. For it is all his doing and not our doing. All praise be to God.

You certainly have a responsibility to respond to the gospel when you hear it, but the very fact that the gospel came your way and was presented to you and that you would have a heart to understand it and turn from sin and follow

Jesus, all of that is the gift of God. All praise be to Christ our

King. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Now what is the ministry of reconciliation? Number one, the ministry of reconciliation is this.

It is the cause of our own reconciliation with God. So who was the first to give us the ministry of reconciliation?

Well that was Christ himself. Jesus was the first to come and preach that message of repentance and say that all who follow me will be saved, will be loved by my

Father in heaven. As we read about in Ephesians 1 .10 and Colossians 1 .20,

God is reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

He was the first to enact this ministry. He commissioned his apostles to go into all the world and continue this ministry.

It is by this ministry that you have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. The ministry of reconciliation is the cause of our own reconciliation with God.

You are loved by God. You are adopted into his family because the gospel was preached to you and you believed it.

That's the ministry of reconciliation. So first of all, the ministry of reconciliation is the cause of our own reconciliation.

And Paul even uses himself as an example here. All this is from Christ who reconciled us to himself, gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, verse 20. So Paul's saying the ministry that he has been called to, his own reconciliation that he has with God, is because of the ministry of reconciliation.

So first of all, it is the cause of our own relationship with God.

Secondly, the ministry of reconciliation is the consequence of our having responded to the gospel.

We turn from sin and we follow Jesus Christ, and this has happened because of the ministry of reconciliation.

And when we come to this understanding of reconciliation being more than just a thing or a transformation that has happened in the relationship between us and God, reconciliation is also a ministry.

Because as we go with the message of the gospel, this message that changes the sinner from an enemy of God to a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, then it is by the hearing of that message and the believing in it and the obeying it that a person has been reconciled.

So therefore it is also a ministry. It is more than just an event. It is more than just a thing.

It is also a ministry. It is something that we must do, that we have been commissioned to share, so that others would no longer be enemies of God, but be reconciled and adopted into his family.

The ministry of reconciliation is the consequence of responding to the gospel. Thirdly, the ministry of reconciliation is the content of the message that we heard, namely, the forgiveness of sins through Christ's death on the cross for us.

The ministry of reconciliation is the content of the message that we heard.

Remember what I had mentioned to you last week about the first words that Jesus preached, Matthew 4, 17.

First words he preached, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And this message of repentance that he preached was essentially that you would change your mind about God.

You are currently haters of God and lovers of yourselves. You're self -righteous.

You think that you can do something to attain equality with God, which is a blasphemy against God and his holiness and his majesty and his righteousness.

And so Christ, preaching in his message, be reconciled to God, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

It is the ministry of reconciliation. And every time the gospel message is preached, we are essentially saying to one another or saying to others, be reconciled to God.

No longer live in rebellion against God. No longer go your own sinful way, but be reconciled.

Love God. Turn from your sinfulness. And this is the content of the ministry of reconciliation that we would be forgiven of our sins through Christ's death on the cross for us.

This word reconciliation, by the way, in the Greek is katalēgē.

And it means restoration as a result of Christ, exactly exchanging his righteousness or pure blood for our guilt.

That Greek word, as it was being used by the apostles, as Paul uses it here with the

Corinthians, more in this particular section that we are reading than anywhere else in the New Testament.

It is an understanding that through obedience to the gospel, by believing in Jesus Christ and turning from sin, we are restored as the result of Christ exactly exchanging.

Meaning that it wasn't a haphazard exchange. God not shedding his blood on the cross for our sins and then going, here, whoever wants it can have it.

But there was a specific cause and a purpose for why he died exactly exchanging his righteousness or his pure blood, in the sense of the use of the word katalēgē, for our guilt.

He exchanged his righteousness for our guilt. He took our sins upon himself and gave us his righteousness.

And that's what we see in verse 21, that for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

And we'll come to understand this concept of what's referred to here as double imputation next week when we examine verse 21.

Don't be frightened by these large theological words, for we'll come to the scriptures to understand exactly what they mean for the sinner and for the believer in Christ.

So in Christ Jesus, we receive forgiveness. He has exactly forgiven your sins by his pure blood, this spotless lamb of God who died for us.

So the ministry of reconciliation is the cause of our own reconciliation with God. It is the consequence of our responding to the gospel.

It is the content of the message of the gospel that we heard. And finally, number four, the ministry of reconciliation is the call of the gospel to everyone who hears it preached.

And this is where Paul says in verse 20, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

And again, every time we preach the gospel, that's essentially what we're saying to the person that we share the gospel with.

Be reconciled to God. Now, how do we do that?

How do we share the gospel? When you came to Christ, you've already been given an example of how to preach the gospel to others.

Do you remember what that was like for you? Do you remember what it was like when somebody shared the hope of the gospel of Christ with you?

Was your conversion one that you remember when you heard the gospel, you realized, my goodness,

I'm a sinner and I've rebelled against God and I deserve wrath. And that's what's going to happen to me when I die and the day of judgment comes, is that I'm going to perish in my sins.

Was that a realization that you came to when you heard the gospel presented to you? For as Paul says in Romans chapter three, verse 20, it is through the law that we come to a knowledge of our sinfulness.

When we hear things like, do not murder. And we think to ourselves, oh, well,

I'm good with that one. I've never killed anybody before. So that one, see that, I've never even broken that law.

So I'm fine. See, I'm righteous. But then we hear Jesus preach in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five.

And he says, if anyone has even hated his brother, he's murdered him in his heart before God. And then you go, guess

I have been guilty of that. I have done that before. I have hated somebody else. Jesus goes on to say, if you've even said to somebody, you fool, you are guilty of the fires of hell.

So if you've even called someone names, you're worthy of going to hell for that.

Because you have slandered something that was made in the image of God. Someone who was made in his image.

It's the same as if you were to have said that to God himself. And God is so holy and righteous and so good that he will not allow his name to be blasphemed.

As I've heard Paul Washer say, the most terrible news that a sinner could ever hear is that God is good.

That's the most terrible news a sinner could ever hear. Why is that bad news? Because you're not good.

And so if God is good and you're not good, what does that mean for you? Your own destruction when

God who is just brings a finality to all things that are unjust. And that includes you.

So if left in that state, we would have no hope. We would have no prayer. We would have no second chance.

We would perish in our own ungoodness before the goodness of God. God is so great and so holy and so righteous.

A holiness that we can't even conceptualize. That my brothers and sisters, if you stood in his presence, you would melt.

Think of the movie, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. When the

Ark of the Covenant was opened up and everybody's faces melted off, it would be like that probably.

Maybe a little less Hollywoodized, a little less stop motion animation, but it would be pretty horrible.

We cannot stand in God's presence. God would not even let

Moses see his face when he passed by him. And even seeing God from behind,

Moses came down off of the Mount of Sinai, Mount Sinai, glowing because he had been in the presence of God.

Paul had talked about that previously in 2 Corinthians. This ministry that Moses had from God, he was glowing because he had been in the very presence of God.

Yet Paul goes on to say, we have a ministry that's even better than the one that Moses had, because the glow that Moses had eventually faded.

But we have the light of the gospel that is given to us in Jesus Christ, which is eternal and will never fade.

As a matter of fact, for every one of us who's growing in the knowledge of God and what Jesus has done for us, the gospel just gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

Does it not? Does it look all the more glorious and beautiful for us tomorrow than it did for us yesterday?

The more we come to a knowledge of the holiness of God and the wretchedness of man, the more beautiful the gospel looks.

So it is a fearful thing, this idea that we would stand in the presence of a God so holy when we are so sinful, for it would destroy us.

And God is so just, and we are not, that he would judge us in his perfect justice.

And who can stand? That question is even asked in the book of Revelation. Considering God and his holiness and his justice, who can stand?

And then John goes on to see in the book of Revelation a people who have been purified in Christ Jesus.

They are the ones who are able to stand on that great day of judgment. We have been made acceptable in the eyes of God, not because of a righteousness that comes from us, but because of a righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ.

And now when we hear that God is good, we don't fear that news. That's great news, because we know that God in his goodness has forgiven us of our sins, because he gave his son and made him sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God through him.

God is good. We are not. But it is because of his goodness that we've been given his mercy and his grace.

Were these things that you came to a knowledge of when you first heard the gospel, that God is good and I am not, and I need a savior?

Maybe you had some sort of an idea of it. Well, I know that if I were to die, and right now where I'm at, without Jesus, I would go to hell.

So I'm going to believe in Jesus, so that I will not go to hell. Maybe that was the reason why you first believed the gospel.

But then growing in your Christian walk, you came to realize more and more through what is said to you in the scriptures, through what you've heard preached and exemplified by other saints, you came to realize your sin more and more, and your need for a savior more and more, and it just made you love him more and more as you come to learn these things.

So you have an example of the gospel that was given to you when you first heard it, when someone said to you that all have sinned, all will stand before God in judgment, all need a savior, and Christ is that savior, and you will be saved on the day of judgment if you would repent, turn from sin, and worship

God now. There's a very brief expression of the gospel for you.

Over here on the right side of your bulletin, on the inside of your bulletin on the right side, I've printed for you the message of the gospel.

Now, there are other versions of this in other resources that we have made available that you will find all over the building.

This is one. This is called a tract. It says, what is the gospel? It has the gospel on the inside.

It has information about our church on the back. So if you share the gospel with somebody else, you may invite them, hey, come to First Southern Baptist Church where we're growing in Christ together.

On the back of our business cards that are on Archie's desk out there at the front, there's a very, very brief gospel on the verse on the back.

It says, everyone has sinned and the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus Christ our

Lord for all who believe. That's a very brief summary of Romans 3, 23 through 25 and Romans 6, 23.

So you have two little sources that you could use right here to share the gospel with somebody else. And I provided another one for you here in your bulletin.

What is the gospel? What does that mean? Well, the word gospel itself in the

Greek Evangelion means good news. Good news about what?

The good news that God so loved the world, he gave his only son and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

That's John 3, 16. The good news that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

In Acts 2, 21, we are told that it is only by the name of Christ that a person would be saved.

And in Romans 10, 13, whoever calls upon his name will be saved. The gospel is the good news that Jesus died for our sins and was raised from the dead.

First Corinthians 15, 3 through 4, that he did this according to the scriptures. The gospel is the good news that by God's grace, we are saved by faith in Christ and not by our works.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Amen, brother Dave. The good news that God is reconciling all things to himself.

I'd already made a reference this morning to Colossians 1, 20. The good news that Jesus bore our sins on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

1 Peter 2, 24. The good news that Jesus reigns forever.

Just last night, I was cleaning out our garage and I always bring up podcasts whenever I'm doing housework or home improvement work of any kind.

And I started again going through Votibachum series in the book of Revelation.

This is my third time now to listen to that series. It's just beautiful. It's gorgeous.

And the main theme that Votibachum says going into the book of Revelation as he's doing his introduction, he says that the main theme of this book, the thing that you get out of the book of Revelation is that Jesus reigns forever.

That's the main theme of that book. That's the good news that we get from Revelation. Now, if all of that doesn't sound like good news to you, if I this morning have been explaining the gospel,

I've been explaining reconciliation, I've been helping you to understand you are a sinner by Christ.

You have been changed into a person who is pursuing righteousness. You still sin.

God still forgives because he is good because you are his son or daughter in Christ. He loves you because of what

Christ has done for you. And if in talking about these things this morning, you're bored, if this is not good news to you, the reason might be because you don't understand the bad news.

And the bad news is this. You've sinned against a holy

God. You are not good, and he is good.

That's the bad news. And he will destroy everyone who has sinned against God and whose sins have not been paid for by the blood of Christ.

How do you receive that gift of payment that Christ made on the cross for your sins?

By faith. My son was raising his hand. He knows. By faith, by believing in Jesus, you receive his righteousness.

Would God destroy what is righteous? No. We've seen it stated multiple times over the course of the scriptures this morning.

He loves righteousness and hates sinfulness. So by faith in Jesus, we receive his righteousness.

And God does not consider our sins. He does not count them against us. But instead, he sees the righteousness of his son, and we are adopted as his sons and daughters.

If you believe in Jesus, you are forgiven. God shows his love for us in that while we were sinners,

Christ died for us. You're no longer the object of God's wrath, but you are the object of his mercy.

And that's good news. Now, there are people in this world who will try to tell you that the message of the gospel is doing nice things for people.

This is called a gospel of works. It is called a social gospel.

That's probably not the term they're going to use, but that is what it is. They will say the gospel is going and doing nice things.

This is the gospel. We go and we help our neighbor. This is the gospel. We go and we feed the poor.

This is the gospel. We vote for universal health care. I'm not making this up.

There are people that will actually say that. And it is the most common form of the gospel that I hear preached all over America, in particular in the

Western world. The gospel is doing nice things for people. Folks, that's not the gospel.

You could give everything you owned to another person, and you would not make that person's life any better, for in that state, they would still perish before God.

We could be the most prosperous nation on earth. There could be no poverty at all.

Everyone could receive the health care that they want. Everyone would get a brand new iPhone. You know, whatever you think of America being as the most prosperous and luxurious as it could possibly be.

And not a single soul would be saved, for they would all stand before God in judgment and perish because of their sins.

The gospel is not doing nice things for people. Now, as I said for you earlier, if you've been transformed by the gospel, you will want to show love and kindness to other people.

But understand, the deeds you do are not the gospel. They are the result of the change that has happened to you because you heard the gospel.

But that work in itself is not going to change or affect or transform anyone.

Good works are not the gospel. There is a certain charismatic Pentecostal vein who you will hear say that miracles are the gospel.

You need to go pray for healing upon a person or speak in tongues or prophesy to another person, and that's the gospel.

No, that's not. Miracles were used in the Bible to affirm that the message that came from the apostles was the word of God.

But the miracles themselves were not the gospel. The news was the gospel. Since that's what that word means, good news, it's something that must be spoken.

So miracles are not the gospel. There are churches this morning who are preaching to their congregation that miracles are the gospel, and that's simply not true.

And finally, the gospel is not prosperity. Because you believed in the gospel doesn't mean, folks, that now all your problems are going to disappear.

All your bills are going to be taken care of. That promotion you wanted at work, you're going to have it now because you believed in the gospel.

That's not in the Bible anywhere. As a matter of fact, Jesus says in Matthew 7 that this is the hard road.

Your life might actually get harder because you followed the gospel, not easier. People will hate you and turn their back on you.

I had a reminder of that last night. I'm running short on time. I won't share the story. But just a member of my family that has expressed hatred toward me because I love the gospel and they don't.

There are people who will hate you just because you believe this. Life doesn't get easier. It gets harder, but we have the hope of the promise of eternity in Christ, which there isn't anything on earth better than that.

Since the gospel is a message and it's news that must be shared, you must speak it to somebody else so that they would believe it and be saved.

I've given you some examples of what that message is this morning. How can you share the gospel with somebody else?

The opportunity may present itself in numerous different ways, but you may just have to ask a person point blank.

If you were to die today, what would happen to you? What do you think would happen?

There's your icebreaker. There's your conversation starter into sharing the gospel with somebody else.

It's the most common question I use when I'm downtown and I share the gospel with somebody on the sidewalk. If you were to die today, what do you think would happen?

What happens after life? What happens after we die? And I hope and I pray for you as you have heard the message of reconciliation, and you go out with the ministry of reconciliation, that God may so bless your words that you would be able to see a life and a heart transformed from being a sinful, rebellious person against God to being a lover of good and righteousness who is pursuing

God in Christ Jesus because of the gospel. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ when we understand the text.