2 Corinthians 5:17-21

[0:00] Alright so lets go and give the river our Jesus saved.

[0:40] O way, baby, let's give peace to all that's coming back. Some gods understand only what we mean.

[0:53] Let's just say how great the dimension that we use prepares us. I'll be so glad when I lose you.

[1:11] And I'll just be free. I don't cry, I don't cry. I don't cry, I don't cry.

[1:29] I just cry, I just cry. Oh Jesus saved. Oh, and it's me.

[1:43] Oh, and it's me. And I don't cry, I don't cry. I just cry, I just cry.

[1:59] Oh Jesus saved. Oh, I'll be alright.

[2:20] I'll be alright. I'll be alright. I'll be alright. It ain't me and my love, we'll be alright.

[2:37] Oh, I'll have you all the time. Oh, I'll have you all the time. Yes, I'll love you all the time.

[2:51] Oh, I'll have you all the time. Oh, Jesus saved. Oh, Jesus saved.

[3:06] Oh, Jesus saved. Oh, Jesus saved. I'm gonna make my way back to the time.

[3:22] I'll make my way back to the time. In the end, my heart is gonna be mine.

[3:34] I'll make my way back to the time. Oh, I'll be alright. Yes, I'll be alright.

[3:49] I'll be alright. I'll be alright. In the end, my heart is gonna be mine.

[4:03] Yes, I'll be alright. Amen. Amen. Second Corinthians chapter five, we'll begin reading verse 17.

[4:18] It says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.

[4:29] And all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and hath given us the ministry of reconciliation to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed us unto us the word of reconciliation.

[4:54] Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ, be ye reconciled to God, for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

[5:18] So we'll read those five verses there. And like I said, the main thought is this word reconciliation or to be reconciling, however you want to phrase that.

[5:33] But Paul begins this with a verse that I've quoted many times myself. It's a very popular verse in the Scriptures, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new.

[5:47] And he goes on to say, and all things are of God. Folks, that should open your eyes to this act or this action that God has taken into making us into a new creature.

[6:03] The very next line in the very next verse says that all things are of God, meaning that you becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus had nothing to do with you, it had nothing to do with anything that you did do, that you could do, or anything else.

[6:22] It says all things are of God, all of these new things that have come to be are of God. They're not of you, not of your thoughts, not of your wants, not of your desires.

[6:34] They are of the desire of God to have cursed mankind, to have mankind that have been cast off away from him, to have mankind reconciled.

[6:46] Back unto him we had to be reconciled back to God because sin entered in, sin got in the way between us and our maker, between us and the Almighty, between us and the ancient of days, between us and the ruler and maker of the entire universe when sin came in, it cast us away.

[7:12] That is why Jesus Christ had to come to reconcile us back unto God. And all things are of God, all things are of God.

[7:25] And all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. Folks, when we were created in the image of God, when Adam and Eve were created, they were created perfect, they were created sanctified, they were set aside for the service of God to dress and to keep the earth, to go forth and to multiply, they were set forth in the service of God to do what God would have them to do, but yet they were created perfect.

[8:02] But when sin came in, sin came in because pride got in the way when Satan came in the form of the serpent and tempted Eve, he appealed to her eyes, he appealed to her flesh, he appealed to her pride and said, you can be like God, you can be just like your maker, you can be what you want to be and I build to her pride sin creeped in and cast us away from God.

[8:37] We got in trouble. Adam and Eve got us in trouble. Folks, that sin is still here. The original sin of pride is still here. The original sin of pride is the very thing that got Lucifer cast out of heaven.

[8:55] It is the very thing that had him cast out of heaven down to the earth. It was the original sin was pride. Lucifer said, I want my place to be above God. I desire the things of God.

[9:09] I don't desire to be just like God. I want to be above God, his pride and thinking that that's what he deserved. It's the very thing that got him cast out.

[9:24] And every sin in one way or another, it will appeal to your pride. It will appeal to your pride. Either I didn't deserve that. If somebody's treating you bad and you have some rough thoughts about them, I didn't deserve that or I do deserve that.

[9:40] You deserve that. The thing that you deserve something that you really don't, folks, if the truth be known and the truth is in those pages of scripture, every one of us here in this room right now deserve nothing more than the flames of hell.

[9:55] We deserve the death that Jesus suffered. We deserve the beating that Jesus suffered. We deserve the mocking. We deserve everything that Christ took upon himself.

[10:07] We deserve that. He took our beating, took our death for us. To do what? To bring us back to the Father. To bring us back unto Him.

[10:21] At one time, if you're sitting here saved and you're born again, at one time there was a great gulf between you and Almighty God. There was a great gulf, folks.

[10:33] It wasn't just a little canyon. It wasn't just a little river between you and Almighty God. There was a great gulf fixed between us and our maker. That could not be filled.

[10:46] It could not be bred. It couldn't be anything. We needed something though. We needed a bridge to cross that gulf. When Jesus Christ came to be that bridge, hey, if you were to look at it in another way, there was a great mountain between you and Almighty God.

[11:02] We could not cross that mountain. We couldn't take the terrain. We needed that mountain to become a plane so that we could get to God. But none of those things happened before Jesus Christ.

[11:16] Jesus Christ came to be that bridge. Jesus Christ came to level that mountain. When He leveled it, it made the ground level at the foot of the cross. Praise God.

[11:28] I don't care if you're a prince or you're a pauper. I don't care how rich or how poor you are. I don't care what sends you committed and what sends you haven't committed. The ground is absolutely level at the foot of the cross.

[11:42] It doesn't matter whose murdered. It doesn't matter whose lied, whose cheated, whose stole. None of that matters. The ground is level there. Jesus Christ is the one that came to reconcile us back to the Father.

[11:57] And He didn't make it any easier or harder for one than another. It's all by the cross. It's all by the blood. It is all by Him.

[12:10] He came to reconcile us. He came to do this by doing what? The very last verse we read tells us, For He hath made Him to be sinned for us. Who knew no sin?

[12:22] Who hath made Him to be sinned for us? The Father. The Father's whom we were cast out from. The Father's the one that had the issue with us. Jesus Christ loved us. Jesus Christ loved us enough to come here and to be our sacrifice that Roger talked about in Sunday school this morning.

[12:40] He came here to be our sacrifice. He came here to be the unblemished land. He came here to be the land that done the backers, looked down the river bank and said, He hold the Lamb of God which took away the sin of the world.

[12:53] He came to be that sacrifice. But what did it take for that to happen? It took Him. It took the Father putting all of our sin upon Jesus Christ. He took your life. He took your thieving.

[13:06] He took everything that you ever done. Everything that you ever done. Everything that was contrary to God's laws that you have committed in your life. God took and put upon you. He took and put upon you.

[13:18] He took and put upon you. He took and put upon you. He took and put upon the Son. Praise God. He took my sin. Now folks, don't let this confuse you. He didn't make Jesus a sinner.

[13:31] He made Him to be sin. He made Him to be sin. Galatians 3.13 says, He became a curse for us. He became a curse for us. He crossed that same verse.

[13:43] Galatians 3.13 says that we were redeemed by the law from the curse of the world. He made Him a curse for us. He says that we were redeemed by the law from the curse of the law. We were redeemed from the curse of the law by Jesus Christ.

[13:57] He became a curse for us. For the scripture says that cursed is everyone that hangeth upon a tree. Hey, Jesus Christ became that curse for us. He became sin for us.

[14:09] Not a sinner. If He had become a sinner, you and I would still be sitting here. Hopeless. You never sinned. No God was ever found in His mouth.

[14:21] He was the perfect, unblemished, unspotted Lamb of God. And He came to be our, the one that reckons all of us back to the Father, to be our sacrifice, to shed His blood.

[14:35] We can do that. But He became sin for us that we can do what? The last verse again. He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God.

[14:49] And Him. Folks, we had no righteousness about us. I still have no righteousness about me outside of Jesus Christ. Outside of Jesus there is no. Book of Isaiah says our righteousness is our filthy rags.

[15:05] Filthy rags, our works, our deeds, our marriage are filthy rags in the eyes of God because He is completely holy. He is completely righteous. And people will say, is God not omnipotent?

[15:18] Can God not just do whatever He wants to do? Couldn't God just snap His fingers? Couldn't God just have a thought and save everybody? And Jesus Christ wouldn't have had to have went through that.

[15:30] Listen, God is omnipotent and God can do anything that He wants to. But everything that God does must be done justly and it must be done righteously. And He cannot do unjustly.

[15:42] My Bible describes Him as a just and a righteous and a holy God. Everything that He does must be done justly. That's why when we are looking south back to the Father, He can wipe away our sins.

[15:56] He can cast them as far as the east is from the west. He can throw them into a sea of forgetfulness to be remembered no more. And He can do it completely and totally justly because the price has been paid.

[16:09] We've been reconciled back to the Father. Hallelujah. We've been reconciled. All these things are of God. Back to the second verse that we read. Everything that we talked about is all of God.

[16:23] Christians, the church, the church as a whole, we got to get it out of our hands that we have something to do with ourselves. And we have something to do with our salvation.

[16:35] It took God to come to where you were at. It took God to come to where I was at. Why was that? Because from the get-go, from Adam in the garden, they were never seeking after God after sin creeped in.

[16:50] He was hiding from God. He was hiding His sin from God. Thinking that what He had done would be enough to cover His mistake. But when God came, God knew what He had done.

[17:01] He said, Who told you that you were naked? Yeah, really. Because Adam wouldn't have known had sinned up creeped in. Both.

[17:14] We got to know that we're sinners. We got to understand whether you're born again or whether you're lost right now. We got to understand we are sinners. We have offended.

[17:26] We have done unrighteously and the eyes of a righteous God. And that sin must be paid for. That sin has been paid for by Jesus Christ. And if people, the lost folks, the ones that wind up in hell, the ones that have ended up in hell, if they do not accept that sacrifice, that reconciliation, that way, if they do not do that, they will pay for their sin throughout all of eternity.

[17:57] Throughout all of eternity, the Bible describes it as a place of outer darkness. It describes it as a place where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[18:09] It describes it as a bottomless pit. It describes it as all kinds of horrible things and people will spend all of eternity paying for their own sin. If they do not accept the price that was paid through the blood of Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus Christ, then they will reconcile us back to God.

[18:28] Praise God! I've got an intercessor, I've got an advocate, I've got a redeemer, I've got a reconciler in Jesus Christ.

[18:40] I'll take that any day over paying for it myself. I don't want to pay for it myself. This goes on. Now, remember, Paul was in his church, says to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, non-emputing their trespasses unto them and have committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

[19:02] Not only the word of reconciliation, but the ministry of reconciliation. What is he saying there? In short, Paul's much more eloquent than what I can be in his speech. But in short, he's saying, because we're safe, because we've been reconciled, we should be spreading the gospel to others.

[19:23] To everyone we come into contact with, this ministry of reconciliation, this word of reconciliation, it's been passed on to us, it is our job. It's not just a job for a Christian, it's a privilege for a Christian to go out into the world and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with those that they come into contact with.

[19:43] And Paul here is exhorting just that. He's exhorting the church. He says, because you've been reconciled, because you've been reconciled unto God, by Jesus Christ, you need to be out in the world, into the alleys of Corinth.

[19:57] And wherever you go in Corinth, you need to be out there spreading this gospel, spreading this word of reconciliation. Tell them people there's a better way. Tell them people you're a sinner and God is a brave savior.

[20:10] That's our job, but it's more a privilege than it is a job. Now, it goes on. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. What's an ambassador do? Ambassador somebody that represents a country in politics.

[20:25] If we send an ambassador, or if we send somebody overseas to congratulate some big world leader or to maybe even to maybe even to maybe even to maybe even maybe even introduce sanctions against somebody.

[20:42] We send people all over the world for different things. Either way, they are an ambassador. They are representing the entire United States of America when we send them over there, when our government sends them over.

[20:54] They are ambassadors. Paul here says we are ambassadors of Jesus Christ. In other words, we are representing Jesus Christ. We're not Jesus Christ. I'd never fool you or try to fool you because I know some are thinking that I was Jesus.

[21:08] Now, there's people out there will do that, have done that, and they'll continue to do that. Those people are antichrist. Those people are false prophets. But there's been people over the years, over the decades that have convinced people, other people that they were indeed Messiah, that they were indeed Jesus Christ.

[21:26] Shame on those folks. Shame on those folks, and shame on the other ones. It didn't know their Bible is well enough to be about that. But we are ambassadors. We're representatives.

[21:39] If we're born again, we're representatives of Jesus Christ. My question to the church, how are you representing? How are you showing yourself to the world? How are you better yet, how are you showing Jesus Christ to the world?

[21:53] How are you being an ambassador for Jesus Christ under the world? Are we sharing the gospel? Are we sharing the word of reconciliation? Are we sharing it with people? Most of it the best way to get someone to listen to you is to share what Jesus Christ brought you.

[22:12] You don't have to get into the gory details. You don't have to go into anything like that. I'm not saying to spill your guts absolutely to somebody.

[22:24] But to say, hey I was once lost, and now I'm found. Hey, I was once a drunk and now I'm a sober person. I was once a pill head, now I'm a sober person. I was once a fornicator, now I'm not.

[22:36] I was once this and I was once that, but Jesus Christ delivered me. Jesus Christ reconciled me. I now walk a straight and narrow way, not because of anything that I am or I'm done, but because Christ delivered me.

[22:51] That's the word of reconciliation. That's the word that's been handed down to us. We're ambassadors for Christ as though God divasets you by us. We pray you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God.

[23:05] Be reconciled to God. Folks, he's exhorting the church. Now listen, it ain't no different. For the Corinthian church, it is any church out here.

[23:15] I'm going to say including our own. These lost people mixed in with the congregation. At every church you go to, there's people that sit in that congregation for 20 years, just as lost as lost can be.

[23:27] Thinking that they're okay. Thinking that they're okay. That ain't spent your passing judgment. That ain't spent your passing judgment at all. I'm just stating a simple fact. There's people followed Jesus around.

[23:39] There was ministry. Jesus actually sent some of them out and they came back and then they didn't like what they heard and said they followed him no more.

[23:50] They followed him no more. Folks, John writes about it. John says they went out for him because they were never of them. They went out for him because they were never saved to begin with.

[24:01] So what I'm telling you is not judgment. It is a simple fact. It is a simple fact that there are lost folks mixed in with the congregation of saved folks. Most of the Bible says, James chapter four verse four says, friendship with the world is enmity with God.

[24:17] Therefore, if any man be a friend of the world, he is the enemy of God. That doesn't mean, hey, Jesus Christ ate with sinners. I praise God that he ate with sinners.

[24:28] I praise God he came to where this sinner was one day. I thank God that he spent his time with sinners. Thank God that Jesus Christ came to where the sinners were. And Jesus Christ was the friend of sinners.

[24:41] Hey, we should be the friend of sinners. I ain't saying just cast them to the side, throw them out with the trash. I'm not saying you don't like that, but we do not get in close relationship with those people.

[24:53] We certainly don't go to the places they go and do the things that they do. That's the friendship with the world that James is talking about. When he says that friendship with the world is enmity with God folks, I don't wanna be considered to be an enemy of God.

[25:07] I don't wanna be, I've already been an enemy of God once in my life, but when God saved me, hey, I come to the one inside. I came to the side that is guaranteed to win.

[25:19] I can show you scripture upon scripture. That shows God cannot and will not fail. I'm on that side now. God, please help me to not be your enemy again.

[25:32] Amen. Yeah. When he come, look if Isaiah's got some of the prettiest scripture, scripture for that invitation. Isaiah chapter one, verse 18 says, Come, let us reason together, say the Lord.

[25:47] Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be his wool. But it begins with come. It begins with an invitation that God extends.

[25:59] It begins with God saying, come to me. Now I know, and I say, he was writing to the Jews. I understand that he was writing to the Jews when he said that the folks that invitation go straight on into the New Testament.

[26:11] They go straight into the works of Jesus Christ. They go straight into him, being the reconciler of man back to God. We were incapable of it. We could not do anything to bring ourselves back to God.

[26:25] So when Jesus Christ came and he bridged that gap, he bridged that gulf between man and God. He done it so that we could be made the righteousness of God in him.

[26:36] Someone who knew no sin became sin. So that someone like me that had no righteousness could finally have some righteousness about me.

[26:47] Praise God. That's why we lift up holy hands. That's why we shout our hallelujahs. That's why we sing songs because I was not righteous before Jesus Christ came along.

[27:00] And right now I'm still not righteous outside of Jesus Christ. We cannot be made righteous, but through Jesus Christ. Always, always, always church.

[27:11] Keep that in your head. Otherwise you get the big head. Look what I've done. Look what songs I've sung. Look what lessons I've taught. Look what sermons I've preached.

[27:22] Look how many people's patted me on the back saying, awesome sermon, awesome message, awesome listening. And hey, listen, I appreciate people being supportive. I do.

[27:33] But if I ain't real careful, I'll let that get in my head when people tell me that. People say, well, you've preached a good one. Well, you've done this and you've done that. Hey, I've got it.

[27:43] I tribute every bit of it to Almighty God. It ain't nothing that Spencer's done. Spencer certainly didn't put this calling in his own life. It was Almighty God coming to me. It was Almighty God that called me to do this.

[27:55] It's Almighty God that wrote the word. It's Almighty God that had the plan of salvation. It's Almighty God that had the plan of reconciliation. It is God that sent his son to be the propitiation for my sin.

[28:09] It is God that put him in the grave, rolled back to stone, resurrected him. And it is God that will resurrect me one day. I have nothing to do with it.

[28:21] Nothing to do with it. It is all God. It is all God. And that's why we should praise Him a whole lot more than what we do.

[28:31] He had made it be sent for us who knew no sin. We might be made the righteousness of God in Him. In Him, again, someone that knew no sin became sin, not was made a sinner, but He became sin.

[28:46] For folks, there's people out there, there's false doctrine out there right now that says Jesus Christ became a sinner, became a sinner.

[28:56] No, His sacrifice would have been nothing if He had been a sinner. It couldn't have been nothing. And you and I would be hopeless if that was the case. He did not do that. There was a man that, in fact, he and yesterday afternoon, he played a short video clip for me.

[29:10] There was a pastor somewhere, pastor, I'll put it in quotation marks, that says that Jesus, when, I preached about just not too long ago, the Sire Phoenician woman.

[29:21] And he said, when Jesus come to that woman, and she come back and Him to help her cause her daughter was possessed with a devil, and he said, it's not meat, that I take the bread for the children and feed it under the dogs.

[29:35] He said that Jesus Christ had to repent, had to repent of what He told that woman. Because it was a racist statement. What He told her.

[29:47] Folks, if Jesus Christ ever had to repent of anything, He wasn't my perfect sacrifice. He wasn't my perfect Savior. Jesus Christ never sinned, but this was a supposed pastor somewhere.

[29:58] Jesus, or Ian, before he played for me, he said, you wanna see some state garbage heresy? He goes, what's this? And he played that for me. He knows it's one of my favorite sayings.

[30:09] And that's exactly what that is. It's heresy to say that Jesus Christ sinned. Jesus Christ became sinned for us, but He did not become a sinner for us.

[30:19] Folks, if He hadn't become sinned for you and hadn't become sinned for me, we would be hopeless. We'd still be lost. And hey, you turn back, flip back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

[30:30] If Jesus Christ didn't raise from the dead, we're gonna be hopeless then too. And we're gonna be still lost in our sins if that wasn't the case. You know why? Because Jesus Christ wasn't who He said that He was if He did not resurrect that third and appointed day.

[30:46] Jesus Christ was the plan, is the plan of the forever, be the plan of God for redemption and for reconciliation of a fallen man, kind back to its creator, period.

[31:00] He is the final word. He's the final say so. He is the only redemption that there is available. Roger taught out of Hebrews chapter 10 this morning. I know we're, I keep bringing up Roger, but that's all fine.

[31:14] Great and final will, he's a fine teacher. But he taught out of Hebrews chapter 10. There's two things in the passage of scripture that stick out to me that Roger taught out of this morning. One, it teaches us there is no other sacrifice needed outside of Jesus Christ.

[31:31] No other sacrifice needed. In other words, I mean, Roger taught about this morning. The other sacrifices that were continual. Some of them were daily. Some of them were, one, the sacrifice of atonement.

[31:44] That was once a year, the atoning sacrifice. But, some of the sacrifices were absolutely daily. God required the Israelites to have a continual sacrifice, a morning sacrifice and an evening sacrifice.

[32:00] And there had to be a sacrifice burning and there had to be some smoke going up into the heavens. There had to be all these other things. But folks, when Jesus Christ came, there is no other sacrifice needed.

[32:13] He is and was and will forever be the only sacrifice that we need. But if you fast forward just a little bit in that same chapter that Roger taught out of, you also find there's no other sacrifice available.

[32:26] Right, there's no other sacrifice needed and there's no other sacrifice available outside of Jesus Christ. He's the only one. If we try, that's in the verse that Roger taught this morning and talking about willful sins.

[32:42] If we sin willfully, if we sin willfully, there's no more sacrifice for sin. There's no more sacrifice. In other words, these Israelites over in the Old Testament, they would sin willfully and they'd say, well, I'll just take another lamb.

[32:57] I'll take another turtle dove. Hey folks, that's how the Catholic Church thinks about it. They think you can go out and live like hell and do whatever you want to as long as you go to a little booth and confess your faults to a man behind the curtain and you eat a wafer and give a few hell marries.

[33:12] In the meantime, you'll be all right with God. That is not scripture. It's not scripture. In these 66 books, it ain't even in the apocrypha that is completely and totally man-made.

[33:26] But that's what they teach. No, why? Because they want people coming into those churches. Show them that money over in the coffers. They want to keep them coming in. So they teach it. That's reconciliation.

[33:37] That's what's getting them back to God. And it is not. Jesus Christ reconciles us back to God and only Jesus Christ. And he does it. He does it that we can be made to righteousness in God in him.

[33:51] In him, in Jesus Christ. We can be made to righteousness in God. Jesus Christ was the righteousness of God while he was here. He is currently the righteousness of God.

[34:01] Praise God. He'll always be the righteousness of God. And I can be made the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Hallelujah. Don't let the world tell you otherwise.

[34:13] Don't let the world tell you otherwise. Don't listen to the preachers that preach a different gospel. Don't listen to the preachers that say, well, if you just send me $100 a month, then I'll stick in a good word for you with God.

[34:27] You know who's just sticking in a good word with God? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only one that can do this.