Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Main Idea: Our goal ought to be to join God in His goal.

Text:

We’re going to be looking at 2 Corinthians 5, so go ahead and turn there. While you do, I want to start by asking you a quick question. What’s your goal for today? What do you want to do? Take just a few seconds to leave it in the chat, and as you read other responses, encourage one another. I’ll give you just a minute to do that.

What’s your goal for today?

[pause to discuss]

So my goal for today is just to get a little rest and enjoy spending time with my family. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a huge goal, but it’s important to be intentional about resting, and it can actually be a great use of your time. So I hope no matter what your goal was, that you also get some time to rest today.

Well, today, we’re going to be talking about God’s goal, not just for today, but for everything. And we actually started talking about this last week also. Last week, we focused on John 17:21, in which Jesus prayed for us, saying:

that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:21)

I don’t think I mentioned it last week, but the title of the sermon last week was “That the World May Believe.” And we talked about how being truly united in our faith, like Jesus prayed, would lead to greater evangelistic effectiveness, because the world would see Christ’s love through us.

We did that by asking some hard questions. They weren’t questions that were necessarily hard to answer, but they were sometimes hard to put into practice. Like, it’s hard to hold your tongue. It’s hard to swallow your pride. And yet, these kinds of things are often some of the most crucial ways to practice unity and love within the church and toward the world around us. And if we’re truly committed to seeking and saving the lost, as Jesus was and is, then we need to be willing to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him.

I want to continue to build on that idea this morning. Except this morning, we’re going to shift slightly to focus more on the goal: “That the World May Believe.” To do that, we’re going to read 2 Corinthians 5:17-19. It says:

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. (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)

Father, help us to join You in Your mission to reconcile the world back to Yourself through Jesus. And help us to engage in this ministry wholeheartedly, as new creations, resting in how You’ve forgiven all our trespasses through Christ’s death on the cross. Thank You, in Jesus’s name, Amen.

Like last week, I want to ask you some questions that you can discuss together. But I realized from last week that 90 seconds was very little time to discuss, I probably should have given you just a little more time for each question. So this week, I’ll give you a whole extra minute for each question. So after you share your answer, take a minute to also engage with some of the other answers. Ok?

Ok, so here’s your first question. Paul wrote that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. So my question is, if you’ve received Jesus as your Savior and Lord, what does it mean to be a new creation? Talk about that in the chat.

What does it mean to be a new creation in Jesus?

[pause to discuss]

We focused on this verse a few years ago during VBS. It says that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Do any of you remember the song we sang? Here’s a taste of it.

[2 Corinthians 5:17 song]

Remember that? How can you forget, right? But this is an awesome thing, because being a new creation means that your past doesn’t define you. You’re not defined by your limitations, or your failures, or even your accomplishments. Your relationship with Jesus defines who you are, and Jesus says you are loved and completely forgiven. The old you has passed away, and the new you is here.

But then the Bible goes on to talk about what they should look like. Now, we could have talked about that in several ways. We could have talked about the theological realities, such as being a child of God, and having a new joy and hope in life. Or we could have talked about giving up some of the old sins that we clung to. And that’s good to do, and the Bible focuses on those things in other places. But that’s not where the Bible goes in this passage. The first thing it talks about isn’t about having a quiet time, or making sure you give money to the church, or even stopping drinking and cursing. The first thing the Bible tells us to do after it says that we’re new creations in Christ is to share Jesus with the world, so that they would come to believe as well.

I’ve learned these last few years that not many Christians even want the world to believe. Because if they did, we’d send more missionaries. We’d give more toward missions, and more of us would become missionaries. We’d have more missionaries, more pastors, more evangelists. At the very least, we’d see more guests in our church because we’d be constantly inviting our lost friends, family, and coworkers, and they’d come because they just got tired of us inviting them.

So, here’s a hard question. Do you want the world to believe, and does that actually show itself in the way that you live? Take a couple minutes to discuss that question.

Do you want the world to believe, and does that show itself in the way that you live?

[pause to discuss]

I had a friend in college named Jennifer who signed up to be a counselor for a Billy Graham Crusade when it came to St. Louis about twenty years ago. As a counselor for the Crusade, you would simply stand near the stage as Billy Graham finished his sermon, and the people who wanted to receive Jesus as Savior would literally come to you so that you could lead them to Jesus right then and there. So I told Jennifer, “Hey, that’s really cool that you volunteered to be a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade, but aren’t you scared?” And her response stuck with me. She said she had always wanted to share the gospel more with people, but she often didn’t know how. But if she didn’t take this opportunity to share Jesus with people when it was easy, when would she?

Maybe you desperately want to start sharing your faith with the people around you, but you’re scared or you just don’t know how. That’s ok. Sometimes we imagine that evangelism has to look like Billy Graham preaching the whole gospel, but that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes we just need to be open to doing small things, easy things, so that we’re prepared to share more when the time’s right.

I think sometimes we dismiss the small things we can do everyday because we wonder what difference they can possibly make. So, here’s a question for you. What are some easy things that you can do this week to share the gospel? Discuss in the chat.

What are some easy things that you can do this week to share the gospel?

[pause to discuss]

I did a search online for easy ways to share the gospel, and the very first search result was “25 Easy Ways to Share the Gospel.” Here are some of my favorites.

When someone is sick, bring them a hot meal and a card with a nice note and an encouraging Scripture verse written on it.

I think that’s a cool idea. Here’s another one.

Do a random act of kindness and leave a note simply saying “because Jesus loves you.”

You don’t even need to put your name on it. Just let them know you served them because of God’s love. I like this one:

Play Christian radio in your car when you carpool (It’s okay to have it on quietly. You don’t have to blast it and sing at the top of your lungs–unless you want to.)

Maybe you can let your coworker know you’re praying for them. Maybe you can call someone you haven’t seen at church in awhile, and invite them back. These kinds of things can often just take a few minutes, but they can remind people or even let them know for the very first time that God loves them.

But maybe you feel weird or inadequate to even do any of these things. I think we’ve all felt that way, and I wonder, why would God choose to do it this way? Why would He rely on us to share the gospel? Why doesn’t He just save everyone without having to use us?

But here’s the thing. God doesn’t just want to save us. He wants to transform us. He wants us to be new creations. He wants us to make it our goal to join Him in His goal of reconciling the world to Himself.

So here’s our last question. It’s a simple yes or no, so I’m not going to give you any extra time to answer or discuss it. It’s really simple. Have you made it your goal in life to share the good news?

Have you made it your goal in life to share the good news?

When Jesus was born, the angels told the shepherds that this was good news of great joy that shall be for all the people. Jesus said that He came to seek and save the lost. And we read in 2 Corinthians that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

So our goal ought to be to join God in His goal in seeking and saving the lost.

But maybe you’re still trying to figure all this out for yourself. Maybe you’re wondering how God could possibly love you, because of all your sins and failures. You wonder what you have to do so that God will love you. But that’s the beauty of the gospel. You don’t have to do anything. God is the One reconciling the world to Himself, forgiving our sins. God has already done everything. Jesus died on the cross, so that we simply rest in what He’s done for us.

If you’ve never trusted in Jesus to forgive you of your sins, I invite you right now to pray this with me.

God, I know I’ve sinned. And I believe that Jesus died for my sins. So please forgive me, and help me now to turn from my sins in order to live for You. In Jesus’s name, Amen.