New (slide 1)

Andrew Kirstein

5th Sunday • Sermon • Submitted 4 months ago • Presented 5 months ago

2 Corinthians 5:16–21

New Years Day

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Opening Joke

God is Left-Handed

Little Philip was spending the weekend with his grandmother after a particularly trying week in infant school. His grandmother decided to take him to the park on Saturday morning. It had been snowing all night and everything was beautiful.

His grandmother commented, 'Doesn't it look like an artist painted this scenery? Did you know God painted this just for you?'

'Yes, 'replied Philip, 'God did it and he did it left-handed.'

This confused his grandmother, so she asked him, 'What makes you say God did this with his left hand?' 'Well, 'said Philip, 'we learned at Sunday School last week that Jesus sits on God's right hand.'

Open

YG VIDEO (slide 2)

Do you ever wonder why people make New years Resolutions? I have to be honest I never thought New Years Resolutions made sense. If you like them great, I am not judging you. In my mind I always thought that If you want to loose some weight, loose it. If you want to learn how to speak German then learn how to speak German. Why wait until the new year? At least that was my thought then…

…Then something happened that made me understand why people wait to the New Year. 2020. You see until 2020 bad things happened yet there were certain norms in place that made it ok. Then 2020 happened. We had Covid. It shut everything down. I like so many of us was separated from my family. I had never spent more than a couple of weeks without seeing them now it was months. My church family. School was shut down. Really everything. Then George Floyd happened and it seemed like the pent up world exploded. I can not think of a time in life when my world felt more uneasy. More like a world I didn’t know. I didn’t like it. Then a wonderful thing happened. December 31st 2020. At midnight, 12:00 am, 2020 was over. Did things get better, sure a little but it was the hope and thought that finally the old terrible year was done a brand new shiny year was about to begin. It isn’t that people need January 1st to learn German. It is the fact that people want something new with the new year.

It makes sense that the word New would be important to people, but The word NEW is very important word to us Christians. All Christians were created the same way. Sinful beings in need of a Savior. When we finally realize the gift that the Savior is giving us. We become NEW beings. Born again! Paul wants believers to see themselves as NEW and to see that they have new responsibilities as well.

In verse 11-15 Paul had just finished telling the Corinthians why he does what he does.

#1 He fears the the Lord. Not just a Holy fear type of way. Paul knew that whatever we do we are accountable to God. Paul new that someday He would stand before the Great Throne and give account to the almighty. Paul had no choice in his mind except to do what God gave him to do.

#2 Paul knew that every decision he made in his life was for the Glory of of God and for the betterment of God’s people. Paul’s life and Paul’s needs had zero impact on his decisions. Why?

#3 Because he was imitating Jesus. Paul made it clear that Christ died for all. That Christ’s love saved us. Because of this our lives are no longer our own.

Paul is telling the people these things to set up our scripture for today. The first New Paul wants us to experience is……

A NEW VIEW (Slide 3)

There is something that Paul is telling the Corinthian people about and that word is reconciliation. The definition of reconciliation is the act of coming to an understanding and putting an end to hostility, as when former enemies agree to an amicable truce: Why the word NEW then? Because as we are about to see when true reconciliation happens it makes the relationship new!

2 Corinthians 5:16 ESV

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

This may come as a shock but we are all humans. We are all sinful humans. That means that we often see things through sinful eyes.

Paul is stating this when he says the phrase “according to the flesh” in laymen terms this means seeing things from a world point of view.

We judge people

We use anger all to often

WE don’t take the time to listen, we jump to conclusions.

I could go on.

Paul wants us to see things through a very specific viewpoint, God’s.

Romans 14:8–12 (ESV) (slide 4)

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,

and every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Make no mistake we will all stand before the father and give account for our lives. The only difference is when we stand before the father and He turns to the massive amount of wrong that is at the beginning of each of our lives we have an advocate in Jesus who will stand up for us and say “Nope dad I took care of all that. They are good to go.”

In order to see things through God’s eyes we have to accept Christ’s gift of Salvation and allow him to change us from the inside out. It makes sense. When we do that, we we throw away the old person and become New We fix a broken relationship. We experience a….

A NEW RECONCILIATION (slide 5)

Before we had a personal relationship with Jesus we had emnity toward God. We had no connection with him. We were in fact hostiles. Christ’s death on the cross allowed us to be reconciled to God. Make no mistake nothing absolutely NOTHING we did did this. Nothing we did helped this. We did everything we could to make the case that we didn’t deserve it, yet Christ died, and Christ rose, and Christ took all the sins of His chosen people on HImself.

2 Corinthians 5:17–19 ESV

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.

This is a very big portion of scripture. It gives us as Christians a very clear picture of why we are here and what we are to be doing while we are here.

Before Salvation we are all slime. That is putting it nicely. We have no worth. God created mankind for more than having an existence on the earth. Without God We have no reason. If you are sitting in this building right now. If you are watching from home or on your cell phone and you can say without a doubt that you are saved. That you have accepted Christ’s calling of Salvation. Make no mistake you were born for that Salvation. You exist for that Salvation. You breathe because of that Salvation.

Now after you are saved you are a NEW CREATION: You have NEW VALUES< NEW BEHAVIOR, you are NEW!!

Galatians 6:14–15 (ESV) (slide 6)

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

What matters, our relationship with God is what matters. And if we have a relationship with God and that is what directs us, the rest of life will fall into place.

God reconciled us to Him when He should have killed us all. No one was worthy of Him. Yet instead of ending us like he should, instead of another flood or earthquake, or meteor , or whatever God wanted, He sent his son to be born in a barn and die on a tree so we could start a NEW life in Him.

Romans 5:8 (ESV) (slide 7)

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

Reconciliation is an amazing thing. In the Bible when it is used in the active tense it always refers to God. When it is used in the passive tense it always refers to man. I am no genious when it comes to English, but this means that when it comes to reconciliation Christ ALWAYS does all the work. Are job is to accept it.

Paul then says the statement of the “message of reconciliation.” Paul knew that it wasn’t his job, just as it is not OUR job to make people feel better and get a case of the touchy feelies. His job was to share the correct message of God, no matter the consequences to his person. It is our job without fail to share the message of God with love. The love that Jesus showed us. But we have to share the exact message, not the message that people want to hear. The true message that we know because it is written in the Bible is the message that will help others find reconciliation with God.

God will continue to act through those who have been reconciled to HIm. He will continue to act in those that He has made NEW. And those NEW creations have the privelege and the responsibility to share and to call others to be reconciled to God.

For the newly reconciled this is our……

New Purpose (slide 8)

This is what is asked from us as Christians. Share the news of the gift that we have been given. The last verse in our passage this morning calls us ambassadors, look with me at verse 20.

2 Corinthians 5:20 ESV

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

As intimidating as it may be to do this we are Christ’s ambassadors in this world. That means that we are Christ’s spokesman and spokeswomen. It is no longer about our purpose it is all about God’s purpose. The beauty of this is when we achieve Christ’s purpose we will feel fulfilled because we are achieving OUR purpose.

Unlike normal ambassadors of the time who were treated as royalty Paul wasn’t and he loved it. Paul saw himself differently.

Ephesians 6:20 (ESV)(slide 9)

for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

Paul was an ambassador in chains! He saw it as we should see it. He saw it as an honor, not something to be ashamed of.

If we want to be NEW. If we want the reconciliation that Christ did all the work for than we have to realize these 4 things.

#1 - We have to acknowledge our responsibility and our wrongdoings. (slide 10.1)

We have to take responsibility for our actions. We have to stop looking for people to blame.

#2 - We must re-order our lives around God. (slide 10.2)

What is a year. It is one circular trip around the sun. Hour lives need to revolve around the Son! If our lives are not revolving around the SON we are not living our lives correctly.

#3 - We Must not evaluate others with anything other than the viewpoint of God. (slide 10.3)

We have to stop judging people. We for sure shouldn’t accept things that are not of God, but We have to stop looking at others the way humans see them. No one is going to be able to do this all the time but that should not stop us from striving to see everyone as God sees them.

#4 - We have to continue to make amends to God. (slide 10.4)

We aren’t perfect and we never will be. So daily we have to make amends. Daily we need to go to the father and fix the mistakes that we continue to make. When you make a mistake you need to admit that mistake and ask for forgiveness. That is how you keep a relationship strong.

Close

What are your feelings about 2024? I can’t speak for anyone but myself, and I would consider myself stupidly optimistic, and I think that 2024 might be a whirlwind.

Do you have a New Years Resolution? We have a whole generation of young people who’s future is dependent on us. Not politically I will leave that decision for you, but the moment you chose to accept the gift of Salvation, sharing that became your purpose.

If you want to loose weight, or gain it go for it.

If you want to learn german or just eat more Brautwurst I encourage you to do so.

There is a lot that will be decided this year and it is our duty to make sure that God is in the center of it all. So I have a New Years Resolution for all of us and it comes straight from the mouth of our Savior.

Matthew 28:19 (ESV) (slide 11)

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

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