“You Are Not Perfect” March 18, 2018

11 Apr “You Are Not Perfect” March 18, 2018

3/18/18   2 Cor. 5:16-21  “You Are Not Perfect”

I think that you must really get tired of reading and hearing about all the bad things that are happening in our world.  We live in a world where violence is so common that he hardly give it a second thought about children being shot in our schools unless of course we are close to the situation.  It seems that we have become immune to most of the bad things of the world.  Bad has become the new good or at least the new neutral.  How sad!  I often hear something like this; how can a loving God allow such atrocities to happen?  This is a legitimate question and I really don’t have time to go into it today but hear is the quick answer.  He doesn’t allow these things to happen.  He allows each of you free will.  It is your free will that does these things along with the help of the devil.  The underlying cause for all of bad things is evil.  We do these things along with Satan, not God.  God is incapable of doing anything bad but we sure can.  Anyway, we have this huge mess in our world and how can God reconcile this world to Him?  He does this through Jesus Christ and what He did on that Easter so many years ago.  Let’s see if we can figure this out or at least kind of understand what and who God is.   Let’s figure out how this going to make our lives better.

This story comes from Australia by James Jack and really reflects what reconciliation through Christ means.  There was once an Aboriginal man that the white men had named Bill.  He lived in the late 1800’s.  He lived on the land in a place where the modern day city of Taree would be.  The only difference between his tribe and others was that his tribe had been contacted by two Catholic missionaries who had told them the Gospel and they had accepted it.

Bill learned English but still lived the traditional life with some contact with white civilization.  Two white shepherds worked some of the land near where Bill’s tribe was located.  They decided, and no one knows if it is true or not, that some of Bill’s people had stolen three sheep from their land.  We have to remember that the white people of that time and area did not consider the Aboriginal people to be human.  This is so wrong.  Anyway, these two men felt quite justified in taking their shotguns and killing ten members of Bill’s tribe one night, including two of Bill’s sons.

When the local authorities got wind of this massacre, the paper ran a story about it.  The two men had been arrested and they were quoted in the paper as saying, “There’s nothing wrong with it.  They were only subhuman.”  I have cleaned up that quote a little as the original quote was too disgusting to repeat.

Anyway, the journalist went out to see the remainder of Bill’s tribe for the story.  He was expecting to see people who really weren’t people at all in that they probably couldn’t speak very well and were savages.  When he got there he spoke to Bill and was surprised that this subhuman could speak so well.  A few days later the article appeared in the paper.

The journalist had asked Bill what he would like to say to the two men who had killed his family and were proud of it.  Bill replied, “I don’t like what they did but that’s alright.  I just want to be their friend.”  Bill was saying, “I forgive them.”  He forgave and was ready for reconciliation.  What he said goes against all the ways of the world both then and now.  The world says that we only need to be nice to those people who are nice in the first place or in return.  If someone does something wrong against you, you should fight back, or fight for your rights or fight for punishment, or just hate them but never forgive.  These two men weren’t even asking for forgiveness. They weren’t even sorry.  And that is the same type of situation we were in or are in when God offered us reconciliation.  For the most part we aren’t even sorry for the sins we have committed.

Let’s take a closer look at this tremendous piece of scripture.  The first thing we have to do is to make sure we are talking about the same thing.  We need to have the same definition of reconciliation.  What Paul means here when he uses reconcile is to reunite or get back together.  It differs from forgiveness in that to reconcile is a two way exchange while to forgive is a one way exchange.  Two people cannot be reconciled if one of them refuses to do so.

Continuing on, this short little piece of scripture is one of those passages that could almost be the Gospel in a nutshell.  Paul begins by telling us that we are new.  We are new creations in Christ.  When you accept Jesus as your Savior, you become a new person.  He changes you for the better, always for the better.  And with this comes a whole new aspect on our world and the people around us.  We have a new view and it is definitely not like the world around us.  When we see an aboriginal like Bill, we do not see a short black man who is subhuman.  We see a brother who has been saved by Christ.  Does anyone listening today remember when you first became saved?  Do you remember the first day that you let Jesus take control of your life?  Remember how everything looked different and you were almost walking on air.  It was a wonderful feeling.  So what happened to it?

Now we have to remember that we are sons and daughters of Adam.  With him came sin and the world has been controlled by it ever since.  If we do not spend time in the Bible every day, if we do not spend time in prayer every day, or if we do not give God the glory every day, then we start to fall back into our old ways.  And that is what happens to our walking on air.  During the exodus, ancient Israelites wanted to go back to the old ways they had in Egypt.  The Corinthians wanted to go back to their old ways before they knew Jesus.  We are the same way.  If we are not vigilant in our study of God, then we too want to go back to the way it was.

I think that one of the hardest lessons you have to learn is that you can never go back.  It does not matter what you have in mind, when you go back, things are different.  This is not always bad, and often times it is very good.  When a marriage is put back together, we have an example of good.  Things will be a bit different, but they will be good.  Our old lives are gone and we are made a new creation in the likeness of Jesus.  This should be great news to anyone and everyone.

Not only are we new creations but we are also new examples for the people around us.  This can be an equally hard task.  I ask myself this question all the time.  “How in the world can I, that is this person right here, be a good influence on anyone?”  The answer is that I cannot be.  It’s only when I allow Jesus to work through me that this miracle happens.  It’s the same way for all of us.  It’s the same way for you.

During a recent heated presidential campaign a man came to church wearing the button of one of the candidates.  The pastor asked him in a nice way to remove it while he was in church.  The man didn’t want to because he believed in the candidate.  The pastor said, “Suppose a man from the other party sees that pin.  He might get upset so much that he will not be able to hear the Gospel and be saved.”

The man replied sullenly, “I suppose you are right.  We have to remember that people are not Democrats or Republicans, but they are all sinners in need of the grace of Jesus Christ.”  We are to always model Christ.  We are all sinners that need Him.  We all need reconciliation to God.

Now we come to the part of being reconciled through Christ.  As I was reading up on this a little, I realized that we could make this real complicated.  But I do not think that we need to make it that way at all.  As I mentioned earlier it takes both parties to be willing to be reconciled.  We cannot have just one party doing it and the other going about their private business.

This has been going on for centuries.  This is especially true of our country today.  We have it very nice here.  We have numerous cars, we have multiple TV sets, we have cell phones everywhere, and we have so much food that most people eat too much.  We have so much plenty that we really have no need for God.  Therefore why should we be reconciled to Him through Jesus or any other way?  After all, it is not easy to follow Jesus and there are many other false religions that are far easier to follow.  By the way please don’t get fooled by any of these false religions and they are all false.

Anyway, I will tell you why.  Following Jesus is the only way to heaven and salvation.  The Bible is full of witnesses of what happened so many years ago.  As a matter of fact there were over 500 witnesses who saw Jesus after He rose from the dead.  This doesn’t even take into account all the people who saw the miracles first hand.  There is not one religion in the world that has witnesses and so much proof of its existence.  It is only Christianity that has actual witnesses as to who Jesus really was!

Several years ago there was a fad in this country that was called the Secret.  To put this in a nutshell, if all you think is positive thoughts then only positive things will happen to you.  This is similar to prosperity preaching.  I watched a couple of TV shows about this craze and came to this conclusion.  The basic premises are pretty good.  We should be positive in nature.  There is nothing wrong with this part.  We are to treat people as we want to be treated.  But where does this lead?  Where is the proof that this gets us anywhere except matbe a little happier life here on earth?  But of course, the followers of this fad take things entirely too far.  As far as I’m concerned, they do not have a clue as to what the secret is.  As Christians, we know the secret and we know that it is no secret.  All can have eternal life if they come and let themselves be reconciled through Jesus.  We were separated through the sin of Adam and now we can be reconciled back to Jesus if we just come to Him.  He is waiting.

Paul is telling us here that Jesus took everything upon his shoulders when he went to the cross.  Everything is directed to Jesus.  No longer do we have to worry about the wrath of God.  No longer do we have to worry about the sins we commit over and over.  All we have to do is accept Jesus as who He says He is and ask him to live in our hearts.  It is that simple and it is no secret.  The resulting life you will get will be better than you can imagine.

When we hear about people being reconciled, most of the time we see that both parties will come to some sort of agreement.   Then they meet somewhere in the middle.  It may not be exactly in the middle but it is somewhere in the middle.  I would like to talk to the men for a minute here.  I think that we were made way differently from women, I guess that’s obvious, and one of the ways that we are different is that we find it hard to be reconciled with someone.  And I think that this is especially true for married men.  How many times does your wife have to come 80% of the way before you budge off of your spot?  There is just something about us that makes this very hard for us.  I do not mean to point at anyone in particular here because I am the same way.  If you do not believe me just ask Sharon.  But I also want you to know that if the shoe fits then let’s take a look at your life.  Whether you are a man or a woman, there is no one that should not meet somewhere in the middle during a reconciliation process.

So what has God done for you?  He has made it very simple for you.  If He were 100 steps away from you, all you would have to do is take the first step.  All you have to do is believe in Jesus, confess your sins and ask Him into your life.  That is the only step that you have to take.  God, through Jesus, will take the other 99 steps.  He will make all of the other steps if you just take the first one.  I’m telling you men now that this is a good deal for us.  You do not have to meet in the middle as you would in your marriage.  You only have to take one step.  God loves you so much that He will take the rest.  And of course, ladies, this is open for you also.  God loves both men and women equally.

And after you come to Christ, you are to be an ambassador for Him to the world.  This is like the great commission.  You are to seek out other people so that they too can know the truth and be saved.  You have been called to serve as an ambassador to a world that has rejected the Lord.  Notice that you are not to be an ambassador for United Methodist Church or the Lutheran Church or any other church.  These are man-made entities and are subject to our faults.  You are to be an ambassador for God, through Jesus Christ.  He died for your sins after living a sinless life.  He never sinned.  He was perfect.

You cannot be perfect.  It is not possible for you and you should not dwell on the impossible.  But you are called to be a new creation in the likeness of Christ.  You are called to leave the old life behind and go forth as Christ like as you can as you spread the Good News.  It is not easy.  You will see all kinds of hardship.  But you have Jesus.  Remember this when the hard times come, and turn to Him.  He will give you rest.  He will give you words to say.  He will tell you where find people.  You have Jesus.  And when you have Jesus, you will need nothing more.  Praise the Lord and thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.