“Ministry of Reconciliation” One Part Only

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 913 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: I’m very reluctant to get up here…very conscious of what Carl was expressing. And that’s just how unworthy and how unable we are in ourselves to do anything. But yet God somehow in His mercy has chosen to operate this way.

( congregational amens ).

And so we have to just take things as they are and exalt Him. It’s interesting the opening remarks Carl made were from the passage that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. It’s such a rich store of truth in 2nd Corinthians 3 through 5, along in there when Paul is talking about his ministry. And I used this to emphasize the Lordship of Christ last week, but I just want to kind of flow with what’s been said this morning. I believe it’s right on the money.

And Paul speaks of the ministry that he has already told us the ability to engage in that ministry comes entirely from God. It was not of himself at all. That’s the thrust of chapter 3 and how the ministry is a glorious ministry. It’s the ministry of the Spirit. It’s a ministry that has the power to bring freedom and life to all who open their hearts to it. Even though some were veiled, when the heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away and then you can see, and then there’s the possibility of entering into that life.

Chapter 4…let’s read this again. “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry….” (NIV). Boy, I feel that this morning. How much I need His mercy. I cannot stand here on any other ground. There’s absolutely no other ground that I can stand upon except that God has been merciful to an unworthy sinner. But that’s true of every one of us, if we stand at all, we stand by God’s mercy. I thank Him for it.

“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry we do not lose heart.” That’s the reason we don’t have to lose heart is because it isn’t based on us, it is based on His mercy. “Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience….”

Well that’s about all we can do, isn’t it? You have somebody that has a ministry given from God and their job is to give it out plainly and put the ball in your court, as it were. Every hearer who hears the Word of God is responsible for it. Light is come into the world and the question is: what do men do with that Light?

He says, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” And the reason for that is, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Now that’s the condition of men without God. They live in gross darkness and only God’s…only a miracle, as Carl mentioned, only a miracle can do anything about that. If men are left to their own devices, there is a veil, there is a blindness, there is an inability to see anything beyond this world…to be attached, to have our affections engaged by anything other than the desires of this world. We are locked in without God’s mercy.

And so Paul, that’s were Paul says, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord…” That’s the foundation. “…And ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” Now let’s get it all straight. Jesus is Lord, we are the servant. Our job is just simply to point you to Him. He’s the only One that can do anything about the situation. And so that’s our job here today. That’s our job as a church. It’s not to say, hey, look at us. We are nothing. Jesus is everything. He is the Hope of men. He’s the only hope for men.

Now here is what it took for Paul to be in that position. He says, “For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” I mean, you could preach on that for a long time. There’s a lot of truth there.

But how did Paul come into possession of this. Paul was a zealous, religious man, giving himself unreservedly to the religion that he believed in. He was zealous to serve God as he understood it in his sin-blinded condition. Without God’s intervention, he would have continued on the path that he was on. And so would you and so would I. But God intervened!

God shined a light in his heart. This was not simply an external message. Paul had heard the external. He had had encounters with Christians. He heard and was there on the occasion when Stephen was stoned to death. He held the coats of those who were stoning him, so they could do a better job of stoning him. He was agreeing with them. He went out and he haled Christians into prison. He was responsible for others who died. We learn from his letters. So Paul was absolutely hell-bent in the wrong direction. Only the intervention of God on the inside was able to change the situation.

There was a light of God’s very being that came, that shone through Jesus. Jesus was God’s revelation to this world. Without the revelation of Jesus Christ and the light that was in Him, no one would ever have anything but darkness. But that light has to shine down in here, doesn’t it?

You know, I have all ideas this morning that there are two kinds of people here. There’s people who have that light on the inside and there’s people who need it. And so for those who have never come to this place, has God’s light ever shined in your heart? Has God ever brought you to a revelation of Himself that causes you to see what you are by comparison?

Now look what He did for Isaiah. I guarantee you, Isaiah thought pretty well of himself before his experience in chapter 6. He was a prophet of God. God had used him. He was certainly a righteous man among a nation where most of the people were off worshipping idols. But then he got lifted up to heaven and saw a vision of the Lord’s glory and boy, he wanted to crawl in a hole and pull it in after him. I mean he was just absolutely blown away with the holiness and the purity of God.

Folks, we live in such an incredibly broken world, we have no idea…I mean believers today, us…we have no idea. We are so influenced by the culture and the world around us, we have no idea what God is like. You know, the cross reveals many things, but one thing it reveals is God’s judgment of this world. Jesus, before He went to the cross, he said, “Now is the judgment of this world.” God’s gonna pour out His wrath upon me and that is going to be His judgment upon this broken world.

You want to know what your sin is like and what it’s like to God? You look at the cross. You want to look at the very best that this world has to offer? You look at the cross. God absolutely, utterly rejected it and poured out His wrath upon it. Boy, we have a warped up view of what is good and what is right and what is desirable in this world. We need God’s mercy to open our eyes, to show us.

You know, Carl rightly pointed out the two reactions. Most people when the light of God comes and they begin to feel their unworthiness and how dirty they are before a holy God, what do they want to do? They want to push that away. That’s the reason for the judgment. Read Romans chapter 1. God’s wrath is revealed against the ungodliness of men. Why? What’s the basis of the wrath of God against this world? What is its basis? Its basis is that men hold down the truth by their unrighteousness. They make a choice to say, I want to embrace what I want. I want to embrace the darkness that I already possess. I want my values to be esteemed above the truth of God and I’m gonna hold that…I don’t want to hear that.

I tell you what, it’s one thing for a world to be ignorant. It’s another thing for them to have light and choose darkness. That’s where the wrath of God comes into play. And I’ll tell you, that’s what was poured out upon our Savior. He was the stand-in for this whole creation. He was a stand-in for you!

( congregational amens ).

I tell you, when He died, God poured out His wrath against you and your sin, and your independence and your rebellion and all the things that are wrong in you. Oh, I’ll tell you, we can put on an act. We can go to church. We can sing the songs. But I’ll tell you, has God ever done for you what He did for Paul? I don’t mean you have to hear a voice. I don’t mean you have to get knocked off a horse by a brilliant light. But I’ll tell you God’s light has got to shine down in here.

( congregational amens ).

You’ve got to come to the point where you see that everything about this world is vain and empty and hopeless, and you’ve got to run to the only source of help that there is in all the universe! That’s Jesus Christ!

You know, Paul goes on to say, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay….” Now I’m gonna pause there because he calls the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ a treasure. I’ll tell you this world is choosing its treasure here. One of the other things that you see in the cross is Jesus’ own evaluation of this world. The cross not only represented God’s…the pouring out of God’s judgment upon this world, it represented Jesus’ utter rejection of everything this corrupted creation stands for. He said on one occasion, that which is highly esteemed among men is what?

( congregational response ).

It’s abomination in the eyes of God. I mean the very best that this world can produce is so far from what God is after, so far from His purposes that it’s something that Jesus just utterly rejected. Oh we’re so sentimental. Oh we want to sort of think that we’re okay, and we’re good, and we’re this and we’re that…oh my God. One glimpse of His holiness and we would know the truth.

But oh, Paul saw something, didn’t he? Paul saw something that was so real that he was willing to throw every bit of his life in the trash, saying, I don’t want any of that. I want this. That’s salvation, folks. If you’re not willing to give up your life to have it, you don’t have it! Has God ever put His finger right down in the depths of your soul, put his finger on the very fountain of your life, and said, “That is what’s wrong”? “You’re gonna have to give it up and you’re gonna have to give up your life to Me. But if you do, I’ll give you Myself, and I’ll give you a hope that goes all the way into eternity. I’ll give you the treasure that Paul was talking about.” Oh, praise God for the treasure. What did the man have to do to get the pearl of great price? How much did he have to sell?

( congregational response ).

How much?

-- Congregation: All.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Everything! And that’s what it costs to have Jesus. Everything has to be laid down and say, “Lord, I want You.” He’s worth everything. There’s nothing--there’s nothing that you can hang on to…that you can hang on to and say, oh I want this. Lord, I’ll come if You’ll just let me hang on to this. No, no, no. Every bit of it’s got to be laid down.

But you know Paul was still in a jar of clay, wasn’t he? He was still in an earthen vessel. He still lived, he still had this wonderful treasure, but he had it in a flesh and blood body. Brother Burton spoke about Jesus having…about the world seeing Jesus with skin, that’s exactly right. That’s God’s method. And that comes to the rest of us here. We need to have lives that express the life of Jesus and not what we were before we came to Him.

( congregational amens ).

And left to ourselves, what will we express? What will people see in us? They’re not going to see Jesus, are they, if we’re left to ourselves? Listen to what Paul said about the ministry. Because this doesn’t apply just to people like Paul, this applies to every one of us. God desires to express His life through those who have it, so that other can see it and be drawn to it. That’s what’s been expressed this morning and it’s right.

He says, “But we have this treasure…” the treasure of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, “we have this treasure in jars of clay…” Why is that? “…To show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” God’s fixed it to where there is a power that comes through human vessels, but God has got it so that everybody should know that it’s not us. We have nothing in ourselves. It’s from God and not from us.

So, how does that work out? Paul said, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed….” Are you perplexed this morning? Something you don’t understand. Well you’ve got good company.

( laughter ).

Paul, the apostle, was often perplexed. Many times he didn’t know what to do. You know, he had to just constantly do the same thing we have to do. He had to depend on God, and say, God, I don’t know what to do. Help me here. We think of him, we put him way up here somewhere. He’s just like us except he had a particular call on his life.

So he was perplexed, “…But not in despair.” His perplexity, his lack of having an answer in a given situation did not cause him to give up in despair. He knew that there was always a resource, there was always One to whom he had to look. Why? Because the virtue was not in him, it was in Christ. God put him in a position, you see, by the perplexity to have to look to God. Has God put you there?

( congregational response ).

Yeah! God wants life out of us. He wants it out of me in a greater measure. God help me. God help us. “…Persecuted…persecuted, but not abandoned…” never alone, “…struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

See that’s something else that comes out of the cross and the resurrection. Jesus’ death was our death, and we need, not just to lay down our lives down to possess His life, but God’s plan is for us daily to take up our cross, to so live in a manner that our life is being put to death day by day, so that His life can come forth. Now how many of you just voluntarily and easily do that?

( congregational response ).

Well, you’ve got a lot a company there, too. So Paul goes on to say, “For we who are alive….” Now who are those who are alive? Those who’ve embraced this light, those who’ve recognized their need of God, those who have turned over their hearts to Him, those who’ve given up their lives and repented of their sins, called upon His mercy, and have received His life.

It says, “We who are alive are always being given over to death….” That’s not coming from me, is it? That’s not coming from you. That’s something that’s coming from the outside. That means God is always doing something in our lives that is restraining, that is putting to death the various parts of our life that get in the way of what He wants to do. Is God putting you in a distressing situation? Is God putting you in a perplexing situation? Has He even put you on a bed of pain?

Oh, we don’t want those things, do we? We want to find a quickie little miracle ministry to just kind of make all that go away. But God said to Paul, or Paul said of his ministry, we are given over…God has put me in places that are difficult and He’s done it to put to death these things, because if He didn’t do that, I would be moving in my own wisdom. I’d be moving in my own strength. I’d be doing what I wanted to do. I would be blissfully going along thinking I was serving God and I wouldn’t be doing a bit of good. But God was more faithful that that.

And I’ll tell you, that same God is gonna be faithful in our lives to work in us so that we can be a light. Have you prayed that God make me a light? Have you prayed, God, make this church a light, a greater light? Well, what is that light? It’s not doctrines. It’s not our little traditions. It’s the light of Christ…of God’s life that’s in us. But like Gideon’s light that was all hidden in that earthen vessel that had to be…what had to happen for that light to come out?

( congregational response ).

They had to break the vessel. And that’s what God is doing in our lives. And so we need to be thankful. Because Paul says, “We who are alive are always being given over to death…” Always…there’s always something that is restraining and putting to death, this sentence of death is always there. “…For Jesus’ sake…” For His sake…well what are we living for? Our sake? We’re supposed to be living for His sake.

( congregational amens ).

His sake. Why? Why is this necessary? “…So that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.” That’s the whole point. God wants to show His light to the world. That can only happen one way. It’s through your earthen vessels that are given to Him and in order for that to happen, His death has to be worked out in us day by day.

I’ll tell you that explains an awful lot that goes on in the life of believers. We need to understand and have a confidence to recognize, God, Your hand, Your stroke of death is upon my life and I embrace that! I recognize that what I would be in myself is nothing…is not even close to what You’re after. Not only that, it’s in the way of what You want to do…that my ability, my pride, my ‘all of these things’ cannot help you, God. You’re just gonna have to come and put to death the things that are in the way of what You want to do and help me to open my heart to that, to embrace it.

Jesus opened His heart to the cross. He joyfully embraced the cross. Everything that men value in the world, He despised, He rejected it. It was His own embracing of suffering, of death, of shame…it was the exact opposite of what men pursue in the natural. He embraced that. He said, that’s my pathway to life! Well that’s our pathway of life, too…to life. Thank God that we can go to the cross with Jesus, and yet live. Thank God He’s opened a way. There’s nothing we could have done to fix our situation. We were without hope and without God in the world. We needed a Savior. We have one in the Lord Jesus Christ.

( congregational amens ).

But oh, praise God! I’ll tell you what, in the world everyone died…I mean in the cross everyone died, but some are made alive. Those who are made alive are the ones who embrace the cross and the death, and are willing to lay down their lives and take hold by faith of the promise of God of eternal life in Christ Jesus.

And those who live should, what? This is actually a verse. I’m gonna go ahead and just…just read it. Verse 14 of chapter 5, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” That’s what God has called us to. That’s the only thing that actually qualifies as being a follower of Jesus.

If you are one here that needs to have God come down into the depths of your heart, I pray that His light will penetrate some heart this morning, will cause you to say, I want Jesus. I need Jesus. I need the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His promises that if I will repent of my sins, put my faith in Him, I can have that gift of eternal life that’s mentioned in John 3:16.

God didn’t come to world to condemn you. He came to save you. What are you gonna do about it? When the light comes, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna find some way to sidestep it and try to think that oh, I can hang on to my life and I can be a Christian, too. Well you can’t. You’ll never be a follower of Jesus until you walk the road He walked. Take up your cross and lay down your life. But oh, when you do, He’ll give you His life.

And Paul looked at the life that he had in Christ and the hope that he had in Christ, he looked all of his past life, and said, that’s a bunch of trash. Throw it out. I want this. I want Him. But oh, I pray that for all that have found Him, God help us to humble ourselves every day, to look to Him, to let Him do the work in our lives that He desires to do and to recognize that as He puts us to death, His life is gonna come forth in a greater way. It’s gonna touch lives around us.

And I pray, as Carl does, that God will lead us to people that He’s dealing with, because we can’t argue and we can’t debate people in. We can’t through any human effort, accomplish the work of God. But only as God touches people’s hearts by His Spirit, and down in the hearts reveals the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ can it happen. And I believe God is doing that. I believe He’s bringing us to that in a greater measure. May He cause us to grow. But oh, may this light grow in our hearts today. I praise Him. I praise Him for the cross. That’s the foundation of it all.

( congregational amens ).

When he died and when he was raised from the dead, everything…all history focuses on that reality. And then the fact that He is ascended into heaven at the right hand of the Father. But oh, He’s coming--He’s coming. And he’s coming as Savior, He’s coming as Judge. We’re all gonna stand before Him on that day and we’re gonna give an answer about the Light that has come to our lives. May God give us the right answer. Yes, Lord. When that Light comes, I surrender to it. I want it. Praise God!

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