Filling Up the Lifeboats

Well, arguably the most well-known disaster in history is the one pictured on the screen this morning, the sinking of the Titanic in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. There's something hauntingly magnetic about the story of the Titanic and all that happened on that dreadful night. That story has intrigued generation after generation. This has been written about the Titanic and award-winning Broadway show was developed about the Titanic. Movies have been made about the Titanic, one of which was the top-selling film of all time. And numerous expeditions were set out both before and after the discovery of the Titanic in 1985, numerous expeditions to try to retrieve some of the materials from the Titanic and find out more about what happened there. So this has intrigued people for generations. The stories of the Titanic are legendary, considered the technological marvel of its day, probably according to many people, unsinkable. It left on its maiden voyage from England to the United States with the largest collection of wealthy and powerful people ever assembled in one place that we know of in history to that time. To be unsinkable, there was a disregard for the warnings of icebergs in the region because so many of those wealthy and powerful people were busy sending telegraphs to their family and friends in New York City giving estimated times of arrival and the telegraph operators were overwhelmed. They just disregarded all the warnings. And then suddenly hitting the iceberg, six gashes torn in the hull and within two hours the ship went down. And the stories of what happened after that are legendary, the musicians playing classical music on the deck of the Titanic as people are panicking and then as things get worse changing to playing hymns, 1500 of the 2200 passengers losing their lives on that fateful night. And even lesser known stories like Evangelist John Harper who was on the Titanic was on his way to speak at Moody Church to hold Evangelistic meetings at Moody Church. He had been in Chicago and had such success as an Evangelist in Chicago in the fall they invited him back for the spring. And there he is on the Titanic making his trip over to the States and the stories that are told are by survivors are that he was witnessing to everybody he could find as the ship was going down. And even after he himself was in the water, losing his life every time he saw someone floating close to him, he challenged the midst of whether or not they knew Christ. And one man did receive Christ was rescued and lived to tell the story of John Harper and his witnessing even in the waters of the North Atlantic. The stories are legendary but no story is more tragic when it comes to the Titanic than the stories the survivors told about the lifeboats. There were only twenty of them not near enough for a ship that size but again it was thought to be invincible who would need lifeboats. The lifeboats that were used most of them were not full. Many of them only half full of passengers. Hundreds of passengers either fell over into the ocean or dove into the ocean and with life jackets sustaining them in the ocean cried out for help. But lifeboat after lifeboat continued to roll away from the disaster not back to where the people were. It was thought by some that it would be too risky to try a rescue. It was thought by others that maybe the ship's suction would take the lifeboats down as well. For whatever reason they did not go back. Only one lifeboat ended up going back to try to rescue dying passengers. And it was too late. They only found six people still alive. Three days later when ships from Nova Scotia went to rescue bodies or to get bodies, they found the eerie site of 328 women, children and men floating on their life jackets above water but frozen to death. Why? Because those who were already safe in a lifeboat would not turn around to go back to try to rescue those who were dying. And when I think of that I wonder is that a picture of us? By God's grace we're in Christ's lifeboat. If you have trusted the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you are in the lifeboat, you are headed for heaven, you're going to safety. But all around us are people who have no hope unless they are rescued by our lifeboat. And God has put some of them within your reach and within my reach. They're people we work with. They're people that we live beside. They're people that we know. There may be even family members. But they're where we live. They're where we work. They're where we shop. They're where we go to school. The question is will we make every effort to turn our lifeboats around and go back to rescue some of those people or will we continue to road to safety with our lifeboat comrades singing our lifeboat songs, doing everything we can to make our lifeboats more attractive and comfortable while people cry out, within reach, dying without hope. What will we do? What will we do? Will we continue to let people slip beneath the waves or will we turn around and try to rescue people? Will we be lifesavers? People who reach out to those who are dying without Christ. Well, what will make the difference for us? What will turn us away from our own survival and comfort to try to rescue other people at great risk, maybe? What will make the difference for us? Will it be a guilt trip put on us by a preacher? I doubt it. Will it be some slick evangelistic program? Probably not. I think what will make the difference for us is a fresh realization of the love of Christ. And how much He loved us and how much He gave for us and how much He did the same for everybody else that's out there sinking beneath the waves as well. A fresh appreciation of the love of Jesus Christ for us will make the difference in whether or not we are just our survivors by ourselves or whether we are lifesavers trying to reach other people who are dying. And that's exactly what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5. So if you open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 5 this morning, we want to look at what it means to have our world turned around and our perspective changed to where we're no longer content just a role way in our own lifeboat, but we're willing to row back to some hurting and dying people and try to rescue them as well. It is the love of Christ that will make the difference. Notice what Paul says there in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 14. He says, for Christ's love compels us. Now I want to stop for just a moment before we get any further into the verse and just look at that word compels. What does Christ love do to us? It compels us. You may have a translation that says, it constrains us. It's the same word that's used in Philippians 1 verse 23. Look at this verse where Paul said, I am torn between the two or in the King James trans, I am in a straight, be twixed the two. A desire, a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better than he said the other option is to stay here and be with you for more ministry and that's what eventually felt like the Lord had for him. But he's kind of between a rock and a hard place is how we would say it today. He is constrained. He is pressed between these two. That's the same word Paul uses. The love of Christ constrains or compels us. The idea is that it presses us to where we begin to see things and we focus. It presses us. It constrains us. It compels us to a more definite focus in life. The idea is of an athlete who is facing his or her greatest contest, maybe an Olympic event or a national championship and there is focus. I mean the pressure, the pressure of that event focuses all of their energies and you can see it in their eyes. It is that squint of concentration of focus on that event. It's the same thing that a worker has under a deadline and they focus all their energies on getting that project done. It's the same focus, the concentration of energy that a student has before a final exam that makes you cram and study all night and then go in and really focus on that exam before it all leaks out your ears and you forget it all. It's that focus, it's that concentration that Paul's talking about here. The love of Christ does that for us. If we understand and get a fresh appreciation for the love of Christ, the love that Christ gave us, then it will sharpen our focus. It will press us into a focus on what's really important. So this is what Paul says. It will focus us in three ways and he describes them in this passage. Number one, the love of Christ will focus our motivation. Now look at verses 14 and 15, we'll read a little further this time. For Christ's love compels us, constrains us, presses us into this focus because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died or all were dead 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. Now if you notice the story of the gospel in the sense is told in those two verses, it talks about we were dead. So Christ died and we have been made alive. That's really the essence of the gospel. We were all dead. Christ died for all and then there are some of those all who are alive who have trusted Christ and so we are no longer spiritually dead. That's really the gospel. We were dead. Christ died. Now we're alive. That's great. That's the gospel. But the point of the gospel is what are you going to do now? How are you going to live now? What is your motivation in life now that you are one of those who's alive that used to be dead but now you're alive because of the death of Christ? He died for you, verse 15 says, that those who live and here's the point should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So in that verse Paul talks about two different motivations. The love of Christ motivates us away from one and toward the other. The first one he talks about is a selfish motivation. So the love of Christ takes us away from a selfish motivation. He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, a selfish motivation. What is a selfish motivation? What does it mean to live for yourself? Well it means that life is centered around me. I'm concerned only about how things affect me. That's what selfish motivation is. I'm concerned about my own agenda, my own plans, my own ambitions, my own goals and how everything that happens in life, how's that going to affect me? What do I get out of this? What's this going to do for my welfare? My benefit, that's a selfish motivation in life. Selfish motivation highlights possessions over your soul. A selfish motivation will think that position and favor in life are more important than others needs. A selfish motivation will value pleasure over pleasing God. A selfish motivation will value how you look over who you are on the inside, your character, because it's all about me. And there is no place where selfishness shows up better than in marriage, right? I see all of you mates saying, yeah, my mate, my spouse, yeah, I see it. There's really, because we are who we are around our spouses, right? We really are who we are. Kind of like the couple that came to a pastor and they said, you know, we are at the end, we are getting a divorce and the pastor tried talking with them, tried counseling with them, persuading them, urging them, and to no avail, they just said, we are settled. Our mind is made up. We're going to get a divorce. And finally, in exasperation, the wife blurted out, you don't understand pastor, we are both in love with the same person, him. That's the problem. I heard about one guy who won a trip for two to Hawaii and he went twice. That's selfishness, okay? It shows up in our relationships, in our closest relationships, like marriage. We have a tendency by nature to be selfish. And selfish motivations can show up even in the Christian life and in the church, you know that? Even in our Christian lives, in our churches, we can become focused on ourselves and have a selfish motivation. We just want more blessing for us. And we become very self-centered. We want programs that meet my needs. We want a place where I will feel comfortable. We want a church the way I like church with very little thought for people who are unchurched, unsaved, and that need the gospel to be presented in terms that they can understand, they can appreciate. But no, I want it like I want it. Sometimes we become very selfish in our motivations, even in the church and in the Christian life. We've tried to do some things, to try to break some of that down. And obviously we all struggle with that. I included, and we've tried to do some things to make us more of an outreaching type church. And I remember when we first started doing some of those things, I got a couple of letters and a couple of those letters said things like, you are more concerned about the new people than you are those of us who have been here for 30 years. You know what my response is? Guilty as charged. I'm concerned about people who have been here 30 years. But my heart-passion is for people who do not yet know Christ. And I will do anything, anything that we can do within the confines of God's Word, to reach out to lost people and unchurched people while at the same time still continuing to minister to the saints. But I believe that we are selfish if we become so withdrawn and ingrown that all we're concerned about is us, us, and what meets my needs and church the way I like it, rather than what really reaches out to the lost and dying people who are ready to slip beneath the waves. You see it all the time in churches where a seminar is offered on how to get your marriage together. A seminar is offered on how to raise children or how to manage your money or how to lose weight and you can get a full house with that kind of stuff. But you offer a seminar on evangelism? The last workshop we have offered on evangelism we had zero people there, zero. There are lots of reasons for that maybe. But it just makes me question, have we become self-focused? We become withdrawn, inward focused. I hope not, but I sure want to preach hard against that because Jesus died for us so that we wouldn't live that way, so that we wouldn't be focused on ourselves. Too many Bible-believing churches have people with notebooks, full of sermon notes, schedules, full of Christian activities, heads full of Bible truth, and lifeboats half empty, only half full of people. And I want this church and my life to be the kind of church and the kind of life that says, I want to go back for some dying people. I want to fill the lifeboat. I don't want to get out of here with my own safety and my own security with a lifeboat half empty. Jesus died so that we would no longer live for ourselves, that we would no longer be self-focused and want things the way I want them to meet my needs. No Jesus died so that we would no longer live for ourselves, but verse 15 says, so that we would live for Him who died for them and was raised again. To live for Him, that is not a selfish motivation, that is a servant motivation. In other words, our whole purpose, our goal, our drive, our ambition, our motivation in life is no longer to live for me, but to live for Jesus Christ. And you know what that boils down to? What did Jesus come for? What did Jesus come to this earth for? I mean, the verses are very clear, aren't they? For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believed within Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Himself said to the religious crowd of His day in Jericho a few days before He died. He's walking into the house of a dirty low-down tax collector, a traitor to the Jewish cause and the religious crowd is very critical of Him for spending time with people like that. They always have been throughout His ministry. And Jesus looks at them and says, for the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. That's why I came. I came for lost people. There were times when Jesus told them, I didn't come to heal the well. I came to heal the sick. I asked sick people that needed a physician. That's why I came for. And so Jesus' purpose in coming was to reach lost people. If we are going to be followers of Jesus, then we will be fissures of men, not rowers of lifeboats that roll away from lost and dying people. We'll be fissures of men. Jesus said as much in Matthew 4 verse 19 when He called some of His first disciples and He said, come follow me and I will make you fissures of men. Can we claim to be followers of Christ if we're not fishing for men? If we're just rowing lifeboats away from disaster? Can we claim to be followers of Christ? I think not. If we're following Him, He will mold us and make us into fissures of men. People who are out seeking to rescue people from the waves rather than rowing away from them. The focus of our motivation is away from a selfish motivation and toward a servant motivation. Paul was a great example of this. He really was. Paul said things that really were counter culture that were really counter to people's thinking. Paul said things in Philippians like, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. How is death seen is gained because you're with Christ. Paul would say in Philippians 3, what things were gained for me? The things that really everybody wanted. I had, and he describes him in the first part of Philippians 3. He had power, he had education, he had position, he was exceeding, he was going way off the charts in all of the things that meant success in his day. He said, what things were gained for me? Those I counted lost for the sake of Christ. Yay, and I counted all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ so that I may know him and be found in him having his righteousness, everything centered around being a servant of Christ. And you know what that meant? You know what that meant for Paul to be a servant of Christ and meant he would do whatever he could within the confines of God's Word to reach out to lost people. He said it in 1 Corinthians 9. You might want to just flip back there real quick since you're within a few pages. 1 Corinthians 9, verse 19, he says, though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave. Here's that servant motivation again. I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. Now in the context here, Paul's talking about Christian liberty. You know that I'm not under legalistic constraints anymore. I have Christian liberty to live. My life is, I believe God wants me to, but Paul said, hey, when it comes to reaching people for Christ, I'm willing to give up some of my freedom. I'm willing to give up some of my liberty to be able to win others to Christ. Now here's how he said it. Look at verse 20. Where am I, verse 19? Yeah, look at verse 20. To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law, though I myself am not under the law so as to win those under the law. What does he mean by that? He meant when my audience is a Jewish audience. When I'm trying to reach Jewish people with the gospel, I don't get up in the pulpit and start banging on and haranging on legalistic type stuff. I don't get up and say, okay, the food laws are lifted. No more dietary laws. Start eating ham sandwiches for crying out loud. He said, that's not the way I preach. When I'm trying to reach Jewish people, I try to do as much as I can to fit into their culture and reach them where they are with their level of understanding. I become like a Jew. Now, he says, I don't compromise biblical principle, but things that are areas of freedom, I just kind of say, okay, I'm not going to forget about it. Now, I'm not going to make a big deal over that right now. I'm going to forget about that to reach people with the gospel. Look at what he goes on to say in verse 21. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law. He's talking about Gentiles there. They don't have the law. They don't have all those restrictions. So I became like that. He says, and notice the qualification here in parenthesis, though I am not free from God's law, but I'm under Christ's law so as to when those not having the law. So when he's with Gentiles, he doesn't make a big deal over Jewish stuff. He tries to fit into the culture that he's in as much as possible, so as not to offend them and to hopefully reach them with the gospel. It's the same thing we ask every missionary to do when they go to the mission field. Just try to fit into the culture you live in. Don't take American values and American ways of doing things and force them on a culture in Africa or Asia. Try to fit into the culture that you live in. Don't compromise the gospel, but in your living, try to be one of the people living the culture. That's what Paul was doing. What he was saying. My methods, my way of reaching out to people differ according to the audience. When I'm with Jews, it's one way when I'm with Gentiles, it's another way. And then he goes on to say in verse 22, to the weak, I became weak to win the weak. In the context, he's talking about people who have a weak, real sensitive conscience about everything. You know, shouldn't do, shouldn't do, shouldn't do. Paul just tries to fit in with that as much as possible to win those folks. He says, I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. So Paul was a great example of how to live a servant motivation. It meant that whatever it takes, apart from compromise of the Word of God, whatever it takes by way of my lifestyle and giving up my own freedoms or trying to fit in with other cultures, I will do that in order to win those people to Christ. Christ's love focuses our motivation. Secondly, Christ's love focuses our mindset. Look at verses 16 and 17, back in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 16. So from now on, because of this, because Christ's love really presses us into this focus. So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. You know what that means? That means we have a different mindset, a different view of others. Our view of others is changed because of the love of Christ and what that means to us. Now when I talk about mindset, what I'm talking about was what Paul says when he talks about regarding someone, it's the way we view people, it's the way we look at everything and everyone that changes, should change when we really come to know Christ. Our view of others changes. It's not anymore a worldly point of view. And what is a worldly point of view? Well it's seeing people from a purely human standpoint. I mean, how do most people make up their minds about who's important and who's not in life? How do they view other people? You know, naturally people have kind of a pecking order that we place people in. I'm talking about from a humanistic worldly perspective. We have a pecking order. And those who are more wealthy or more powerful or more educated or better looking or whatever, we kind of place them higher. And those who may not have as much of some of those things, they're a little bit lower. There's this pecking order that people naturally place each other in. Paul is saying, I don't see people that way anymore. Now that the love of Christ is sharpening my focus, I don't see people based on position or wealth or power or talent or family they come from or race or personality. None of that makes any difference. Everybody is a soul that is going to spend eternity somewhere. That's how I view people now. And that's what he's talking about. I no longer see people from a human perspective. I see them from a spiritual perspective. I mentioned earlier, Moody Church. D.L. Moody was one of the greatest evangelists this country has ever seen. And he had some great blessings of God meetings in England. He would preach at Spurgeon's Church in England. You know the theological background of those two men? You understand both of them knew something about grace. But beyond that, Moody had a great ministry at Spurgeon's Church in London. One of the times when he was in London, he was going to be preaching some meetings there. There was a little boy, an orphan boy who had seen on a poster in town that Moody was going to be in town. He'd heard about Moody and he wanted to go here Moody preach. And so he's a little orphan kid. He's a street kid. He's dirty. He's smelly. He's closer and tatters. But he made his way halfway across the city. He finally found the church and shows up before the service. And he's about ready to walk in the building when one of the dormans at the door, the usher's caught him and grabbed him by the, you know, the nape of the neck and said, where do you think you're going? And the little boy said, I want to hear Moody preach. And the guy said, you're not going in there looking like this and smelling like this. You can't come in this church building. And the little boy walked away and sat down at the steps in front of the church and started crying. About that time of carriage pulled up. And a large gentleman got out of the carriage and the first thing he saw was that little boy over there crying. So he walked over to him and he said, son, why are you crying? And the little boy told the story of wanting to go in. He said, I've been wanting to hear Moody preach. And he said, I wanted to go in, but they told me I couldn't come in because of the way I look and my clothes and the way I smell. And I know I'm dirty. And he started crying again. The man reached down and took his hand, walked him up the steps, walked him in the church, walked him to the front of the church, told him to sit down right on the front pew and then walked on up on the platform to get ready to preach. That man was a deal Moody. You see, deal Moody saw people like Jesus, saw them, like Paul saw them. I no longer see people from a worldly perspective, Paul said, from a worldly humanistic point of view. Our view of others changes because the love of Christ constrains us. We realize that Jesus died for all. That means he died for that little boy. It means he died for everybody. Regardless of where they come from, regardless of what country or nationality or race or political standing or social standing or whatever, Jesus died for them. They are a soul that needs to hear about Jesus. So our view of others changes when the love of Christ constrains us. Many go on to talk about our view of Christ changes. Notice how he says in verse 16, though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. What does it mean to regard Christ from a worldly point of view? Well, it means to think of Jesus like the world thinks of Him, like the natural man would think of Him. Person who does not understand spiritual things, they recognize Jesus lived. Jesus is a great teacher, a good moral man, an example, a leader. Jesus is all of those things. You may even be a prophet, but Paul says, I no longer see Him that way. Jesus is the Son of God who came to this world to die for our sins. He is our Savior. And beyond the cross, He arose from the grave. And beyond the grave, He ascended to heaven where He is Lord of all over all in heaven. That's who Jesus is. I no longer see Him like the world sees Him. I see Him differently. And that ought to impact the way we see ourselves as well. And that's exactly what He says in verse 17. So we view others differently, we view Christ differently. Verse 17 says, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. What Paul is saying is that it's not that you just got religious or got reformed. It's not that. You became a new creation entirely when you got saved. You're a new person with new desires, new ambitions, new directions, new goals, new everything in life is new. The old has gone, the old person you were outside of Christ with the control of the sin nature over you. That's behind you. That's gone. Don't live that way any longer. Paul says in other epistles. But live in the light of the fact that you're a new person in Christ, you're a new creation. All things are new. So our view of others is different. Our view of Christ is different. Our view of ourselves is different. And all of that fits together into what we do as Christians. And that leads Paul to say, the love of Christ not only constrains and changes and shapes and focuses our motivation, it not only focuses our mindset, our view of everything, it also focuses our ministry. And in verses 18 through 21, he talks about how to focus our ministry. Three things he says. Most of all is we now have a ministry of reconciliation. A ministry of reconciliation. Look at verse 18. All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. And here's the ministry of reconciliation verse 19, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. Now what is this thing of reconciliation? What does that mean? It's a big theological word that we use. Paul uses here. What does it mean? Reconciliation simply means that in the cross, God has removed the barrier between man and Himself to make it possible for man to be saved. Now that barrier was our sin and the fact that it had to be punished and the law of God that stood between us and God that condemned us. Now what Christ did on the cross for the whole world that says here is that He removed what stood between God and man to make it possible for us to be brought back to God. Now reconciliation is not the same thing as salvation. Reconciliation just makes it possible to be saved. There is a sense in which reconciliation is simply the fact that God makes it possible now because the barrier between God man's remove makes it possible for man to be saved. So we are to go out and tell people about that. Do you reconcile the God word to tell them? He goes on to say. We have a ministry of reconciliation. We're to announce to the world that Jesus Christ did everything that was needed on the cross to remove the barrier between God and man so that now man can come back to God. Jesus bore our sin and His body took care of the demands of the law. He bore the wrath of God. So it's possible now for you to be brought back to God. For you to be reconciled. To be brought into relationship with God. So we have a ministry of reconciliation announcing that to the world. But we also have a ministry of revelation. And by revelation I'm talking about the fact that the message we're to give is found in God's revelation of Scripture. Notice it verse 19, end of 19. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. So we've got a message to give people and that message is found in God's word. It's very clear. Very thing Paul's talking about. The message is in the word of God that Jesus Christ has died to make it possible for God and man to be brought back together again for us to be reconciled to God. Now we are to urge people. Come back to God. Be reconciled to God. Trust Christ is your Savior. And that message is found in His Word. By the way, when you talk to people about their need, when you talk to people about spiritual things, make sure that you focus on the Word. So many people are hung up on personal preferences and personal convictions and things like that that sometimes the message of the gospel kind of gets blurred or left behind altogether. In the Civil War, President Lincoln was visiting a hospital where soldiers had been injured in battle. And just before President Lincoln had gotten there, a woman had gone through and given the soldier's tracks, which is a wonderful thing. But when President Lincoln arrived, one of the men was holding up the track, laughing. So Lincoln went over to his bedside and said, sir, what's the problem? And the man said, this woman that came through just gave me a track on the evils of dancing and both my legs are shot off. The evils of dancing is that what people need to hear? Or do they need to hear that Jesus Christ came to die for your sins? You can be reconciled to God. You can become a part of God's family. Too many people, they are blurring the message by all kinds of personal issues. This is the only translation you can use. Don't use that kind of music. And, you know, haranging away at lost people with those kinds of things, lost people need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I get all kinds of stuff in the mail about, you know, this is what you need to do in order to reach lost people. That's what you need to do. And you need to make sure they understand that this is necessary and that's necessary and this is necessary. And I have a file for those kind of things. It sits on the floor beside my desk. Because you know what lost people need? They need the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus loved them enough to die for them. They don't need to hear our personal convictions on what translations are best or not best, or what music should or should not be used, or how you should comb your hair, or what you should wear, what you shouldn't wear. It's like we've got to get them all cleaned up and dressed up before they can get saved. Heaven forbid, we blur the gospel when we do that. They need the message of God's revelation. Stick with the Word. Stick with what the gospel is. So we've been given a ministry of reconciliation, a ministry of revelation. And then third, we've been given a ministry of representation. Oh, this is great. The way Paul says this, look at verse 20. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through us. And here's the appeal. We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God. Here's the essence of the message of verse 21. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. That's it. That's the message. That God sent His Son Jesus who was sinless, who was the perfect Lamb of God, only one ever qualified to die for someone else's sin. Jesus sent Him to die for our sin, to be made a sin offering, to take on Him our sin so that we might have the righteousness of God given to us. We place our faith in Christ. That's the essence of the message. But notice, we are to represent God in giving out that message. We are called Christ's ambassadors. Now, you know what an ambassador is, don't you? An ambassador is a public official that represents His country in a foreign land. He is the special representative of the President of the United States and of the United States of America. If something is communicated to that other country, it will most often be done through the ambassador, the ambassador is the spokesperson representing the President and this country. And much of what that other country may feel about our country comes through the way that ambassador lives represents himself, represents his country and what he says. And we have the tremendous privilege of being assigned to be special representatives of Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe in this world. You know what that means? That means you just don't happen to live at such and such a street and such and such a town. You are Jesus Christ's special representative on Oak Street in Princeton, West Virginia. He's assigned you that role. It means that you are not just a student in high school or at Bluefield State or Bluefield College or Concord or wherever you go to college. It means you're not just a student there. You are assigned to be an ambassador, the representative of Jesus Christ on that campus. It means that you don't just work at such and such place in such and such town. You are assigned by Jesus Christ in his providence to be his ambassador, his representative, to represent him in that workplace. It means that you just don't shop at the mall or at such and such a store in such and such a place. For that point in time, you have been assigned by Jesus Christ to be his special representative in that place, at that time, to represent him on planet earth. Man, that throws a whole new light on what we're here for. We're not just existing trying to make our way through life. We are ambassadors, given a special privilege to represent him in this world. We have a ministry of representation. Now maybe some of us here today are thinking. I've been comfortable in my lifeboat. I thank God that I'm saved, that I know I'm going to heaven. I'm thankful to be in the lifeboat. We've never made an effort to row out to someone who's dying, who's crying out for help, and who may be ready to slip beneath the waves. And maybe you're sitting here this morning, and maybe I'm standing here this morning, and we're thinking, we've watched too many people slip away. We've just watched it happen. No more. No more. No longer will I be content with my secure place in the lifeboat. I'm going to ask God today, Lord, open my ears to the cries of those people who are sinking hopelessly into spare. Open my ears to the cries. Open my heart to want to reach out beyond my comfort zones and my self-focus and my complacency to reach out, to show them Christ and to tell them about Jesus. Lord, use my arms to reach around them and not just to roll away from them in my lifeboat, but help me to reach out to them and embrace them with Jesus' love. Lord, help me to be one of those each one reaching one, at least this year. Would you pray with me, please? Father, help us to not be content with our little place in our lifeboat, singing our lifeboat songs and enjoying fellowship with our lifeboat comrades. Lord, help us to be mission-minded, to be others-minded, not to be self-focused, help us to reach out to the lost. Lord, I need more of that focus each day to see myself as your ambassador wherever I am, representing you in that moment, in that time, in that place. I pray, Father, that you would all be more aware of the opportunities you have already providentially placed in our paths to represent you in this world and to give out your message. Help us Lord to be others-focused and not self-focused. May we remember that your love focuses us in that direction. Jesus' name we pray, amen.