August 28, 2016 - 11:00 a.m.
Pastor Jonathan Falwell
Plugged In: The Power of Sharing
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:11-21
Summary: In this sermon, the second in a series entitled Plugged In, Pastor Jonathan Falwellfocuses on 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, and with the importance of sharing our faith.
Last week we started a three-week series, and we entitled it Plugged In, because we kind of take this opportunity at the end of every summer, the beginning of every fall, to rehearse and reflect on what it is that we do as the church, why the church exists. And not just our church, but the church.
We live in a community here of Lynchburg of hundreds of great, incredible, God-honoring, gospel-preaching churches. There are churches all over our community that are serving and ministering, and we believe firmly that we partner together. There is no competition when it comes to the local church. We believe in what they are doing. We partner together to reach our community.
And we always have to take the opportunity to remember and reflect on why it is that we do what we do. Because a lot of time what people do in churches is they come together in the church and they are involved in church, they show up, they worship together on Sunday morning, they are involved in maybe life groups and small groups; maybe they’re serving in the nursery or whatever it might be; they are maybe playing in the orchestra or singing in the choir. They are doing all the things that we do, but yet sometimes we forget why a church exists.
And a church does not exist so that we have something to do on a Sunday morning. A church does not exist so that we can have a place where we can fellowship together. A church does not exist so that we can have an opportunity to get to meet new people. No. A church exists to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. And so oftentimes churches forget or maybe they neglect or maybe it’s a “we understand that, we know we’re supposed to do that, but we’re getting together and worshiping together and God is honored.”
Listen, I don’t ever want us to forget that we live in a community here of 240,000-plus people in Lynchburg and surrounding counties—240,000-plus people. And I know this: Many of them, if not a majority of them, do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That’s why there’s no competition here when it comes to the local church. You see, what we’re doing is we’re here to preach the gospel out of Thomas Road Baptist Church, but also in every other church in this community, because we have been planted here by God to reach this community.
I was asked this week, talking to somebody because they knew we were involved here at Thomas Road in planting some other local churches, and they were saying, “Are you worried about that, the churches meeting? Are you worried some of your people might go over there?” Listen, there is no competition here. As long as there is one person in this community that doesn’t know Jesus Christ, then let me just tell you something: there is no competition. We are in partnership and we are on mission to reach those people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, as we’re meeting here, right across the railroad tracks over here at the Regal Cinemas over there, there’s a church meeting right now—the Hope Company, P. J. Preston leading that church, doing an incredible job. They started back at Easter. We helped them plant that church. We are funding them as they are starting that church. Some would say, “Why in the world would you plant a church literally right across the parking lot, right across the tracks from where you are? It’s because we are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. And listen, as long as there is one lost person, we’ve got to do everything to reach them.
Now listen, when every one of those 240,000-plus people come to know Jesus Christ, then we can have some competition. We can have some blood sport going on, gladiators. Get the pastors out there with lions or whatever it is they do. We can do it then, but until then, let’s just reach our community for Christ. Are you with me on that?
So I want to take this opportunity. Last week Charles did an amazing job of taking us to Psalm 46 and talking to us about what it means to know who God is, of what it means to truly know who He is, because so often we are active but we miss out on being in the presence of God. Psalm 46:10, Charles shared with us last week, “Be still and know that He is God.”
Our mission statement here at Thomas Road Baptist Church is a simple phrase. It just says, “To change our world by developing Christ-followers who love God and who love people.” This is a simple mission statement. You’ve been around here; you’ve heard me say it a thousand times; and you are going to hearme say it a thousand more, because I want us to get it. I want it to be ingrained in us. Why? Because these are not words that I wrote or anybody here at our church wrote; these are words that were literally written by the voice of Christ.
If you go back to Matthew 28, Mark 16, Acts 1, in a conversation, one conversation recorded in three different places in the gospels, Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” He said, “Go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Why? Because the gospel is the only thing that can change our world.
We can’t change our world just by calling ourselves a church. We can’t change our world simply by getting together on Sunday mornings and singing some good songs. We can’t change our world by having our beautiful kids come up here and sing along and lead us in worship. No. That doesn’t change the world. What changes the world is the gospel.
So Jesus made it very clear what our mission is, what our activity as a church should be: to change our world. How? By preaching the gospel to every creature. In Matthew 28 He said, “Go and make disciples of all the nations?” Guess what? Developing Christ-followers. That’s what discipleship is all about. Growing in our faith. God does not intend for us to come to Him and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, to understand that He’s the only way to salvation, and then once we get saved we just go about our business and live our lives the way we want to live for the rest of our lives.
No. He wants us to grow in our faith. He wants us to get to know Him better today than we knew Him yesterday and get to know Him the day after that better than we do tomorrow. He wants us to get to know Him better. That is discipleship. That is developing Christ-followers who love God and love people.
Matthew 22, when the lawyer asked Jesus, “What is the most important commandment,” what did Jesus say? He said, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Remember that? “And the second is like it,” Jesus said, “to love your neighbor as yourself.”
So you see our mission statement literally comes from what Jesus said the church should be doing. So if you don’t like this mission statement, you don’t need to meet me after the service today and complain, because it ain’t mine; it’s His. It’s what Jesus told us to do. So here at Thomas Road, that’s our mission statement, and what we do is we kind of couch this in six values, six values that we hold dear to, that guide everything that we do, guiding principles for all of our activity.
The first one is commitment to Scripture. Believing that God’s Word is the infallible, inerrant, inspired Word of God, that every word within the pages of this book come directly from the heart of God. There is not a mistake in it. It comes directly from God’s heart to our heart. Standing on the Word of God. If there is one mistake in this book, then all of it is not worthy to be read and studied. Everything in here is God’s Word. We believe that.
We have a commitment to Scripture and a culture of prayer. We believe firmly there is power in prayer. We pray. We believe God has given us amazing gifts that we can seek His face and come to Him when we are faced with troubles. Right before I came out to this service, in between services this morning, just backstage I had the privilege, along with a couple other of our pastors here at Thomas Road, sogathering together around the Eubank family. He is battling cancer and finding out some things in the coming days about what the prognosis is and what the treatments might be and all those kind of things, and he came to us, saying, “Would you pray for me for healing?”
And I believe in healing. Now I don’t believe in healing sometimes the way we see it on TV. You’ll never see me walking around slapping people on the forehead and getting them to fall down. I’m not going to blow on people after eating Mexican and they fall over. I’m not going to do that. Let me tell you what we do. We go to the only one who can heal. Man does not heal. God heals. And I believe in the power of healing coming from God.
And so we believe in prayer, so we pray. A lifestyle of worship. We talked about last week recognizing that worship is not exclusive to Sunday mornings in our services. No, worship is something that we do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Connected in community. God did not intend for us to walk this journey, following Christ, in isolation. No one thrives in isolation. We need to do this journey together.
A heart for serving. We talked about that in Haiti; that’s what we’re doing, serving because we know that God gives us the opportunity to bless others, to minister to others, to encourage others, and we want to serve.
And then a passion for sharing, and that is, today, what I want to focus on out of 2 Corinthians 5. Now I want to give you, today, out of this passage, our memory verse for today. And it’s kind of the underlying thought of everything we’re doing, why this mission statement, why it is that this church does what it does. It’s 2 Corinthians 5:17, a verse that you’re familiar with—maybe not the reference, but you’re definitely familiar with the verse. It’s our memory verse for this week, and I want you to read it together with me out loud.
It says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation; behold all things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” How many of you have heard that verse before? Yeah, it’s a common verse. Why? Because it’s an amazing truth. It’s an amazing truth that because of Christ, because of what He’s done, because of His death, burial, and resurrection, we believe that Jesus died and rose again. When we give our lives to Christ, when we follow Him, when we, Romans 10:13, call on the name of the Lord and we are saved, it is not just something that is good; it’s not something that makes us feel good. We are a new creation, completely transformed, made completely new.
And I don’t know about you, but do you think that in the world in which we live today, the world that is out of control, the world that seems to be getting crazier and crazier and crazier, that new creation is kind of a good thing to talk about? Do you think the people out there in the world today, do you think we need to see some more new creations taking place?
A lot of times as Christians we see what’s taking place in our world; we hear what’s going on and we get discouraged. And we come together, we worship together, we celebrate together, but then when we leave this place, we kind of hide. We get into a situation where we are out there and we’re people of faith and we’re walking with God, but because of all the craziness in the world, because of all the attacks and all the opposition to what we believe, we just kind of keep our heads low, right? We don’t want to be noticed. It’s the whack-a-mole principle. We keep our heads low so we don’t get smacked on top of the head.
Well, let me just tell you today that when we think about this idea of in Christ we are a new creation, whenever we hear all the discouraging, awful, horrible things that were taking place in our world, when we read the news, see the news on television or read it on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you might get your news, it is not a time to get discouraged; it’s a time to be reminded that the hope for the world is not found in a politician. The hope for the world is not found in legislation. The hope for the world is not found in the Supreme Court. The hope for the world is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ alone, and God has sent us to tell them. And that is who we are and that is what we do and that is what this church is all about.
So let’s take a moment and read 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 11. We’ll read through this passage, and I want you to take a few moments to use this passage to help you see how very important it is that we have this passion for sharing, because the gospel is the only thing that can change our world.
Beginning with verse 11 it says this—and this is the apostle Paul writing here,
Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too. Are we commending ourselves to you again? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us, so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart. If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
This passage is an amazing reminder of the hope we have in Christ. It’s an amazing reminder of what God will do when we believe in Him, when we trust Him, when we serve Him, when we run to Him, and when we tell others about Him. God has an answer for the problems of this world.
Now we talk about our mission statement to change our world, and so today what I want to do, again, is just break down a few verses here in this passage we read today on how it is that we can change our world. Because a lot of times we think about we want to change our world, but listen, understand this: it is very easy to say we want to change our world; it is very difficult to do. It is so easy to make that statement. It is so easy to say we’re going to change our world, we want to change our world, and we walk out of here and we go back to life as normal and we haven’t a clue how to make it happen.
But as God so often does, He has filled His Word with amazing truths that if we will hear them, if we will listen to them, if we will kind of marinade in them a little bit—I said that word. I’m getting hungry now; I’m going to preach quick because of that. No. If we will allow that to guide us in everything that we do, here’s what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that we will know how to change the world, and then we’ll do it.
And so the first thing that we recognize in this passage of what we must do to change our world, what is necessary, what we’ve got to understand is it takes work. It is not easy. It is not just naturally going to happen. It is not a natural byproduct of a local New Testament church that if there is a local New Testament church in a community and if it meets regularly and if they have worship services together and if they sing together and if they preach God’s Word and if they have activities together and if they go on missions trips together around the world, it is not a natural byproduct of a local New Testament church that their community will be changed by the gospel. It doesn’t just happen. It takes work.