01-17-21 RECON

Reconciliation & Reconnaissance
Scripture  2 Corinthians 5:16-21

2 Corinthians 5:16-21
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Along with Martin Luther King Jr., let us pray, VIDEO: MLK reconciliation PRAYER

          I want people to know (meaning to experience) the joy that I know – the joy that I experience from having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I realize that joy has a precondition – RECONCILIATION. I needed to reconcile my previous beliefs with those of the bible. I needed to reconcile my inability to overcome sin in my life without help from someone else. I had to come to a point of reconciliation between myself and God.
          I was born, like Adam and Eve “Imago Dei” in the image of God. Like Adam and Eve, I also willfully, knowingly, broke away from that image. God designed us to live in communion with Him and God did not walk away from a relationship with us, we walked…NO, we ran away from HIM & hid from Him (Gen 3:8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden). Don’t wonder why there is evil in the world till you recognize that you are the one who ran away and hid from ultimate goodness. And because Adam and Eve, and You and I have done that, God removed the ability to live forever in our current state. He kicked us out of Eden so we could not eat from the tree of life and live forever.
          If we were ever going to have access to that tree again, God would have to provide a way for us to be reconciled to Him…Thousands of years later he made a way through another tree cut down and fashioned into the shape of a cross. Now that we have experienced forgiveness and new life through the one who died on that cross and have been reconciled to God, we are to become reconcilers.
If we are to win the world for Christ, we must begin by reconciling ourselves with the people of this world. Political divides are the easiest example where we are unwilling to reconcile with others. Reconciliation does not mean being in agreement – it means being in community even with those whom I disagree with.
RECONCILIATION:
1.     the restoration of friendly relations.
2.     the action of making one view or belief compatible with another.
Opposite of Reconciliation:  estrangement, alienation, feud, incompatibility
Reconciliation is not simple: (4 personal examples – 2 without R. and 2 with R.)
MISSED OPPORTUINITY: The guy with a gas can.
UNWILLINGNESS TO RECONCILE Jeff & Lisa (tried shaking hands on Xmas Eve).
AGREEING TO DISAGREE: Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
MISUNDERSTANDING CLEARED UP: Mike Redman (Heather kicked out)
          The goal of personal reconciliation is similar to the goal of spiritual reconciliation. To restore friendly relations between you and another person and the other between you and God. And we must do all we can to seek that reconciliation. Spiritually it brings about our New Birth and personally Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way in his message titled “Birth of a New Nation”: VIDEO: MLK reconciliation

Martin Luther King Jr.
“Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace. But let's be sure that our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery, that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters. Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr. Engelhardt, not to defeat Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil that's in them. But our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt. We must come to the point of seeing that our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God, and not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship.” [Martin Luther King Jr., "Birth of a New Nation"]
          I can hear God calling out across heaven just before Jesus is crucified, Oh, my heavenly hosts, our aim must be not to defeat John and Ted and Susie and JoAnn and (every name on earth). Our aim must be to defeat the evil that's in them by what my son is about to do for them. Our aim must be to win the friendship of John and Ted and Susie and JoAnn and (every name on earth) so that they may be reconciled to me and once again be able to eat from the tree of Life.
When we serve as Christ’s ambassadors heling reconcile others to Him, we are fulfilling the foundational scripture of Ashland Church: Ephesians 2:19-22   “You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” 
COMPASSION as demonstrated by kindness, humility, gentleness and patience toward one another (Colossians 3:12), being on mission together for the greater good of building Christ’s church in the world.
 
My friend Bryan showed that kind of compassion toward me because he did not want to just be friends for this lifetime, he wanted me to be reconciled with God so that I would know joy in this life, but also so we could be friends forever.
The story of Bob Laurent, Michael W. Smith & Dale.
2 Corinthians 5:17-20 (MSG)    Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.
 
ALTAR CALL: “Friends are friends forever”