A great big hand. That was great. I love it. Upper Elementary, you can go as well. I love that. Real family theme there. Really, really cool.
Well, good morning to you as everybody kind of finds their places. My name is Jonathan. My wife, Alicia, and I are part of the pastoral team, preaching team at Destiny Life. We're glad that you're gathered here on the Claremore campus. For our 11 a.m. service, I started to say 11 p.m. service, but that would be a good one. That would be awful late. I don't know, though. When I came this morning, it felt like it was 11 p.m. I don't know if it's the barometric. It's the barometric pressure or what, but just like... Just like a man. You got to snap out of it here. So we're glad that you're here. Glenn and Jay. Glenn and James are in Alabama. Moved church this morning. Many of you guys know Jonathan and Jennifer Fox. Pastor Moved church there. They join us every summer for our ATI summer conference. And so they are down there today. And Jeremy Ford is over ministering the word in Owosso, we're glad that you're here, whether you're in the building or joining us online. And we are preaching through, as many of you well know, the book of Seth. 2 Corinthians, and we are in the latter half of
chapter 5. I was going through the message today, preparing and studying. I thought, man, I hope we didn't bite off more than... We can chew in the sense that basically this part of
chapter 5... ...there's got to be some verses in here that if you've been in and around... ...church for any period of time, you probably will recognize there's some heavy theology in this. And my desire today is to make it simple, make that theology simple. But there is a lot... And my hope is that you would really leave with just a fresh revelation, really, a revelation, really, of who Christ is and what he's done and what he's launching into a series today called Resolved. Today's passage or today's message is Resolved and Reconciliation. When I use that word, resolved, here's what I mean by that, is to be firmly determined. When you think about being resolved, I'm firmly determined, I'm settled, I'm unwavering Now, I do want to make sure that I put this caveat in because I've met some people who would call themselves resolved, really they were just hard-headed. Anybody ever met anybody like that? We're not talking about being hard-headed. We're just talking about I'm firmly settled in some of this. I'm settled in some things that the Lord has done in regards to a purpose. It really implies this decision. A decision that's been made that really is no longer up for debate. I got to tell you, there's some things in my life Now I hold a lot of things very loosely But there are some things in my life that are just not up for debate. I've settled them and I'm just not going to shift it. You know, one is I serve the
King of kings and the Lord of lords Possibly quoting Revelation 19:16. His name is Jesus. And I've just resolved in that, right? We're not turning back on that. It's just we're resolute in that. And so for the purpose of the message today, as we think about being resolved in reconciliation, here's kind of the resolution, if you will, or to be resolved in this idea. It's the fact that God has moved toward us and now he helps us to move toward others. Paul says in this passage and I find myself quoting this a lot that he has reconciled us to God and now out of that he's given us the ministry of reconciliation so God has moved toward us and so now I move toward others I want you to have that framework in your mind as we kind of work through the reality of this passage. And really this message today centers on this reality of being reconciled to God through what we call the divine exchange. Right? Who's ever been to an encounter retreat at Destiny Life? Wave at me. All right, a lot of you, okay? So there may be some that haven't. There's another one coming in September. It's part of our discipleship pathway. If you've not gone through one, please go. It's a huge blessing. But in one of those sessions, on the cross, we use this term, a divine exchange. In essence, what we're doing is what we're doing, and we use a nail oftentimes for that, and people do it a little bit different, but the way I do it is we have this nail, which there's nothing special about the nail other than just a point of contact, and I'll have people come up in that session and they'll hold one part of the nail, I'll hold one part of the nail, and I'll ask them this question. What is what is it that you're coming today to exchange, right? What are you laying down at this altar in order to pick up from Christ, right? Now for myself, I remember many years ago when I came in that session, I was at an encounter and I in essence, every time that I do this, it's some realm of this. I'm laying down my own righteousness to pick up the righteousness of Christ. That's the ultimate divine exchange. I'm laying down that word righteous as a big theological word that means right standing for God. In other words when I come forward or someone comes forward in that session basically what they're saying is I'm laying down all that I thought I can be that I think I should be that I'm that I'm trying to earn I'm laying all of that down so I can pick the same thing back up in Christ in other words Jonathan trying to get it right I spent a long time trying to earn my way to God to no avail Nobody in this building or watching online can earn their way to God none of us even though we try it don't we? how do we try it? we try it by being on our best behavior by being a good Christian by saying the right things acting right doing the right things and all of that is good but if I'm trying to do that to earn my place in God you're going to always fall short I use a little one liner that says I'm not working for a place I'm working from a place there's a huge difference in that so we make this divine exchange and Paul's going to talk about we bring that verbiage right out of the passage that we're going to talk about today because when you really grasp the reality of this it fundamentally shifts your perspective of everything in other words when I really make that divine exchange my perspective of life totally and completely changes that means that I see everything in life differently and I and I live differently right that means that I I filter everything through what I'm going to call a kingdom worldview or a kingdom paradigm I can't look at the world the same anymore now if that has not affected you to that degree then I would ask you should ask yourself have I really been converted here's a difficulty for us in the United States and kind of the church world that we've grown up in the West we have a lot of people that love Jesus with their heart and when they die they're gonna go to heaven and yet they've not been transformed by the renewing of their mind so they still think like an atheist and yet they're not going to be transformed by the renewing of their mind so you'll see believers who don't know doctrine who don't know their bible you'll see them espousing ideas that are blatantly anti-christian ideas anybody ever ran out of that anybody ever done that right all of us probably done at some point right so it has to change in other words I stop and Paul says this I stop seeing things from a human point of view at some point I've got my filter is got to shift right my filter has to shift into seeing things through the cross seeing things through the kingdom so it's not just Jonathan's reasoning now I'm very simplistic in my mind when I think of this when you boil every thing down and you pull all the layers back we either start with the priest a presupposition something i'm presupposing i'm starting with a presupposition of god and or us there's no other starting place so I'm either going to reason from a presupposition of God and I'm going to say to you starting to reason from humanity has cost hundreds of millions of lives. Millions, and still today, millions. And you're just left with these two things. I'm either going to reason from God as the beginning or humanity. And Paul addresses this. Now, I want to start with this analogy. I need analogies. They help me kind of grab truth. I want you to think about an embassy. I'm going to use the United States. I want you to think about a United States embassy in a in another nation right maybe even a nation that would be hostile to us right to us as a nation when you have an embassy when you go on to the proper property of that embassy in that other nation you were standing on sovereign u.s. territory in other words the laws that govern that nation outside of that fence are not the same laws that govern inside that fence because that's United States territory in other words as an ambassador and as an embassy there I'm living in a place that I'm not a citizen of you with me so that's the same way that we as believers function in this world we are living in a place that we are not a citizen of ultimately my citizenship is heavenly if you will even though I live on this earth. So when we think about that it's really much really most of our lives we kind of spend as locals right we sometimes think of ourselves as locals trying to make the best of a broken world but really we're not locals trying to make the best of a broken world really what we are is diplomats or ambassadors of grace from another world right so I want us to have that mindset as we think about it so that means as a believer who Paul calls an ambassador of Christ a minister of reconciliation I can't operate like the world in which I live now there's a scripture that has been yanked out of context massively over the course of my life in the way that I grew up you probably heard this scripture that we're to be in the world but not of the world now what that meant when I was a young kid was you couldn't have certain haircuts you couldn't swim on Sunday you got all of these crazy rules that made no sense to me you couldn't go out to eat on Sunday because somebody was working and I'm causing them to sin my dad tells a story I was probably maybe four years old I've always you know well I won't go into all that but anyway we were visiting my dad was preaching at another church away from our church and literally it was about 45 minutes at least 45 minutes away maybe longer we would drive over there because we were in the kind of we've got one that's going to France on Monday. So we're trying to make sure work in another country. It is going to France. What is this for the week?
