reconcile_02

At the end of 2008, we began a journey through the Book of Acts that may very well take us through the second coming of Christ. Here we are in the middle of 2012, and we're not even to the middle of the Book of Acts yet. This is because we're going through the epistles, the letters of the New Testament, chronologically with the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts is a history book. It covers the first 30 or so years of the ministry of the church, and during that time, the letters, the epistles that make up most of the New Testament were written. So, we're going through those as we go through the Book of Acts.

As we've been going through this study, I have been personally challenged, and I have been challenging our church pastorally, to recognize that it is our call to be missionaries to our own culture. During these last four years, we've been going through books like James, Galatians, Thessalonians, and 1 Corinthians. I have given exhortations from those passages that we would be cognizant and aware of the fact that it is our role in Christ to be ambassadors of God. Wherever we are, wherever He would take us, we are there as missionaries. Even if we are living in the culture that we grew up in, we are there as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven.

This very conviction, this calling that God has placed upon us as a church, stands as the primary reason for the name change of our church this year. We changed from Calvary Chapel of Escondido; we are still a part of the Calvary Chapel movement, but we changed our name to Cross Connection Escondido. We are a people who are connected to God through the cross of Christ, and we see it as our call, as our mission, to bring lost people into connection with God through the cross. That's what we are here to do.

Wherever the lost may be, or wherever we may meet them, we want to bring them into connection with God through the cross. So, whether we are in a boardroom, a classroom, on a baseball field, a construction site, or at the grocery store, we are called to fulfill this mission.

Store, or the gas station, or even down on Grand Avenue, as we have some people down there today, we are servants of Christ and ministers of the gospel of Christ.

Last week, I used the topic of marriage and the LGBT community to highlight something in the message. The message was not necessarily about homosexual marriage; that wasn't the focus of it. I used that topic to illustrate a point. It was primarily to illustrate the fact that all sin is sin, that sin causes the loss of community with one another and the loss of communion with God. This is what people are seeking and longing for. They are seeking genuine, sincere community with one another and communion with their God in heaven, their Father in heaven.

We Christians have the very thing that this world is looking for. We have the Word; we have the message whereby man, who is lost in sin, can be reconciled and restored to community with one another and communion with our Father who is in heaven. This is what humanity is desperately seeking. Everyone in this world who does not know Christ is searching for this. Homosexual behavior is a symptom of that separation that results from sin. In fact, it is just one of the many sinful symptoms that arise from that separation. Only Christ deals with the sinful root. He is the one who is able to address that and ultimately deal with the visible fruit that springs forth from sin.

We look to Him to be the one who transforms us. Amen? How many of you see in your own life a transformation that has taken place since you put your confidence and faith in Jesus Christ? We are all sinners, and we have all been transformed by the grace of Christ.

As I mentioned last week, I expected correspondence, and certainly, I received a lot of it. I spent most of this last week responding to the correspondence that I received from last week's message. Some people wondered why I even brought up the topic of homosexuality. From the perspective of many in the evangelical church, and we would be considered an evangelical church, the homosexual community is perhaps the most dreaded and avoided demographic of our society. They are the lepers of our day; they are the people that are avoided and seen as unnatural.

They're seen as unclean. Many people in the church consider them to be anathema, accursed. So, we tend to try and stay away from people groups that we see in that way. Yet, that's the very kind of people that God is seeking to restore to a right relationship with Him. This is a group of people that is despised and rejected by the church. In many ways, they are acquainted with sorrows and grief. They are in desperate need of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The most clear evidence of this came in last week's Newsweek magazine. You probably saw this cover on one of your news TV shows. It was very provocative, featuring a picture of our president with a rainbow halo, and it stated, "The First Gay President." The article was written by Andrew Sullivan, a conservative blogger who is also a homosexual. Although many of us may have seen this on the news, probably not many of us read the article. I did, and I found it very interesting.

There is something near the end of the article that really stood out to me, illustrating the point I was making last week in a very perfect way. Let me read this one paragraph to you. It discusses our president: "Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet. He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family. The America that he, Barack Obama, grew up in had no space for a boy like him—black yet enveloped by loving whiteness."

Now, get this one little line in the middle of this paragraph: "Estranged from a father he longed for, another common gay experience." This highlights the situation perfectly. You have a group of people who are lost. They are clearly in sin if they are living in homosexual behavior; that is what the Scriptures say. They are longing for the restoration with a father from whom they have been estranged. This is what humanity is seeking.

Now, please understand, I'm not standing up here preaching this to try and get us to start a ministry to the homosexual community, although that would not necessarily be a bad thing. I am saying what I am saying to try and get us to recognize this reality: within 30 minutes of this building, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are in need.

There is a desperate need for salvation among those who are longing for the restoration of their relationship with their heavenly Father, the one who created them. They are estranged from Him because of sin, just as we who sit here today were, at one point in time, estranged from Him because of our sin.

I'm not trying to change our opinion on the sinfulness of homosexuality; it is clearly identified in the Scriptures as sin. However, what I am saying is that these people are sinners, just like every other sinner in the world. They need salvation. Sinners need salvation. There are hundreds of thousands of people in our own community who are walking in darkness. With 7 billion people on the face of the planet today, the great majority of them are estranged from their Father in heaven because of the stain of sin.

This is why we send missionaries to Mozambique, to China, and all over the world—to seek and save the lost. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, as Paul said in 1 Timothy, of whom I am chief. Paul recognized his own sinfulness, and it is not until a person comes to that recognition that they can put their faith in Christ for salvation.

We need to see that we not only send missionaries to the uttermost parts of the earth, but right here in Escondido, Valley Center, San Marcos, Rancho Bernardo, Fallbrook, and Bonzel, there are sinners all around us—in our workplaces. We are missionaries to them. We are called to bring the gospel to these people. Our mission as ambassadors is to connect the lost with the cross, not to separate ourselves from them.

If God wanted us to be completely divided from sinners and never come into contact with them, He might as well take us home. But He has left us here to be in this world. We are not of this world, but we are in this world to bring people into connection with Him so that they might be reconciled. Humanity is longing desperately to be restored back to God and to one another in true relationship and true community.

This concept, which we are exploring in this series called "Reconcile," is known as Incarnational Ministry.

Incarnational ministry. Incarnational. Does that ring a bell? Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1.

In John chapter 1, verse 1, we read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

Now, there was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He, John, was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of the light. That was the true light that lights every man that comes into the world.

He, the light spoken of in the first verses, was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

In verse 14, we read, "And the Word, that we're introduced to back there in the first verse, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." This is that great event that we call the incarnation, where God, who was in heaven, became a man to dwell in the midst of sinful people.

We see this also in the book of Philippians. If you want to turn there to the right of the Gospel of John, Philippians chapter 2, verse 5. The Apostle Paul here is telling us that we need to have the same vision as God, who incarnationally came to us.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. But He made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient, even to death, the death of the cross.

Now, a couple of weeks ago, we had a guest speaker here by the name of Jeff Johnson. He was kind of energetic, walking all over the place. Remember him? At least three times in his message last week, he said we need to move into the neighborhood, learn the language, learn the culture, and introduce them to Jesus. That was one of the primary points of his message. We need to move into the neighborhood, learn their language, learn their culture, and introduce them to Jesus.

In his context, he was talking about ministry to Muslims—Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Liberia, and all over the world. He was saying we need to move into the neighborhood, learn the language, learn the culture, and introduce them to Jesus. This is another segment of our society that many people tend to be rather fearful of, right? Here you have these two different groups that people are fearful of: sinners who are in desperate need of salvation and who are longing to be restored back to the God that created them.

We are ambassadors of Christ. We have this awesome example in our Lord that He, God, became man to dwell in the midst of sinful humans to introduce them to the Father. This is the incarnation, and He calls us to be incarnational in the way that we live and minister. Every one of us is called to this ambassadorship.

2 Corinthians 5, verse 17 states, "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." All things are of God, who has reconciled us unto Himself by Christ Jesus and has given unto us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. He has committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

Verse 20 of 2 Corinthians 5 says, "Now then..."

We, the Church, are ambassadors of Christ. As though God did beseech or pray or beg you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead: be reconciled to God. For God has made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

How many of you here today, who have put your faith in Christ Jesus, were righteous before you were a Christian? Wow. No one. None of us. God made Him, Jesus, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Now, how many of you Christians here today are righteous? If you're a Christian, your hand should be up. Now, let me ask another question. You don't have to raise your hand, but if you're brave, you can. How many of you will admit that this last week you fell short of God's glory and sinned? Okay, good. I'm not alone. So, we're still sinners. We've still sinned. We've still fallen short of God's glory. And yet, God has made us righteous in Christ.

He's promised us—promised to us—in the book of Ephesians, we learn about this: that He is going to present us blameless before Himself in the age to come. So, He has made Him, Jesus, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ.

This brings us to the concept of incarnational ministry. God became a man. He moved into the neighborhood, learned the language, learned the culture, and introduced us to our Father. He restored us to God through the work that He did on the cross.

He has left us here as Christians to move into the neighborhood, to learn the language, learn the culture, and to introduce people to God. We are to bring them into connection with the cross of Christ, allowing them to experience what a Christ-honoring community is. This community is one with another in the body of Christ and in community with our Heavenly Father.

What does this look like, though? What does incarnational ministry tangibly and practically look like? I want to bring us to a story that's found in the Gospels. Jesus had been in Jerusalem.

While he was there, he caused quite a stir. How many of you have read the Gospels and know that this happened quite a bit? Jesus was in Jerusalem, and he caused quite a stir. He had gone into the temple there and forced out anyone who was buying and selling wares. There was something of a swap meet going on in the temple courts. People were exchanging money because they could not spend the Roman-stamped money in the temple; that money was considered bad. They had to exchange their money for a temple shekel. How many of you have exchanged money before and know that it's kind of costly?

There were these money changers who were gouging the people, saying, "Well, you can't use that Roman money in here; you've got to get some of the temple shekels," and it was not a one-to-one ratio. Not only that, but they were also selling the special sheep and goats that could be sacrificed. If you brought your own, they would say, "Well, you know that hasn't really been certified by the priest, so let me sell you this one over here. I know it's four times as much as you paid for that one, but it's certified." This was obviously displeasing to God, as illustrated by Jesus' actions when he went into the temple, turned over the money changers' tables, and told them to get off the premises.

Jesus dealt with the situation in a way that the religious leaders didn't like. They were rather bothered by what he did. Shortly after this, one of those religious leaders, one of the most respected in the day, came and met Jesus by night. They had a conversation that ended up being one of the most famous in the Scriptures. It contains one of the most translated verses of the Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." This was a powerful discourse between Nicodemus and Jesus.

After that interaction, Jesus left Jerusalem and went out into the Judean wilderness, where he preached for a time. He was right near the Jordan River because his disciples were baptizing people who were coming to him while he was out there in the wilderness. People were coming from all the surrounding cities to hear this preacher, Jesus, in Judea, and his fame began to spread.

More and more, Jesus departs from Judea to go back to his hometown region in Galilee. We come to this story in John chapter 4, where Jesus was leaving Judea, departing again to go into Galilee. He had to go through Samaria, and so he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, which is near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there outside of the city called Sychar.

Jesus, being wearied from his journey, sat by the well, and it was about the sixth hour of the day, or noon. As he was sitting there, a woman from that city of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Would you give me a drink?" His disciples had gone into the city to buy food. The woman looked at him and said, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, a woman of Samaria?" She informed him that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaks to you, you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said, "Sir, the well is deep, and you have nothing to draw with. From where are you going to get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock? Are you greater than him?"

Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. The water that I shall give him shall be in him as a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." The woman said, "Sir, give me this water to drink so that I don't have to thirst or even come to this well anymore."

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here."

The woman answered, "Sir, I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have well said that you have no husband, for you have had five, and the one that you are now with is not your husband. In that, you have said truly." The woman said, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet."

This is, of course, a well-known story from John chapter four, a powerful passage of Scripture. I want you to think about this interaction for a moment between Jesus and the Samaritan woman who came out there. Consider what we know about her from the story in John chapter four.

The first thing we see, if you're taking notes, is that she is a woman. While this may not seem like a remarkable detail, it is a reality worth noting. Women in the first-century Middle Eastern world were not highly esteemed. In fact, 2,000 years later, very little has changed; women are still not very highly esteemed in Middle Eastern culture.

Not only is she a woman, but we are also told that she is a Samaritan. This may mean very little to you and me, but Samaritans were related to Jews and even worshipped in a similar way, albeit in a separate manner. However, they were looked down upon; they were despised. Samaritans were hated.

The Samaritans developed as a distinct ethnic and religious group about 700 years before Jesus came, during the time that the Assyrians invaded the land of Israel. It was common Assyrian practice in the eighth century BC that when they conquered a people, they would perform a kind of ethnic cleansing. They would take their prisoners of war from a different region that they had conquered and intermingled them with the new region. Then, they would take this group of people that they had just conquered and spread them throughout their empire, throughout their kingdom.

In this specific case, around 721 BC, the resulting group that emerged was called the Samaritans. Their land was situated between Jerusalem in the southern part of Israel. Many times, the Jews would go around Samaria; they would cross the Jordan River into modern-day Jordan, go south, and then come back over because they did not want even the dust of Samaria to touch them. They felt that they would be made unclean if the dust touched them.

The woman in this story is a Samaritan. The term "Samaritan" was often used as a derogatory label that Jews applied to people they disliked. In John 8:48, they said of Jesus, "He’s a Samaritan and has a devil." This illustrates their disdain for Samaritans, using the title as an insult. It may remind you of other marginalized groups throughout history.

The third thing we learn about this woman from the story is that she was divorced. In that culture, this was considered strike three. Women who were divorced were looked down upon, and it was nearly impossible for a woman to divorce her husband in that day and age. This woman had been divorced five times, likely by her husbands, which meant she was considered an outcast by the people.

The fact that she was an outcast is illustrated by her coming to the well in the middle of the day by herself. As you read through the social customs of these people groups during that time, you will find that it is still the same in many other tribal communities today. Women typically go out to get water together as a group in the morning. This woman, however, came alone in the middle of the day, indicating her status as an outcast.

Among her people in the city of Samaria, she was a woman, a Samaritan, divorced, and, according to the text, a liar. When Jesus asked her to go get her husband, she immediately responded, "I have no husband." This was probably the shortest and briefest thing she said in the whole discourse, as she didn't want to talk about that issue.

It is interesting to note that Jesus knew her lie. He identified that her statement wasn't exactly true; it was kind of true but not entirely accurate. However, he didn't immediately call her out as a liar. Instead, he commended her for speaking the truth, saying, "In that, you have well spoken."

Additionally, she was an adulterer. Although it is not expressly stated in the passage, a woman who was divorced and remarried multiple times was considered an adulterer in that day. Furthermore, she was a fornicator, as she was currently living with a man who was not her husband. So, we have these six things against her: she was a woman, a Samaritan, divorced, an adulterer, a fornicator, and a liar.

When Jesus spoke to her, she said, "You are a Jew; I am a Samaritan. Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." In essence, she was telling him that he wasn't supposed to talk to her. It was clear from the discourse that she knew she was a sinner. She felt like an outcast, and it raises the question: Are there any outcasts in our society today, like this Samaritan woman? Are there people who might say to you or to me, "We don't interact with such people. We have no dealings with such people. We do not associate with such people"?

Have you ever had someone say to you, "You're not supposed to talk to me. You're a Christian; you're not supposed to have anything to do with me. Christians don't associate with people like me"? Yet, Jesus reached out to this woman. He reached out to people just like her throughout the Gospels, so much so that he was often accused by the religious leaders of his day of being a sinner himself because of his association with sinful people. They said he was a wine bibber, a glutton, and a friend of sinners.

A commendation: this guy is a friend of sinners. He hung around with tax collectors and sinners. Now, he was not sinful. The Scriptures reveal in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15, that he was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21, says he who knew no sin became sin for us. So, he himself was not sinful, and yet he could be found in the bad.

Jesus, fully God, is there in heaven completely sinless. He became a man to dwell amidst sinners to restore them to their heavenly Father. We Christians are children of God by grace through faith. We are future citizens of heaven, looking forward to the day when we are with God in heaven. But right now, we are in this world.

Why are we in this world? We are among sinners for the purpose of restoring them to their heavenly Father, to bring them into connection with the cross of Christ. How did Jesus do that in this passage? Well, go back to John chapter 4 for a moment and look at verses 13 and 14. Jesus answered and said unto this woman, "Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. The water that I shall give him shall be in him as a well of water springing up unto everlasting life."

Jesus knew that he had the very thing that this woman was seeking at the deepest level. He knew this reality because he is Creator God. In John chapter 1, it states that he was in the beginning; he created all things. Without him, nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and that life is the light of men. So, he knows what this woman desires at the deepest level. Now, she thought that she was coming out to that well simply to get physical liquid water.

Because she's thirsty, there’s a greater thirst resident within her, and Jesus knows what that is. Now she recognizes that thirst. Up to that point in her life, she had lived in such a way that she was trying to quench that deeper thirst with something she sought to satisfy it—human interactions and physical relationships. Nothing satisfied; nothing dealt with it at that deep level, as indicated by her five husbands and her soon-to-be sixth husband. She is not satisfied.

Jesus spoke, number one, to her dissatisfaction, and number two, to her desire. He spoke to her dissatisfaction and he spoke to her desire. "Woman, if you drink of this water, you’re going to thirst again. But if you drink of the water that I shall give, which is spiritual and not physical, you will never thirst, and the water will spring forth unto everlasting life."

It is our mission as Christians, as ambassadors of Christ, to incarnate the grace and love of God among the lost of this world. We are to seek out those people who are dissatisfied. They can’t get no satisfaction; they still haven’t found what they’re looking for. We need to come in contact with those people and reveal to them the only source of true satisfaction, which is only found in Christ.

We have what this world so longs for and desires, yet we could be found guilty of hiding that light under a bush, trying to separate ourselves from anyone we might consider sinful. Yet we are all sinful—every one of us. We all raised our hands; we did it to ourselves. Now we are sinners saved by grace. We did not come to Christ righteous; He has made us righteous. He has set us on a course for heaven and given us living water that satisfies at the deepest core.

Remember back to your life prior to Christ. Sinners continue in sin, hoping that in some way their sinful behavior will quench that deep thirst of the soul, but nothing in this world satisfies. Sin causes loss of community with one another. We saw that last week in Genesis chapter three. Sin causes separation of the communion that God intends to have with man; it separates us from our God. Isaiah 59:2 states, "Behold, your iniquities have separated you from your God."

We believers in Christ, Christians, have been restored to God through Christ. We have been reconciled to God through the cross of Christ, and He has given to us the word, the message, the ministry of reconciliation. This ministry allows us to bring lost sinners to restored community with one another and communion with the Father. This is what all humanity is desperately seeking.

Our mission as ambassadors is to connect with the lost, not separate from them. We are to live life together as the body of Christ in a Christ-honoring community with one another. In this world, we are not to separate ourselves from the world in some sort of defensive posture, armed to the teeth, ready to condemn every sinner that comes through the door. We should not dig the trench deeper, fill it with water, and put a moat around it to keep sinners away.

We have the freshly sharpened blade of the sword of the Spirit, yet the Bible says it is the job of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of sin. John 16 tells us that the Holy Spirit is in the world to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Now, how many of you think that the all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing Holy Spirit needs our help? He is in the world to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. John chapter 5 indicates that Jesus is the one who judges sin, not us.

Again, I don't want you to misunderstand me. I'm not saying that we never use the Word of God to bring conviction of sin; we do, most certainly. There are times when we give forth the clear teaching of the law of God, especially to the proud, self-righteous individual who fails to see their sin.

You see, Jesus in His ministry spent more time interacting with harlots, tax collectors, and other sinners. Tax collectors were considered sinners in that day. How many of you would say that’s probably still true? The Pharisees, a religious sect, considered themselves to be blameless before God because they kept the law and the traditions of Israel. The Sadducees, who strictly adhered to the law, did not consider the traditions of the Jews as much. The scribes, the lawyers, and the chief priests looked at Jesus and said He was a friend of sinners.

One night, Jesus was invited to a Pharisee's home for dinner. As He was sitting there, a sinful woman—whose specific sin is not mentioned—came in with tears streaming down her face. She anointed Jesus with oil and washed His feet with her tears, kissing His feet. The Pharisee sitting there thought to himself, "If this man were a prophet, He would know what kind of woman this is and would not allow her to touch Him." In their minds, if a sinful person touches you, you become sinful. This was the mindset of the religious, the self-righteous of the day.

Jesus had some words for Simon the Pharisee. You can take our school of discipleship class; we talk about that in one of our sessions. The self-righteous religious leaders of the day looked at sinners and thought, "If I come in contact with you, I am unclean." How many of us, if we're honest, will say we're guilty of having a similar mindset? I'll be honest; there are ways in which we can look at people and say, "I will never come in contact with you because your very presence makes me sick." Remember those bracelets from the 1990s, "WWJD"? It's challenging and something to consider.

Why did Jesus spend so much time with sinful people? What was His answer to the Pharisees when they asked Him this question? He said, "It's the sick who know they need a physician. I didn't come to save the righteous," Jesus said to the Pharisees. Now, is there anyone righteous? No, not one.

However, there were people in Jesus's day who were so self-righteous that they could not see their sin. Yet, there were also people—harlots, tax collectors, and sinners—who knew very well that they were lost. Sinners need salvation; they are in desperate need of what we have. It is a sin to withhold it. It is a sin to withhold the grace that God has given to us.

In Romans chapter 1, I believe it's verse 14, Paul says, "I am a debtor to both Jews and Greeks to preach the gospel." What does that mean? He says, "I am in debt to go and preach the gospel. I have to preach the gospel. Far be it from me that I preach not the gospel; accursed be me if I preach not the gospel."

Proverbs chapter 3, I believe it's verse 27, says, "Withhold not good from him to whom it is due when it is in the power of your hand to give it." We are challenged by God to be in this world, not of it.

When you have a person who calls themselves a believer, who says, "I'm a Christian," and they are living in unrepentant, open sin, what does the Bible say? It says in Corinthians, "Do not associate with a person who calls themselves a brother who is living in such sin." Yes, there is an area where we separate from that person and say, "Listen, you can't possibly be a Christian and live like that."

But throughout the Scriptures, we are told that we need to be in this world and not of it. We need to be lights to this world, not hiding our light under a bush. Oh no, we don't let Satan blow it out!

I'm gonna—come on, you all went to Sunday school—I'm gonna let it shine. Oh God, shine through us! Shine through us!

Next week, we're going to look at Peter's words in First Peter chapter two: "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood."

God's own peculiar people. Can anybody identify with that? Why would you proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light? You were not a people; now you are a people. You had not received mercy; now you have received mercy.

We are in this world to expose darkness with light. Father, work this in us. Let's stand together. Father, we pray that You would challenge us. Lord, enable us to live incarnationally, to carry the good news of Your grace to those who so desperately need it.

God, I thank You that every single one of us who admitted today that we are sinners and lived formerly in sin. We thank You, God, that someone brought the gospel to us. Lord, challenge us to bring the gospel to those who are lost in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, throughout our community, wherever we may go. Shine through us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank You.