Key Words In The Christian Life: 'reconciliation'

• He urges all Christians to consider themselves ambassadors for Christ.

• God has given you the gospel of reconciliation,

• If you are not evangelising, you are not representing your king.

• This is our ministry, and it is not an optional extra!

Ill:

• Some years ago, when many American missionaries were allowed to serve in China,

• A blind Chinese man was taken to a mission hospital.

• The missionary doctor performed an operation.

• And removed cataracts from the man's eyes.

• Soon, the man was able to return to his home,

• He left the mission hospital rejoicing in his restored eyesight.

• A few weeks later the missionaries at the hospital.

• Saw the man coming back down the road toward them.

• But this time he was holding a rope to which forty other blind people were clinging.

• He was bringing them to the place where his sight had been restored.

• TRANSITION:

• That is what God calls on us to do.

• You and I have received life from the Lord Jesus Christ.

• Now it is our privilege and our calling to lead others.

• To that same One from whom we received our life.

(3). A New Relationship (vs 21)

“God made him who had no sin to be sin (a sin offering) for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Ill:

• Charles Dickens is one of my favourite authors.

• One of his great books (‘A Tale of Two Cities.’),

• Starts with this famous opening paragraph,

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

• It is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.

• Two are the main characters are French aristocrat: Charles Darnay

• And English lawyer Sydney Carton who is a waster a drinker.

• In one scene Charles Darnay is in prison awaiting the guillotine.

• Sydney Carton has wasted his life and talents and so decides to so one good deed.

• He breaks into the prison to set Charles Darnay free,

• They cannot both escape because when the guard makes the roll call,

• And counts the number of prisoners he will know one is missing.,

• He will raise the alarm and they will both be caught.

• So, Carton makes Darnay swap clothes,

• Carton puts on Darney’s dirty spoiled clothes.

• And Darney puts on Carton’s clean clothes, and he escapes.

• The next day the plot id discovered, and the authorities decide to guillotine Carton.

• As just as he ascends to the guillotine, he says,

"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more... it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

• And in the book Dickens inserts a verse from the Bible.

• John chapter 15 verse 13.

• “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

• TRANSITION:

• An illustration of substitution and sacrifice.