First Priorities
This was the first sermon I preached to an actual congregation ... in that case, Ascension Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in March 2016.
You’ve gotta love firsts. We cherish the first day of school, first communion, and our first anniversary. We love first place, our first paychecks, our first cars, our first houses, the first man on the moon. And if you are like me, some of you will remember the first time you went to church and how hearing the Gospel for the first time became so life-changing.
Now, I’m not sure why I chose this for my first sermon. There is a concept in our epistle reading that is so big, that has so many syllables, I spent nearly my first week of preparation merely trying to wrap my head around it.
I’m talking about the ministry of reconciliation.
THAT is a mouthful of syllables.
But to say it simply, the ministry of reconciliation is this: God followed through on HIS first priority: restoring creation and his relationship with us, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He thus enables us to renew and restore our relationships with Him, and then with each other.
When I was a boy, Grandma and Grandpa kept a magnificent garden, with flowers all around the house and a seemingly endless supply of tomatoes and cucumbers. They even had a peach tree for a while.
Now I’m sure you’ve seen some pretty magnificent gardens yourself. But could any of those possibly compare in your mind’s eye with what Adam and Eve saw in the first moments after creation?
My vision of the Garden of Eden is that it’s 72 degrees year-round. The grass is dark green, soft and lush, and never needs to be mowed. There are ripe peach trees everywhere. There are crystal blue waters. And ... I can pet the tigers.
Yes, creation was magnificent! ... until we spoiled it!
I’m sure you know the story from the opening chapters of Genesis. The serpent was a crafty beast, so crafty in fact that his subtle twistings of God’s words had Adam and Eve tripping all over themselves.
“Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden,” the serpent asked Eve.
“Oh, come now,” she replied, “We may eat all the fruit of all the trees except for that one over there; AND neither shall we touch it, lest we die.”
Um ... hello ... Adam!
Are you listening? ... Adam?
What a terrible mistake they made. Eve hadn’t paid any attention to what God had said, and Adam, who was probably lounging right next to her, was too busy shirking his role as a husband. The result of ignoring the word of the Lord, who had told them not to eat the fruit of one tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, was disastrous. Chaos followed! When Adam and Eve took their first bite, they opened the door to death, and the heat of the desert. Sin truly began killing us. We found ourselves naked, and ashamed, and afraid. We began feeling pain, the first signs of sin. And we started getting old.
Sin ... even the little ones ... hurts ... really ... bad.
Worse, that first sin separated us from God, immediately. And you and I got lost in the process. God cast our first parents out of paradise into darkness, where we have faced uncontrollable lust and lifetimes of hard labor ever since. Our children started killing each other. Our neighbors began stealing from each other. We turned on the TV, and the Internet, and disconnected ourselves from each other. Worse, we became as Psalm 14 and Romans 3 declare, without understanding, without God, without good ... NO, not even ONE OF YOU!
We became bitter and broken.
Fortunately, the Lord wasted no time in revealing His first priority to the mess we created. The Lord went looking for Adam and Eve, calling to them. And when he found them hiding in the bushes, He made the first great promise before making everything new. Listen to the promise from Genesis 3:
“The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this ... I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’” (Gen 3:15).
Did you catch the beautiful message?
God promised to make everything right first.
And he did!
God delivered the Gospel first, proclaiming that His Son will stand between us and Satan, eternally protecting us from the serpent’s fangs by dying on the cross for us.
While you were busy embracing your sin, your lusts, your desire, your selfishness, your greed, your idolatry, our righteous Father, through the seed of Mary, was giving up his innocent, righteous Son to crush the serpent’s head.
As Paul said in Romans 5, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
Your sin, your lust, your desire, your shame, your guilt was nailed to the cross WITH Jesus. As our text says in verse 21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Your sins were removed from you as far as east is from the west so that in Christ you could receive the righteousness of God. THIS is the ministry of reconciliation, God’s first priority.
“Now, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold! The new has come!”
Because God first reconciled us to himself, your sins do indeed become, as Isaiah wrote, “as white as snow.” Because God first reconciled us to himself, you are enabled to then confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that He was raised from the dead. Because God first reconciled us to himself, you ... will ... be saved (Rom 10:9).
Even if your past life is like that of the prodigal son, who wasted his Father’s riches in reckless immorality, God has reconciled you to himself, so that you can be presented “holy and blameless and above reproach” (Col. 1:22). Now, when you believe and are baptized: You are saved! (Mk 16:16).
This is the heart of this ministry of reconciliation, because as Paul writes in Second Corinthians: “All this is from God, who in Christ, reconciled us to himself.”
This ministry of reconciliation isn’t some new concept Paul made up for his letter to the Corinthians. Jesus conveyed that message first in our Gospel reading through the Parable of the Prodigal Son. So many of us can see ourselves in that son, because we are all like Adam and Eve. We recognize our sinfulness and the shame that comes with it.
But take the ministry from the parable to heart, as it says in Luke 15:20 “While he was still a long way off, his father saw his son and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” What a beautiful example of the ministry of reconciliation.
In the parable, like in the Garden, it was Father first who bridged the Grand Chasm of our estrangement. It was the Father first who ran to the son, who had recognized his sin and was ashamed. It was the Father who embraced his son ... first. It was the Father who rejoiced in reconciliation ... first.
“But Father I have sinned,” the son cried. “I have sinned greatly. I am so ashamed.”
And the Father’s response: He robed his son in finest clothing, and put together a great feast to rejoice. ‘My son was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found!”
The prodigal sons and daughters of the world have been reconciled first through the work of Christ! It’s not your work that saves you. It’s God’s!
The mediator of this reconciliation between the Father and us is Christ himself. Now, we can rejoice with the Father because, as Paul wrote in verse 19, Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (v.19).
He canceled, he deleted, all of the world’s debt, all of your debt, yesterday, today and tomorrow’s, through the death of Jesus on the cross, in the ultimate act of reconciliation.
He saved us, not because of what we have done in our lives, but because of his first mercy, his ministry of reconciliation. Now Christ comes to each of us individually here in this sanctuary, when we hear the Word proclaimed. Christ comes to us individually here when we receive His true body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper! Christ has come to some of us here in the baptism that saves.
It’s there in the water and Word, as Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us, that “we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Can you see sprouts of first fruits in your life? Do you hear it?
When you do, what a glorious day it is, as Isaiah proclaimed. “For though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me” (Isa 12:1).
We therefore have a new calling — the ministry of reconciliation (v.18-20).
Now that you are a new creation, the Lord has entrusted you with this ministry of sharing the news of his first priority. As verse 20 says, He has made you an “ambassador for Christ; God is making his appeal through us.”
How else is God going to make an appeal to others through you than by making you one of his great ambassadors?
Paul is encouraging you to hear your calling from the Father to forgive each other, and to seek forgiveness because God first reconciled us to himself, the first priority.
You have a new faith that is not from yourself. God has called you by the Gospel. You have a new, glorious hope, one from the Father, who has continued to fulfill his promises to you. You have a new love, because the son stood in your place, and died for you, and promises to restore you in his new creation. Now it’s your turn to proclaim this ministry of reconciliation in your life, through your new calling to others.
Like Paul did with the Corinthians, I urge you in Christ, to share the peace God has given you knowing that Christ died for you, to share the love of God you have after you were called out of the darkness. Share it with all your neighbors. By neighbors I mean those sitting next to you in the pew. I mean those sitting two rows away. I mean those who attend school with you. I mean those living next door. I mean those you meet in the grocery store. I mean, well, the world. To quote Paul: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh” (v.16). Or to say that without the idiomatic language of Paul’s day, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Our whole way of looking at other people has changed because of Christ.
So ask yourself: That person you saw in the grocery store the other day, did you see them through the eyes of your old sinful flesh, the eyes of contempt or jealousy or lust?
Or did you see them with the eyes of the new creation you are in Christ, who has brought you back to the Father, who has forgiven you, and restored you?
When we put first things first, we will find no greater ministry than that of reconciliation. There is no greater calling than to be an His ambassador in this reconciliation. There is no greater privilege than to share the Good News of His reconciliation.
It sounds like such a big concept.
But it’s so simple. And it is so far-reaching when we all make it our first priority.
Jesus lived for you first. Jesus died for you first. Jesus rose again for you first. Boldly, confess it and believe it. The ministry of reconciliation depends on it.
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. To His glory, and to your good. Amen.