Our text this morning is found in 2 Corinthians, verses chapter 5, verses 14 through 21. 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 14 through 21. Here now the word of God, for Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. 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. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 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. God made Him who had no sin, to be sinned for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the word of the Lord. Let's return. The passage we read with Durant just a few moments ago. Again, this Sunday we will be outside the gospel according to Luke. We'll return there in a couple of weeks. This morning, 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 14 through 21. This is not a familiar passage, or it's one that's sort of familiar, but not as familiar, not one we can quote. So it will be good to have this open in front of you. If you don't have a Bible with you, take one from the view and open it to the book of 2 Corinthians. If you don't know where 2 Corinthians is, look it up in your index. It's there, and you may not learn a thing from me this morning, but you're going to learn where the book of 2 Corinthians is. So look it up and turn there with me. You know, I forgot to do something this morning after the morning worship. Always come the first thing I do is put the sermon pages back in order. And I had something happen right after the worship this morning and didn't put them back in order and just opened up to page 10 and had to put them back in order. And don't panic because that's how many pages I usually have. In fact, I'm about to page short this morning. It's not a passage we usually see and know about heart. So now that it's opened before us, let's pray. And ask the God who was there with Paul when he wrote it. And the God who was here this morning, let's ask him to speak. Father in heaven, we can hear, we can see and read, but Father, I can't change men's hearts. I can't say anything that will change us from the side out. And we can't hear that way either. And we're right now helpless, completely helpless. Unless you come and teach us, send your spirit across this congregation. Follow, send your spirit to our hearts and teach us and grow us from the inside out and change us. Some of us for the first time in Jesus' name. Amen. Proceed by grace. There are some stories of strange pursuits several years ago, and Eastern newspaper reported this story. One evening a woman was driving home when she noticed a huge truck behind her that was driving uncomfortably close. She stepped on the gas to gain some distance from the truck, but the truck stepped on the gas also. The faster she drove, the faster the truck driver drove. She became alarmed and she left the interstate, but the truck made the same exit with her. The woman turned up of a main thoroughfare, hoping to lose a pursuer in traffic, but the truck driver even ran red lights, continuing this odd chase. Reaching the point of panic, the woman whipped into a service station and bolted out of her car, screaming for help, but the truck driver jumped from the cab and he was paying no attention to her screaming. He ran to the car and pulled over the back door and jerked a man out of her back floorboard. He was hiding there to do her harm. He had seen from his vantage point he had seen him hiding behind that front seat. That woman was running from the wrong person. We all have nightmares. I could not go to every person's sanctuary and all of us had been some dream during our lifetime about something chasing us. Recently, young Jim Dostor had a nightmare. He woke up crying and his father went and picked him up and he was just continuing to cry. He said, what happened? He said, he had a bad dream. He said, what did you dream? I dreamed a T-Rex, a Tyrannosaurus Rex was chasing me and he caught me and he ate me. This morning in the passage we read, you may not have realized it. But you heard Paul talk about the strangest and greatest pursuit story ever told in these next few minutes. Title of the message is pursued by grace. I want us to think together about how we were pursued by God, pursued by grace. First, I want you to see the surprising reality of God's pursuit. Look at verse 18. Oh, this is from God. Oh, what is from God. Paul was writing of his salvation. He was writing of the Corinthian salvation. He was writing of our salvation. Look at verse 15. And he died for all, who died for all Jesus did, verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. That's our salvation, the Holy Spirit changing our hearts, verse 19. That God was reconciling the world to Christ in Christ. He was reconciled the world to himself in Christ. Paul looked at the entire panorama of man's salvation. He looked at the entire panorama of our salvation and he said all of this, all of it, the justification, the regeneration, all of it, is from God. And I love with the New English Bible how it translates that verse. It reads, from first to last, this has been the work of God. Now to some of us, this is really, really surprising. When we become Christians, we tend to think that we have found Christ. We say to somebody, I've become a Christian, I've found Christ. We think we have discovered Christ. We think we have pursued Him. We seem to think in those first days of our faith that we saw Jesus. And we saw Him, we desired Him, and we sought Him. Paul looked at our salvation and did not understand it as man seeking God. He looked at our salvation and said, from first to last, it's all the work of God. The surprising, unexpected truth we discover is that God sought us. That God pursued us. That He brought about our salvation. There was a convention in London of leaders and thinkers from the world's great religions. They were discussing both the common ground of those religions and the differences between those religions. In a seminar one afternoon, these leaders were discussing and answering the question, how is Christianity different from all other religions? And they had not come to a solution that one difference that sets Christianity apart from all of the religions. CS Lewis was late in coming and he walked in and he said, what are you discussing? And they said, we're trying to find an answer to the question. How is Christianity different from the other religions? And Lewis immediately said, that's easy. And they looked at Him like, we've been discussing this for 30 minutes. And he said, oh, that's easy. Grace is what makes Christianity different from all of the religions. And then he went on to say, in the religions of the world, man is seeking God. But in Christianity, God is seeking man. Even pursuing man. Paul understood. From first to last, it is the work of God. From the very beginning, we get so accustomed to reading scripture that we don't see this. And we failed to step back and we get in among the trees and we fail to see this big picture of what is happening in Genesis 3.21. Just a simple verse. Listen to that. I'm going to quote from several who tested in passage. I want you to see that this is the panorama. This is what God says author's scripture. We read in Genesis 3.21, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and His wife and He clothed Him. I love that verse. You know, you see a ragged child and you want to clothing. Well, God, he looked at Adam and Eve. Yes, they had rebelled. They had sent the world into the darkness in which we've lived our history. They shook their fist in God's place and said, we want to be the gods. Surely as they turned their back on God, God turned their back on them. And God said, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Adam. Wait a minute, Eve. I've got some clothes for you. There's a hostile world out there. You're going to need a covering. What was God doing? He was reaching out. Reaching out into angels in heaven could not believe it. They were astounded. These folks were rebels. They were sinners. In Genesis 12, the beginning of the history of Israel. In Genesis 12, the Lord said to Abram, leave your country and your people in your father's household. And you go to the land, I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. Abraham's down there in the counties. And here comes God invading his life. Here comes God pursuing him. Here comes God chasing him. Abraham, through his Abraham, he's a worshipper of idols. He's not a doletor. He's down in the earth of the counties. He's a pagan. And he comes and he chases Abraham. You can just hear Paul saying, Abraham. All this is from God. Jeremiah. Jeremiah 31, 3. Listen to this. The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I've drawn you with loving kindness. He keeps saying it over and over again all through the Old Testament. Listen to Ezekiel 34. You know that in John 10 we have Jesus, a good shepherd. You know where he got that? He got it from Ezekiel 34. It's good reading for Sunday afternoon. Try it out. Listen to verse 11. For this is what the sovereign Lord says, I myself will search for my sheep. Who are he sheep? That's right. I will search for my sheep and looked after them. Verse 16. I will search for the lost and bring back the slaves. The surprising reality of God's pursuit. What was it Jesus told to the disciples? They thought they had chosen to follow Jesus. And Jesus says, Peter, John, James, you have not chosen me. But I have chosen you, John 15, 16. You know, for the rest of the day we can read verses just like that. Not only for the rest of the day, but for the rest of the week. And we would see a picture of a God who was reaching, seeking, searching, willing, persuading, drawing and saving. Anywhere, anywhere in scripture that you see, man, reaching for God, it's only because God has worked in that man's heart to reach him. Oh, Guston understood. He put it this way. He was praying to God and he said, I should not have sought you, God, unless you first found me Lewis the Stewart. We know him because of his work on viruses and rabies and work in the area of bacteria and anoculation. He was interrupted. His work was interrupted by the Franco-Pression War that began in 1870. His only son was in that army. He had lost three daughters to tragedy before that time. And now his son was at the front and he had not heard from him in weeks. Pastor left the laboratory and set out to find his son. As he made his way north, the roads were choked with defeated soldiers and stragglers. He finally located his son's unit and the news was depressing out of 1200, only 300 to officer said, had been left alive. I'll let Lewis undermine in the book he wrote, makers of the modern world, speak of the Stewart's next move. Pastor went on through a nightmare of winding roads, choked with dead horses and men suffering from freezing cold and infected wounds. His family, the Stewart recognized a gump soldier weak with hunger, wrapped to his eyes in a great coat and the father embraced his son. That's the picture of the gospel right there. You understand that, don't you? Your father, you would go find your son. That's how God pursues us. You look in this passage, it's all from God, the surprising reality of God's pursuit. Secondly, look in this passage and see the appalling target of God's pursuit. Look at verse 19. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men sins against them. What does reconciling mean? Now hang with me here. What does reconciling mean? Think about it. It's a biblical word, reconciliation. It's also a word that we use in history and political reconciled. It means to settle a quarrel, to bring into harmony, those that were out of harmony. If you need to be reconciled to someone, that presupposes they were your enemy. Friends don't need reconciliation, they're all ready together. Our sins had made us enemies of God. Look at verse 19. Not counting our sins against us. What does that tell us? That he was pursuing us, that he was chasing us, even when we were sinners. While we were opposed to him, he was pursuing his enemies. Why do you pursue an enemy? To get that enemy, to kill that enemy. He was pursuing us. He was pursuing his enemy to save us. We call it grace. Unmerited favor, favor. We receive that we don't merit. An undeserved gift. And we love that, don't we? We think that's such a pretty thing. God is a gracious God. That's so pretty. It's not as pretty as many of us think. Read through scriptures. Who did God assemble? Who did Jesus assemble? He gathered to himself the thieves in the prostitutes. And what did the good church people of Jesus day say? The same thing we say today. We don't want any part of a Messiah who saves those kind of people. I originally entitled this message, why does anyone pursue scorpions? I called the church office Thursday morning and changed it. But that's the question that one must ask when he reads the gospel. Why would anyone pursue scorpions except to kill them? The wise old teacher was being watched by his students one day as he set by stream and deep thought. A scorpion floated by on a small limb. The teacher reached out knowing what the scorpion did not know that he was in danger. And he tried to pull the scorpion to safety and the scorpion stung him. He reached again and the scorpion stung him again. And the disciples ran down and tried to pull him back and said, what are you doing? Don't you know that the way of the scorpion is to sting? It's his nature to sting. And the man reached out one more and he said yes. But don't you know it's my nature to save. Is this not the gospel? Not counting our sins against us. What did Jesus say in Luke 19's sin? For the Son of man came to seek and to say that which was good? The Son of man came to seek and to say that which was flourishing? The Son of man came to save that which was moral? No. It says the Son of man came to seek and to say that which was lost, which was black, which was dark. The elders and deacons and staff have been trained together about living out the legacy. And one of our prayer groups the other evening, one of our officers prayed for his extended family. And prayed for his folks from which he came. And he said in his prayer, he said Lord, I pray for my family. I pray for them even day they don't want you to save them. What a great prayer. Folks, the reality of it is that the way we were born, none of us wanted to be saved. We were not looking to be saved. What did Paul say in Romans? He understood that God demonstrates His love for us and this while we were still sinners Christ died for us. The appalling target. You know some of us say and we really think this way. We don't say it. But we think this way. Well, of course God pursued me. Look at me. I'm a good guy. I've been a member of Praise be in church for 40 years. I'm a good guy. I would think God would proceed. But that's not the gospel. We ought to be a Paul that were the targets of his pursuit. A poet wrote this. You, so many of you know this, the hound of heaven, and the poet is talking about the Holy Spirit being a hound, not the hound of Baskerville, but the hound of heaven. And the poet writes this. I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the arches of the years. I fled him down the LeBrennton ways. And he goes on to say, I fled him in laughter. I fled him in the darkness of despair. But he ends each stanza with this. But with unhurried chase and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instance, they beat. A voice beat, more instant than the feet. All things betray thee, who betrayest me. And then there's another stanza. And then you hear again. Night and night draws the chase with unperturbed pace, with deliberate speed, with majestic instance, see. And past those noisy feet, a voice comes yet more fleet. Low, not contents thee, who contents not me. Who was gone pursuing Francis Thompson. There's a writer of that. When he wrote that, he had been in the streets of London. He was a vagabond. He was selling matches, trying to get by, living in rags, living in the streets, sleeping in the street, just trying to get enough pennies to support his drug habit. He was a dopey and he was an addict. Lost in drugs and immorality. And yet he couldn't get away from the gospel. That's when he wrote that. The appalling target of God's pursuit. Yesterday I read the, in preparation for this message, I sat down and read the book of Ozea one more time. God looks at Israel and Israel has forsaken him. And he goes to Ozea. He says, Ozea, I want you to go get a wife. And he says something that we cannot even dream of. Our parents never said this to us. God said to Ozea, Ozea said, where am I going to find a wife? And he says, you go to the brothel. Find a prostitute in Mary. And that's what Ozea did. Her name was Gomer. She did not see Kim. He saw her. He chased her. They began a family together and they had children. And then she became bored. She began to find pleasure with other men. And she left her husband. She left her children. She came to the property of another. And God came to Ozea again. He said, Ozea, I want you to go search out Gomer. And take enough money to bribe by her back. So he suffered the pain of chasing after a woman who had humiliated him, who had been used by the community. And he had to go get her and bring her back home. What was God saying to Israel through Ozea? And Gomer, he was saying to Israel the same thing is saying to us. And he's saying to John Sartelli saying, this is how I love you. If you don't understand it, we're the prostitutes.
Who not only were unfaithful, but to this very hour are unfaithful. Who this very week had committed adultery against our God. He does not chase us because we're good, because we're beautiful, because we're wonderful, because we're rich. He chases us because we're scorpions, because we lie gossip cheap, we'll fully walk away from him, because we deny his sovereignty, because we think we created ourselves, because when we survey everything he's given us, we say, look at what my hand and my ingenuity and my hard work has done. And it's man, man, man. And he's chased us because we are selfish and arrogant and dark and because every time he reaches it out for us, there's a part of us that stings his hand. That's why he chases us. And if there's anything in you, if there's anything in you, this is, that's not me. Then you ought to fear for your soul, because you're standing before God who gave his own son to save us and to save you. And you're saying, God, I can do it. Look at this passage. You see the surprising reality of God's pursuit. You see the appalling target of God's pursuit. You see the extreme extent of God's pursuit. Look at verse 19, that God was reconciled with the world to Himself in Christ, not counting then sins against them. Not counting then, God's holy. What's he going to do with your sin? Is, can this just God you say, hey, that's all right. I don't care what you're doing. Not, someone had to give in the county. Who gave in accounting for our sins? Verse 21, God made him who knew he had no sin to be sinned for us. Who was that? That was Jesus. Who was Jesus, God's son. Do you knew no sin? God gave his own son. How far would God go in this wild chase to what the angels in heaven must have wondered? God, how far would you go in this crazy pursuit? Of these people. God said, even, even my own son. Even when my own son will pray from that garden, say, father, if it's possible, let this cut pass from me. God says, the father said, I can't let it pass. To what extent will God go in His reaching, seeking, searching, willing, persuading, drawing and saving for God to love the world that He gave His own son? Sometime ago, a teenager author, Hinckley, lifted a 3,000 pound tractor with his very, imagine that. You, 17 years old, try to go out and write, pull up, pick up 3,000 pounds. You know why I did it? He wasn't a weightlifter. A friend of his Lloyd Bachelors was 18 years old, and penned under a tractor on a far near Rome, Maine. And he heard Lloyd scream, and author knew his friend, and he picked up that tractor now. The writer of the article became somewhat poetic, and he said, you know, it was the love that author had for Lloyd that caused him to pick up that tractor. I want to ask you a question. You want to know about love? That's something that love can pick up a 3,000 pound tractor, and that's not even the beginning of love. What if there's two people trapped under that tractor? It's not a front end, but it's your son. What if author had been the guy that picked up the tractor? What if that had been his son under the tractor? And what if there had been another person under that tractor? And that person was just a day worker just passing through a stranger. Didn't even know his name. Or didn't even know his name. And what if you really suspected that guy had been stealing from you? And the tractor's own both of them, but to get the stranger out, you would have to put all the weight of the tractor over on the sun, and crush your own son. How many of you would do that? How many of you would pick up the tractor to let a stranger, stranger who was stealing from you? Some of you didn't even, and crush your son in doing it. That's exactly what the father did in reaching out and saying, now that's love. It's not love that just picked up 3,000 pounds. It was love that picked up the weight and put it all on the son and crushed him. I'm not being modeling. I'm not being sensational, sensational, or sentimental. I'm just being a prophet. That's what Isaiah said 700 years before Christ was born. And talking about the death of Christ and looking forward to that cross. Isaiah said, he was, here's for our transgressions. He was crushed for our equities. And I come to these folks when they joined the church. When I quit, when a young man or young lady singing my office, and we come to that verse and they memorize it. And I say, who Christy? Who pierced him? And they usually get it. God did. God crushed him. God pierced him. God pierced him. How far will God go in this wild chase, disapproved, the surprising reality of God's pursuit? The appalling target of God's pursuit. The extreme extent of God's pursuit. Fourthly and finally, the unlikely participants of God's pursuit. Look at verse 18. And all this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ. Now, catch it. Here's what it's all about. And gave us the ministry of, gave us the ministry of, we are to become the reconcilers. Not with each other, but with men to God. Yeah. In the Hebrew mind, they wanted to repeat something, they wanted to stretch something, if they wanted to say, hey, pay attention. This is it. They didn't put a circle around. They didn't put an asterisk bite. They didn't capitalize it. They couldn't underline it. What they did was repeat it. Paul was Jewish. Look at this. And he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Now look at the end of verse 19. And he's committed us to the message of reconciliation. Verse 20. We are therefore Christ ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. Have you counted them? And gave us a ministry of reconciliation one. And he's committed us to the message of reconciliation two. And we are therefore Christ ambassadors three. As though God were making his appeal through us four times. He says, hey, you have been made a part of God's pursuit. We become a part of the hurricane of His grace. We become a part of the tidal wave of His reaching and seeking and searching and wooing and persuading and drawing and saving and redeeming. At one time in Jesus ministry, Peter stood right in His way. And He said, Jesus, you can't do that. You can't go to the cross. Messiahs don't die on crosses. Messiahs don't get crucified by Romans.
He might as well have been standing in the front of a hurricane four hundred miles wide with winds three hundred miles per hour. In fact, that would have been nothing compared to what he stood in front of that day. How do you like to stand in front of a hurricane four hundred miles wide with winds three hundred miles an hour? And have me say to you, hey, why don't you stop that hurricane and say, you Christ? That's what it's like trying to stop the pursuit of God. I want you to know something. I want you to think about this. Church is more than we can ever dream. Individual Christians more than we can ever dream as exactly what we're there. Instead of being participants in God's pursuit, we become barriers to God's pursuit.
The unlikely participants, we were the objects that we were the appalling targets of his pursuit have become the unlikely participants. Jeremiah was fed up. God had given him a message and it wasn't a message you'd want to take to the people, but it was a message from God. And he kept taking it to the people and taking the people and people didn't want to hear the message. And they kept blaming Jeremiah for the message they were getting from God. And so they were beating up on Jeremiah. And Jeremiah finally said in chapter 20 verse 9, I am not going to mention him or speak any morning's name. I'm not going to that. And then the last part of the verse reads, his word was in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. And I am weary of holding it in. Indeed, I cannot. He said, I couldn't stop God's pursuit.
The world will test us. The world will see just how far we will go in being a participant in God's compassionate, reaching seeking, searching, viewing, persuading, drawing, saving, redeeming grace. How far will you go? How far will you go? God says, God says, I went to the extent of giving my son. And we say, well, Lord, I'm not even sure I want to pray for someone. What's wrong with us? I probably hate line was an elder at Coal Ridge, Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was an elder, well known elder, a great, great man. A lot of people knew him. Now, one testimony that I read about Mr. Hainline this week wrote, the writer wrote, when I first came to Coal Ridge, an older gentleman, Mr. Charlie Hainline immediately took me under his wing, and greatly influenced my life in the area of gold setting to know him was to know humility. He went on to say that Mr. Hainline described himself as a poor, Kentucky farm boy. Let me tell you, when someone describes himself, I'm just a poor, old Tennessee farmer. That's all I am. You better hold on to your watching wallet. Hainline was a man who radiated the love of Christ. And he was serious, serious. Nothing in his life was he more occupied his mind and heart than communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ. He wasn't a minister. But he loved to pray for people and bring them before the throne of God and pray that God would have mercy on that individual. He loved to talk to an individual about Christ. How far would he go? How far would he go? His life was not a better roses. It was hard. His daughter was kidnapped and killed. I will not go into the gory details except to say that they found part of a body floating in a canal. The murder of his daughter was caught and convicted. And he went to jail. Charlie went to the jail, usually every week. And that man landed in that jail. Even though that man had murdered his daughter, Charlie still went to jail. And he sought out that man. And he said, I have come to tell you about a God who is pursuing you, not to judge you, but a God who is pursuing you, to love you and to save you. And Charlie Hainline sat down and told the murder of his daughter about Jesus Christ. You say, I wouldn't do that. I probably wouldn't either. But where did Charlie get it? He got it because he knew he had once been on God's death row. And Jesus came to him and pursued him. People, if we understand that we're the scorpions, if we understand that we're the prostitutes, if we understand that we're the killers and that Jesus Christ pursued us, if we understand that, how can we not pursue? That's a question. That's a simple little card saying, I will pray. I'll pray for myself and I'll pray for another. I'll pray that somebody, an individual or a friend of mine, will come to know Christ. If you say no, I'm not going to do that. What are you going to say to the God who gave his own son for you and pursued you? What are you going to say to him when he asks, why aren't you?