Vessels of Redemption

Vessels Poured Out For Redemption

The whole world stands in desperate need of redemption. They are gay and straight and bisexual, liberal and conservative and libertarian, black and white and brown, male and female and transgender, moral and immoral, free and prisoner, law abiding and criminal, religious and atheist, Muslim and Jew and Hindu, but what is common to them all is that Christ died for them and He commissioned us to tell them. They do not need condemnation, they stand condemned already. They need someone to care; they need someone to share; they need mercy; they need love; they need redemption; they need Jesus.

They need anyone who would deny himself and be a living sacrifice for their sakes. Paul once said,

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,
That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:

That, my friends, is what following Jesus looks like.

Read again my list of sinners and you will find that somewhere in that wide and varied forest is you. Oh yes, you were lost within that fallen village. You were not on a journey to find God and be redeemed, Far from it, you were enjoying a selfish and narcissistic lifestyle and you were willfully blind to the Redeemer. But instead of searching out your sins and spreading that information to all who would listen, Someone waded into that forest looking for you. He was not interested in condemning you. He was interested in seeing your eternal soul redeemed. The person of which I speak is the precious Holy Spirit.

And before Jesus ascended into heaven He exhorted the disciples to wait in Jerusalem before they went to preach the everlasting gospel. He knew they would need the power and compassion of God’s Spirit before they could be effective witnesses for Christ. In the natural we do not really care for others. Even our acts of kindness are meant to assuage and comfort our own consciences. But the Spirit of God came to this sin laden house of horrors for the purpose of drawing sinners to Christ and then teaching them to be like Christ.

But how often have we become tabloid journalists rather than vessels of redemption? So many times we are sideline voyeurs who can articulate the sins of others but refuse to venture into that forest of sin with the light of Jesus Christ. You cannot do both. It is impossible to intercede and condemn at the same time. You must do one or the other. You must decide whether you are a follower of Moses or a follower of Jesus. But before you make that choice, just remember, Moses is now a follower of Jesus. He has abandoned the tablets of stone in favor of a white robe of redemption.

You see, most men have dreams of happiness and fulfillment. And they go about satisfying that dream with all sorts of earthly labors and schemes. And round and round they go chasing one dream after another but only experiencing fulfillment in patches, just to see it disappear. They have no divine light.

Matt.16:25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

The church sees the lost as one faceless amalgam and not as individual sinners whose soul is worth more than the entire world. We see sinners as irritants to our culture and we are aggravated that they seem to force their “agenda” upon us. We seem to maintain a sanctimonious arms length, not wishing to sully our reputations, but willing to use the lost as proof of our morality and righteousness. But to really fall in love with Jesus, is to also fall in love with lost souls. The church has fallen in love with so many things. Prosperity, doctrine, organization, size, political influence, preachers, and other earthly endeavors. But when will we fall so in love with lost souls that we will deny ourselves to spread His gospel? It’s so easy to “love” the lost conservative, but it demands Christ’s love to love the Rosie O’Donnells of the world.

For what shall it profit a man if he gains ecclesiastical notoriety, or has impeccable doctrine, or preaches eloquently, or lives a moral life, if he is not consumed with the plight of lost souls? Jesus had everything as God the Word. He needed nothing, and His glory was infinite. There was one and only one reason He came to earth. “To seek and to save that which was lost”.

Matt.9:36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;
38 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

Jesus sees the world as a harvest for the kingdom. He does not condemn those whited fields, but He implores for more laborers. What good is a laborer if he disdains what he is harvesting? Which farmer would hire grumbling laborers who speak disparagingly of the farmer’s crops? A laborer who despises that which he is harvesting will not handle the crop with care. Where did we change His vision and supplant it with ours? Jesus dies for His enemies but we delineate their sins and indict them over and over and over again. The two approaches are incompatible.

Oh my dear brothers and sisters, lay down your self righteousness and immerse yourself in His matchless grace. You have been saved by grace and by grace you stand. Your morality is a gift of grace. Your discernment is a gift of grace. Your Scriptural understanding is a gift of grace. You have nothing but that which God has graciously given to you and empowered you to have. And you who know Christ and have received the Spirit, you still sin. Oh not willfully, you say.

Do you go over the speed limit? Do you lose your temper? Do you pray as you should? Do you waste time watching television when you could be reading His Word or praying? You see, if you desire to throw stones at the lost make sure you save quite a bundle for yourself. We all must cling to His grace. Yes, within the body we must exhort and reprove and rebuke, but to the lost we must be the Jesus of the gospel itself. Hollering at dead men only entertains the living, but it has no redemptive affect on the dead.

God has called us to be living epistles, living sacrifices, humble servants, and bondslaves to be sure. These are very high callings indeed, however if we replace them with man made callings we not only reduce the level of our discipleship to our own caricatures, but we severely misrepresent Christ and His mission. The Christian life must remain a paradox. It is difficult and requires much sacrifice and self denial. Yet in all of that are the hidden treasures of the Spirit which not only strengthen us, but which lifts the soul into realms of glory unknown to fallen earthlings. Any among us who have been granted a faith glimpse of the Risen Christ can testify to the surpassing worth of that one glimpse. But God has not limited us to one glimpse. The well is full, and when we draw a significant amount of living water from it, it still remains ever full.

This gospel, this eternal gift from the Creator, must never be used as a platform for a carnal display of our own elevated view of ourselves. We must never forget who we were and who is responsible for our gracious transformation. Perhaps butterflies of the Most High today, but we came from yesterday’s maggots. And the good news for all our former maggot brethren is that by faith in Christ Jesus the same metamorphosis awaits them as well. How is it we are not more excited to tell such a wonder, but so often are consumed with telling the sordid details of maggots and their present lives?

Look again at the Son of the Father. Gaze deeply into His face and let that light change you again. Shake off the dross and the grave clothes. Just because outwardly you no longer practice things that were observable in your former life does not mean that the closet of your inward man is not accumulating those same grave clothes. There is a wonderful freedom when we humble ourselves and invite the compassion of God to flood our souls. No longer must we react to all that is wrong. No longer must we inform everyone what we see as sin so that no one will think us soft or blind. In His freedom our reputations are worthless. We are not as good as some believe say we are, and we are not as bad as others suggest. We are content to allow Him to receive any and all praise. And if we are granted the grace to speak a word of gold in pictures of silver to a sinner dead in his sins, and if by God’s Spirit our words are used to lead a citizen of darkness into God’s glorious light, then we experience a fullness which satisfies more than all the gold in the universe.

So let us weigh our words and allow them to be sifted through the prism of God’s gospel grace. There is coming a great judgment which will be terrible in its depth and scope. And we may even warn sinners of this coming horror, but even then let us do it with tears in our eyes and an aching heart. The Lord Jesus has risen from the dead. He has suffered for us all.

May the Lamb of God receive the reward of His sufferings. And may our lips, our lives, and our hearts be a humble looking glass into those sufferings.