Well, our Old Testament reading is from Isaiah chapter 43. You can find that on page 604 of your Pew Bibles as you're turning to Isaiah 43. Just general context here, Isaiah has prophesied that God's people would go into exile, but there will be a second exodus as God will again deliver His people from bondage so they might worship Him. The old will pass away and the new will come. So Isaiah Chapter 43, verses 16 through 21. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior, they cannot lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise. I invite you now to turn to 2 Corinthians, usually we do 2 Corinthians in the evening, but short week for me, and so we'll do it in the morning. My other hope is that if there's still some on the fence trying to make it to PM service, maybe if you hear a 2 Corinthians sermon, it'll whet your appetite and you'll want more. So that's on page 966. I'm gonna read 2 Corinthians 5, 11 through 21. And in these verses, Paul's teaching us about the new covenant ministry of reconciliation. Our sermon is going to focus on verses 16 and 17. So 2 Corinthians chapter 5, starting at verse 11. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we pursue others, but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you cause to boast about us so that you may be able to answer those who boast about our outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. If we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, and therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but also for him, who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the very righteousness of God. The word of the Lord is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Let's pray. O Lord, You have given us Your Word for a light to shine upon our path. Grant to us to meditate on this Word and to follow its teachings so that we may find in it that light that shines more and more until the perfect day. The light of Jesus Christ, in His name we pray, amen. Well, I know that some of you here have perfect eyesight and are too young and you've probably never been to the eye doctor. But for those of you that haven't been or haven't been for a long time, let me tell you some of the things that happen when you go to the eye doctor. You go and you sit in this chair and they tell you to keep your eyes open and they push some air through there. They're checking to see, you know, if you can handle the pressure and whatnot. You get these drops that go in there and they burn just a little bit. And your eyes get dilated and you go in this kind of dark room and you sit in a chair and the doctor pulls down this apparatus and you look through it at the you know, the wall chart, and then the fun starts then. It's, they show you at number one, number two, and you're supposed to tell them, well, the number one looks better, number two, number one, number two. And to tell you the truth, by the way, you can't even tell which one looks better, and you just, eventually, you've asked them to repeat it enough, and you just guess and hope that it's okay. So it's not an exact science, but so that's kind of what happens. And the chart starts out a little blurry, and as you get the two choices, it does come into better focus. But eventually what this does, this helps the eye doctor to fine tune that prescription for you so you can see as well as possible. Well, the Apostle Paul, He's not an eye doctor, but he is a resurrection ophthalmologist. He's been fine-tuning our view of life through resurrection glasses in 2 Corinthians. And as we've been going through 2 Corinthians, we've seen how the resurrection shapes the way that we look at our life and our future. And up to this point, much of Paul's focus has been on how the resurrection helps us to see what God is doing in our life, especially through our various trials. Well, now Paul, he's fine-tuning it even more, going with the number one, the number two. He's dialing in this prescription by helping us to see how new resurrection life that we have already in Jesus Christ helps us to see ourselves as God sees us, and helps us to see others as God sees them. In 2 Corinthians 5, verses 16 and 17, Paul teaches that Christ's redemptive love for us compels us to see ourselves and others as new creations in Christ. That's what we're gonna look at this morning, and we'll unpack this message into two headings. The first is worldly vision, and the second is heavenly vision. In the Greek text, the first word of verse 16 is actually the word therefore, so we wanna know, you know, why is the therefore, what's it there for, right? So we gotta back up just a little bit, back up to verse 14. For the love of Christ controls us because we've concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all. that those who might live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. So what Paul's saying is that Christ's love for sinners is already proved to us in history. He proved his love by paying for the sins of those who belong to him and by conquering death through his resurrection. So in Christ, all who believe have now died with Christ and they've been raised with Christ. And this love on display now controls, compels, and propels us to serve Jesus as we are saved so that we can serve. And now in verse 16, we see that being saved to serve also instructs us on how we should see and treat our brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. See, Paul doesn't want us to use worldly standards anymore, because our union with Christ in his death and resurrection changes the way that we see others, others that Christ has rescued. So verse 16 again, it says this, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. So Paul says, from now on, or from this day forward, we are to think of people differently than we used to think about people. The from now on is from the day you were saved and then forward. Now that you've been born again by the Holy Spirit, you're to think of others differently than you did before your conversion. Or if you've known the Lord Jesus your whole life, it's a reminder to make sure that we're not using the world's standards to look at people. Paul tells us, we regard no one according to the flesh. A more literal reading of this phrase to help us out to understand what he's getting at might be something like, therefore, from now on, we know no one according to the flesh. So what does it mean to think of someone according to the flesh or to regard someone according to worldly standards? If memory serves, I think the NIV says worldly standards. I think that's where I got that. So what's Paul telling us to change here as far as our mindset goes? Well, the worldly standard is to look at the outward appearance or the image of something. The Corinthians themselves, they were evaluating those false teachers among them and Paul's ministry, they were looking at them side by side and they were judging them by worldly standards or the appearance of success. The world's standards are social status. Fame, wealth, prosperity, just what the world deems as success. The world looks at the immediate and what we can see. But Paul's already told us back in verse 12 that God's standard is to look on the unseen, what's in the heart. Paul himself says he used to evaluate Jesus according to worldly standards or according to appearances. He said, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh. Paul's talking about how he viewed and evaluated Jesus before he met Christ on the road to Damascus. We, most of us, will remember that Paul, in his upbringing, he's a Pharisee royalty here, a big time scholar, and he previously viewed Jesus as a messianic pretender. He thought Jesus was just a man who failed up to live to his promises and ultimately suffered a cursed death on the tree. At best, Paul, before his conversion, viewed Jesus as a confused teacher who somehow maybe perform some signs and miracles. At worst, Paul viewed Jesus as a false messiah, as a tool of Satan to make things even worse for the people of God and to bring more Roman persecution down upon them. Paul evaluated Jesus according to his own fleshly standards and the world standards of outward appearances. And to many, Jesus was just another rebel, another zealot whose promise of bringing the kingdom of God died when he did. And now some of the Christians, they're starting to buy into what some of the false teachers are saying about Jesus. Now, they're not going as far, perhaps, to say some of these kinds of things. Maybe it wasn't as blatant as Jesus was a pretender, but somehow we know from 2 Corinthians 3, they were trying to say that Jesus was still inferior to Moses. They're still trying to lead people astray. But Paul says, look, something happened. Something changed for him and his ministry team, and it changed for him in the blink or the flash of an eye. Paul says, we regard him thus no longer. He says, we don't think of Jesus according to our misguided and false worldly standards anymore. So what was it that changed for Paul? Well, some of us remember what it was. In the midst of Paul persecuting and even participating in the killing of Christians, he met the risen Lord Jesus Christ in all his glory on the road to Damascus. That's in Acts chapter 9. Let's read a little bit about this encounter that Paul has with Jesus that changed everything for Paul. Acts 9, now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. but rise and enter the city and you'll be told what to do. I'm skipping around here a bit. Saul rose from the ground and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And for three days he was without sight and neither ate nor drank. You see, Paul fought the Lord and here the Lord won. He met the risen Christ in all his glory and he was blinded. We know that Paul was blind, but the scales would fall from his eyes and he would be able to see. And what did he see? He saw that Jesus was the Christ foretold by the scriptures that would come and that had come to save people from their sins through his death and resurrection. The Holy Spirit gave Paul new spiritual eyes so that he could see Jesus as he really is. And seeing Jesus as he really is changes everything. Seeing Jesus as he really is changes how we view ourselves and it changes how we view each other. Before we get to the each other part, I wanna ask you this morning, how do you see Jesus? How do you regard Jesus? How do you think of Jesus? How do you evaluate Jesus? For we know that our Lord Jesus is often evaluated by worldly standards that say, yeah, we love Jesus, he just helped me win the Super Bowl. Not to make light of anyone's public profession of faith, but it seems that only Christians win. Many say that Jesus is just a good teacher. What he has to say is still valuable. But the Messiah, being raised from the dead? Come on, we don't really believe in that kind of stuff, do we? That's for Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and those kinds of things. Well, some teach that Jesus had good things to say, but ultimately that he himself, that Jesus himself even was disappointed. He was disappointed because he preached about this great kingdom of God that was coming. He preached this revolution and it never came. So Jesus died disappointed as a man. That's today's scholarship, the historical Jesus. Now look, if this is how you view Jesus in general, as a good teacher, but maybe a little misguided, just a man, then beware. Because if that's all that Jesus is for you, good advice, this kind of Christ cannot save you from your sins. And that means that you are left on your own to find a way to make peace with God. You cannot make peace with God on your own. You're born a sinner, you're a sinner by birth, and Adam, you're a sinner by choice, and you've been piling up testimony and evidence against you for the day of judgment and wrath since your birth as you continue to sin. So if Jesus is just a good teacher, you gotta find some other way to pay for your sins and the wrath of God, and you can't. You must decide. Either Jesus is a liar and he's not the one that saves and brings the kingdom of God. Jesus is a crazy man talking about a kingdom that never came. Or he is who he says he is. He's the very son of God. He's the savior of sinners. He's the bringer of the kingdom of God on earth. You cannot stay neutral. You must decide. You've heard this argument, some of you, before. It was going to be in our membership class. It'll be next week. Who is Jesus? Is He who He says He is, Lord and Savior, or is He a liar, or is He just crazy? Will you view Jesus according to your own fallen worldly standards, or will you adopt the perspective of God Himself? who in his word testifies to the true person and work of Jesus, true man, true God, that's found for us in the holy scriptures. You must choose. You must. There is no neutrality. To put the choice off or to say we'll just see and we'll find out, it will be too late for you. Many of you know that my brother was not a believer as far as I know, and that he died in jail of a drug overdose when he was 25 years old. I had many conversations with him. He said, you know what? I'll just wait and see until Judgment Day, and then if Jesus is really Lord and Savior, then I'll repent and I'll believe then. That's too late. It's too late. You must decide. Who is Jesus Christ? And for those of us who know that Jesus is Lord and Savior, we must continue to give thanks then that it's not because we're smarter or because we're good, it's because the Spirit of God has worked in us, giving us new spiritual eyes to see Jesus who he really is. I think most of us have no trouble thinking and regarding that Jesus is our Savior. Praise God that he is. But even so, some of us still have trouble regarding Jesus as our Lord. We have trouble with the Lord part. Jesus as Lord means that his will must be done and not ours. It means dying to self. It means that we want our thoughts to be in alignment with his thoughts. It means that we must seek, by God's grace, to have our lives reflect God's holy standards. We praise God. that we can now view Jesus as Paul did after he met our Lord in that blaze of light and glory on the road to Damascus. Praise Him. But now we must also continue to walk in the light of that revealed will. To see Jesus with spiritual eyes, Holy Spirit eyes, is to see Him as our Savior and then to seek to lovingly obey Him and serve Him as our Lord. Seeing Jesus rightly changed everything for Paul. Has it done that for you? Is it doing that for you right now? I pray that it is. It should also affect how we see and look at one another. And this as we get to verse 17 and point 2. Heavenly vision Since we know the risen Lord Jesus, now what do we do with this? How do we see ourselves differently? How do we see our brothers in Christ differently? Well, when we view ourselves and each other with heavenly vision or we see ourselves and others as God sees us, first we'll start with us. When we look in the mirror, what do we see? We see a new creation in Christ, verse 17. Therefore, if any was in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Now, we've already talked about these therefores, and since we see Jesus with spiritual, and I mean capital S again, Holy Spirit eyes, now what do we see when we look at ourselves in each other? Well, all who are united to Christ have been united to him in his death and are united to him in his resurrection. Christ is the firstborn of the dead. He's the first man resurrected. That's what that means. The firstborn of the dead. The first resurrected man. He's the first one who's been further clothed, as Paul has been speaking about. Clothed with a resurrection body that's made to live in the new creation. Christ in his resurrected body right now is a part of the new creation. Now our English translations help us to kind of smooth out a little bit of something that's here in verse 17. It supplies some words for us. It says, But this is what it says in Greek. It's a little rougher. And there's a little bit of an impact here. So when it's smoothed out, it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. And that's a fine translation. But the Greek really comes across, it really reads like this, if anyone is in Christ, new creation. It has the force of saying if anyone's united to Christ, he's united to him in his death and his resurrection, and the result is boom, new creature, new creation. That's what it says here. Union with Christ means that believers are new creations in Jesus Christ. If anyone is united to Christ, you are also a part of the new creation, the kingdom of God even now. One commentator sums it up. He says this, redemption in Christ is nothing less than the fulfillment of God's eternal purposes in creation, so radical in its effects that it is justly called a new creation. If you are in union with Christ, that means that you no longer belong to this world, but you belong to the world to come. You are new creation. Isn't that the most exciting thing that you have heard this morning, this week, maybe ever in your entire life, that in Christ you're new creation? It is when we spend time to think of it. I will spend eternity with God, who's perfect all the time, without sin. New creation. I will be with my beloved Savior in the great company of the saints. I will never be lonely again. I will never be depressed again. But I will be full of joy, everlasting. I can't wait for those days, and they've started even now, even this morning, as we're here gathered together. Praise God. Paul further explains what being a new creation means. He says, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. This is the Isaiah, second Exodus language. In our Old Testament reading, we read, remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah was looking forward even before Israel was exiled into Babylon. He was looking forward not just to a second exodus, but he was looking forward to something greater. He was looking forward to the new creation. That new creation, it's a done deal, and Paul yells out in jubilation. These are exciting words by Paul. The old is done away with, the new has already come. The kingdom of God is at work in you. In Christ you have died to the things of this world and you've reborn. unto the world to come. The old is gone. Where has it gone? What's gone? Our hearts of stone are gone. Our self-centeredness is gone. Our separation from God is over. And our alienation from each other is gone. Our ignorance of truth is gone. Our dwelling in the darkness is gone. Our slavery to sin is gone. The Spirit of God has done away with all these things. I sure don't miss them. I know you don't either. And the Spirit hasn't just erased these things. He didn't just condemn the building and knock it down, the building of our lives, and leave it there. It's not just gone. It's been replaced with something totally new. God has given us new hearts that long to be with Him, a new obedience that desires to obey God, a new relationship status as His children, He's reconciled us to each other, He's made us new creatures in Christ, and He's continuing even now to prepare us for life in new creation. Think about what this means for your identity. You have a new identity in Christ. This means the world might still seek to drag us down and try to evaluate us according to appearances. It might tell us certain things about ourself, but that's not how God sees us. He sees us now as his children that he has rescued, redeemed, and is preparing for glory. That's what you should see when you look in the mirror. When you look in the mirror, you should see someone united to Christ. a new creation in him. The reflection that looks back at you has been someone that has been rescued. Your sins have been forgiven. You've been made clean, and now you're called to serve your creator. This is your self-portrait, and this is the self-portrait of every Christian. Now, at the beginning of the school year, especially in younger grades, thinking of self-portrait, I remember as kids, I always asked to draw a self-portrait. I don't know if we still do that or not, or if we do that in homeschool, we should, because it's really entertaining. But I always hated that assignment, because I was not very good at drawing. And according to worldly standards, the thing that I drew looked like some kind of alien out of Star Trek or something like that. It looked terrible, nothing like me. But we remember. Remember what God sees, and when he looks on you, he sees his beloved child being transformed in the image of his beloved son, being made spotless and perfect for the new creation. Look, this is not just a trick. This is what I see when I look in the mirror. This gives us more than a positive image of ourselves. It gives us a heavenly new creation image. Or some of you like that word, it's an eschatological image. But heavenly new creation image, that's the image of us that God sees. And we need to be reminded of this frequently as others, again, seek to value us by a standard that's passing away. Let us remind ourselves who we are. new creations in Christ. We also want this truth to inform us and help us to think about our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, because they are new creations as well. Too many times, We think of each other according to worldly standards. We find ourselves in competition with one another, coveting one another's gifts and things and lives. Or we evaluate each other based on our appearances or how successful they are in life or maybe where where they came from, or their job, or social status, or the way that they talk, or the way that they do things, and the list goes on and on. Brothers and sisters in Christ, regarding each other in any of these ways, it's to evaluate each other and to regard each other according to the world's standards. when you see or think of a brother and sister in Christ. And if you're hard, it starts to go critical and it starts to go judgmental. And if you're involved in some kind of disagreement or conflict with them and you think they're lying, there must be something else behind this. They don't really love me. What are they really getting at? There's some kind of conspiracy theory here. Look, when we find ourselves not thinking the best of one another and holding on to grudges and refusing, refusing to be as graceful with others as God has been with us, we need to stop and remember who that person is. They are a new creation in Jesus Christ, just like you are. And we need to think the best of them. We need to think the best of their motives. We need to pray for them. We need to believe them when they say that they want good things. For they too have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and have been born again by the Spirit, a new birth made possible by the resurrection of Jesus. We must think of and regard each other as a family, the family of the world to come. And when we do this, our petty differences and disagreements will look petty. They'll look insignificant. We will be able to be quick to forgive and to overlook and to be graceful. If you're struggling in a relationship with a brother or sister in Jesus Christ, yes, the peacemaker's helpful. Use that. But remember who you are as a new creature in Jesus Christ, part of the family of God, and that's who they are too. And the more we think on this glorious thought, the easier it is to forgive and to seek reconciliation. May we begin to look past worldly standards and view and treat each other according to the Holy Spirit heavenly standards that we see here, because those are the ones that will last. Well, let's go ahead and close. I've said a lot here. Here's what I want you to take away. If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. You're part of the new creation. This means that when we look upon Jesus, ourselves, and our brothers and sisters in Christ, we look upon them with heavenly vision. We look upon our resurrected Lord and Savior and as we do, we give praise because He's raised and He's already received His new creation body. And so we know that as those united to Him, that's guaranteed for us as well. And now we can also see why that we are so precious to God the Father as those who belong to Him. And we can also now rightly see each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus who've been saved by the same Savior and called by the same Savior to view and treat one another as the family in the new creation. By God's grace, may we see ourselves and treat others as new creatures in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we praise you that it is your eternal plan for us to dwell with you in an existence that's eternal and imperishable. And we praise you, God the Son, for making all of this happen through your death and your resurrection. And we praise you, God, the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father and the Son to unite us to Jesus Christ and to further conform us to his image. We thank you, Lord, for these things, and we thank you that you have designed us to live with you and to enjoy you forever and ever. Amen.