Camp Sunday – Unqualified

21-05-16 – Camp Sunday – Unqualified

HBI – Before we knew God we where sinful and broken but in Christ we are created new creation because He has changed our lives. 

Intro

This Sunday we are celebrating the upcoming Camp season. It is going to look a little different this year, but the point of camp is still the same. 

This is a time to get everyone excited about what we are going to do this year, yes it may be hard to get excited for a quite different camp season, so we look into why we do this in the first place. 

Why do we do camp? I would say that the main reason is we have a community filled with kids who are lost. We have all been there. 

We are lost in Sin before we know Jesus. We are broken and in need of a saviour to fix us. We have kids that come from broken homes. We have kids in despair, feeling like there is no hope in the world. 

They may have heard about Jesus, but this feeling causes them to feel unqualified, feeling like they are not good enough to have a relationship with Jesus, they feel to lost. 

We feel unqualified and not good enough to be a child of God or be forgiven by God. For why a great, powerful and loving God would want anything to do with me. 

Well, I have news for you are not the only one! You are not the only one that felt unqualified to be with Jesus. The bible is filled with people who have felt that they were beyond repair. 

King David committed adultery, Moses said he could not talk properly, Rahab was a prostitute, Paul the apostle said he was not a very good speaker, and he also persecuted the church before being changed by Jesus. 

The point is that we feel unqualified, we feel beyond repair but the message that we share is that Jesus’ forgiveness is for all who will receive it and in Jesus, as His child we are a new creation the old will pass away and we become new. 

Let us look into a little bit about what this means. 

Vs 16 – the old

The reason why we spend so much time and effort getting ready for camp? Why is ity that we do what we do. Because we are facing a world where people are lost in sin and we are called to do something about that. 

I want to look into 2 Cor 5:16-20 for a bit. 2 Corinthians 5:16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way.

We start out with a worldly perspective. But what is this worldly perspective that we used to know Christ from. 

Romans 5:12 says that we all have sinned, and that sin entered the world through one man. We are all sinners. The bible is filled with passages. 

This is the lens in which we view Jesus and the message that He brings. We are told that we are sinners and we can not do it on our own. 

This worldly perspective says that we are good enough and that we do not need a saviour to save us. But sometimes what this shows us when we see that we are not enough, that we need more than our own strength is that we feel not good enough. 

We feel that what we have done disqualifies us from becoming a child of God for who would love someone like me after all that I have done.

But the good news is that Jesus will forgive you if you ask Him and make Him Lord of your life. 

But sometimes that worldly perspective follows us. Sometimes we still feel unqualified, like we are not good enough to be used by god. 

We wonder if God really can take all the little broken pieces of our lives and make something beautiful out of them. Can our Loving heavenly father really use us for His glory to do His will after all that we have done. 

New Creation – vs 16-19

 The beautiful thing is that Jesus can take all of these broken pieces of our lives and do something with them. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 (CSB)17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!

Have you guys ever broken something and tried to glue it back together? It does not quite look the same does it. 

If I where to take all of these ripped up pieces of paper and tried to glue them or tape them back together, they would quite be the same would they? 

But what this tells us is that Jesus takes all the broken pieces of our lives, all the things we have messed up and makes us new again. 

We become one of His children and no matter what we have done, it is forgiven, and God wants to use you for His glory, and He can and will use you. 

We are a new creation; we have been made new again to be used for the glory of God and one day be with him someday. 

We have been reconciled with God as we become His children. That means that we have been restored into a right relationship with Him. 

Everything we have been given is from Him. We may still feel unqualified but that is okay because it is through the strength of God that we live for Him anyways. 

Our trespasses are now longer counted against us as His children so that means that if you are not a child of God, no sin is so great that His grace is not greater still. 

If you are a child of God, you have been restored to a right relationship with Jesus. You may feel unqualified, but God wants to use you anyways and He will through His strength not yours. After all we are a new creation in Christ. 

Ambassadors

And this is why we do what we do, this is why we have Bible camp, Because Jesus changed lives. He makes the broken whole again, and because of that we are called to be ambassadors for Jesus. 

2 Corinthians 5:20–21 (CSB)20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” 21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We plead on behalf of Christ to point other people to Jesus. This is why we have camp, why we are doing camp this year even through all of the restrictions that we have right now. 

There are so many kids around us that do not know Jesus, that come from broken homes and they need to hear the good news of Jesus. 

And it is our job to be ambassadors for Jesus to share this message. 

We may have once been broken, we may feel unqualified but Jesus can take what was broken and make us new again, like this piece of paper here. 

And our response to that is that we are called to be ambassadors for Jesus to the people around us no matter where we may be so that all the people around us may hjear the good news of the gospel.