Bible Lesson 170
RECONCILIATION
“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His Sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:20
“FOR YOU WERE BOUGHT AT A PRICE; THEREFORE GLORIFIY GOD IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR SPIRIT, WHICH ARE GOD’S.”
Reconciliation’.what a wonderful, meaningful and beautiful word to understand as we look to God’s word in this lesson and find what it cost God to bring us as sinners, hateful, and determined sinners, into a renewed relationship with Him-self. We use the word in a secular meaning a lot, and we find that there are times that we must reconcile ourselves to a former friend that we have offended in some way, or to a wife or husband, or to a father or mother. We, for whatever reason, have offended someone with a careless act or deed and there is a distinct separation, or alienation from someone who is dear to us.
The instance that caused the alienation is a problem and we normally want to rectify that situation. We can do it in many ways, for instance, we can apologize, or make amends in some other way, if the alienation is between two human beings: however the ultimate alienation that we will consider here today is that of the alienation that men are born into, with God.
Let me make it clear that God did not alienate Himself from man, man alienated himself from God. God in the beginning created everything, including Adam and Eve. After He had created them God announced that they were good. Adam and Eve had been created in innocence, they did not know the difference between good and evil and they had no sin.
God also gave them the option to obey Him or not, and they chose the wrong thing. We all do that same thing because we are born as the sons of Adam, and we have the same nature that He had. If we think about it Adam and Eve both had the nature of Lucifer, who was cast out of heaven because He wanted to be God. Isn’t that the reasoning that Lucifer (Satan), influenced the first couple to sin.
Remember, there in Genesis Chapter Three and verses one through five, Satan had caused Eve to doubt God’s goodness and in the end He said to her, “For God knows that in the day you eat of it (The forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” Genesis 3:1-5.
Satan, is still in the business of attempting to cause human beings to doubt God and His Goodness and His Grace. It is easier now because we who are born of the flesh since the Garden of Eden, are born with the propensity to sin.
We are born ‘Dead in trespass and sin, and under the wrath of God’, we do not have that closeness to God, we do not have anything in us that will connect with God; We are like Adam and Eve were after they sinned and were driven out of the Garden of Eden. We are born needing reconciliation to God because we love to sin and anyone who says that they did not love their precious sin before they were saved by God, is just not being truthful.
Adam’s sin took a terrible toll on God’s crown creature, and we say that man is God’s crowning achievement in creation because God gave man dominion over all the other creatures of God, (Genesis 1:26). Adam in listening to his wife instead of God, ate of the forbidden fruit and brought upon himself and all of the world the sickness of sin and the blight of sin that exists in our world today (Genesis 3:17-19). Adam’s sin of disobedience, brought sickness, disease, blindness, death and eternal suffering to the Creatures that God had created and it only gets worse as the world continues to stand. Some may ask, what did Adam’s sin have to do with us today. It brought all that we just listed above on all of us! If your newspaper or your radio or TV. reported today that there was a gruesome murder in your hometown’.that was just one of the things that sin has brought down through the ages. Notice just a few years after Adam’s first sons were born, one of them (Cain) became upset with his brother (Able). It was all over something that God had done, which was to respect Abel’s offering which was prescribed by God. God did not respect Cain’s offering because it was not what God prescribed.
Abel had offered God a living animal of his flock which involved death and the shedding of blood, while Cain who knew that was what God demanded, instead offered what came from his garden. I like to think that Cain was like so many today who seem to believe that it doesn’t matter what God has said as long as we do ‘something”. Cain probably said if God requires blood, let Him get blood from my turnips. Sadly, God did get blood from Cain’s turnips because Cain was caused by God to be a fugitive and a vagabond who was to wander the earth without God. I’m sure that Cain came to desire death more than life but God had set a mark on Cain so that no one would kill him. As we look at Adam’s first sons we can trace the devils work as he continues to stalk those who are God’s children. Abel died at his brother’s hand because Cain was not in the line of the godly. Remember God had promised a Messiah, one who would defeat the devil, back there in Genesis 3:14-15. That Messiah was to be the seed of the woman and would come from that line that were chosen by God. Satan had caused the death of Abel who was the godly line from Adam, but God gave Adam another son, who was called Seth, who was a godly man (Genesis 4:25-26). If you would like to see the lineage of Christ down through the ages to Jesus Christ, you can find it in Matthew chapter One. We have forgotten that the world we live in was invaded by Satan, and what was at the time of God’s Creation of all things pronounced ‘good’, exists now with evil. There is an ongoing war between good and evil. Man because of his nature decides to follow the evil and that is the reason that in our day, the war seems to be going to the evil.
Man’s desire to be like God is what caused Adam to disobey God and eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and by doing that Adam removed himself from the goodness and Grace of God. God had created Adam in innocence, but soon, Adam disobeyed God’s one commandment to him; which was that he not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam had a loving and good relationship with God, but he ignored God’s warning about eating of that fruit and so lost that relationship that communed with God. We are born knowing right from wrong in a sense because of Adam’s nature that is part and parcel of our nature, so we are born with a broken relationship with our Creator God. God had warned Adam that in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit that he would die and die in that situation meant that when Adam sinned he began physical death and he only lived to be 930 years old. God had told him that eating the forbidden fruit would cause him to die that day, but you may say well, Adam did not die in that same day he lived for hundreds of years; however we know that since God does not use time the same as we do, that God had said in 2nd Peter 3:8, “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” So, Adam died in the day that He ate of that tree, just as God had said. God had created Adam to live forever but Adam broke the relationship between himself and His Creator, and purchased to himself; and all of us, death and a hard way of life. He gave up that life without end in a Paradise here on the earth, for a paltry bit of fruit. We must now ask ourselves how many times we have not heeded God’s wisdom not to run after some fleeting sin, that cost us and those we love much sorrow.
So, that’s how we became separated from God; we had sinned and sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2). We are not reconciled to God in any way unless and until we have been drawn to His One and Only Son Jesus Christ, who left the glories of heaven and came to this earth and took on the form and flesh of man and lived some 33 years among us while never sinning, in order that He could take that cross that you and I deserved to be nailed to and suffering, bleeding and dying to redeem and reconcile us to the Father God. I want you to think about what you just read for a few minutes’.think about the fact that it was we who had offended our Creator and broken the relationship between man and God, and yet, it was the offended God who undertook to be our redeemer. He paid the price that we could never pay, He paid the sin debt that we owed, we had deserved the death penalty, but God gave of Himself in Jesus Christ to be nailed in our place, to suffer a just penalty for every sin, and die to provide us reconciliation (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; John 3:16-21; Romans 5:12-21; 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21). If you have been saved (reconciled to God), that is what it took to provide that propitiation (payment) for your sin debt.
From the best of us to the worse of us our hearts tell us that none of us was worthy of that kind of love; but God “Who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)”. did exactly that. (Ephesians 2:4-5). Charles Haddon Spurgeon had this to say about our redemption, “That God should consider His fallen creature, man, and instead of sweeping him away with the besom of destruction, should Himself undertake to be man’s redeemer, and to pay His ransom price, is, indeed, marvelous!”
So, with that said, how does the creature normally react to the knowledge that God has bent down so close to him at such a price’ If you are awake and aware, you have to agree that mankind has received the Word of God with suspicion rather than as a precious gift from the Creator. Man has come to the point that rather than worship and follow God’s leading that man will instead push God and His Word aside and begin on a trail that leads through darkness and death. We play the civil game that we call church, but many, if not most, never really hear what God has said with the ears of faith. We walk aisles, shake hands, profess to know and believe in a Jesus that we do not understand. We sign pledges, and teach what we do not know and lead where we have never been, as we attempt to look like something that we really are not. We talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. Instead of being part of God’s ecclesia, we become the purveyors of things that we do not know and have misunderstood in most cases. We hardly ever pause to think about what the Bible or God is all about. If what I say makes you angry, think about it for a moment. Try quoting just three Bible Verses that you have committed to memory, along with their address (Chapter and verse).
Call to memory the last time that you sat with anyone including your children and made a presentation of the good news of the gospel. How often do you take time out of your busy schedule to reach out to those in your community that are in need’ I don’t mean giving a few bucks to some charity, I mean going out into the needy communities that exist in every town and community in this great country, America. God did not give us His Word for us to just read and, never to teach to others. I think it is a sin that churches and preachers and denominations have become satisfied with what we call church in our day. We think that if we have built a building, and attracted a congregation, who meet on Sundays, and built up a comfortable bank account, that we are pleasing to God. Churches like that must smell like a wet dog to God. Look back at the church, which is actually a word that simply means ‘The called out ones’, of the first century and after, They turned the world upside down and they did not have air conditioned buildings, padded pews, or men who preached with long letters referring to their educational accomplishments, as their well paid pastors. The first churches were love in motion, people who left everything to go out into the world and teach others to obey all that Jesus had taught them. They were willing to give up earthly treasure, to accumulate treasure in heaven. They put their lives on the line to say and stand on the profession that they were Christians. They suffered beatings, and death to keep the Word of God going out to the hearts of those who needed to hear it. Most of us in our day, complain or even get angry if the pastor takes a few extra minutes to preach on a given Sunday.
Too often, we are satisfied to have people join our group on nothing other than a simple mouthed profession that they have ‘accepted Christ’, when we know nothing about what they believe. It is not accepting Christ that gives us reconciliation, it is whether Christ has accepted us! Hear this and remember it forever’.There is a marked change, a radical change in every person who is ever reconciled to God. There is almost a smell of death on the newly saved person; because God has put the old creature who walked in the flesh to death and raised up a new creature, who will walk in newness of life (Romans 6:11-14; 2nd Corinthians 5:17). I see too many church members today’and notice I did not say Christians, because most people who are church members are lost people who have possibly been intrigued by something that they have heard or maybe it’s that they want to meet people or some other reason that they join some group. Joining a church does not make you a Christian, surrendering to Christ and obeying Christ and living like Christ, indicates that you are a Christian, while joining a church group simply makes you a church member.
One of the most important things that the church has to learn is that they are not God, they cannot save anyone, all that they can do is to teach and preach what God has said in His Word, the Bible. Too many people that call themselves Christians, have undertaken to rewrite God’s inerrant, infallible and inspired Word, the Bible. Everybody seems to have his own salvation plan worked out. To some, love is all God is about, thank God, He loves His people. But does that mean that anybody and everybody is saved, simply because God is love as it says in 1st John 4:8. What we must remember is that, that verse, says God is love which means that it is God’s nature to love; however it does not say that love is God. I think people like to lift that scripture because it is work free, it is easy, and convenient’it does not require anything from us’God is love and so we are all saved, how ungodly can we become’ Others, want to make God wrong for electing some and passing over others, when what they ought to be saying, why would God save any of us’ Over thousands of years since Christ walked on this earth to suffer and die to save those who would obey Him, we have criticized, ostracized, and edited His inerrant Word to the point that it has become confusing to those who want to know God through His Son Jesus Christ.
The creature wants to do everything except bow before the majesty of the Creator and obey Him. Don’t get the idea that you are ever saved by simply agreeing with a bunch of statements about Jesus Christ. You are saved because in the beginning, before the foundation of the world, God elected you, and now in time, He will call you with a call that you cannot refuse, in fact, you will not want to refuse. Now, I have been preaching a long time and I know that there are many who will not believe particular election’.that does not change one single thing, God said it and that makes it true (Ephesians 1:1-5; 1st Peter 1:1-2; Romans 8:28-30). Now, the secret is that God did not put a mark on those that He elected before the foundation of the world. Neither did He put a mark on those that He passed over, so nobody but God knows who the elect are. The only way that we can know if a person was elected before the foundation of the world is to watch their lives to see if they ever become that new creature, with the old things passed away and all things having become new (2nd Corinthians 5:17). Can you look back to a time in your life that you know for certain that God placed a call on your life and then regenerated you (New birth Ephesians 2:10), and that you knew for certain that God had given you of His Holy Spirit’
Most like to think that salvation does not cost the person saved anything but that is not true. It costs God His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ and there is a cost that we must consider in looking to God and desiring to be adopted into His Family (Luke 14:26-33). The cost and the potential to provide it are supplied by the Creator, because in salvation He gives us a new heart and a new mind and the power of the Holy Spirit to live in obedience to God. I firmly believe that the hardest part of acceptance of God’s truth is that it requires us to accept without question all that God has said. Those who cannot abide a God who requires that of them are simply not willing to be saved. We are commanded to walk with Christ. He said to those who would be His disciples that they must follow Him, that means walk like he walked, believe like He believed, pray like He prayed, and stand like He stood upon the word of God (Amos 3:3).
Jesus walk on this earth just as we are to walk, like a stranger and a pilgrim, a man who is not at home here. We must give up the world and the worldliness that exist around us, almost like the air we breath. That is what we resist for the most part; because we all have our priorities and they normally are the things that make living in the world what we think is easier than going against the grain. We normally do not like to stand out in the crowd, we would rather just act like cattle and go wherever the herd leads us. We like many of the things of the world and we resist giving them up to follow Jesus, because Jesus walked toward Jerusalem and that is where the Cross awaited Him. For the most part we like to get along with the world and the worldly but that cannot be for the true Christian. We have to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age’.that means we live like that right here and right now (Titus 2:11-15).
Most of us do not want to look like fanatics, and we don’t subscribe to fundamentalist thinking; however that is what we must look like and subscribe to, if we are to follow Christ. Jesus Christ was not crucified for feeding the hungry or healing the sick or restoring the sight to the blind. He was not hated for raising the dead and the like, the reason that the people back then hated Jesus was what He did when He lived and preached the gospel. He cut across every person’s belief system back then; and He still does today. They had the Word of God as it was written for them and they had the law but they have no idea that it was something that must be internalized. The Word of God is many things most importantly it is the ‘Word of the Almighty’, it is a lamp unto our feet and light unto our path, it gives life to those who receive it as the Word of God, it is the Law that the human being is to live by, it is perfect and converts the soul, and it brings faith to those who are willing to abide by it. (Romans 10:17, Psalms 19:7-11, Psalms 119: 1,41, 89, 105). The Word of God should be understood somewhat like a new miracle drug that would cure cancer, heart problems, and all kinds of diseases. Only, The Word of God cures all of that plus even death and hell.
With that in mind, are you ready to ‘follow Christ” Are you ready to stop all of your sinning’ How about it, have you repented or felt sorry for sin to the point that you now hate all of your sin and have turned away from them forever’ Have you been raised a new creature by the new birth that is part and parcel of true salvation’ Have you come to hate the creature you used to be and have you gotten so disenchanted with him/her that you cannot stand the thought of him/her’ Is Jesus Christ your Savior, and King’ Have you begun to really seek all of the information about Him that you can gather, and are you acting on what you find out’ Do you love Jesus Christ more than you love yourself, your mother and father, your wife and children and anyone or anything else on the earth (Luke 14:26-33)’ Are you striving to study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed (2nd Timothy 2:15). Are you obedient to all that God has said to us through His Son Jesus Christ, then you are more than likely reconciled to God’not because you made up your mind to do any of this but that you are being led by God’s Holy Spirit to willing do it because you have been reconciled to God. I will close by asking you to read and study the following scriptures ‘.. 2nd Corinthians 5:10-21 (The heart of the gospel of good news), 2nd Corinthians 1:9-10; 2nd Corinthians 8:9; Are you preparing to soon be able to be an ambassador for Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:20; 2nd Corinthians 2:15-17).,
Until next time,
may God bless and keep you
This is Bro. Bob