Reconcilation

Psalm 51, verse 9 through 16. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you deliver me from blood guiltiness oh God oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness oh Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it you will not be pleased with a burnt offering You may be seated.

I'll remind you that last week we were looking at Psalm 51 and I broke it down into three parts. Certainly you could break it down differently, but I broke it down in repentance, reconciliation, and restoration. And last week we talked about repentance and we looked at a number of verses dealing with repentance. And this week we're going to look at reconciliation.

And so it's not like an outline. It's not like the first seven verses are repentance and then the next seven are reconciliation and then the next five are restoration. They're all mixed in even, you know, the way the verses break down. Some of the verses have multiple elements. and what I taught you last week was at the end when David after proclaiming what we just read that God doesn't delight in sacrifices or he would give it he doesn't want to burn offering David says do good to Zion and your good pleasure build up the walls of Jerusalem and then in the last verse he says then will you delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings then bulls will be offered on your altar and so I talked about the fact that there was what seems like a contradiction where David you know if you're counting verses within the span of three verses says God doesn't want to sacrifice or burn offering and then three verses later that God will delight in them.

And the point was this, that Psalm 51 concludes with what I think the thesis of the whole psalm is, and that is that once repentance is authentic, reconciliation is secured, and restoration is in process, religious duties instituted by God and performed by men will be pleasing to Him. Yeah, thanks Elijah. acceptable sacrifices fragrant and pleasing aromas will be the result of your spirit led religious worship and so the point being that our religious works no matter how zealous we are for them remember Paul was seriously zealous about his religion when he was still under God's wrath our religious works don't do anything to expiate our sins or propitiate our sins or make atonement for our sins or earn God's love or favor for us. And that's what David's talking about in verse 16.

And religious acts done while living in sin and living in hypocrisy in that sense are abhorrent to God. That means God hates them. But when we are in right standing with God and when we're actually trying to live the way God has told us to live, those religious duties and are actually pleasing to him so when we take communion in a little while there will be some people around the world today who take communion in even christian churches where god will actually hate what they're doing because what they're doing is just an act of religious observance that's meaningless to them and they're not coming to god with a heart that really loves jesus christ and then there will be others hopefully everyone in this room that takes communion, who will come as children of God, who he loves through his son and are trying to be in a right relationship with him and then doing that religious duty with the right attitude God has pleased.

So let's look at a few verses from Psalm 51. And let's talk about reconciliation. Reconciliation from verse 9. David cries out, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. In verse 11, David says, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Verse 14, deliver me from blood guiltiness O God, O God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

In verse 16, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it, you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. So quickly, quick summary of what these verses are saying, and then we'll go through some of the other passages where we're going to try to dig deep into just what does the Bible say reconciliation is? And I know there's probably different ideas in our mind of what reconciliation is.

If you ever have done accounting, reconciliation is a particular word that is used in accounting. And it means that we take two different accounts as a general rule, and when you reconcile them, what you do is you figure out what the differences are and whether you can justify those differences or whether you can properly attribute transactions into each account so that they'll be the same. So an example would be on a somewhat regular basis, I have an account, a ledger, where I keep track of all of my spending and it tells me how much money I have in the bank and then I go into the bank website and the bank sometimes has a different number and I have to reconcile those two things and try to figure out, in my case, what I'm really concerned about is, is the bank wrong?

Usually it's just a matter of making sure I've updated everything, but if the bank was ever wrong I would want to know. And if I, so if I only had one account and I never compared them, I'd never know if the bank was wrong. I'd just be told this is what it says. The Roman Catholic Church has a sacrament called reconciliation. Sometimes it's called confession or penance.

And in the Roman Catholic Church, they actually ascribe reconciliation as one of their things that the priest does for you. He absolves you of your sins when you go to him and you confess your sins. And so they have some ideas, very right and biblical, that you're to confess your sins and that you need to be reconciled to God. And yet that is not what we would teach at a Protestant church.

And we're going to see what that means in a minute. Why we don't need that continual reconciliation that Catholics would say they need. If it gets too hot, you can try to override it. I feel hot too. If somebody wants to adjust it, go ahead. But so in verse 9, David says, hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.

So I'm going to say that reconciliation entails God hiding his face from your sins and blotting out your iniquities. We know that God is omniscient. The idea that God would not know something or that somehow God would forget something is borderline anathema. You couldn't imagine God actually not knowing something. And yet God, in the Bible, professes to know your sins no more once he forgives them.

So reconciliation at least partially entails God imputing your sinfulness to Jesus Christ. And then seeing you as righteous in Christ. And so we have this reconciliation where you're now in peace with God. And we're going to go into a bit of an outline. If you're a note taker, I've got a great outline for you today. It's really clear actually.

So I should probably start it instead of just keep talking and doing my intro. But verse 11, he says, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. That's a verse that confuses people because he says, take not your Holy Spirit from me. And so some people say, well, there's evidence that the Holy Spirit could leave people. Or there's evidence the Holy Spirit could leave people in the Old Testament.

Or there's evidence the Holy Spirit doesn't permanently indwell believers. and so what I'm going to do with that verse I think is the same thing we did with 1 Peter when we get through Psalm 51 I'll probably do one final week where we'll kind of re-summarize it all and I'll talk about a verse like that that needs a little more attention. But the idea is David wants to be in the presence of God. Reconciliation has to do with being able to still be in God's presence.

God is so holy he can't be in the presence of sinners and so David feels like a sinner. verse 14, he says, deliver me from blood guiltiness. Reconciliation with God has to do with being delivered from your guilt, from not being seen as guilty, from God hiding his face from your sins. And verse 16, he says, you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it.

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. We'll do this more in the summary as well. But again, this is an example of David recognizing that the sacrifice that God required for his sin, it wasn't enough that David could just slaughter some animals. The Old Testament sacrificial system that was meant to point people to the coming Messiah, the promise that would come, that Old Testament system was not sufficient to wipe away the guilt of anybody that ever lived.

The blood of bulls and goats can do nothing to get rid of the sin of human beings. and David recognizes this and David tells us that even in the Old Testament real quick side note we I think even in this room maybe but as a culture in general we have this idea that all the Old Testament people were just these morons because they didn't have iPhones and they didn't have delivery on Amazon and they didn't have you know electricity harnessed yet we have this idea that they were just kind of always out in the field like grunting and they're like those Neanderthal guys that used to be in like a progressive commercial or Geico or one of those cavemen and we have this idea that these people were like intellectually so far below us and that there was no way they could have understood some of these concepts even that we think the New Testament clearly reveals and yet David tells us here that he knew these things. And I'll argue with you if you want that we're the stupidest generation that's ever lived. People are actually just getting farther away from the perfection that Adam was created with.

Okay? And some of the smartest people who ever lived aren't alive today. And there's different people in each generation. But the things that we have today that are actually miraculous inventions, or I shouldn't say miraculous, just really great inventions, It's because we're standing on the shoulders of other people who have already invented the foundations we needed in order to create these things.

So to have a little iPhone, you needed the guy that made the first computer that we would laugh at today, right? Now, so three points today about reconciliation. First, we need to be reconciled to God. We need peace with God. The second point is that we get reconciled to one another. There's a reconciliation to one another.

And then the third point is that we will then reconcile others to God. So there's three levels of reconciliation. The first point if you a note taker has three sub points So reconciliation with God is promised to us So turn to Ezekiel 36 So we're going to be reconciled to God. We're going to have peace with God. And we're going to see what that means. But we're going to start by just saying that it was promised.

This is not a surprise. It wasn't a surprise to God. It wasn't a surprise to people who understood the Bible when Jesus came. God says in Ezekiel 36 He says in verse 25 We'll start there I will sprinkle clean water on you And you shall be clean from all your uncleanness And from all your idols I will cleanse you And I will give you a new heart And a new spirit I will put within you He just described the new birth And I lost my spot There we go and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So there's restoration. That's for next week. He says, you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. Now listen, reconciliation. And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Peter says once you were not a people but now you are God's people once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy reconciliation with God was promised in the Old Testament we could spend 40 the next 40 weeks doing an hour-long sermon and never exhaust just the basics of reconciliation in the Old Testament okay this is a summary level thing but reconciliation with God was promised and it was clearly promised this wasn't something that was a shock to people who understood the Bible when Jesus came he says in verse 29 I will deliver you from all your uncleanness I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you I will make the fruit of the tree and increase of the field abundant that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations Now, just because last week we did repentance. Verse 31. Okay, this is repentance.

Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good. And you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. This is the response of a person who's been given a clean heart. when you've been born again by the spirit of God and you have a clean heart inside you you forgetting what lies behind and looking forward to what lies ahead that's what Paul said that's what you're going to do you're going to press forward to the upward call of God and the prize in Christ Jesus but one of the reasons you forget what lies behind you is that it was all abominable to your clean heart the very best deed that you did prior to you being born again is worse than the things that you do now for God, even on some of your bad days.

We are to loathe ourselves for our iniquities and our abominations. I do fear that we don't do that enough. So point number two. So first, being reconciled to God was promised. Second, reconciliation with God is accomplished in Christ. Turn to Colossians 1. so reconciliation was promised it's accomplished and then it's going to be applied that will be the last point so promised, accomplished and applied reconciliation with God I'm going to start in verse 15 because it may be the most fun verse in the whole Bible or 16 too, but he is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation, it's talking about Jesus Christ just said that in him we have redemption and forgiveness of sins so Jesus Christ, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him.

And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Now pay attention. And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things. whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And then Paul says, and you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, I would venture to say this is most likely because he's writing to Gentiles. But he says, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. now there is no way that you can read Colossians 1.22 and you can remain Roman Catholic you have to decide if you're going to believe the Bible or if you want to follow the Roman Catholic system of religion because one of them says you've been reconciled and the other one says you need to continually be reconciled because I will tell you this the Bible when it talks about reconciliation to God is, in fact, referring to justification. Now there's a nuance and there's a difference there.

There's a reason why there's different words. Turn to Romans 5. We're going to look at how Romans 5, I think, teaches us, at the very least, a serious interconnectedness between the two concepts. Now justification Justification is a legal term. Reconciliation is more of a relationship term. So turn to Romans 5.

So what I mean by that is justification means that you can stand before a judge and you either guilty or you justified So if you stand before a judge and you didn do the wrong thing like some of you kids you go before your parent your brother said he did this she did that and you know you didn't do it, you're justified before your parent. Or maybe you did something, but once you explain why you did it, it's justifiable. There's a good reason why you did something that appeared to be wrong at the time.

You know? If I said the man plunged a knife into the child's stomach, that would probably sound like a bad thing. And then if I told you he was a surgeon performing life-saving surgery, you'd think, well, that was justified knife plunge, right? And so there's an idea here that before a judge, you can be seen as justified. The judge can see you as justified.

Reconciliation has to do with the relationship you have with God. Because of your sin, you are at enmity with Him. And then because of justification and your reconciliation, You now have a relationship with God. So verse 1 of chapter 5, Romans 5. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Reconciliation, as we're about to see, related to justification brings peace with God.

But before your justification, you didn't have peace with God. You may have thought you had peace with God because He wasn't striking you with lightning every time you violated His holy law, because He actually, because of His mercy, allowed you to walk around and breathe His air He created with your dirty lips, you may have felt like you were okay with God, but until you're justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, you don't have it. So Paul goes on.

Peace with God. Through Him, Jesus, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God chose his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So that took a lot of self-restraint on my part because there's 30 sermons in there.

And I just have to wait till I get there because I was trying to get to verse 9. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. I just want to reiterate, this is a past tense completed verb, justified by his blood. It's a one time act. and if you deny that you're denying an essential of the faith you're not trusting that God justified you because of Christ's blood if you don't believe it and then he says for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Past tense. Reconciliation received and justification nuanced different words. They have different fundamental meanings to them, but hand in hand in the plan of God. If you've been justified, you've been reconciled to God. If you've been reconciled to God, you've been justified.

And so I won't equate the two, but I'm going to tell you they're interconnected in a way that makes them inseparable. So reconciliation with God. So your relationship to God as his enemy, as a child of wrath, as someone upon whom his wrath abode, John chapter 3, the wrath abides on those who don't obey Christ, your relationship to God is changed and it's called reconciliation.

It's been made right. So rather than being under God's wrath, you're transferred from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of His Son, Colossians 1. That's what preceded what we just read. And you're made into one of God's people. And so now you have reconciliation accomplished in Jesus Christ perfectly accomplished there's nothing you can add to it Jason just prayed that right you come to God and you think that you drink a half ounce of wine and a piece of bread is going to make him love you a little bit more that's a serious affront to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ there is nothing you can do to make God love you more than the way He already loves you because He's granted you all things in Jesus Christ.

He's already given you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Jesus Christ. Don't try to add to it. Rest in it. It's one of the reasons we have a weekly Sabbath to remind us to rest in the accomplished work. Finally, being reconciled to God. Reconciliation with God was promised in the Old Testament.

Reconciliation with God was accomplished in Christ. And now reconciliation with God is applied. So turn to 1 Peter 2.10. Unless you have it memorized, because I told you I would memorize that. Peter said, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

That's how you apply reconciliation. Jesus Christ died for your sins, made you right with God. What does that mean? does it just mean now you're a sinner that God doesn't think a whole lot of he doesn't think too much of but now at least he's not going to send you to hell or does mean more than that? Are there additional benefits to being reconciled to God than just, hey, I got fire insurance?

The answer is yes. Romans 8, turn to Romans 8. Arguably the best chapter of the Bible. If you're going to go to a desert island or prison and someone said you could have one chapter of the Bible, this might be the one I'd say you should take. Okay? But Romans 8, Paul is arguing for your eternal home.

You're going to go to be with God one day. That's what he argued in Romans 5. That your justification that you've already received implies that you're going to go be with Jesus for good. And then he's saying it again in Romans 8 because it's bookending a couple chapters about how we still struggle with sin. and those of you in this room that struggle with sin it can bring you down but because you are not justified by your righteousness your sin can't unjustify you or unreconcile you so God in chapter 8 of Romans Jason referenced this in his prayer too it's amazing how providential sometimes the prayers are verse 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. Reconciliation promised in the Old Testament, accomplished in Christ, and then applied to you in adoption. Adoption is a permanent concept. When you are adopted by God to be one of his children, because Jesus Christ died for you, and God adopted you while you were... So logically speaking, you're dead in your sins, and you're following the course of this world, and the prince of the power of the air, and you're an enemy of God, and then God sends his Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes, and he changes your heart, gives you the heart of flesh that Ezekiel talked about, and then you believe the gospel, and you're justified, and it's not really a sequential concept, but at that time you're adopted by God.

And you have done not a single righteous thing in your entire life. Even the best act you ever did as a pagan, God sees as a filthy rag. Because it wasn't for His glory. But at the moment that you get saved and you get justified, you get adopted too. It's not like then you be a good boy or girl for a while and then maybe he'll adopt you. It's not like that.

It's not like little orphan Annie where they all tried to clean themselves up before the people would come in so maybe they'd adopt them. God went and grabbed the low of the low and he said, I'm going to adopt them and then next week I'll restore them. The growth comes after. But the adoption happens at the beginning. Your adoption is based on his election, not on you.

It's not on you who run or you who work. It's on him who wills. And so the adoption of God is the application of the reconciliation already earned by Christ. You have peace with God and you will persevere. And you have a promise that you will persevere because of the types of permanent words that God uses to describe your new status. You are my people.

You have received mercy. The teaching of churches like Roman Catholicism that you can receive mercy and grace and somehow it isn't enough to keep you to the end. It's so sickening that I tell you now, there's a hotter hell for them than there is for atheists, okay? The idea that God would adopt someone as his son, call him his child, because of the love of the Father, and then let you go because of sin he knew you'd commit from all eternity anyway?

Jesus Christ paid it all. And there is no way that he's going to lose any of his own. When Jesus Christ suffers the penalty of sins for a person, he suffers them perfectly. And God is not surprised by the most heinous act of the worst Christian. He's not recommended. we'd hope that for better things for all of us but God knew and God knew your weakness and it was your weakness is why he elected you not really why but your perceived strengths have nothing to do with why he picked you let me put it that way your weakness is actually what allows His strength to be on display.

Secondly, we're reconciled to God, but God reconciles us to one another. Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. Turn to Matthew 5, verse 23. Jesus is speaking, so that your Bible may have the words in red. I'm not going to get into red-letter Bible stuff right now, but I'll just tell you what, the whole Bible is the words of God. The things Jesus said are no more special than all the other things that the Holy Spirit inspired men to write.

But it is true that Jesus was incarnate and he spoke. And he said in verse 23, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. If you are going to worship God, and you have a problem with one of your Christian brothers God saying that you need to reconcile that before you can offer acceptable worship to me.

So even if you're justified, this is kind of a hard concept, so I'm telling you like, well, you're justified by Christ, but now I'm saying, but your actions can actually kind of block you a little bit from God. So David said, hide not your face from my sins, or hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. There's a sense where even as a Christian, your sin interrupts your relationship with God.

So you're justified. You're still His son. But anybody in here that's a son with a father, a father with a son, a mother, sons, daughters, all the different parental relationships, you know that even though they're still your kids, sometimes there's a block in the relationship because of the behavior. And you adults should know from your own parents too, that you remember how you disappointed your dad.

You knew he was still your dad. He didn't all of a sudden become not your dad. But wow, it wasn't the same that day until you repented. And some of you kids in here understand that. So Jesus says, before you go and offer your gift to God, before you come up and you take communion wine and bread, or put your money in the box, or sing the song, if you know that you've sinned against one of your brothers you should try to reconcile with him you should try to make things right you should try to restore the relationship with that person this is not about your relationship with God it's implied here that you have the relationship with God but John says if anyone says that he loves God and yet hates his brother he's a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

So if you're a person that's going to say you love God, you love your brothers and sisters in Christ. And I'm not saying you've got to do it perfectly because I think it can be hard. There will be times there will be people who don't work with you on reconciliation because of what's going on. Maybe you're really willing and you've tried. and so I'm not saying you abstain from communion because some guy from your old church doesn't like you or something like that there's going to be difficulties but in particular in your church amongst your brothers and sisters you ought to be reconciling yourself and if you've done something you ought to confess you ought to be forgiven and you ought to ask forgiveness.

Don't just say you're sorry. When you say you're sorry, you're really not saying much. You're just kind of telling the person, well, I feel bad for how you feel right now. And that's a good thing to do sometimes. But when we've done something that we actually think is sin, we say, will you forgive me? We ask people to forgive us for it.

And that's how we reconcile. What's the song we sang last week? Do you remember, Easton? What song did we sing? Nope. Do you remember, Henley?

What song did we sing last week? Go ahead. Yeah, behold how good and pleasant it is when, what? When brothers dwell in unity. how are you going to dwell in unity with a bunch of sinners you have to be reconciled there's going to be conflict if you came into this building today and thought I'm so glad I finally found the conflict free church you're in for a surprise I'm sure we have five conflict free marriages at least but in the church in the church there's a little more stuff going on sometimes look there's nothing wrong with conflict we come from different backgrounds we have different opinions even about the same scripture we have a document that's not terribly long called the confession of faith that we say we're going to agree to we'll probably sometimes disagree on how to interpret that we need to love one another and we need to be interested enough and the relationship we have with one another, that reconciliation is our desire.

And reconciliation is not only possible, but I'm going to say it's promised, because you have the Holy Spirit. And because God has put His Spirit in us, because He takes not His Holy Spirit from you, so I'll tell you, He answered that prayer of David. He's not taking His Holy Spirit from any of His people. Because of that, there's a possibility. So because you, who had an insurmountable, infinite pile of sin debt before a holy God, can have that reconciled with him, you can have reconciliation with somebody else who could not possibly offend you anywhere near as much as you've offended a holy God.

Spurgeon said, Our love ought to follow the love of God in one point, namely, in always seeking to produce reconciliation. It was to this end that God sent his Son. Has anybody offended you? Seek reconciliation. Now he's quoting, oh, but I am the offended party. So was God, and he went straight away and sought reconciliation.

Brother, do the same. Oh, but I have been insulted. This virgin says, just so. So was God. All the wrong was towards him, yet he sent. He says, oh, but the party is so unworthy.

This virgin says, so are you. God loved you and sent his son. So if your brother has something against you go to your brother and try to be reconciled to him Spurgeon's even saying that if you're the offended party, you should seek reconciliation. That's what God did for you. A lot of times that's the person that has to do it. That's the person that has to be able to share the truth.

Alright, so we're reconciled one to another as Christians and we have, behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. That's important. But God also reconciled Jews and Gentiles. Turn to Ephesians 2. A couple of years ago, it was hard to explain to people how much Jews and Gentiles probably hated each other. We could try to tell people historically and things from the Bible. and I think it was almost hard to imagine here in the United States unless, you know, maybe that team up north and the Buckeyes would be the best comparison I could come up with.

But even that falls short, right? I'd still eat next to a guy from that state up north. But now we live in a country where there's such a divide that they've created between different races that it's actually somewhat easy to see how two different groups of people, because of some type of outward identifiable difference that they discover, can just hate each other with no good reason.

But God has reconciled people to one another. Look at Ephesians 2, 14-16. For he himself is our peace. So this is Jesus Christ. Remember I said reconciliation applied produces peace with God. But he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

Well, there you go. Jesus Christ's death created a breakdown of the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. He's made us one. So whereas before the Jews wouldn't eat with Gentiles. Remember Peter and Acts? He wouldn't eat with the Gentiles. and he said he wouldn't even eat the food that God was telling him in a vision to eat because God said it was unclean in the Old Testament.

Jesus Christ has broken that down. How? By abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. God did away with the ceremonial law. ceremonial law had a purpose it was to separate the Jews from the people around them some of the judicial laws too but the purpose of it was to point to Jesus Christ as the one who would come and create a new separate people who were separate in a different way not just nationally we are a chosen race, a holy nation a royal priesthood, not the Jews and then he says he might create in himself one new man in place of the two making peace in 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

If you're over here and you're a Jew or a Gentile or you're a black guy or you're a white guy or you're a woman or you're a man or whatever you are that somebody over here is so different from you that in our world you have to hate each other, you have to go to war, whatever it happens to be. When you're both reconciled to the same God, you're in the same family now. and there's just no breaking that God reconciles all peoples to one another Colossians 2 so interestingly enough this is where I wanted to spend the bulk of my time and I shouldn't save that for last because I think the bulk of my time has been taken but in 2 Corinthians 2 God's going to tell us in one passage how he's reconciled all peoples to one another, so the Jews and the Gentiles, but I'm going to say even more than that. A lot of the subject of the New Testament was dealing with that, but he's also then going to go right into how we reconcile others to God, how we are ambassadors to do that.

So starting in verse, we'll just start in 11. 2 Corinthians 5.11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. So go down to 14. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

So he's describing Jesus Christ, crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection. And he's saying he died for all of his people, and all those people have then died also. He died himself. And you're no longer to live for yourself. Now listen, he says, from now on, therefore. So because of this, because Jesus did this for you, 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 there's an argument for hey let's not have pictures of hippie Jesus hanging around either okay he's not in the flesh we don't regard him that way but the point is this Jesus Christ came in the flesh and died in the flesh is a picture for us among other things we don't regard people according to the flesh when you meet somebody and they make a lot of money and they're really good looking and they're really good at their job or whatever it happens to be, you shouldn't be any more impressed with them than you would of a person who maybe isn't.

Less than those same ways. But also we don look at people as black and white and red and brown and all those things The correct term that we should use is we are colorblind We shouldn't be subject to all of this critical race theory stuff going on and all these things that are going on that are designed to just pit people against each other and put them into different groups. We regard people no longer according to the flesh. so when we talk to somebody we find out are you a Christian are you born again and then based on their answer we may ask them more questions to make sure we think they are and then we treat them either as a person who is outside of the kingdom of God who needs us to love them by telling them the gospel and explaining to them that they are under the wrath of God and he can come at any time and take them away but that God sent his son for people who will believe or we rejoice and through our brother with whom we can dwell in unity immediately.

And you all should know that feeling. If you've ever been anywhere where you suddenly met a person that you realized was a believer, and all of a sudden you're praising God together, you're talking about His good works that He's done in your life, or in their life, and you're together talking about the same God, and you realize instantly, like, we both know the same God. And you just rejoice in that. and I think some of you probably felt it when you came in here some of you came to the church and you came from somewhere where you weren't experiencing that because people would talk about God and you thought man it's like they're talking about a different God than I believe in that happens inside churches too and it's sad that's why it's our job to stick to our confession to hold fast to what we know is true so that people will get to know God But so we don't regard people according to the flesh.

And then the final point was we reconcile others to God. So just continuing in the same chapter. Therefore, because of what we just heard, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. There's a lot in this verse, but one application for sure that I want you to understand is we don't treat people according to their former sins.

Now, I'll qualify that. Some of your former sins may have consequences that will follow you the rest of this life. Some of you maybe should stay away from money banks. Some of you maybe should stay away from being in a children's ministry of sorts. there are former sins that still tempt us sometimes because our flesh carries a lot of strength and some of us have fed our flesh for a long time and we should be very careful what we put our what situations we put ourselves in knowing the fear of the lord and knowing that we are never perfected in this life.

But you do not hold somebody else accountable for their former sins. You treat them as the new creation they are. You expect them to act like a new creation and not to act like their former self. So here's a little tip if you're a parent. Your kid comes to you and says, Hey, I got saved. I believe in Jesus.

I want to be baptized. You should expect that they're a new creation. you should be listening to the sermon dad says yeah you can expect even a little child to be a new creation if they're in christ and in fact i think we do them a disservice sometimes when we don't and we think oh well they're just a kid still like well bible says they're a new creation we don't regard them according to the flesh we regard them according to the spirit and so we want to treat and i think what will happen if you have a kid that gets saved. I think if you treat them like a Christian and disciple them like a Christian, they're going to grow like a Christian.

And I think we're going to see some kids hopefully in this room that grow up to be great men of God at much earlier ages than I even could say his name without blaspheming. And so that's what we hope for, is that kids are discipled at young ages. And when they turn 17, 18, the little guys know they're ready to be pastors and girls know what they want to do. and we have people, arrows in our quivers.

But all this, okay, verse 18, all this is from God, listen, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. So there we have Christ reconciled us to Himself. We are reconciled to God, accomplished in Christ, but as the result, He gave us the ministry of reconciliation. it does not say he gave some Christians the ministry of reconciliation it does not say he gave the special Christians the ministry of reconciliation it doesn't say he gave the men a ministry of reconciliation it doesn't say he gave it to the priests Roman Catholics use this to describe priesthood it says he gave us the ministry of reconciliation let's see what that means therefore I don't even have to tell you what it means I can just read it Okay.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. An ambassador is somebody that goes on behalf of a king or some kind of world leader and they go and they're a messenger for that leader. And they go to other people and they try to be peaceful and make peace between their leader and the other person. It's a general rule. we're ambassadors for Christ so Jesus Christ who has all power and authority and ability to go anywhere he wants to go and send anyone he wants to send and the Holy Spirit could just, if he had wanted to the Holy Spirit could have just gone throughout the world and throughout all of time and just saved whoever he wanted to save anytime he wanted to save them he works whenever he wants but instead what God decided is I'm going to save these people and then I'm going to have these people be my ambassadors that go and tell the other people. so that they can share in the joy of watching people come to know me.

You're an ambassador of peace for Jesus Christ on behalf of God. So he says, God's making his appeal through us. And he says, we implore you on behalf of Christ. There's that word again, be reconciled to God. So Paul's writing to this Corinthian church. And I think Paul's a little worried that some of these people aren't justified because they're not acting like it.

And he says, for our sake, he made him, Jesus Christ, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. So you have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. God has made peace with you, not because you woke up one day and sought it yourself or thought oh I better make things right with God But God has made peace with you because he chose to because of his eternal love toward his people.

He in time sent his son to die, raised him from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and then he sent an ambassador into your life who brought the gospel to you. It may have been multiple different people. it may have been a tract, it may have been a thing you heard on a radio could have been you reading the Bible but he sent an ambassador to you and now he expects you to be so moved by that that you would I would dare say almost desperately wish for others to also hear this message without which they cannot be saved so remember once your repentance is authentic your reconciliation is secured and restoration is in process your religious duties instituted by God will be pleasing to Him So repentance is authentic doesn mean perfect Reconciliation secured means past tense. And restoration in process means that's something that is going to continue throughout your life.

And we'll look at restoration, Lord willing, next week. We pray, Father in heaven, we thank you that your word is inerrant and infallible, and that it's sufficient for all our needs, Lord. We thank you that David suffered what he suffered, that he might pray the prayer of Psalm 51, pointing us to the truths of Scripture that were known before time began, as forever your word is established in heaven.

And we pray that your word would pierce our hearts today, that it would cause us to be repentant, and that we would be sure of our reconciliation. that we would make our calling and election sure, and that those in this room who have not yet been reconciled to you that you Lord would do the work that only you can do in their lives That they would be moved by the preaching of your word to profess with their mouth that Christ is Lord and believe in their heart that you raised them from the dead unto justification that they might be reconciled to you today, Lord. We ask that you do not delay in the saving of our children in this room, of our people that we are connected to, wives, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, that you would save their souls, Lord, and begin to use them and use us as ambassadors. Forgive us for being such failures as ambassadors.

I claim your promise towards us, Lord, that all of our sins have been cast away as far as the east is from the west, knowing that you will use even broken vessels for your glory. And I ask all these things in the name of your precious Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.