Landon Coleman
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Salvation: Reconciliation
Well, those of you who have been with us the last few weeks, you know the drill. We're going to look up a lot of verses tonight. We're going to flip around and hunt some scriptures out. We're going to talk about salvation. That's the title of this series. Week one, we talked about salvation in the most broad and general terms. We've talked about the fact, week one, that there is a past aspect to salvation. We have been saved. There is a present aspect to salvation. We are being saved and there's a future aspect to salvation. We will be saved. We talked about the fact that God is the one who saves us. He saves us from himself, from his own wrath and fury and judgment that we rightly deserve because of our sins. And he saves us not only from himself, but for himself, for his glory and also for our good. The next couple of topics that we looked at go together, propitiation and redemption. That's the work of Jesus on the cross in accomplishing our salvation. Propitiation is the idea that Jesus on the cross satisfied the Father's wrath that should have fallen on us as sinners. And redemption is the idea that Jesus purchased us. He shed his blood to pay the penalty for our sins and to buy us out of death and to buy us out of slavery to sin. We talked about regeneration. It's the unique work of the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus was born that men might have the second birth, new birth, birth from above. We just sang that in a Christmas song a moment ago. That's the work of the Spirit as he begins to apply the finished and accomplished work of Jesus to our lives. Conversion is our response to regeneration. Conversion involves two things from us. It involves repenting from sin. And then secondly, it involves trusting in Jesus, believing in Jesus. We talked about union with Christ. And I'll just give you a little spoiler alert for Sunday. It will be very helpful for the Wednesday night people who know all about union with Christ when we come to the verses we're going to look at Sunday in Romans chapter 6 because really Paul's argument in Romans 6, 5, 2, I think it's 13 or 14 that we're going to look at. It hinges on or it rests on the idea of our union with Christ. We have been united with him in death and we've been united with him in his resurrection. So we talked about union with Christ. We spent the last two weeks talking about justification and adoption. Those are both courtroom ideas. They're declarations made by the Father on the basis of the work of the Son given to us in justification. We are guilty but then declared righteous. And in adoption, we are alienated from God, estranged from God, but then we are adopted into his family as his children. Now the idea we're going to talk about tonight is reconciliation. And it's very similar to adoption. It doesn't have the family overtones that adoption has, but it certainly has the relationship aspect that we talked about last week when we talked about adoption. And then you can see we have a couple more weeks. We have sanctification next week. As you think about sanctification, I imagine that we're going to talk about a few things, at least a few things next week that aren't on your radar now. We probably have an idea of sanctification and we are going to talk about what many of you have in mind. But there's a few things relating to sanctification that maybe not be on your radar. And then we'll spend the last two weeks talking about resurrection and then last glorification. So last week, we played a little game. I want to play another game tonight. I asked you to guess a TV show last week and Kay Butler was the only one who vocalized the guess that I heard and it was not remotely close to the right answer. It was completely wrong. So I'm going to give you just a little clue here before Gareth puts the picture up. I told you last week, as we played this game, I said one of the greatest TV shows. I didn't mean that last week when we talked about the People's Court and Wopner and all that stuff. That was sarcastic. I'm being serious tonight, one of the greatest TV shows of all time debuted January 18, 2010 on the History Channel. What was it? Somebody said it. Yes, it was American Pickers. Yeah. How many of you show of hands have watched at least one complete episode of American Pickers. That's why you all are my people. Frank Fritz, Mike Wolf, Mike owned a business called Antique Archaeology in Iowa. Frank, this is a tongue twister. I've been practicing this all week. Frank Fritz owned Frank Fritz Fiennes, Frank Fritz Fiennes. Say that 10 times fast in Illinois and they had a TV show together and they traveled around the country in a big white van picking. I read to you the opener from People's Court, so I'm going to read to you the opener from American Pickers. We're Pickers. We travel the back roads of America looking to buy rusty gold. We're looking for amazing things buried in people's garages and barns. What most people see is junk we see as dollar signs. We'll buy anything we think we can make a buck on. Each item we pick has a history all its own. And the people we meet, well they're a breed, all their own. We make a living telling the history of America one piece at a time. Now here's the reality, whatever you think about this show. If I told you in 2009, okay, one year before the show came out, I have an idea for a show. I'm going to take two guys, middle-aged white guys, just average Joe's. And I'm going to put them in a van, I'm going to put a camera on the dashboard. And I'm going to let them drive about 70,000 miles a year in this van to barns and garages in storage units and they're just going to buy junk and put it in the van. That's the whole show. You would have said that's the worst idea for a show I've ever heard. Two guys just driving around in a white van, looking to buy junk. The ratings were really, really strong for this show, for a pretty good run. One of the most popular shows, certainly for the history channel and on cable. Why was this show popular? I think it was popular for two reasons. I think reason number one is people watched the show. Now you understand there really is no such thing as reality TV, right? There's nothing real about anything you watch on TV, so it's not reality TV. But this show was real enough. People were doing things that you could feasibly, possibly do. And it made you think, I need to get on a garage sale routine in Odessa, Texas. And I could be a picker. I could have my own shop. I could do this. People got very excited about that and people thought that they could pick that up. The second reason I think it was popular was the relationship between Mike and Frank. It was a real relationship. It wasn't forced. While the show you understand was scripted and things were set up, the conversation between the two guys was honest and it was just two guys having a normal conversation. There wasn't anything forced to it. Now, some of you read the news or heard the news that Frank passed away, October 1st. And as I read the news about Frank passing away, I had not realized that Frank and Mike had had a bit of a falling out. So a couple years ago, Frank had to step down from the show and he had several health issues. He had Crohn's disease, he had a stroke, he had a major back surgery, and all of those things going on, Frank just couldn't be on the show anymore and so he had to step back. The rumors that you read online, I don't know if they're true, you don't know if they're true, but the rumors were that Frank felt a little bit hurt, that as he stepped away from the show that they just plugged other people in and that they forgot about him and that his buddy Mike didn't reach out to him very much, didn't check on him. They lost touch and Frank felt like he had just been left out to dry in the wind. Now, he passed away on October 1st and most of the accounts say that in the last couple weeks of his life that these two estranged friends reconciled. And I read some reports that said Frank reached out to Mike and I read some reports that said Mike reached out to Frank, but I did read that when Frank passed away, Mike was there and they had talked about the show and they had talked about their friendship and they had made amends. These two men had reconciled, they'd reconciled. So sometimes in life you think about friends that you know or maybe friends that you have where you say, hey, there was a time where we were really, really close, but then something happened or some things happened and we kind of drifted away and we don't feel close anymore and there's a little bit of attention. There's a thing that nobody's really dealt with and when you're in that situation you hope that maybe there's a time and a place down the road where friends can reconcile. Sometimes you think about reconciliation with parents and children and sometimes parents will say, you know, it was great raising my kids up through the years, but man, this thing happened somewhere along the way, maybe while they were teenagers or maybe in adulthood and there was a bit of a falling out and we don't have this relationship that we used to have, there was an estrangement. We talk about parents or children sometimes being estranged and if you've ever experienced that, you know the pain of that, the hurt of that and you know what it feels like to long for reconciliation, for a relationship to be set right. Sometimes we talk about reconciliation in the context of marriage. Sometimes we say, you know, there was husband and wife, they met, it was love at first sight, they took their vows, they were united together, all those things we talked about. We read from the Book of Common Prayer just a few weeks ago when we talked about union with Christ and the dearly beloveds were gathered here today, all that stuff, but something happened and there was a breach in the relationship and you know that sometimes in a marriage relationship that breach is final and there is no going back, but you also know that sometimes there can be reconciliation, there can be a setting right of a relationship that has been broken and so the topic that we're thinking about tonight is reconciliation, not between just two human friends, not between parents and children, not between husband and wife, but reconciliation between Almighty Holy God, the creator of the universe and his creatures who were estranged from him. So here's a big idea, reconciliation, we are no longer enemies, we're no longer enemies. One of the things I want to point out to you is that when we think about propitiation and redemption and regeneration, when we think about adoption and justification and many of these things we've talked about, these are accomplished realities. These are finished realities in our lives. When you are adopted into God's family, it's not like you're adopted in on a trial basis. Like hey, we'll foster this puppy for a few weeks and see how he does and if he's not a good fit, we'll just send him back. That's not how it works when we're adopted. God brings us into his family and that's a finished work. When we think about reconciliation, sometimes our human experience is cloud how we think about spiritual realities and salvation and sometimes you think about reconciliation and you say, you know, it can be a process, it can take time and it maybe doesn't always happen in just one counseling session or one conversation or with one apology and sometimes we even use a language of in the context of marriage, we are reconciling to an ongoing process. Now what you've got to understand when it comes to our reconciliation with God is that it is a completed work in the life of the believer. We're not on some sort of trial basis like, hey, we're going to give it another shot and see how it goes but because of the work of Jesus, the accomplished and finished work of Jesus in redemption and propitiation, we have been reconciled to the Father. That's a completed and a finished work. No, here's John Murray to get us going, propitiation places in the focus of attention, the wrath of God and the divine provision for the removal of that wrath, reconciliation places in the focus of attention, our alienation from God and the divine method of restoring us to His favor. So our relationship has been broken, we're alienated from God and He is going to the greatest links to reconcile us to Himself. Why do we need to be reconciled? Two simple thoughts. Number one, we have turned away from God to follow the world, our flesh and the devil. We've turned away from God. We've looked at Genesis 3 multiple times. When we think about our need for salvation, the fundamental text in the Bible is Genesis 3. And as we've been thinking about the book of Romans on Sunday mornings, we keep going back to the work of Adam in the fall and how that impacts us and how it affects us and how his sin is passed down to us. But you see this in Genesis 3, as soon as Adam and Eve sin against the Lord, the Lord shows up and they don't run to Him, they run from Him. They don't want to have communion and relationship and fellowship with Him. They want to hide from Him. They have turned away from His authority and they've broken this relationship with the Lord. If you have your Bible, you can look at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 52 and 53 is this great messianic prophecy about Jesus and it talks about His work on the cross, His substitutionary, sacrificial work on the cross. And Isaiah 53 says this, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to His own way." We've turned away. We've gone astray. I like to listen to a Presbyterian preacher out of South Carolina and he's an Irishman and I was listening to him preach on a podcast recently, Psalm 23, and he was talking about shepherds that he actually knew back in Ireland. And he had a shepherd friend who said to him, "Sheep are the only creature who will leave a green lush field to wander off into a wasteland." That's the idea that Isaiah is describing in Isaiah 53 when he says, "Like sheep we've gone astray. We have turned everyone to His own way." Turn to the New Testament. Look at Romans 8. We've looked at John 8 multiple times. I don't think we need to look at that again. That's Jesus saying to the Jewish leaders that they're not children of Abraham, they're not children of God, they're actually children of the devil and they've gone astray and lying and murdering, just like their father, the devil. Romans 8. We're going to come to this text in short order on Sunday mornings. Romans 8, 7, says, "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not, does not, submit to God's law, indeed it cannot." the mind that's set on the flesh, that's your mind apart from God's grace in your life, a mind set on the flesh, a mind that wants nothing to do with the truth of God. That's who we are in Adam as we talked about in Romans 5 recently, the mind that's set on the flesh, it's hostile to God, the relationship is not good, there's hostility there, there's friction there, there's fighting there, there's tension there, there's division there. It doesn't, Paul says, submit to God's law. It doesn't submit to God's law because there's hostility. And not only does it not, but Paul says, you've got to get this deep down in your bones to understand the biblical teaching about salvation, it cannot. You don't, and left to yourself, you don't have the ability. It does not, and it cannot submit to God. Ephesians 2, I know we've read this a lot. It's just a very, very clear text when it comes to the doctrine of salvation. Ephesians 2, 1, you were dead and the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh carrying out the desires of the body and the mind we were by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind. The world, our flesh, the devil, look at Colossians 1. We'll come to the rest of this paragraph in a minute. We're just going to leave a thought hanging here. Paul says, you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, as who we are apart from God's grace. We're alienated from God. We're separated from Him. Our relationship is not sound. It's not good. It's non-existent. We're alienated. We're hostile in our mind. Paul said that in Romans 8, and our lives are marked by evil deeds. One last verse, James 4, 4. James says, you adulterous people right there. That's a broken relationship. You are adulterous people. The relationship is not right. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes Himself an enemy of God? What do we read in Ephesians 2? We follow the course of this world. We're friends with the world, left to ourselves, and those who are friends with the world by definition are enemies with God. Look, this truth that we've all turned away to follow the world or flesh the devil. This is a fundamental truth that divides all sorts of religious systems from biblical Christianity. And you've got to settle this in your mind. Who are we apart from God's intervening grace in our lives? Who are we? What's the truth about us? There's a lot of religions and there's a lot of Christian churches who would say, you know, we show up, we're kind of like blank slates. We just kind of could go either way. Got a lot stacked against us because this is a bad world. So probably going to go that way. But we just kind of show up, we're neutral until we do something bad and the scales start to tip in another direction. That's just not the biblical teaching about who we are. When we show up in this life, we are not morally neutral. But the biblical teaching is that we've turned away from God to follow the world or flesh and the devil. Secondly, God, for His part, is righteously angry with sinners. And as we just read, we become God's enemies. Psalm 7 says, God is a righteous judge. He's not a corrupt judge. He's not a judge on the take. He's not an immoral judge. He's not a hypocritical judge. He's a righteous judge. And that means He's a God. Psalm 7 11 says, a God who feels indignation every day. A righteous judge, he feels indignation every day. Isaiah 59. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it can't save or is ear dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. He can save. In the book of Isaiah has lots to say about salvation. His arms not too short, His hands not too weak. He can save. But understand this, your sins make a separation between you and God. Romans chapter 1, I know we've looked at these verses recently, but I think it's good to be reminded of them. Romans 1, 18 says, the wrath of God, the anger of God, the fury of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. God's wrath is now actively being revealed. And then just one page over or a couple of paragraphs later, Romans chapter 2, verse 5, Paul says, because of your heart and impenitent heart, you're storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. His wrath is being revealed now and it's being stored up for the day of judgment, for those who have heart and impenitent hearts. John Murray again, reconciliation presupposes disrupted relations between God and men. It implies enmity and alienation. This alienation is twofold. This is a really important idea to get in your head. Our alienation from God and God's alienation from us. The cause of the alienation is, of course, our sin. But the alienation consists not only in our, and you might underline this phrase, we might mark this phrase, our unholy alienation against God, but also in God's holy alienation from us. Our iniquities have separated between us and our God and our sins have hid his face. Unholy alienation and holy alienation. Those are the two points that we just talked about up above. Here's the unholy alienation. We've turned away. We've turned away. And here's the holy alienation. God's a righteous judge who feels indignation every day. He's angry with sinners. They're his enemies. And they should be because he is righteous and holy. This is a two, two-sided equation. Now, there is inequality there. You see the inequality and that the alienation is our fault. It's our responsibility. It's not that God has caused it. God's holy alienation towards us is in response to our unholy alienation towards Him. So to go back to our human metaphors, you can't take human thinking and project it up towards God. Because odds are, if you think about a friend that you have, and you say, "I have a friend," we're estranged. And if the two of you were going to be reconciled, probably what would need to happen is that both of you would need to ask for forgiveness. Somebody would need to go first and say, "Hey, I owe you an apology." And then the other person would say, "Oh, I overreacted. I did this, and I shouldn't have done that." And there would be a little bit of a back and forth, and you would both end up saying, "Yeah, my fault." Probably the same is true with parents and children who are estranged. Somebody's got to go first for reconciliation to happen. And probably the child would say, "You know, I did this and this. I shouldn't have done that and that." And I'm sorry for that. And the parent would probably need to say, "You know what? I'm not a perfect parent. I'm trying to figure it out as I go." And you probably both need to kind of meet in the middle somewhere. Same with husbands and wives. This is the biggest barrier, one of the biggest barriers to reconciliation within marriage is the husband thinking. It's all her problem. And the wife thinking, "He's an idiot." And they both stubbornly wait for somebody to make a move. And then maybe when someone makes a move towards reconciliation, the other one just says, "Yeah, you're right." Instead of saying, "You know what? Hey, me too, and I'm sorry." And when it comes to our alienation from God, there's a couple of things that are true, okay? First thing that's true is that God didn't have to do anything about our alienation. He didn't have to. He could have just left us alienated. And the second thing that is true is we can't do anything about it. We can't fix it. As you see how this inequality exists when it comes to our reconciliation. God didn't have to do anything. He did. That's what grace is. God's grace is Him not giving you what you deserve but Him giving you the opposite of what you deserve. He's not obligated to do it. So why He's not obligated to save everyone? Unless you're a total universalist, you think some people are not going to be saved. God does not have to save everyone. He's under no obligation to save anyone. And the fact that He chooses to save some, that's a result of His grace and His mercy and He gets to make that decision. He does not have to do anything. And we can't do anything. Romans 8, 7. The mind that's set on the flesh, the mind that loves the world, is it enmity with God? We're objects of His wrath. We're following along the course of this world. We don't submit to His law and we can't. We can't make the first move. We don't make the first move. I think about this. I thought about this this last week. I listened to something that made me think about the early stories in the gospel of John. And there's a story where a man finds Jesus, meets Jesus, interacts with Jesus, and he goes to get his buddy and he said, "Hey, we found the Messiah. We found Him." But if you've read the story in John's gospel, you read that Jesus was the one who went to find that man. So often people will describe their conversion and say, "I did this. Look, I came to the end of my rope and I realized this and I made this decision and I made this commitment to God and I did these things." And you know what? There are some things we do in this process of salvation. We repent and we believe. But apart from God coming to find us, we can't do it. We cannot do it. God didn't have to do anything to reconcile us and we can't do anything to reconcile ourselves. So how does that happen? At this point in the series, it becomes really hard to talk about any one aspect of salvation without pulling from other concepts that we've already talked about. So when we think about how does God reconcile us, we could just insert the word propitiation because God is angry with sin, graciously angry. He is a righteous judge who feels indignation every day. And what happened at the cross? Our sin was placed on Jesus and God's wrath was poured out and it was satisfied. It's finished. It's paid. It's complete. That debt is gone. We could talk about propitiation. We could also talk about regeneration because you understand part of our estrangement or our alienation from God is the fact that we've turned away. We're hiding with Adam and Eve in the bushes. We're suppressing the truth about God that's plain to us. But what happens in the miracle of regeneration? God takes out our dead heart Ezekiel 36. He gives us a new heart so that we love Him, the things that we used to hate. Now we love and the things that we used to love. Now we hate and God's created this fundamental change inside of us. So we could talk about regeneration. We'll just make four quick points. How does God reconcile his enemies? Number one, the Father sent the Son, Jesus, to be the Prince of Peace, the Prince of Peace. Okay, we read Isaiah nine earlier, so we don't need to read that again. But maybe we could read the rest of Isaiah 53. We read the part of verse six that says, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we've turned everyone to his own way." Let's just read that whole stands of verse four, five, and six. It says, "Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions, and he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace." That's reconciliation. "Chastisement was placed on him so that we could have peace. With his wounds were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Turn to the New Testament, Luke chapter two. We've read a Christmas prophecy. We have sang two Christmas hymns tonight. We might as well look at Luke two. Verse eight, in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord." This will be a sign for you. You'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased." Peace. That's the fundamental idea of reconciliation. We're no longer enemies, but we're at peace. And when you read Luke two and you read about this angelic pronouncement about the birth of Jesus, and you think about what we just said, that God didn't have to do anything to reconcile us. You understand that the message of those angels could have very well been trouble. Trouble's coming. The judge is coming. He's wetting his sword. His judgment is close. His wrath is kindled. His fury is hot. You're in trouble. He did not have to send a Savior. He sent him once and the message proclaimed was peace. Jesus the Prince of Peace. Secondly, Jesus died to reconcile us to God. He died to reconcile us to God. Two quick passages here that probably worth thinking through. Romans 5. Verse 6, "While we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." That word four is talking about substitution. He died in our place. One will scarcely die for a righteous person, though. Perhaps we're a good person, one would dare to die. But God chose His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, while we were alienated, while we were estranged, Isaiah 59, "Your sins have made a separation between you and God." While we were separated and alienated and estranged from Him, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we've now been justified, declared righteous, by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God, for if while we were enemies, reconciliation were no longer enemies. While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we're 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. You've got to get the logic that Paul's operating within your head, because a lot of Christians live day to day with the fear that God is low-grade frustrated with them. Like God is some cranky person up there. He is so disappointed in you. He is so discouraged with you. He can't believe you've not made more progress. He can't believe you're still struggling with those same sins. And they live with this thought that God might just be done with me one of these days. Paul's logic is that while you were a sinner, estranged from God and His enemy, He sent Jesus to die for you, and you have been reconciled to Him. The hard part's done. You've been reconciled. You're no longer His enemy. Now that you're no longer His enemy, how much more are you certainly going to be saved by His life? There's no question about it in Paul's mind. He's going to come back to this train of thought when we get to the end of Romans 8. We will be saved by His life, and more than that, we will rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation. Look at Paul's logic in 2 Corinthians 5. Let's pick up in verse 18. He says, "All this is from God. The old is gone. The new has come. It's all from God. This work of grace and regeneration and salvation. It's all from God. It's not from us. He does it. We benefit. We don't contribute to it. It's all 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. How could the holy God not count trespasses against people? How could He just overlook it? How could a righteous judge who feels indignation every day simply decide, eh, I'm not going to count that against them. Gospel logic says that it wasn't counted against us because it was counted against Jesus. As exactly what He says down in verse 21, and we'll circle back to verse 20, "For our sake, He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Jesus died to reconcile us to God. Two quick thoughts before we think about how this changes us. Part of the mystery of the gospel is that God used the Jewish Messiah to reconcile the Gentiles to Himself. We don't live in a context where we interact with a lot of Jewish people on a day-to-day basis. I think as Gentiles in the United States, we tend to think that we're the center of God's thoughts and life and everything that happens in the world. This is a pretty revolutionary thought as you move from the old covenant to the new covenant, and Paul takes some time to flesh this out in Romans and in Ephesians where he says, "Look, don't miss the fact that God used a Jewish Messiah to reconcile the Gentiles to Himself. The Jews in Paul's day needed to hear that. They needed to hear. The Jews needed to hear. The Gentiles had been reconciled. And the Gentiles needed to hear it was through the Jewish Messiah, the offspring of Abraham. You can trace these things out in Romans and Ephesians. Number four, last one here. Part of the mystery of the gospel is that God used the death of Jesus to set things right in the cosmos, and I'd like you to look quickly at Colossians 1, verse 19. Colossians 1, 19, "In Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." In Jesus, the fullness of God dwelt. The word became flesh. This is a manual God with us. We sang about that earlier. He was pleased as man with men to dwell. Who was pleased? God was pleased. The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Jesus. Truly God, truly man. And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven making peace, reconciliation in peace, reconcile all things, peace by the blood of His cross. And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind 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. Okay, we sang earlier, "Joy to the World." And we sang it the right way, which means we sang verse 3. We sang the verse that when most people look at it, they say, "Eh, let's cut that one." Verse 3, "No more let sins and sorrows grow. North thorns infest the ground." He comes to make His blessing flow as far as the curse is found. Okay, we think about the work of Jesus mostly as it pertains to us. But Paul thought about the work of Jesus as it pertained to everything that had been placed under a curse. And he talks very expansively here about all things being reconciled to God. Now we don't have time to trace all of this passage out. What I'm saying to you is Paul is not making the argument that in the end everyone will be reconciled to God. Okay, you take this verse that speaks about reconciliation. You use other scripture to interpret that and you understand he's not saying that everyone will end up being reconciled. But he is saying that everything that was impacted by the curse and everything that is wrong and off and everything is going to be set right by the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross. So it's part of the mystery of the gospel. How does this change us? Let me give you a few quick thoughts and we'll end. Let's think about prayer. When we talk to God, we're talking to our Father. We talked about that last week, adoption. We're talking to your Father. And you're talking to your friend. John 15. No longer do I call you servants. Servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all that I've heard from my Father. I've made known to you. The greater temptation for I think most of us who grew up in a evangelical tradition is to approach God in prayer too casually. I think most of us make that mistake. We approach far too casually. I think the reminder of Ecclesiastes is helpful. We talked about this not that long ago on a Wednesday night. God is in heaven. You're on earth. When you come before him, let your words be few. Recognize who you're talking to. Recognize his holiness. Recognize his transcendence. Recognize his vastness and his omnipotence and think before you speak when you come into God's presence. I think many times we need that reminder. But some of us need the reminder that when we come before God, we're not coming to some cold, cruel, grouchy, distant, disinterested, separate deity who doesn't want anything to do with us. But as we saw last week as believers when we come to him in prayer, we're talking to our Father. And Jesus said, "Which one of you?" If your son asks his Father for bread, the Father would give him a stone. None of you. You're coming to your Father. He cares about you. He knows what you need. You're coming to Jesus, having been reconciled. You're not his enemy. And he's not yours. You've been reconciled. This relationship has been restored. And there should be a closeness as you talk to the Lord. Secondly, discipleship. The ultimate aim of reconciliation is growth and holiness and maturity. What is God up to in our salvation? Remember what we said week one. He saved us from himself for himself, for him, for his glory. Colossians 1, 21, you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. In order, why did he reconcile you? Here's why. In order to present you wholly and blameless and above reproach before him. If indeed, you continue in the faith, stable, steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, became a minister. God's aim is to present his people whole and complete and mature and holy and blameless. It's not just to reconcile you so that you can continue in your life of sin, but he's reconciled you that he might finish this work in your life. What about evangelism? God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. It's just a mind-blowing thought in 2 Corinthians 5. All this is from God, salvation's from God. He's reconciled us through Christ. He made him sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we could become the righteousness of God. And then verse 20, we are ambassadors for Christ and God is making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Be reconciled to God. That's a fascinating phrase. It is grammatically a passive imperative which seems like a contradiction. It's passive in that you don't do it. Someone else does it to you. And it's imperative in that it's a command for you to respond to. Be reconciled to God. You can't do it. He didn't have to do it. But he did out of his grace in his mercy. And there is a call for you to respond to his grace in his mercy, to repent and to believe and to be reconciled to God. Last church, our congregations ought to be marked by unity, and unity requires reconciliation. If friends are going to be unified, they have to be reconciled if there's estrangement. If a parent and a child are separated in a strange, there has to be reconciliation for there to be unity in that family. If a spouse, a couple is estranged from each other and they want to be unified like God intends for husbands and wives to be. There has to be reconciliation. And the same is true in our relationship as the people of God. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 2. He says we were separated from each other. We were separated from God. But through Christ, He's drawn us close to Himself and He's knitted us together in the church. Jew and Gentile and everybody in between were called to be one in Christ. We'll end with Murray. He's been helpful throughout this subject. Reconciliation is represented as a work of God. It's not our work, it's God's work. Reconciliation is a finished work for the believer. This accomplished work of reconciliation is the message committed to the messengers of the gospel. Father, we're grateful tonight for the work that you've done on our behalf and sending your son and sending your spirit. Father, you've covered all the bases here. You've gone to the greatest lengths. You've done everything that needed to be done. We have sinned against you. We've separated ourselves from you. We've made ourselves your enemies. Father, we recognize tonight that you were under no obligation to reconcile us to yourself. Father, we recognize that there was nothing that we could do to repair the breach in our relationship. Father, we're thankful for this work that you've undertaken on our behalf. That while we were your enemies, you sent your son to die for us. We have been reconciled as believers. How much more than will we be saved by the life of your son, the Lord Jesus? Father, we do stop to pray tonight for those who are here who are still estranged from you. They've never repented of their sin and they've never put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we urge them. We implore them to be reconciled to God. We ask that you would do God what only you can do. We pray that those who are far from you tonight would repent of their sin and put their faith in the Lord Jesus and in doing so. They would no longer be your enemies, but they would be your friends. We're grateful for Jesus. He stands at the center of this work of salvation. We're thankful for all that he accomplished. Lord, we're thankful for your Spirit who applies the work of the Son to our lives. We're thankful for your love for us and your grace. It is the foundation of all that we experience and enjoy and salvation. We recognize that you, the crown God, Father, Son, and Spirit have done everything that needed to be done to save us, to reconcile us. We thank you for that in Jesus' name. Amen.