Ministry of Reconciliation - part 1

I wasn't sure anybody would show up. I mean, we finally give you a chance to sleep in, and then we have another event, so... But, uh, glad to see that there were a number of people that showed up. If you all rise, we'll go ahead and ask God's blessing on the...on the seminar. Great Father and King, we thank you for all your blessings, and we just praise you, Father, for everything that you've given to us. For the Feast of Tabernacles, and for this Holy Sabbath Day that we're now here together, worshipping you, and help us to keep these days in a sacred way that honors you and honors Jesus Christ. We ask for your guidance and help this morning, that we can all come to a deeper understanding of your truth, of what this Scripture says, of what you're teaching us, and so that we can be proper tools in your hands, Father, now, as we learn to be your children, and in the future when Christ returns. So we ask for your help and your guidance. We ask all things in Jesus' name. Amen. We will try to take...using a seminar, and I was sort of hoping to be able to do this, where you can just sit down and talk and take questions, but unfortunately, we're just not going to be able to do that. So in some ways, it's more like a Bible study. I want to give you an outline of something to think about, a very big subject, a very broad subject, that as a church at times in our culture over the last 80 years, we have not always approached, we have not always totally understood, and something that we need to understand if we're going to help fulfill what we're picturing here. We've already heard a number of sermons and sermonettes that have talked about when Jesus Christ returns, what He's going to do to reconcile humanity to God. And that's what this is all about. It's what the day of the Feast of Trumpets was about. It's what the Day of Atonement was about. You know, when we kept the Day of Atonement. And of course, all the Holy Days have a past, present, and future importance to them, but we tend to look at the future so much. And we look at, okay, when Christ comes back, and He sets up a kingdom on the earth, and Satan's removed, and He brings this atonement, and everybody's brought into and reconciled to God, of course, reconciliation simply means brought into a proper relationship. The concept of reconciliation has inherent in it the fact that something's broken, something's separated.

And that reconciling is bringing a relationship that has been broken and bringing it back together.

Reconciliation just isn't learning to get along. Reconciliation just isn't learning to communicate properly. You know, when we talk about conflict resolution, we usually have a set of rules. You know, step one, two, three, four, and that tells us how to get along with each other.

But reconciliation is more than that. Now, we learn that from the Day of Atonement, when God begins to reconcile all humanity to Him. And of course, we look at the Feast of Tabernacles when we're here to celebrate that, we're here to participate in that. Now, if we're going to help Jesus Christ reconcile the world to Him in the future, then we have to be reconciled to God now.

So we have to begin to take each one of the Holy Days and not only see its future, but what it means to how we live right now, how we make our decisions, what we do. And reconciliation has to do with relationships. Now, we could start with Matthew 18, we're not even going to really go to Matthew 18. Matthew 18 is how to reconcile with your brother.

That's three or four or five sermons to really go through Matthew 18. But there's something we must do before we learn to reconcile with each other. How are we going to help the world reconcile if we can't reconcile? If we can't reconcile as the children of God with each other in our congregations, with our husbands and wives, with us and our children, if we can't reconcile, how can we help the world reconcile? So we're supposed to learn that now. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers because they shall be the sons of God. Peacemakers. How in the world can we be a peacemaker? Now, once again, how to make peace between each other is a huge subject. But before we go there, we have to first be reconciled to God. Now, let me explain. I have five main reasons why we have dysfunctional conflict. Now, what I'm talking about today is dysfunctional conflict. There's conflict between any human beings once a decision has to be made. Right? Just get two human beings and try to decide where to go for lunch. Now, that kind of conflict is not bad if it's worked out properly. Correct? Any group of people to come together, a husband, a wife, a family, we have 21 family members here. We've learned from experience. It's not a good idea to get together after services and decide where we want to go to eat. Because we won't be eating until about three o'clock. Now, but many of the things we do that are positive in life and relationships are because we take conflict and we have a positive way of working it out. But that's not the world you and I live in. We live in a world of dysfunctional conflict. Wars, crime, divorce, hatred, people separated. I'm always appalled when I go to a funeral. How many times are people there that will get in a fight over grandma's glass bowl, serving bowl, and won't talk to each other for the next 20 years? We've seen it happen many times. Dysfunctional conflict. Dysfunctional conflict that causes people to walk away from each other, to hate each other, to gossip against each other, to try to hurt each other.

It's the world you and I live in. And we are told in prophecy, as we get closer to the end, the church will be in danger of becoming overwhelmed with that kind of dysfunctional conflict. So we have to learn reconciliation. Now, here's the five main reasons. There's a lot of reasons why we have dysfunctional conflict. But let me give you five to start with. Now, as I go through these, the first thing you'll think is, I know somebody like that. You're already down the road to dysfunctional conflict. Because what we have to do is we always have to start with ourselves. The first one is pride. Pride is an exaggerated view of your own importance.

Pride is a great deceiver. Once again, we could spend a lot of time talking about pride. Each one of these things is an hour in itself. But I'm just trying to open the door to this important doctrine. And it is a doctrine. I hope someday that the United Church of God has a written doctrine on the ministry of reconciliation. Because it is a major teaching of the Bible. Jesus Christ is coming back to reconcile all things to God. So what does that mean?

How does He do it? How do we participate in that? Pride is one of the things that keeps us from doing that, and here's why. Pride centers us on how other people treat us. You will know when you're driven by pride because you will be thinking about how the other person treated you. And we become obsessed with that. We become obsessed with our own rights. And we become obsessed with our own hurts. And in doing that, and all of us have been there. Well, maybe you haven't. I've been there. See, I'm an expert at these. The reason I know this is because I'm an expert at it. I've done all these things. And what happens with pride is that we become driven by a need to win.

A need to vindicate our cause. And so we are driven by this, this, I must be proven right. Because I am right. You know what's the hard thing about pride? Is when you are right. And sometimes we can be right and still be driven by pride. But remember, pride keeps us centered not on how we treat others, but it keeps us centered on how other people treat us. If you are always concerned with how people are treating you, and you always feel like you're being mistreated, then maybe you have to ask a question.

Am I driven by pride? Because that may be the source of the conflict. And I'm not saying that we don't treat each other. We do. We treat each other wrong much of the time. But what I'm saying is, is what motivates us so that we're constantly involved in conflict? A second, and I find this one very interesting, it's taken me a long time to figure this one out. I really didn't start to understand this until the last couple years. You and I have expectations of others to satisfy our needs and desires. In other words, we come into every relationship we have. We have certain expectations. I mean, if you walk into the grocery store, and you have this, you have now a relationship with the checkout girl.

She is the checkout girl. You are the person buying the groceries, right? And in that relationship, you expect her to act a certain way, don't you? You expect her to be courteous, you expect her to be efficient, you expect her to be able to check all your groceries through, and when she doesn't do that, what do you feel? A great deal of anxiety, anger, right towards that person. So we enter all relationships with expectations.

What happens when other people don't meet those expectations? Then it's very easy for us to begin to harbor a great disdain for the other person. I find this in marriage counseling. And of course, every couple that gets married has great expectations of what that other person is going to be like and do. He's never going to not be nice to me. He's going to bring home flowers every night.

He's going to kiss me every morning, every noon, and every night. And what happens when he doesn't do that? Oh, I've got a bad husband. My expectations weren't met. Now, as we mature, we begin to realize that we put such expectations on people that they're going to fail no matter what. We literally put expectations on people. They couldn't, no matter how hard they try, they couldn't reach those expectations.

But we have them. And this need, this expectation that other people are going to meet our desires, they're going to treat us the way we want to be treated. When the truth is, much of life, we're never treated the way we want to be treated. We have a problem here. We're going to come up with this a number of times.

One of the problems here is that we tend to think of ourselves as a God. And everybody has to meet my expectation. I call it, we're dirt gods.

You know, we're not the real God, we're just made out of dirt, so we're dirt gods. And we have these expectations. Now, once again, are all expectations wrong? No. But you can see how we're driven sometimes by expectations of how other people should treat us. A third is our need to control. You and I are designed by God that in conflict, we basically, our first reaction is fight or flight.

Punch the person in the nose or run away. That's our normal reaction to almost anything. Now, there's a reason for that. You and I are designed to survive. Some of you may have encounters with bears. And at that moment, you're going to have a fight or flight reaction. Now, we have to reason through that because running away is probably the worst thing you can do, and punching the bear in the nose is not any better. So neither of those are good ideas.

But this is what we do with each other. You see, we come into this world with this great need for security. You and I need security. We need to feel safe. We need to feel like we have value. And every time we're in a conflict, the easiest way to deal with the conflict is to control them. Now, you know that with a one-year-old, you can do that.

With a two-year-old, it gets more difficult. With a three-year-old, it gets more difficult. At some point, you either train that child, or if you spend your whole life trying to control the child, what do you have by age 16? You have a very dysfunctional conflict in your family. Because you're just going to control this child and make this child do whatever I want, and then I will feel secure.

Well, then the child at 16 doesn't feel secure, and guess what they're trying to do to you? They're trying to control you. We have this need to control, to protect our self-image. That's a whole other subject. We all want to protect our self-image. We have an image of what we want other people to think about us, and we will protect that at all costs. We were swapping stories last night.

The family sat around and telling stories, and a story came up that I guess my kids had never heard before because it's not one I like to tell. I was at a teen event in Shreveport, Louisiana, and it was a water slide, you know, in these water parks, and I went down a water slide. And when I started at the top, it looked like a lot of fun. When I got to the bottom, I had no back in my trunks. And my towel was on the other side of the park. And you just acted dignified and walked across the park because you have no choice.

That hurt my self-image, really. I mean, that was tough. My wife was walking behind me, and I just walked through the park. And there's nothing else you can do. At that point, my self-image was taken a real hit. So this need to control was real, and it causes a lot of problems. And we could spend an hour talking about that alone. A fourth reason is that when we are hurt, Mr. Grovack talked about being hurt a little bit and how we have to move forward from that because there's all hurts in life.

I've seen more Christians probably destroyed by being hurt by another Christian than I have from almost anything else. It just hurts us. Because we don't expect to do this to each other the way we treat each other sometimes.

When we have been hurt, when there's conflict, and we're angry or we're hurt, we expect the other person to emotionally heal us. Right? I will talk to that person when they say, I'm sorry. Why? Because when they say, I'm sorry, I will be emotionally healed. Then I'll feel okay, and then everything will be okay. So we expect other people to emotionally heal us. I've seen people spend their whole lives expecting somebody to emotionally heal them.

I remember talking to a man one time who was just devastated because he had been, this was many, many years ago, and he had been basically mistreated by someone he respected, a person he respected. And he felt devastated by it. And then the person who he respected who had mistreated him had died. And he said, I can't get over this. I feel like he's reaching up out of the grave and grabbing, holding, controlling my life. He needed to be emotionally healed by this person, and he couldn't get emotional healing.

You ever see people do that where they're estranged with a parent and the parent dies? And they spent the next 20 years in just turmoil. I can't be healed because that person is supposed to heal me. Now, all four of these reasons for conflict, deep inside. See, we look at the issues. Most of the time, the issues can be solved.

These are the reasons why the conflict between us becomes dysfunctional. See, if it was just a matter of, okay, we're dealing with conflict that's normal, I could give you ten steps to solve conflict. And everyone here could go home and do those ten steps. But why doesn't it work? It's not the steps that's the problem. It's the dysfunctional, emotional problems and spiritual problems we bring into the conflict.

And these four things just won't let us, won't allow us to deal with conflict properly. Here's a fifth reason. A fifth reason for conflict. I wish I could spend an hour on each of the four we just talked about. But this one is the real source of all conflict that you've ever had in your life. Romans 8. Romans chapter 8. The Apostle Paul tells us the root of all conflict. Romans chapter 8 verse 7.

Years ago in the church, this was one of the memory verses. Everybody had to remember this verse. They had to put it to memory. Because the carnal mind, the natural mind, because the natural mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. The root of all dysfunctional conflict in this world, whether it be between husband and wife, church member, nations, neighbors, the garbage men in the city council, wars fought between people, tribal disputes, the root of all the dysfunctional conflict going on in your life and in this world is, we have a conflict with God. And if we're going to help the world reconcile to God, that means you and I have to be reconciled to God.

We have to deal with this conflict first. Oh, no, no, no. If you would just go deal with my husband, no. Well, you say deal with this one first. You don't have my kid, no. Yeah, but you don't know the person, my neighbor next door, who's an atheist, no. But you don't know the person who runs the socials in our church. He's a dictator, no. You don't know my minister, no. But before you even deal with that conflict, we have to deal with this conflict.

I believe that when you have people that have dealt with this, God will help them solve anything. I didn't say they will solve anything. God will solve it. But how can we have God solve our conflicts until we're dealing with our conflict with Him? You and I are by nature enemies of God. Now, you and I have been reconciled to God in a certain way. That reconciliation wasn't just an event. That reconciliation has to be a lifetime of being reconciled. It is a lifetime of growing in this relationship.

So you say, well, I repented, I was baptized, I was reconciled to God. That was stage one. It's just first step. This whole reconciliation with God is a lifetime experience that culminates in the perfect reconciliation at the resurrection. It's completed then, which means it's not done yet, is it?

We all have to grow in this. We all have to grow in being reconciled to God. Now, we know what happened in Genesis. We don't have to turn there. We know that Adam and Eve didn't need to be reconciled with God. At first, Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship with God. Here, this is a banana. Peel this and eat this. Wow, this is good. Adam, here's a wife. Wow, this is really good. Adam, namely animals, named this one and this one and this one, this is really good. There was no problem between the relationship between God and Adam and Eve until they chose the knowledge of good and evil.

And at that point, they became a mixture of good and evil, and their nature changed. And that's where we have to understand the core problem of all dysfunctional conflict. The core problem of all dysfunctional conflict is that you and I have a nature that is corrupted. Now, our nature is being changed, which means we should be getting better at conflict. The world isn't getting better at conflict.

Because in the end, conflict is not resolved through...the kind of reconciliation God wants is done by relationship one person at a time. That's how God is creating the saints, one person at a time. Now, we have to come into a community. You know one of the reasons why there's a community called the church? You know one reason why you and I are commanded to be part of a congregation?

So we can learn to resolve conflict with each other. Because there's going to be a lot of it. If you and I were going to build a church... I've read books on how to create mega churches, fascinating marketing concepts. One of the things you have to do is you have to bring everybody into that church from a singular culture and a singular background. This is the absolute worst way to build a church. Take people who don't even know each other, who come from all kinds of different backgrounds, all kinds of different economic strata, all kinds of differences in family structure, differences in jobs, and put them together and say, get along.

This is the way God does it. It's the exact opposite of the way marketers would do things. And there's a reason why. We have to be reconciled to Him and that we have to be reconciled to each other because someday we have to teach reconciliation. Adam and Eve, then, were kicked out of the garden. And what's happened to us ever since is in Ephesians 2.

Ephesians 2. He's talking to the church here in Ephesus, and Paul says... Ephesians 2, verse 1, So this is the church. So this is speaking directly over the thousands of years to us. He has made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which He once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.

The world is the sons or are the sons of disobedience. You and I were the sons of disobedience because Satan influenced us. And we were the enemies of God. And I want to stress that word that Paul uses in Romans 8-7. We're enmity. We are the enemies of God. You have to understand how deep that goes in the Scripture.

God said, You were created to be my children, and you are now my enemies, because you think like my greatest enemy, who was Satan.

That's what we were at one time, before reconciliation. And he says then, verse 3, Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. By nature you and I were the enemies of God. We were the children of wrath, of anger against God.

And we could not be subject to his law. That's what Romans 8-7 says. We couldn't be subject to his instructions and his ways, because we were by nature his enemies. Now we must never forget what we were, if we're really going to understand what we're becoming. We were the enemies of God. The world are the enemies of God. Now, so we begin to look at what we've talked about so far.

The things that cause this functional conflict is pride, an exaggerated view of self that creates a need to win. It is a desire to be happy, an experienced pleasure, and avoid physical and emotional pain. And we expect everybody else to give that to us. We have a natural desire, our natural reaction to conflict, to fight or flight, which gives us this need to control. If I could just get all of you to do exactly what I want, I could be happy. Right? I think how scary that would be. Isn't that what dictators do? Get everybody to do exactly what they want so they can be happy. The need to be emotionally healed when people have damaged us, we need the person who damaged us to heal us.

And then we have this conflict with God because we are by nature, and we were by nature, the children of wrath. Now, how does God fix this? Here's the problem, then. How does God fix this? How do we reconcile to God? Did you call God one day and say, you know, we need to talk. My people get with your people, we'll do lunch. How in the world do we get to where God, this rift between us and God, what rights do we have to go before God? When we are by nature the children of wrath, what right did you and I have to go before God?

We had no rights. We had zero rights. We were the enemies of the creator of the universe. We were children who rebelled and hated our Father. You say, well, no, that's not how I was. Deep inside, that's how all of us were. And you know, deep inside, that's how all of us still are a little bit. And you and I, if we're ever going to understand this, we have to be willing to look deep into that crevice and see that.

I don't like that it's there, but it's there. There's still part of us that's corrupted human nature. And we have to be willing to look at that once in a while. We do it the Passover. How do you feel the Passover? Isn't it amazing how humble we feel at the Passover?

You know, we're supposed to feel like that all the time. That's the way we're supposed to be all the time, in our humility before God. So how does God fix this? 2 Corinthians 5. This was already mentioned in one of the sermons. I don't think it was read, but it was mentioned. 2 Corinthians 5. Verse 18. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. This is the heart and core. If you understand the ministry of reconciliation, you understand the heart and core of the Gospel.

How humanity was separated from God, how Jesus Christ came the first time to bring us back to God, and how He's coming the second time to bring all humanity into God's family. And those three things are the beginning, the middle, and the end of the ministry of reconciliation, and that is the Gospel.

That's what it is. That's the good news. We have to tell people the bad news first. This is why our message will never be really popular. Our message is, let me tell you some good news. Boy, you're rotten. Now let me tell you how to make your life better.

But the front end of the good news is always the bad news. Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. It's not, let me tell you about the Kingdom, and then somewhere down the line, you've got to repent. The front end is always, there's something wrong with you, and you need to be fixed.

You need to be changed. Your nature is corrupted the way you think, the way you feel. Christianity is more than a set of doctrines. Do we have to have the right doctrines? Yes. We'd better hold on to those. Christianity is more than simply living a good life. Christianity is being reconciled to God. And the doctrines and the commandments are part of the reconciliation process.

There is a goal. God is doing this for a reason. And that reason is for you to stop being his enemy and to become his child. How do we teach that to the world when you and I are still fighting God? Notice what he says here, and this is how he begins to do this. That is, that God was in Christ, this is verse 19, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and is committed to watch the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. And we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For he made him who do no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God in him. God doesn't say, or Paul doesn't say, that God simply wants to open lines of communication with us. Paul doesn't say that what God wants to do here is simply, you know, get along with us. Can't we all just get along? He wants to enter into a relationship that was like the relationship he had with Adam before he sinned, the relationship he had with Eve before she sinned, the relationship he had with his children before they sinned. That's what he wants. He wants us to come into that kind of relationship, where whatever daddy says is good. And we simply do it because it makes us happy. We no longer care about choosing good and evil, we just want him to tell us what his good is. And we will then reconcile to others. Now, when we look at how God has forgiven us, and we're going to talk about that, it is not just amnesty that he's given to us. Here's the great problem with evangelical Christianity. God offers mercy, God offers his grace, he offers amnesty. So people take that grace and they use it as a license to sin. That's not what he wants. He offers this forgiveness to us because he wants to restore us to a relationship with him. The problem is that we still can't get across this gap to reconciliation. How bad are we before God before he comes into our lives? Some of you might say, well, I was a pretty good Baptist, I kept Sunday, but I was a pretty good person. How bad were you to God? Because the thing he says, all human beings, all human beings, are his enemies. Well, I wasn't that bad of a person before he called me. Wait a minute. All human beings are his enemies. It's an interesting word in the Old Testament, abomination. Abomination is a powerful word. In Hebrew, it literally means, it's something that's despicable. It's offensive. You know, we'll say, that just makes me sick. That just makes me sick. Well, when God calls something an abomination, he's saying, I find that offensive. I find that disgusting. And you start going through, you want to do an interesting study, go through all the places in the Old Testament where the word abomination is used. But sooner or later, you will find yourself. Well, abomination, that's homosexuality, right? Well, yeah. And that's witchcraft. Yeah, and it's idolatry. Well, yeah. It's also dishonesty. It's also pride. It's also our thoughts. God says even our prayers can be an abomination to him. Sometimes the way we approach God in prayer.

When he says we were his enemies, he means it. We were children by nature, children of wrath. We were, at that point, unless he does something for us, unworthy of eternal life. Unless God does something for us and with us, we are unworthy of eternal life. That's how much of an enemy we are. Think of Proverbs 6. Just one passage that talks about abominations and things that God hates. Proverbs 6.

Verse 16.

These things, these six things the Lord hates, he has seven or an abomination to him. In other words, God hates these things. When you add all this up, this is just disgusting to God.

A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren. Now, you notice that a number of these have to do with dysfunctional conflict.

All through the Scripture, we're told to, we must learn to love.

Dysfunctional conflict is always a sign that somewhere love isn't taking place.

So how do we bridge the gap?

Before God calls us, we are an abomination.

Lest we forget that.

How much love does it take to love an abomination?

I want you to think of the most despicable person you've ever known in your life who treated you the absolute worst.

How much love does it take to love that person? For you to love that person?

Romans 10.

Let me explain the gap here between us and God, a carnal human being and God. Now, you and I aren't carnal anymore. That's why we need to know this. But this is the foundation. You know, I think there's times we have to go back to this foundation. I'm not telling you anything that's not new, but we have to go back to this because we have to understand that we still are fighting that human nature. And if we don't understand that, that human nature is going to be controlled by Satan and manipulated by Satan to further and further dysfunction in our own lives.

So we have to go back to what has God done. Let me explain the gap between you and God when God calls us. How many of you have ever been to the Grand Canyon?

If you go one place in your life, go to the Grand Canyon. There are no pictures that justify the Grand Canyon. I mean, you can't... the pictures are awesome. When you go there, it's like, wow. I mean, you can see pictures of certain things, and you go there and think, oh, okay, I've seen the picture. Right? This is one of those places where there's this silence everybody experiences the first time they see it.

Now, you're on the Grand Canyon, and it's a mile deep and five miles across, and God's on the other side. Now, if you want to understand the problem, God's on the other side, and you're on this side. And the question you have to ask yourself is, how much of a running start I have to get to jump that chasm?

Because that's the gulf between us and God when He calls us.

There's no way across that chasm.

We can't jump it. I mean, what are you going to do? Put a jet pack on?

There's no way across that chasm.

And unless God does something, you're stuck, I'm stuck on the other side, in our sins, worthy of death. The enemies of God. That's reality. That's the beginning stages of Christianity. That's the bad news.

And we must never forget that.

Romans 10, verse 14.

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed, and how shall they believe in Him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? And then he quotes from the Old Testament, as it is written, Part of the gospel message is peace. It's the Kingdom of God. It's all these things. We say, what does that mean? That means we have to recognize. We have to understand what God is doing.

It's called the gospel of the Kingdom, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of salvation, the gospel of God. The gospel of peace. Those aren't contradictory terms. Matthew called it the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. These aren't contradictory terms.

God isn't just coming back to establish His rule on this earth. He's sending Christ back to reconcile all things to Him. And the first time He came was to begin that process. How does He get across the gap? How do we get across the Grand Canyon? That spiritual canyon that's between us and God. Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2.

Actually, what we're going through here between today and a couple days from now, when we wrap it up, is we're going through all the meaning of all the Holy Days. I'm just not taking the time to show how each Holy Day pictures this. This is the Holy Day plan, is what we're going through. How God reconciles Himself. And He reconciles us to Him through Christ, which starts a Passover. Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2. This is why if... Isn't it amazing? You ever talked to somebody who kept the Holy Days for 20 or 30 years and then gave it up? And you try to hold a conversation with them? And they don't even remember them. What is it? What is that? Tabernacles. Yeah, do you do that? Oh, man, that was so much fun. We used to get a big stand. We used to camp. Do you remember why you did it? Oh, no, we've been freed from that. No, do you remember why you did it? Yeah, because we like to camp. But some of those people knew it. And it's gone. And you think, how do you forget that? Because you stop doing it. We keep these days because we will forget it if we don't. This is how God's Spirit... This is how God through His Spirit motivates us to keep this in our minds. It's by doing the days. Hebrews 2, 14. It is much, then, as the children, the wayward children, the children who God kicked out of the house and became His enemies. I don't think we really appreciate the pain that God has gone through for us. I don't think we appreciate the... You think of just how God grieves over us. His wayward children, He had to kick out of the house and let Satan have them. And they became His enemies. But He said, that's okay, I have a plan. I'll fix this. You have to learn this way, and I'll fix it. It is much that as the children were taken of flesh and blood, He Himself, Jesus Christ, likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy Him who had the power of death that is the devil. Once again, we're back to Passover, now we're talking about David's atonement, Satan has to be removed. But He came that first time to begin this reconciliation process, to break the barrier between us and God, that I talked about on the first opening night, the barrier between humanity and God. So reconciliation, a relationship, can be restored. He says, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed, He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, making propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself suffered being tempted. He is able to aid those who are tempted. The bottom line is, Jesus Christ, or God, crossed the chasm for us, through Jesus Christ. You and I can't get across the spiritual Grand Canyon, we can't run, we can't jump, we can't yell loud enough for God to hear.

Unless He wants to hear.

We have no way to get to God. See, He came to us.

When we go through reconciliation, you begin to realize that we won't have time to do that today or next time. You begin to break this down in how we treat others. If someone's abused you, will you cross the chasm for them?

I want you to understand, we offended God.

We were offensive to God. We were His enemies. And God's response is to come get us.

Jesus Christ crossed the chasm for us.

Because you and I couldn't get across.

What price is the Father, and what price is your brother willing to pay to reconcile with you an abomination?

So that we are no longer abominations. You know, God doesn't look at us as abominations anymore. We are not the enemies of God anymore. We are being reconciled. Realize what that means. When you go before God, He doesn't say, Come here, you little abomination.

God says, Hey, kid, come here.

I think of God looking at Job, and what did He say to Satan? Have you noticed my son Job? There's a boy for you.

Go read Job. Satan couldn't come make accusations against God until God bragged about him.

Then he said, Well, let me have him. He won't be such a good kid anymore.

That's the change. You and I are being reconciled to God.

A relationship is being created that we did not have, and we could not create.

And this is how it's begun. Now, there's a second step to this, and this second step involves you and I have to participate. See, Christ can come across the gulf to us and us still not be reconciled to God.

He can come across that chasm to us, and we still are not reconciled to God. There's a second step, and that's what we'll talk about in the second part of this. But this is the first step. We have to go back to this first step.

Because it begins, if we're reconciled to God, these are the same methods we use to reconcile to each other. Will you reconcile with your wife, even though she is acting like your enemy?

That's how God treated you.

It changes everything a little bit, doesn't it?

It changes how we deal with conflict with others.

Colossians 1.

Colossians 1.

Colossians 2.

Verse 19.

We're still in to talk about the first stage of how you and I are reconciled to God, where we were, and how He got us to where we are now.

So how's He going to get the whole world?

Well, there's two steps, and this is the first one.

Paul writes to the church of Colossians, verse 19 here, chapter 1, For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fulness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

In other words, God wasn't going to do away with His law.

He wasn't going to do away with the definition of right and wrong.

Good and evil were going to always be good and evil.

So since you and I were on the other side of the chasm, you and I were already worthy of death, you and I were already sinners, we were already corrupted, we had no way to get across.

He said, well, how do I make peace with those enemies?

I die for them. Yeah, I have a hard time with that one.

I mean, there's lots of stories of soldiers, who in the heat of battle have thrown themselves on a hand grenade to save their buddies.

I've never read of a case where a man was captured being beat and tortured by his captors and then threw himself on a hand grenade to save the people who were torturing him.

That I've never heard of, except Jesus Christ.

He died to make peace with the people who were torturing Him.

To bring them to God.

That is what was paid for you and me.

Lest we forget that.

That's not just a passover Scripture.

That's a daily concept.

What price has been made for me to have peace with God?

What price am I willing to pay to have peace with God?

Because there's a price you and I have to pay to.

He goes on, He says, and you who were once what?

We don't like to think of it. No, I wasn't this. Yes.

Paul takes us right back to it.

You were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works.

He has now reconciled.

You were the enemy of God. I was the enemy of God.

That's who I was. I was an abomination to God.

Now all that ugly, corrupted part of my human nature is still there.

We used to have some, not all of it. Hopefully we've all grown since then.

But we still carry around part of that.

We must never forget that. We must fight against that.

We have to go back across the gulf, but we'll explain next time how God does that.

He goes on here in verse 22.

In the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in His sight.

Verse 23 is very important.

If, if, He said, now there's something you have to do too.

For peace to be made is not just one side makes peace.

You can never have complete reconciliation unless one side, if there's been offense, one side forgives and the other side repents.

But the amazing thing about God, and this is the exact opposite, He authors the forgiveness before the repentance.

What do you and I do?

Since we expect the other person to heal us, right?

We have expectations and we need to be healed by the other person. We won't forgive people until they repent.

God is the exact opposite.

He offers forgiveness and that leads us to repentance.

Oh boy. I want that from God, but I have to tell you, I hate to say this, I have a hard time doing that to other people.

I want God to forgive me before I repent, but I don't want to forgive other people until they repent.

Am I to be like my father?

If I truly understand reconciliation, we have to become like our brother and like our father.

So, this reconciliation, he made peace. He destroyed the barrier between us.

He came across the gulf to be like us, to be made like us.

If we could wrap our mind around that.

What's it like to get cold and hungry? What's it like to feel pain?

What's it like? The things he had to go through.

I don't mean to degrade Christ, but let's look what he did. What's it like to get the hiccups?

He never had hiccups before.

You ever get the hiccups and can't get rid of them?

And drive you crazy? He knows what it does like.

What's it like to have other people get on your nerves?

You know, is God, people don't get on his nerves. He doesn't have any nerves to get on.

Jesus got in a boat and went out in a water just to get away from people.

I can't take this anymore.

Did he ever have that before? Has God ever said, Sorry, folks, I'm going away for a while because I just can't take you anywhere.

Well, maybe that was the dark ages, I'm not sure.

But, you know, God's never done that.

Jesus Christ said, I can't take this anymore.

You know, I look at John 17, He says, just bring me home.

When you look at John 17, the night there before he died, He's just telling God, just bring me home.

They messed this up so bad. This isn't worth living.

This wasn't what we designed. So just bring me home.

I know this is the way we're saving them, but man, restore me to where I was before.

If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded in steadfast, and not a moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Paul says, if you just stay with what God's doing, this is the gospel.

That's why the Ten Commandments are part of the gospel.

It's part of the beginning stages of how God changes us and moves us along, so we're not His enemies anymore.

Let's end with Romans 5.

This has become, to me, so vital. I preach about this every chance I get.

And the reason why is, I don't think the churches of God get it.

I don't think we've really understood this for probably, not in the way that we should, for maybe 30 years.

Our culture has moved away from really understanding what reconciliation is all about.

And if we're not properly reconciled with God, we'll never reconcile with each other.

We must learn this because God's going to use us to do this with the world.

Romans 5-6, Paul says, For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Remember, He died for us while we were alienated and enemies.

What God did was cross the chasm while we were enemies.

We'll never understand, I don't think, until we're changed the love of God.

He said, For scarcely, for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Before we repented, He died for us.

And there's a reason. It is that act that helps bring us to repentance.

It is His reaching out and saying, I forgive you, will you take my hand that brings us to repentance?

So He had to do this. Can you imagine if God was hanging around waiting for all of us to repent?

How many times do we say, Well, you don't understand the truth until God opens your mind. So if God doesn't do something, we can't repent.

If God doesn't take us someplace, we don't go there. So if God's waiting for all of us to repent and never sent Jesus Christ, nobody would have ever repented in the history of humanity.

Did Abraham repent? Because he woke up one day and said, You know what? I've decided to be righteous.

I've decided to obey God. Hey, God, I'm a good guy down here. I'm going to obey you.

Let's get together and talk.

That's not how it happens.

God always comes across for us. We don't go to Him.

He goes on. He says, Through whom we have now received the reconciliation. Christ must live His life in us. We must imitate Him.

So that we can stay reconciled to God.

And that's where repentance and obedience comes in.

This is a relationship, and it requires our response for the relationship to be completed.

God did His part. God will continue to do His part. Jesus Christ is coming back to continue to do His part. He says, I'm going to do it. Will you, will I, do our part?

He did His part first.

Well, we do our part.

Now, for that reconciliation to take place, Christ has come across the chasm.

We have to get across that chasm now to God. There's a second step in the process of reconciliation. And doing that, we now begin to have the understanding, and we will receive the power to reconcile with each other.

We will receive the power to learn to overcome hurts. And we'll go through how those four things we talked about are solved by what God does by sending Christ across the chasm and then taking us back across and how He does that.

So that's what we'll cover next time. I wanted to try to keep this into an hour.

I only had four hours worth of stuff.

Next time, we'll only have 45 minutes because services start at 9 and services start at 10. So I'll only have about three hours there to do in 45 minutes. So I was really hoping we could have more time just to ask questions and so forth, but it didn't work out that way.

Pray about this. Think about this. I mean, like I said, this isn't anything new. You've read those scriptures before. But we have to go back to this.

We must never forget this.

God is reconciling us to Him through Christ.

We must reconcile to each other.

And there's going to come a time then. We will help Christ reconcile the world to God.