Reconciliation
The Gospel of C.H.R.I.S.T. • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 4 viewsNotes
Transcript
Doxology:
This is my Bible. It is God’s Holy Word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path, and I will hide its words within my heart, that I might not sin against God. Amen!
Scripture Reference: 1 Cor 15.1-4
We are continuing our series through the Gospel of Christ. We have been using 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 as our base text:
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,
2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
In its most basic form, this is the Gospel. It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But our purpose in this series is to understand these things on a deeper level. For those who did not grow up in church… for those who haven’t heard this since they were old enough to walk… what does this mean?
Why do we need someone to die in our place? We didn’t ask them to do that.
Why does Jesus matter so much? Can’t we make it just fine without all of this Jesus stuff?
These are exactly the types of questions we want to unpack as we walk through this series.
To make it as simple as possible, we are using the title of Jesus, which is “Christ”, as an acronym to help us move through the Gospel.
Creation
Creation
We started with the letter “C”, which stood for creation.
We discussed how that we were created to rule, created for relationships, and created to reproduce.
Creation
Creation
We then moved on the letter “H”, which stood for Hesitation.
We discussed how that a moment of doubt and uncertainty can cause severe damage to our relationship with Christ.
God is God, and nothing will change that. As the designer of this world and everything in it, He alone also gets to define right from wrong, good from bad, righteousness from sin. When we stop for even a moment and begin to question what God has said, or doubt God’s love for us, we end up in sin. It affects everything that we were created for. It affects our ability to rule; it affects our relationships; it affects our ability to reproduce effectively.
Context
Context
Creation
Creation
Today, we move on to the third letter, which is “R”. “R” stands for “Reconciliation”.
We are going to be looking at a very well known account of Scripture in order to help us understand this today.
1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”
2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
3 And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.
4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering,
5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
6 So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?
7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
8 Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
10 And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.
Let’s Pray!
Content
Content
According to the English Dictionary, the word reconcile means:
To settle a quarrel or dispute.
To bring into agreement or harmony; To make compatible or consistent.
To restore to communion.
When we take a step back and look at the big picture, we can see this clearly:
God created man in absolute perfection.
He dwelt with God in Eden
He was in perfect relationship with God and knew no sin
But then there was this moment of hesitation to where Adam and Eve entertained the voice of a snake. This snake caused them to stop, reconsider, become uncertain, and even doubt the words and motives of God.
The result of this was the very first sin in all of creation.
The further result of this was separation from God. Because of their sin, they were kicked out of the Garden.
So we started up here in perfect fellowship with God, but then through sin, we dropped from our perfect standing with the Almighty.
The rest of Scripture is the unfolding of how God plans to reconcile (to restore, to redeem) mankind back to Himself.
God wants us to be in perfect fellowship with Him, and we want to be in perfect fellowship with Him. But in order for this to happen, something has to deal with this problem of sin.
Now as we get into this fourth Chapter of Genesis, we have to understand that there is simply a lot of things we don’t know. For instance, we go from Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden in Chapter 3, to them having kids in Chapter 4. What happens in between is left out.
We also go from Cain and Abel being born in verses 1-2 to them offering sacrifices before the Lord in verse 3-4. So there again, a lot of the information is simply left out.
With that being said, we do have enough information given to us to understand some things here.
1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.”
Things get very interesting right out of the gate. Adam and Eve have their first child, and this in and of itself is completely new. Cain is not only the first child of Adam and Eve, he is the first child to be born in all of creation. Adam and Eve were created as adults by the very hand of God, but they would be the only two individuals who shared that experience. All other humans would be born through the natural process of childbirth. Cain is the very first.
I want us to look back real quick at Chapter 3, to see one of the things that God told Adam and Eve before they were kicked out of the Garden: Genesis 3:14-15
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.”
Though Adam and Eve were punished for their disobedience, they were left with a promise: God would one day send a great deliverer who would indeed crush the head of Satan. This deliverer would come through a woman, and he would redeem all of mankind.
When Eve became pregnant with her first child, she truly believed that this child would be that deliverer. She thought that he would be the one to redeem them back to God, to crush the head of the serpent, and restore them back to the Garden of Eden. We know this because of what she named her firstborn son: Cain.
Cain means "to acquire, to get, or to possess." Eve named him Cain because she truly thought that she had acquired her deliverer from the Lord. "God has promised a deliverer, and now He has given one," she thought.
2 Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel…
Some time passes after Cain is born, and Eve has another son. Interestingly enough, this time she names the son "Abel".
Abel means "emptiness or vanity".
Many different explanations have been offered as to why Eve named her second son this. What do you think?
It is possible that she was simply feeling the weight of life itself and applied the name based upon her feelings.
It is possible that she had already come to a point of realizing that Cain was not the promised seed, and had given up hope of ever returning to the Garden.
Most agree that she still believed in Cain as her redeemer, and that her second son Abel, at least at his birth, was viewed as unnecessary, at least in terms of gaining access to God once again.
Either way, Eve names her first son after the promise and her second son apart from it.
Notice how her gaining access to the Father once again, being in His presence, being redeemed from the sin that caused it all, was at the forefront of her mind. It was literally everything. So much so, that she names her first two children based upon that promise.
Adam and Eve wanted more than anything to be restored to the Father. They knew they messed up. They knew this separation from Him was not what they were designed for, and living apart from their designed purpose was a heavy weight to bare.
This same thing is true for us today. When we live apart from our designed purpose, it is a heavy weight to bare. And even though we might not realize it for what it is, it is there nonetheless. The weight of it shows up in every aspect of our lives.
How do we know they wanted back into fellowship with God? How do we know they still maintained what fellowship they could with Him?
3 And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.
4 Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat…
We know that Adam and Eve still sought the Lord because here we see Cain and Abel bringing offerings to the Lord.
Who taught them to do that?
This goes back to that point of being created to reproduce. Adam and Eve, since getting kicked out of the Garden, had continuously brought offerings unto the Lord. It doesn’t tell us that, but we see the result of that here in Cain and Abel.
How else would they have known to do such a thing. These two young men brought offerings to the Lord because they had watched their parents do it over the years.
Finally, they are old enough, or reach a point of maturity, to where Adam and Eve decide that it was time for them to bring their own offerings to the Lord.
No doubt, Adam and Eve shared with them the stories of how God had sacrificed the animal in the Garden to make clothes for them.
And I personally believe that Adam and Eve taught them so much more than that. They no doubt admitted that they were out of the Garden because of their own disobedience and sin. They no doubt shared how much better life was while in the Garden. They no doubt shared what it was like to dwell in the presence of the Almighty.
And most importantly, they no doubt shared their desire to one day be back there. They wanted to experience the fullness of God’s fellowship once again apart from sin.
This is where the offerings come in. Adam and Eve understood the significance of these offerings: their purpose, their meaning, and their necessity.
***Sin has separated us from God
We are no longer perfect, but God still is. So there is this natural gap, and it is a massive gap, that exists between us and God.
2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.
This is the result of sin. It causes us to be separated from God. And this is heartbreaking. We know we were created for more than just to live life, have fun, make some money, and then die.
Where is the legacy? Where is the purpose? It is in Him. It is only found in Him.
Adam and Eve knew this. So they continued to honor God as God even after they were separated from Him. They continued to offer up offerings before Him. They continued to seek His face. Because without God in their lives, there was no purpose to living.
So they sought the Lord… and they taught their children to seek the Lord. And they did the only thing they could do in order to stay in fellowship with Him, which was bring their offerings before the Lord.
We will unpack that more in a minute, but first we need to understand something.
So in the process of time, Cain and Abel bring their own offerings before the Lord.
2 … Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
It tells us how these young men were wired. Abel was a keeper of the sheep. He was a shepherd. He provided clothing for the family. Cain was a tiller of the ground. He was a farmer. He provided food for the family.
Both of these things, making clothes and growing crops, were the two things we know for sure that God taught Adam and Eve how to do.
After creating Adam and placing him in the Garden, He told Adam to tend it and keep it. After Adam sinned against God, God killed the animal and made clothes for them.
So these two things were also passed down from Adam and Eve to their sons. One became a shepherd and one a farmer.
It is important to see that neither of these professions was honored over the other. Both of them were necessary. They had to have clothes, and they had to have food.
And when it came time for them bring their offerings before the Lord, both of them brought the best that they had to offer from their own prospective fields of labor.
4 … And the Lord respected Abel and his offering,
5 but He did not respect Cain and his offering…
This has been the source of much confusion throughout the years. Many have wondered why Abel’s offering was accepted while Cain’s was not.
They both came before the Lord. They both brought the best they had to offer. But God accepts one and rejects the other. Why?
In order to get this, we first have to understand the purpose of the offering.
We have already established that because of sin, mankind has been separated from God. We are down here, while God is still up here.
God knew this separation was going to happen, so He gave man a means of what is called atonement.
We see this word “atonement” scattered throughout the Scriptures, but here is what it means:
Atonement is the price of reconciliation. In order for something to be restored, a price has to be paid.
If you wreck a car, there is a price involved to getting that car back to its original condition.
If me and Vance get into an argument, and during that argument Vance pops me good. Before that relationship can be restored, he is going to have to pay a price. It may be that all I require is a heartfelt apology. It may be that my price is that I get to pop him back. Whatever the case, in order for us to be reconciled, there must be a price paid.
That price of reconciliation is what we call the atonement.
Sin has separated us from God. In order for that relationship to be restored, a price must be paid. Here is what the price is:
11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.’
22 And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.
God has set a high price for the atonement of our sin. His price for that atonement is blood.
In the Old Testament, God told them to offer up certain animals as “sin offerings”. They would bring these animals before the Lord, lay their hands upon the head of that animal, state their sinfulness, and then offer it upon the altar for the forgiveness of sin. That animals blood served as the price of reconciliation.
God stated clearly, “for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” and “with the shedding of blood there is no remission” of sin.
You may not like the price He set. You may even disagree with it. But He is the One who set the price, and He alone gets to determine what that price is. He created us perfect and we sinned against Him. If we truly want to be restored unto perfect fellowship with Him, we must pay the price that He has set, and that price is blood.
So Cain and Able bring their sacrifices, but only Able obeys and brings a proper sacrifice. His sacrifice is a lamb. He offers that lamb upon the altar, as he has been taught to do, and so he and his sacrifice are accepted.
Cain on the other hand decides that he wants to offer something else. He decides to offer something from the fruit of the ground. I am sure it was the biggest, most beautiful head of lettuce anyone has ever seen. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was impressive. The problem though is that it wasn’t what was required.
This is where so many are today. We are told that there are multiple ways to God.
We are told that if your good outweighs your bad, then you can make it.
We are told that if you will simply live a good life and be a good moral person, that you can make it.
We are told that all religions lead to the same God.
Listen to me… please!!!
According to God Himself, there is only one way for your sins to be atoned for, and that is through the blood.
That’s it. That is the only way. You can listen to the world, or you can listen to God. And this is what God has said. Only through the blood can one be forgiven.
Now where does Jesus come in.
Here is the problem that came about. Men realized that their sins were forgiven through animal sacrifice. So they quit worrying about their lifestyle as long as they had an animal to offer up for atonement. They began to live very ungodly lifestyles, doing whatever they pleased, and then they would bring an animal as an offering before the Lord and think everything was ok.
God realized what was going on, and this is what he had to say:
10 Hear the word of the Lord, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah:
11 “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats.
12 “When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts?
13 Bring no more futile sacrifices; Incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
14 Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; They are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
16 “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil,
17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
In other words, God says, “I don’t want your many sacrifices… I want you. You think you can live however you want as long as you kill an animal in your place, but this is not how it works. I want your obedience, not your sacrifice. I don’t want to see all these animals killed, I want to see you live Godly lives. And if you will do this, there will be no need for all these sacrifices.”
So God determined a more excellent sacrifice must be made. There needed to be a sacrifice offered to where it would atone for all sin, forever. This sacrifice would be so perfect, so righteous, so valuable, that it would atone for everyone’s sin. There would no longer be a need for multiple sacrifices to be made.
That sounds good, but where do you find such a sacrifice?
It had to be a human sacrifice. The blood of an animal just wouldn’t cut it. It had to be more than that. But this human had to be sinless. If a sinner dies, he receives his just reward, but if there were a person who had never committed sin, that person could die in the place for everyone else, atoning for all sin forever.
That sounded promising, but there was a problem. No such a person existed. There is no such thing as a sinless human being. We are all born with a sin nature, and we all give into the nature from time to time.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
10 As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;
So where would God find such a worthy individual? There was only one place to find perfection, pure righteousness, absolute holiness… in Heaven.
Do God sent His only Son, Jesus, to this earth. Jesus lived a perfect life:
14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
He never committed a single sin against God. He was perfect.
As being perfect put a target on His back. The Jews hated Him because He would correct them for their misunderstandings of God’s Word. He would perform miracles that they could not perform.
So they devised a scheme to lie against Him and have Him killed by the Romans through crucifixion on a cross.
He persevered the worst beating possible, He carried His own cross up that hill, and then allowed them to nail Him to the cross. All of this took place, because God was in this moment pouring out all of His wrath against sin. And in so doing, the blood that Jesus shed at Calvary became the atonement for sin.
It is the only atonement for sin.
Mankind messed up and fell from perfection. We worked hard to restore that fellowship, in many different ways, but nothing worked. The only thing that can atone for our sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. It is the only way.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Why did someone die for you? Because you needed them to.
Why did it have to be Jesus? Because He was the only one worthy enough to do so.
Why do you need His sacrifice? Because you are a sinner, separated from God, and the only thing that can atone for your sin and bring you into proper fellowship with Him, is the blood of Jesus.
Why do I need to be saved? Because if you refuse Jesus, you will be judged, and you will go to hell.
But listen to me, that is not what God wants for you.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us…
19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 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.
21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled
22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—
God wants to save you. God does not want you to die in your sin. With that being said, He has provided only one way for you to be saved, and His name is Jesus.
All the work has already been done. Everything required for your forgiveness has already been presented. The price of your atonement has already been paid.
But you must believe.
You must believe that God loves you, that He sent Jesus, His only Son, to die in your place, that Jesus willingly did that for you, and that you He rose again the third day conquering death and sin forever.
If you believe that, and you are willing to give up this life of sin that you have been living, God will save you.
Don’t be like Cain. When you try in your own efforts to get where only God can take you, you will not make it.
6 So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?
7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
Your sin will either completely consume you, or be conquered through the grace of God.
The choice is up to you.
Commitment
Commitment
