Our Agent of Reconciliation

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Well, when we moved down here back at the end of the summer, one of the things Charla was really excited about with the house was that the previous owner had put in these, Well, to us, they were fancy touchscreen thermostats. We’d never seen anything like that. Well, we’d never had anything like that.

We may have seen it on shows and things like that. So we were really excited until October when one of them went out. Well, partly went out.

Part of the touchscreen on it died to where we could turn the temperature up but never back down. Now, that’s not going to work. It was on the downstairs thermostat.

And so I began looking for a replacement. They don’t make them anymore. Not only were they not at Lowe’s, you can’t order them online.

You can’t even order counterfeits from another country on eBay. I mean, we were just out of luck. And so I, Charles said, what are we going to do?

I said, I’ve replaced thermostats a bunch of times. It’s no big deal. I’ll just go get another one from Lowe’s. Doesn’t have to be the same thing.

Of course, it’s not even the same orientation either. So we’ve got a hole in the wall that I’m eventually going to have to patch. But I put in the new thermostat downstairs.

Did I mention that we also have never had an all-electric house before? We’ve never had electric heat. We’ve always had natural gas.

So I read up on some things that you need to check for and say, okay, I don’t think we’ve even got emergency heat, auxiliary heat, whatever you call it. It worked great until it got cold and then the heat needed to come on. And then we got a $400 electric bill.

Yeah. It’s about how I reacted too. Maybe a little more dramatic, but I made the same sounds that some of y’all made.

That’s what I was talking about this morning, being broke all the time. $400 electric bill. And at that point, I realized something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

As a matter of fact, I called my mother-in-law, who works for OG&E, And I said, short of growing marijuana in the side building, what would I be needing to do to use 3,900 kilowatt hours of electricity? She said, I don’t think you could do it. I said, okay, something’s wrong.

I talked to the co-op, I talked to different people. And finally, I realized what I should have realized early on, that I needed somebody to help me. I needed somebody to do this for me because I was not capable of doing this myself.

Lots of things I can do around the house, but I have a rule. I don’t mess with electricity, and I shouldn’t have them either. Because it just, you know, you end up with a $400 electric bill.

Somebody came out, they changed the thermostat, they said, you’ve got the wrong kind of thermostat. I kind of suspected that might be the case. I didn’t feel too bad, though, because he said the one upstairs is wrong, too.

I thought, okay, so the ones he put in were wrong also, so we would have been in this situation no matter what. And our electric bill went down to $300. dollars.

Still higher than it was, but it’s going in the right direction now. Said all that to say, sometimes you need somebody to come in and do something for you because you’re just not capable of doing it the right way on your own. Have you found that to be the case?

I know as men, sometimes we think we should be able to do it all ourselves, but there’s a reason why I don’t mess with electricity and it’s called messing around with 220 and getting thrown across the garage because it’ll get you. I’ve learned there are some things that I can’t do on my own and that I need help with. But we as men especially are bad about thinking, well, I need to do it myself.

We just as human beings, women included, sometimes think we have to be able to handle this ourselves. We want to try to be independent, and it hurts our pride to have to admit that we can’t do it on our own. Some of you who were in choir practice before church tonight heard the little hour-long standoff that we had with Charlie.

That kind of thing goes on because he thinks, heaven forbid you hand him his plate when he ought to have gotten it off the cabinet by himself. I wanted to do it myself. Well, fine, I’ll put it back on the cabinet.

You can get it yourself. Oh, that’s not good enough. Or opening the door.

All sorts of, that’s not what it was tonight. But that has happened before. People have left church holding their ears because of him screaming when he wanted to be the one to open the door.

And that’s how we do sometimes, like a little kid. I want to do it myself. I should do it myself.

I should be able to say I did it myself. But we have to come to the realization there are some things we cannot do on our own and we need somebody to do them for us. Especially when it comes to spiritual things.

Especially when it comes to that, it hurts our pride to have to admit that we’re sinners and we can’t do what is necessary to get right with God on our own. We want to be like the Pharisees and feel like we’ve done it ourselves. We’ve been good enough.

We’ve tried hard enough. We’ve done all the religious things. We’ve ticked all the religious boxes.

in order to get right with God, and to have to admit it, to have to admit that we still fall short, hurts our pride. That’s why it’s so hard for so many people to trust Christ as their Savior, to come to that place of admitting that they need a Savior because they can’t get there on their own. That we need someone to do it for us because we can’t reconcile ourselves to God.

He had to do it for us. If you would, turn with me tonight to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1, And we’re going to look at verses 19 through 23, if you’ve got your Bible.

If not, it’s going to be on the screen for you, if you want to follow along. And if you would, stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Colossians 1, starting in verse 19.

And it says, For it pleased the Father, that in Him, that’s referring to Jesus, that in Him all the fullness 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. Now, several of those hymns are referring to Jesus. It pleased the Father that in Jesus, all the fullness, meaning all the fullness of the Godhead, all the attributes of God should dwell.

And by Jesus to reconcile all things to himself, that is to the Father, by him, by Jesus, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of Jesus’ cross. I went back on you a little bit, Jack. I was trying to clarify which hymn was who.

So now we’re in verse 21. It says, and you who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not 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.

And you may be seated. The very simple truth of this passage is that your peace with God comes not from trying harder, but from trusting Christ. And for many of you, if that’s the topic we stay on tonight, many of you will say, I’ve heard that a bunch of times. I know that.

I get it. And yet to so many people in our world, that is such a difficult reality to grasp. Not because it’s confusing, not because it’s complex, not because it’s hard, but because it goes against the grain of who we are and what we want to think about ourselves.

Because we want to think, again, that we can be good enough. We want to think that if I just clean my life up, if I just do the right things, if I just go to church, if I give money, whatever the list is, if I just do the right list of religious things, then God will accept me. And there’s an element of pride in there for us.

But it goes against the way we naturally think. To say, no, it’s not about what we can accomplish. It’s not about what we do or what we’ve done.

It’s about who Jesus Christ is. It’s about what He’s done for us. It’s about the change that He makes in us.

And the peace with God that we need, the peace with God that we desperately seek out, whether we realize that’s what we’re looking for or not, the peace with God that we need does not come from trying harder. It comes from trusting Christ. And we need to be very clear on that. I want to be very clear on that.

even if it comes to repeating that to the point where you feel like you’re hearing the same thing over and over every Sunday. Because in too many churches today, in too many churches today, the message is do good, try harder. Now we should do what’s right, obviously.

This is not saying go live however you want and just count on grace to pick up the tab. But the idea that people would come into church and just hear rules preached, things that you have to do, things that you, And the idea being, just be a better person, that’s what the church’s message is, is heartbreaking because it’s not the gospel. It is important for us to do the right thing, but doing the right thing is not the gospel.

Trying harder does not get us closer to God. It is all about what Jesus Christ did. And it says here in verses 20 and 21 that He reconciles us to God.

I like that word, reconcile, because people pretty well understand what it means. I think we’ve probably all had a relationship at one point that was strained or broken. And so we know what it means to be reconciled to somebody.

It means the relationship was not what it ought to be, and then it got fixed. That’s what reconciliation is. Now, maybe you’ve not had a relationship be broken and then reconciled.

I know some people that, hey, I got in a fight with a friend, a sibling. Doesn’t matter. They’re out of my life forever.

But we understand what it means to say that we were reconciled. to say that we were separated from God and then we are reconciled. The relationship has been fixed.

And the reason I like that, because everybody seems to know what it means, is that when we use a lot of churchy words, people don’t always understand what we’re talking about. I’ve given you the example of asking somebody before if they were saved, if God had ever saved them, and they start talking to me about living through a tornado. That’s not what we’re talking about.

Yes, God has spared me numerous tornadoes. Charlie and I have lived most of our lives and more. Yes, God has spared us from tornadoes, but that is not the same thing.

But to tell somebody they need to be reconciled to God, that the relationship is broken and needs to be fixed, that’s something people can understand. And it teaches here that Jesus has reconciled us to God. It says there in verse 21, you who once were alienated enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death.

See, before Jesus Christ, we are enemies of God. And I’ve made that point here a few times. I’ve made that several times throughout my ministry.

And it always feels harsh to say that, that we start out as enemies of God. Because it reinforces this wrong idea. If you just leave it at that, it reinforces this wrong idea that a lot of people have in their minds, that God is harsh, that God is just looking to spoil everybody’s good time, that God is somehow cold and unloving to say that we are the enemies of God.

But the reality is we are the enemies of God. It’s just important to realize He didn’t start the war. God created us to have perfect harmony with Him.

He created us to exist with Him in the Garden of Eden. He equipped mankind with everything we could ever want and only gave us one rule. I mean, if we only had one rule for our children, they’d think we were the nicest parents on earth.

It was mankind that looked at God with all that He had done for us. We looked at God and said, no, I don’t think so. I don’t want you.

I don’t want your gifts. I want rebellion. I want disobedience.

And Adam and Eve embraced their own desires instead of God. And you may say, well, what’s the big deal? It was just a piece of fruit.

No, it was the disobedience behind it. It was the heart that was rejecting God in favor of what we wanted. And folks, we have been doing that ever since.

We do that on a daily basis. Even as Christians, we struggle with that temptation to do that on a daily basis. To embrace the things that God hates.

To embrace the things that are opposite of who God is. Because God, for example, is a God of truth. It’s who He is.

And so when we lie, it’s not just making a wrong choice. It’s rejecting who God is and embracing the opposite. God is faithful.

So when we’re unfaithful in our commitments in life, we’re embracing the opposite of who God is. And so we do start out as the enemies of God. But again, He’s not the one who fired the first shot.

We are. Without Christ, we’re His enemies. It says here, alienated and enemies in our minds by our wicked works.

That word alienated means foreign. We were strangers. Strangers and enemies by our wicked works, it says.

But through the blood that He shed on the cross, Jesus paid for all the offenses that separate us from a holy God. I talked with you about that this morning in the story of Ahab and Elijah and Naboth’s vineyard that there is always a price to be paid for sin. Now, sometimes the price is delayed a little longer.

Sometimes you can defer those payments, but the price always comes due. And so for us, the only hope is that Jesus would pay that price. Otherwise, we’re stuck with it.

But it says here that He reconciled us. He reconciled all things to Himself by Him, whether things on earth or in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. When Jesus Christ shed His blood and died, that offering of His blood, that sacrifice of His life, paid the entire price that was owed by us for our sins and made it possible for there to be peace between us and God.

So Jesus reconciles us to God. He takes this relationship that was broken and He puts it back together. On top of that, Jesus restores our holiness.

In verse 22, it describes how in Him we appear before God blameless. Blameless means that no accusation can be made against us. Now, it’s not that we suddenly become sinless in Jesus Christ. I could ask for a show of hands, but I already know how it would go.

But I was going to ask you how many in here have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and how many of you still sin? Every hand that went up the first time is going to go up the second time. We all still do.

But it’s not that God is confused. It’s not that God is forgetful. But it’s that God looks at us and does not see the sin that is under the blood of Jesus.

He sees the righteousness of Christ that we’ve been clothed in. He exchanges our rags through these white robes of righteousness. And so we stand in Him blameless.

It doesn’t mean that we’re innocent. It doesn’t mean that we’ve never done anything wrong. But it means that no accusation can ever be made.

I was talking to the kids about this this week. and I don’t remember the context or why. I think we were discussing something in 1 John.

But I was telling them that the word Satan means adversary or accuser. And so you could think of this as like a courtroom where God the Father is the judge, although in some passages it describes Jesus as the judge. You could think of God the Father as the judge.

You could think of Satan as the prosecutor. And you could think of Jesus as the defense attorney. And where every time we stand as the accused before the judge, stand before the Father, and Satan says, did you see what he did?

I accuse him of this. Did you see what he thought? Did you hear what he thought?

Did you hear what he said to that person? Do you see the. .

. Every time he brings up a charge, Jesus, as the defense attorney says, I move to dismiss that charge. It’s already been paid for.

The sentence has already been carried out. So for us to be blameless, again, doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, but it means from a legal standpoint, God sees us that way because the sentence has already been carried out. Jesus already bore the sentence.

He already fulfilled that sentence. And now we stand before the just judge with Satan unable to bring an accusation against us. And so we stand righteous in God’s sight.

He has declared us righteous. He has said, they are holy. Not because we’re better than anybody else.

If you look at verse 21 that we’ve already kind of looked at so many times, It was our wicked works that alienated us from God in the first place. But Jesus takes that and declares us righteous in the sight of God. And He returns us to the harmony of God’s design.

That fellowship that existed in Eden, that closeness with God, can only be restored through what Jesus Christ did. You notice in verse 20 it says that He reconciled all things to Himself by Him, by Jesus, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. It is through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that all wrongs will be righted through the sacrifice of Jesus.

It’s through what Jesus did that God one day will gather His people to Himself. That He will one day judge the nations. That He will one day create a new heaven, a new earth.

All of that plan is in place because Jesus paid for sin. Those of you who were with me on Wednesday night, we talked about the three circles. It’s an evangelism technique.

If you weren’t with us, there’s a video on Facebook. There’s also handouts in the fellowship hall that you can look at. But it’s a way of explaining the gospel.

And it has three circles to it, as the name implies. I know they were so creative with the name, weren’t they? But the first circle is God’s design.

And it’s this idea that God has a plan for us. God has a plan for His world. He has a plan for all these things.

And in God’s perfect plan, in this harmony that God established, everything was wonderful. And God has a plan for your life and the way you live, the way you treat others, the way your marriage goes, the way you run your business, the way you work for your boss, all these things. God has a plan for all of it.

But we come to a place of brokenness, which is the second circle, where our lives are broken, where our relationships are broken, where our hearts are broken, where our world is broken. And we get to that second circle through sin. And the world as a whole is stuck in that place of brokenness.

That third circle is the gospel. The gospel is the only answer. See, people will try to.

. . I’m going through the three circles here.

People will try to fix the brokenness by embracing other things. All sorts of things. Money, relationships, substances.

They’ll try to fix the brokenness within by anything they can find. When the only answer is the gospel, it’s the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And us changing our minds about our sin and believing that Jesus is the one and only Savior. And once we’ve trusted in Jesus Christ, once we’ve believed that gospel, we are able to recover, it says, and pursue God’s design.

Now that’s true on a personal level that He remakes us, that He transforms us, that He begins from that day to change us. He not only declares us holy in a legal sense, but He also begins to make it true in a behavioral sense. But folks, it’s not just true of us in a personal way.

It’s true of the world. One day, God will right all the wrongs. One day, He will wipe all tears from our eyes.

There will be no more sorrow, no more death. The former things are all passed away, it says in the book of Revelation. One day, He will do all that.

One day, the harmony of God’s creation and the harmony of His people within it, with Him, will be restored. All things, not just us, but all things will be reconciled to Him, and it’s through Jesus Christ that that’ll happen. But for all of these things that He promises here to us, the key is not our efforts.

The key is faith in Jesus Christ. Trusting Jesus to do what He said He would do. Again, I want to make sure we’re abundantly clear on this. I can’t get there by being a good person.

Sometimes people think, oh, you Christians, you just think you’re better than everybody else. No, I’m no better than anybody else. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know what we’ve come from.

And even now, after 20 plus years of following, actually 30 years, my goodness, time slips away from you, doesn’t it? After 30 years of walking with Jesus Christ, I know what’s still in my heart. I know the changes that He’s made for the better, but I know the attitudes that still lurk there.

I know the feelings and the thoughts that still lurk there. I know the actions that sometimes show up. And I know that I’m not better than anybody else.

As I told somebody this last week, if it was down to me, up to me, to try to earn my way to God, to try to earn God’s acceptance, I don’t trust the best five minutes of my life to get me there. Because I know who I am. I can’t do this on my own.

But I don’t have to, because you look at the passage we’ve just read, and everything is about Him. What He did. What God did through Him.

Him, Him, Him. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And He says this belongs to us.

All of these promises belong to us. How? Verse 23 says, If indeed you continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you’ve heard.

And so tonight, don’t take this as a message of do better and try harder. Take this as a message telling you to hold on to your confidence in Jesus. Trust Him to do what He says He’ll do.

When verse 23 tells us to continue in the faith, that word continue means don’t just camp out there. Live there. Let your faith, your trust in Jesus Christ be something that is the hallmark of everyday life for you.

Not just something you turn to when times get difficult, but the place where you live day by day is that trust that Jesus Christ has saved you and He’s transforming you into what He wants you to be. He’s the one healing the brokenness. When it says to be grounded and steadfast, the picture there is like a massive tree.

And I’ve discovered there are some pretty massive trees on my property. Some of you have been out there to help me cut them down, and they did not go down without a fight. You know what?

The stumps are even harder. I’m afraid I’m going to have to rent some pretty massive equipment to get those stumps out of there. You know what?

Our faith should be similar. It should be next to impossible to move. I say next to impossible because we are human.

But to be grounded and steadfast. You know why those trees are so sturdy and why even the stump can’t be moved? Because they’ve got a long, deep tap root that holds them in place. And we should be the same way.

not moved away from the hope of the gospel, don’t let other things pull you away from that confidence. Don’t let the failures that you experience, don’t let the times that you fall short, don’t let your inability to perform at a level you think you ought to, to where you can feel righteous enough and you can feel religious enough, don’t let your inability to keep up with that list of religious things that we all think we have to do in order to earn God’s acceptance, don’t let your ability pull you away from your confidence in the fact that Jesus is the one that’s reconciled you to God. See, our confidence, our hope, it’s not in ourselves.

It’s not in an idea. It’s not in a system. It’s not in a doctrinal statement even.

Our hope, the basis of our confidence is in Jesus as the agent of reconciliation between us and God. Let me tell you this. If Jesus cannot reconcile us to the Father, if He cannot fix the relationship and put it back to what it needs to be, If he can’t heal the brokenness that exists there, what shot do you or I have of doing it?

If Jesus isn’t powerful enough to do it, why would we trust ourselves? Folks, we are far better off taking Jesus at his word, trusting him to do what he says he’ll do, rather than thinking it depends on us.