THE
GREAT RECONCILIATION
~ Between God &
Man ~
By
Pastor Max Solbrekken, D.D.
“He
came unto His Own and His Own received Him not. But, as many as
received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to
them that believe on His name.” (John 1: 11, 12)
THE
STORY of God - the
Creator - reaching out to fallen man in love and compassion is the
greatest and most fascinating in the annals of human history. Never
has there been such compassion, mercy and grace shown by a Father to
a son, a King to a slave and the Creator to His creation, as Almighty
God showered upon mankind!
And
never has there been such heartbreak, deception and treason with
eternal consequences and loss connected to the sin and eternal fall
of the archangel Lucifer!
When Adam and Eve were confronted
by their Heavenly Father in Eden's Garden, the Man blamed his wife,
but Eve pointed her finger at the SNAKE, saying, “The Serpent
beguiled me. And I did eat.” (Gen.3:13). She Was Right:
The Devil (gr.
Liar) is to Blame.
The Liar entered into the Serpent and deceived Eve, and Adam - who
was not deceived - sinned with his eyes open, not wanting to lose his
wife!
O'
the enormous consequences of that tragic and momentous decision,
which plunged the entire world into turmoil, fear and eternal death!
The Greek Tragedies
of mythology cannot be compared with the enormity of the chaos Satan
so cleverly organized against God and His greatest creation, man!
“Adam, where art thou?” queried
Almighty God, Creator of Heaven, Earth, the Cosmos and all things
animate and inanimate. “I heard Thy voice in the
Garden and I was afraid, because I was naked”,
answered the Man!
And
since that awful hour, man has been AFRAID and hiding from God,
trying desperately to somehow regain the loss of love, trust and
belonging that was lost by his damnable actions. And we have all
failed miserably by doing our own thing, trying to find peace in a
wretched world of our own making.
MALCOLM
MUGGERIDGE,
celebrated writer and broadcaster, wrote: “Christ
is the only answer to an insane world.
They
will not understand that the trouble with the western world
civilization is not economics, but more - good and evil. They are
thinking they can make things work by policies, inventions, but man
will never live on this planet without God!”
BLAISE
PASCAL warns, “If
they turn away from God, one of two things can happen. They will
think they are gods and go mad or turn to carnality and become
animals”.
GEORGE
BERNARD SHAW stated, “I
am ready to admit after contemplating the world and human nature for
sixty years, that I
see no way out of the world’s miseries but by the way that would be
found by Christ’s will”.
WILLIAM
GLADSTONE, Prime Minister, statesman and one of Great Britain’s
greatest legal minds during the 19th Century, said: “Talk
about the questions of the day! There is but one question, and that
is the Gospel. That can and will correct everything! I am glad to say
that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are Christians.
TO
COVER MAN'S SIN OF TREASON!
Almighty God had instituted the Sacrificial System to save Adam and
Eve and their progeny until such time as He would redeem fallen man
through the sacrifice of His Own dear SON!
To
cover man's terrible sin of treason, an innocent animal was slain to
provide skin for their clothing and BLOOD to atone for their sins!
Cain and Abel both knew the rules. Cain, however, being a type of
mankind's rejection of the blood of Christ and relying only on their
own efforts to attain salvation, did not obey God's precise
injunction regarding the BLOOD covering!
Adam's sin infected the human race and brought forth its EVIL FRUIT
in the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. Our loving Heavenly Father
had tried to warn Cain of the slippery slope he was treading.
The
Bible says: “And in the process
of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of
the ground an offering unto the
Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of
the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his
offering. But unto Cain and his offering, he had not respect. And
Cain was very wroth and his countenance fell.
“And
the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? And why is thy
countenance fallen? ... Sin lieth at the door... And Cain
talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass that, when they
were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and
slew him.” (Gen.3-8). The power of Satan prevailed upon Cain
and he killed his brother, becoming the world's first murderer!
For
four thousand years, God dealt with SIN and its forgiveness through
the SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM until one day, like Abraham, the Eternal, Ever
Living God took His only begotten Son to Mount Calvary to die
on an old rugged cross to redeem fallen man by the sacrifice of
Himself, thereby meeting the demands of God's Righteous Justice!
When God asked Abraham to sacrifice His ONLY Son Isaac on Mount
Moriah, it was a type of what He Himself would do. As Isaac carried
the wood for the burnt offering, JESUS carried the WOOD for His
crucifixion.
JESUS DIED
FOR US, THE WORLD'S GARBAGE!
Isaac, however, escaped death through the substitute ram which God
provided. JESUS, however, suffered the shame, reproach and agony of
dying as a common criminal on the Garbage Dump of Jerusalem so
that a world of last sinners could be FREE from sin, sickness, fear
and enslavement to the World, the Flesh and the Devil!
It
was not the Romans or the Jews who killed Jesus of Nazareth. He died
as our SUBSTITUTE, the Holy for the unholy, the Righteous for the
unrighteous, the Living God for dying men! There was no other way
that God could rescue His own creation, the man whom He had created
in His own image and likeness. By giving His “Only Begotten
Son, Who is in the Bosom of the Father”, He
was giving Himself for us, thereby meeting His Own Demands of Divine
Judgement for Sin!
God warned Adam: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat, but of tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt
NOT eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die.” (Gen. 2: 15-17)
The
original Hebrews says, “In
dying thou shalt die.”
In other words, “You will begin to die; the process of death will
begin in you and you will eventually die”! Adam and Eve died
spiritually the moment they disobeyed God and the process of death
began in their perfectly healthy bodies and from that moment forward
every baby is born with death in its body!
Interestingly,
one day with God is as a thousand years with us (2 Peter 3:8), and
the oldest human was Methuselah,
the son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah who lived 969 years! (Gen.
5:25-27)
The
Bible says: “The
Soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek.
18: 4);“Without
the shedding of blood, there is no remission” (Lev.
17: 11); “It is
the BLOOD
that maketh atonement (covering)
for the soul.” (Heb.
9: 22).
St.
John gives us the FINAL SOLUTION: “But if we walk in the Light as
He (Jesus
Christ) is in the
Light (God
the Father), we
have fellowship one with another and the BLOOD of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1
John 1: 7)
ON
A HILL FAR AWAY STOOD AN OLD RUGGED CROSS, THE EMBLEM OF SUFFERING
AND SHAME AND I LOVE THAT OLD CROSS WHERE THE DEAREST AND BEST FOR A
WORLD OF LOST SINNERS WAS SLAIN! SO I'LL CHERISH THAT OLD RUGGED
CROSS TILL MY TROPHIES AT LAST I LAY DOWN. I WILL CLING TO THAT OLD
RUGGED CROSS AND EXCHANGE IT SOME DAY FOR A CROWN.
As
a boy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church (when
they still ordained only godly pastors) we
used to sing this hymn with gusto. I often wondered what the phrase
meant, 'till
my trophies at last I lay down'. I
knew trophies were given for great accomplishments in sports, music,
drama and other achievements.
Then,
it dawned on me what Evangelist GEORGE BENNARD meant by these words
he wrote in 1912: Our
trophies are the souls we have brought to Christ! Bennard
had been meditating deeply on the sacrificial death of our Saviour.
He testified: “I saw the Christ
of the Cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page and
take form and act out the meaning of redemption.” It was at
that time that God gave him the lyrics to this amazing hymn!
The Bible says: “Surely
He hath borne our sicknesses (heb.
kholee) and
carried our pains (heb.
makob): yet we
we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we
are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every
one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us
all. ” (Isa. 53: 3-6)
It was our Heavenly Father Who
laid our sins, sicknesses, diseases, fears and torments on His Son
Jesus Christ. He carried our guilt and condemnation. Our Lord
Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains and by His stripes we
are healed. All glory, honour and praise be unto Him forever and
ever!
A
CHRISTMAS SONG: WHEN GOD BECAME A MAN!
DON FRANSISCO wrote a powerful
song that puts the Gospel in perspective, called 'When God
became a Man'.
It helps explain the great Mystery of our Reconciliation with God the
Creator and Liberator of the Human Race. Here it is:
In
the center of the ages, the Lord talks with a girl
And by the
words He speaks He gives a Savior to the world
Time draws to its
fullness, and Mary’s Son is born
The Promise’s fulfilment lies
asleep there in her arms
He didn’t
come to terrify, to judge, or condescend
To call us all His
servants, but to lift us as His friends
To save us all from
Satan’s power to reign at His right hand
When once for all
eternity, God became a man
Today the
God of Majesty has given to the earth
A gift of such magnificence,
we could never plumb its worth
And the rudeness of the setting
just ignites the Jewel’s fire
A pearl beyond the greatest price,
the joy of man’s desire
Today the
God of Majesty has given to the earth
A gift of such magnificence,
we could never plumb its worth
And the rudeness of the setting
just ignites the Jewel’s fire
A pearl beyond the greatest price,
the joy of man’s desire
He didn’t
come to terrify, to judge, or condescend
To call us all His
servants, but to lift us as His friends
To save us all from
Satan’s power to reign at His right hand
When once for all
eternity, God became a man
Once for
all eternity, God became a man
St. Paul is the only New
Testament writer who used the words reconcile and reconciliation in
His discourse on the great Redemptive work that happened on Calvary's
Cross on Mount Golgatha. As the anointed words of the song, “Once
for all eternity, God became a man”, testifies to the amazing
miracle of the Incarnation that brought God and man together at the
CROSS!
Can
we understand it? Certainly not. If a human being with our finite
mind could understand it, it wouldn't be a miracle. It it
inconceivable and that is why St. Paul writes: “Thank God for
His unspeakable Gift.” (2
Cor. 9: 15)
The
reason that it was His gift to us is that He gave of Himself because,
although there are three persons in the Divine Godhead, yet there is
only one GOD. The blessed Holy Spirit was in Christ reconciling the
world to Himself at the very hour when God the Father had to judge
His Son in our place!
“And all things are of God Who
hath RECONCILED us
to HIMSELF by Jesus
Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of RECONCILIATION;
to wit (that is) that GOD WAS IN CHRIST
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses
unto them; and hath committed unto us the Word of
Reconciliation. Now then we are
Ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: We pray
you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled
to God.
“For
He (God the Father)
hath made Him sin (A Sin
Offering) for us, Who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him.” 2
Cor. 5: 18-21)
Jesus Christ is the indescribable
and unspeakable Gift,
and yet, we must never stop speaking about Him and speaking to Him in
prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving! Hallelujah! Amen.
"
