church of Christ Christian Ekklesia Podcast

And God Said It Never Happened Part 2

 A real look into what God accomplished on the cross through Jesus for us. God has never been afraid of sin, nor will he ever be. [28:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (529)

Welcome back to God’s Message on the Web. My name is Greg and I want to welcome you to listen to God’s great plan of salvation for us. If you are a new listener I welcome you to study with us and learn the truth as put forth for us from the Bible itself. We do not add or take anything away from the Gospel. Nor do we follow the commandments of men when it comes to religion. The Bible is our sole guide and Jesus Christ himself in all of his Glory is the head of the Church

If you are a returning listener I want you to know that you are part of something much bigger than any of us. You are part of a family of those in Jesus Christ who want to understand what the Bible is really saying to us, saying to you. What is your role in this great plan called life? Let’s find out together as we study the Bible and listen to the great plan of God. I know you’re out there. Almost 110,000 Podcasts and 158,000 audio Bible downloads show that. I pray for all of you. I ask you to pray for me and for this Podcast as well so we can help wrap it around the world and bring the great news of Jesus Christ to everyone we possibly can.

I am starting to get back into the swing of things here and have a lot of great Podcasts lined up for everyone. Today’s is an important message in many ways; it is one you have probably heard a variant of. I want to show you that God brought Sin to Himself through Jesus so that he could overcome it at the Cross. I have heard it preached before; and maybe you have to that God cannot stand to look at sin? So he had to abandon Jesus at the cross. This doesn’t make sense to me as God has never been afraid of sin as we will go over after the message today. In short; God went looking for Adam and Eve in the garden, who was looking for who and not afraid of sin in the process? I think it’s time we moved past the good cop/bad cop strategies we have been taught in the past. It doesn’t resonate with the all powerful who loves us so much that He gave His only begotten Son for us, to draw us into an intimate relationship with Him.

Also, a quick reminder to download all 21 MP3 chapters of Wayne Jacobsen’s book “The Naked Church.” Go to www.godsmessageontheweb.net in the right pane or under the question mark (?) in the menu. I encourage you to download all of these audio book chapters and listen to this very important message. It’s a personal relationship with our “Father” God that really matters the most. Not anything that you could ever do for yourself. Resist the urge to make yourself right before God and accept the fact that you can never be right before God without what He did for you through Jesus on the Cross.

It is really great to have you visiting with us today. This world can be such a busy place. It distracts us all from the reality of what we are doing on this Earth. Try to remove all the cares of the day as we study God’s great plan of salvation for us.
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AND GOD SAID “IT NEVER HAPPENED”
(Part 2)

Through much of this century, one of the common topics of discussion in the church has been what is right. Countless sermons have been preached on what is right. We could not estimate the number of arguments that produced confrontations about what is and is not right. Many debates were conducted to defend what was right.

Any in depth discussion of the concept of “right” is lengthy and complicated. However, we commonly approach our concepts of “right” as though “right” is simple and easy to discuss. To the person defending what he is convinced is “right,” “right” is always simple.

Our human concerns about “being right” commonly focus on what is correct. “Right” is centered in correctness–correct organization, correct teachings, correct practices, correct information, correct positions, correct reasoning, and correct conclusions. In our devotion to correctness, we defend right organization, right teachings, right practices, right information, right positions, right reasoning, and right conclusions. This concept focuses on “right” as compared to “wrong.”

So, from human perspectives, the discussion of what is right is a simple discussion. We often think it is as simple as opposing and rejecting what is wrong.

God’s concern about “right” does not focus on correctness. God’s concern about “right” focuses on much more important, much more serious than our human preoccupation with correctness. God’s basic concern regarding “right” involves guilt. Specifically, it involves human guilt.

While Christians are commonly concerned about correctness, God is concerned about human guilt.
I. God is right; that is fundamental to God being righteous.
A. His rightness and his righteousness are affirmed by the fact that God is free from all evil.
1. No form of evil is in or associated with God.
2. God is not right because of His power; God is right because there is no evil in God.
B. Because we misuse our wills, all people are evil.
1. Certainly, evil exists in people in different degrees and different forms; but all people have an enormous amount of evil in them.
2. But no person who possesses and uses his will is free from evil.
3. Therefore, all people have guilt.
C. Therein lies God’s basic problem in His association with people.
1. God is totally free from all evil.
2. All people have evil.
3. Because people are evil, they have guilt.
4. So how can a God who is right because He is free from evil associate with people who are guilty because they are incapable of being free from evil?
5. This is the basic work of justification: making people who have guilt “right” before the God who is free from evil.
II. For God to make a person “right,” God has to destroy the person’s guilt.
A. How does God destroy guilt when people are guilty?
1. This is the condensed version of what God does to make guilty people right:
a. God placed all evil committed (and to be committed) by people in the body of Jesus as Jesus died.
b. In that act, God made Jesus to be sin.
c. Every person who will trust and accept what God did in Jesus as he died is forgiven.
2. Forgiveness provided through Jesus’ blood literally destroys the sin.
a. By destroying the sin, God destroys the guilt.
b. Because the evil and the guilt of the forgiven person is destroyed, the person is right before God because he or she has been forgiven.
3. Every person needs this solution to guilt.
B. God’s primary concern in our becoming “right” centers in words and concepts that declare the destruction of our guilt.
1. We are cleansed from our sins; they are washed away by the blood of Jesus.
2. We are purified, made free of sin, through the blood of Jesus.
3. We received atonement through Jesus’ blood; the function of atonement is to remove sin.
4. By using the innocent blood of Jesus, God:
a. Redeems us–frees us from Satan by purchasing us for Himself.
b. Sanctifies us–sets us apart from evil for himself.
c. Justifies us–makes us right; looks at us as though the evil did not occur.
5. We are right because our guilt and evil have been destroyed in Christ.
a. We focus on correctness, the issue of right versus wrong.
b. God focuses the destruction of evil in us; the issue of guilt versus forgiveness.
c. God justifies us by destroying our guilt.
III. I want to share some things with you from the book of Romans (and we could share the same things from the book of Galatians).
A. I have a very specific objective tonight.
1. We are not trying to do an in depth study of these scriptures.
2. I am encouraging you to deepen your understanding of justification in Christ.
B. In the letter called Romans, you encounter the same problem that you encounter in many of the New Testament writings: the enormous misunderstanding that existed between Jewish Christians and non-Jewish Christians.
1. In the first two chapters of Romans Paul demonstrated that every person needs a means to be right before God that does not depend on human achievement.
a. Paul did a fascinating job of showing that humans cannot make themselves right before God.
b. We cannot make ourselves right by morals or by keeping laws.
c. Every human attempt to do so is based on human achievement, and all attempts result in our becoming extremely wicked or very judgmental.
2. The first scripture I call to your attention is Romans 3:19-25. Please take a Bible and read the verses as I paraphrase the central thoughts of the verses.
a. Many Jewish Christians were deeply offended by the true teaching that all people are saved by God’s grace.
i. “We have known the living God for 1400 years, and we had God’s law all that time.”
ii. “If now God saves people by grace, what was the purpose of all that? It is not fair. Being God’s people all those years means nothing.”
b. Verse 19: The primary purpose of God’s law was to make every person accountable before God. The focus of law is accountability, not forgiveness.
c. Verse 20: No one can be made right before God through law; law can only make us aware of the evil in us.
d. Verse 21: God created a means for people to be “right before God” that has nothing to do with law; in fact, the law itself declared that God would do this.
e. Verse 22: This new means of being right before God came into existence through Christ, and every person who trusts Christ can receive it.
f. Verse 23: Every person has failed God, every person is guilty of evil, so every person needs this new means of being “right before God.”
g. Verse 24: This new means of being right before God perfectly expresses God’s grace through the redemption that is possible in Christ to justify any person–make any person right before God.
h. Verse 25: That is precisely why God sent Jesus–Jesus came to die in our place so his blood and our faith in him could make us right before God.
3. The second scripture I call to your attention is Romans 4:1-8. Paul was still talking to the Jews attempting to help them understand.
a. Verse 1: The beginning of the Jewish nation was Abraham: why was Abraham right before God?
b. Verse 2: If Abraham was right before God (justified) because of his acts of obedience, then he had reason to take credit for his righteousness.
c. Verse 3: But Genesis 15:6 states that God considered Abraham to be righteous because of his faith.
d. Verse 4: If a person is right before God because of his deeds, then he earned righteousness; it is not the gift of God’s grace.
e. Verse 5: But if a person is right before God because he trusts God’s justification, then he is righteous because God made him righteous.
f. Verse 6-8: This is not a new understanding; it is as old as King David who wrote in Psalms 32:1,2:
i. Blessed is the person whose sins are covered through forgiveness;
ii. Blessed is the person that God refuses to hold accountable for his sin.
4. The third scripture I ask you to examine is Romans 8:31-34.
a. Being a Christian brought many hardships and suffering to those people.
b. Paul wrote that no matter how much they suffered, they could be absolutely certain that God never stopped loving them or deserted them.
c. Verse 31: God is greater than anything that exist; there is no enemy of the Christian that is greater than God.
d. Verse 32: God proved that He will do everything necessary to secure our salvation when He allowed His own son to die for us.
e. Verse 33: No one can use your guilt to separate you from God because it is God who justifies you. If God makes you right before Him, no one can make you wrong before Him.
f. Verse 34: If God refuses to condemn you, you cannot be condemned. It cannot happen because Christ died and was resurrected to return to God and intercede for you.
5. Romans 8 is the most powerful expression of the importance of justification for each of us.
a. God destroyed our guilt when we surrendered in faith to Jesus Christ.
b. Our guilt does not exist because we are justified; we are guilty, but God used Jesus to make us right before Him.
c. Satan cannot accuse us as he accused Job because of what God does for us in Christ.
d. Though we are not and never will be perfect, though we will always make mistakes, Satan cannot charge us or condemn us.
e. Why? Because God justifies and Jesus intercedes.
f. When Satan attempts to charge or condemn us, God’s response is simple: it never happened.
g. This is only reason that God refuses to see our sins: God destroyed our sins and our guilt with forgiveness in Christ.

Never, never, never think that you are right before God because you are good or that you are obedient. If you want to know the reality of your guilt, ask Satan. If you want to know the proper consequences for the evil in your life, ask Satan. You are not right before God because you have not sinned. You are right before God because God destroys your sin. He forgives you. He justifies you.

If God has washed your sins away with baptism, stop worrying about guilt. Turn loose of it. Focus on serving God.

Have your sins been destroyed?
Have you discovered this freedom?
Have you given yourself to Christ?
Used with permission from David Chadwell, West-Ark Church of Christ
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That is the end of our Bible lesson for today. Let’s look briefly at what Jesus really did for us on the cross. Please pray about this and I believe you will see the truth here.

Mercy not Sacrifice: If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. (Matthew 12:7) The following is a quote from mercynotsacrifice.blogspot.com You can also find this in the transitions series on llifestream.org and in the book by Wayne” He Loves Me” available for free at his web site in PDF and at great bookstores everywhere.

I stumbled upon Wayne Jacobsen when I was researching different atonement theories last year. The Cross as Cure Not Punishment came up in the google search results. It is part 4 in a series of talks called Transitions. He also talks about this in his book He Loves Me.

….the unanswerable questions should invite us to reconsider our distorted view of the cross. Since Adam’s fall we have come to picture God not as a loving Father inviting us to trust him, but an exacting sovereign who must be appeased. When we start from that vantage point we miss God’s purpose on the cross. For his plan was not to satisfy some need in himself at his Son’s expense, but rather to satisfy a need in us at his own expense.

And it was not his plan to satisfy the requirements of the Law…nor is the atonement about the fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system. Later on in the book he says….

But I am deeply bothered by the thought that in some way God was able to separate himself at the cross. The popular understanding of the cross seems to be that God the Father executed wrath on God the Son while standing at some discrete distance.

Such thinking not only denies the essence of God’s nature but then distorts what happened at the cross. Paul wrote that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ…” God was no distant observer, but a participant. He didn’t send Jesus to do what he would not do; but God himself acted through Jesus to bring about our redemption.

Some have taken Jesus’ cry that his Father had forsaken him to mean that at the darkest moment, the Father had to turn his back on the Son. God cannot bear to look on sin, they argue, so that when our sins were laid on him, God had to turn his face away from his Son.

God has never run from sinful humanity. He didn’t hide from Adam and Even in the Garden. They hid from him as he sought them out. It is not God who cannot bear to look on sin, but that we in our sin can’t bear to look on God. He’s not the one who hides. We are. God is powerful enough to look on sin and be untainted by it. He has always done so. He did so at the cross.

I could not agree with this more. God was IN Christ reconciling the world to himself. Kind of hard to turn his head away if he was (as the Amplified renders it) personally present. And is not our great God omnipresent? Is there anywhere he is not? How is it then that he could not look upon sin? Even if I make my bed in hell, behold, he is there? He has been looking on sin throughout the ages. He personally (in the incarnated Christ) walked among sin on a daily basis.

God is not a wimp…he is not too delicate to look upon sin. He does not have to turn away from sin and in fact there is no hell hole too dark, no evil place too wicked…nowhere that he will not go to rescue his children. The Cross should show us that….

He didn’t just deal with our sins, but with the very nature of sin itself. By allowing sin to touch his person through the Son, he would be able to prevail in himself over that which we were powerless to fight. Through the physical body of Jesus, sin came face to face with the power of God, and as we shall see, God prevailed over sin completely.
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This of course is my standard closing line. I am going to be experimenting with changing this over the next few Podcasts to give a more fluid feel to the lesson. Of course my point is to try and point out that you need a personal relationship with God for this all to work, right? I get that. And I hope you do as well. I wonder sometimes if I come off too harshly when I go through this. Your thoughts are welcome.

God gave us His word for his believers and you can count on the fact that he gave us the correct word. The Holy Spirit selected the precise words in our Bible, “not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Spirit teaches”, 1 Cor. 2:10?13.

The Holy Spirit never used the word “church” or any word which could correctly be translated “church”. The Holy Spirit used the Greek word “ekklesia”. A correct English translation would be assembly, congregation, the called out, my people, my flock or other words meaning the people of God.

In an effort to convey the correct idea, the first English translations did not use “church”,

William Tyndale’s translation used “congregation” which incurred the anger of the Catholics and the Church of England. Miles Coverdale, “The Great Bible” 1539, also used congregation. Alexander Campbell, “The Living Oracles” 1826, used “congregation” and Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible and others used “assembly”.

Why is the Greek not correctly translated in the King James Version? For the same reason they gave us “Easter” and “baptism”, because a correct translation would contradict their organizations and practices. At the time of the KJV translation, the Church of England and the Catholic Church had developed into institutional organizations which had man made rulers and had interposed their institutions as a mediator between man and God. The KJV was authorized by King James himself in 1604. One purpose for this translation was to combat prior translations which had correctly translated the Greek “ekklesia” into congregation or assembly.

The KJV translators were given 15 rules to follow. Three of those rules were: Rule 1. Alter the Bishop Bible as little as possible. (The Bishop Bible was an English translation made in 1566 also in an effort to combat prior translations) Rule 3: Old Ecclesiastical words will be kept, that is, “church” is not to be translated “congregation”. Rule 4: Words commonly used by ancient fathers and the Faith are to be kept.

What is the meaning of this? “Do not translate into words which would be in conflict with our current organization and practices”. so we got Easter instead of Passover, baptism instead of immersion, deacon instead of servant, presbytery instead of elder and church instead of congregation or assembly. They correctly translated “ekklesia” into congregation or assembly when it was used in reference to non-religious gatherings such as in Acts 19:32, 39, 41.

Christian is the only proper name given by inspired writers, Isa. 62:2, Acts 11:26, 1 Pet. 4:16. “Ekklesia” as used by the Holy Spirit means assembly, congregation, the called out, God’s people or those belonging to the Lord. Like “baptism” we may use “church” if all understand all the facts. However its use usually does not make the true meaning of the Holy Spirit’s “ekklesia” clear”.

I want you to know that no matter what your Faith is you are welcome here. My beliefs are based in the book of the Holy Bible. What I would like to point out is the Bible plainly states on many occasions including the very first Sermon in Acts Chapter 2: 14-39 that baptism is a necessity. I encourage you to read the entire chapter so you can see I am not picking a verse from here and there to make my point. I am reading from the most Holy Bible and telling the greatest story ever told.

Peter say’s at the conclusion of the Sermon in Acts chapter 2 verses 36-39 as quoted from the Message Translation “”All Israel, then, know this: There’s no longer room for doubt—God made him Master and Messiah, this Jesus whom you killed on a cross.”

Cut to the quick, those who were there listening asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers! Brothers! So now what do we do?” Peter said, “Change your life. Turn to God and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away—whomever, in fact, our Master God invites.”

You need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ and what he did for you. Hearing this righteous word brings the belief in Christ which is necessary for your salvation. Once you believe you must repent of your sins. Once you repent you must confess your Faith by making a public confession that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And be immersed (baptized) to receive the remission of your sins.

If you have a comment please email feedback@godsmessageontheweb.com , my name is Greg McAbee. Also be sure to check out Brian Hardin daily at www.dailyaudiobible.com and Wayne Jacobsen at www.lifestream.org.
Let’s pray together:
Most merciful God,
We confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
By what we have done,
And by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ,
Have mercy on us and forgive us;
That we may delight in your will,
And walk in your ways,
To the glory of your Name. Amen.

Good Day and God bless you.

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