The Gospel & Reconciliation

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The Gospel & Reconciliation

January 9, 2022

We continue in our Gospel Foundations series on the For The King podcast with this short episode on reconciliation. This concept is crucial when trying to understand the good news of Jesus Christ. We were once alienated from God because of our sin, but now, through Christ, we are reconciled back to God as Adam and Eve once were in the garden. Thanks for listening!

Key Texts:

* Romans 5:6-12

* 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

My guest joining me this week on the Sunday series is my brother Bryce. Bryce is getting his undergraduate degree in philosophy and hopes to get his MDiv. from a seminary after he completes his undergrad. He hopes to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day.

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Transcript

Hello everybody. Real quick preface to this episode you're about to hear. Bryce and I walk through reconciliation and the gospel.

I hope you're looking forward to it. Real quick note about an updated content for the podcast and for the platform and for what I'm doing is on the podcast website, for the kingpodcast.com. I have added a exclusive content subscription to the book reviews that I have been releasing on the podcast. So if you go back in the podcast archives, I'm going to leave all those public.

But from now on, if you want to hear the monthly book review that I've been doing, you can subscribe for as little as $2 a month. And I think it'd be a great way for us to partner together where you can support me and the project and the labor that I'm putting into the podcast as well as maybe hear some good book suggestions and things that I'm reading so you can get to know me more and I feel like you're a part of the community for the king community. So I want to build up the community.

I want you guys to feel like you're a part of something. So I would appreciate if you guys would partner with me and maybe get some extra content. I hope you enjoyed this next episode with Bryce and I talking about reconciliation.

Soli Deo Gloria. If we're going to have the ministry of reconciliation, that implies that we have a ministry of proclaiming the sin of man, right? That we look to the law of God and recognize that we do not measure up. When Bryce and I talked about a few episodes back about this great transaction, double imputation that we see here.

He made him who knew no sin to be sinned that we might become the righteousness of God. Paul is reminding them this is that ministry of reconciliation, that message that we're sending out, that Christ is sending us out as ambassadors from his kingdom that we talked about that is going to go to the ends of the earth. So evangelism is that mechanism by which the knowledge of God covers the earth.

Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

Backing to verse 14, "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Welcome to the For The King podcast. Thank you for tuning in and listening to the words that Bryce and I have to say to you today. So that verse, to interact with it a little bit, because we always like to do that, seems to be saying that the entire earth, this ball of rock, will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

That sounds like an all-encompassing reality. Right? Over the whole earth. I wonder if that's going to happen in a moment or if it might be something similar to a mustard seed that slowly grows and then covers the earth.

Isn't that like a gondi or something? I thought it was, was it Confucius? It was one of those Eastern religions. Actually, psych? Was that the Lord Jesus Christ teaching a parable to his disciples? That the kingdom of God is knowing, you know, the people obviously know the king, right? The knowledge of the Lord cover the waters of the sea. So if the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, then I'll probably interpret this text as slowly growing and then covering the whole face of the earth.

That makes sense, actually. If you were to exegete the whole, the passage with the whole scripture. Oh, I don't use scripture to the scripture.

Oh, I actually don't believe that. Interesting. Did you learn that at Wheaton College or what was that? A seminary, Princeton seminary.

It's funny, Princeton used to be so solid. I know. Like some of our favorite dudes, Princeton.

Yeah. Do you want to feel it? I know. All right.

A little bit of friendly banter, but we are postmill here, folks. Join in on the correct interpretation of the scriptures concerning the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, our king. So we appreciate king.

Yeah. That's a, what did I say? You said our king. Yeah.

Our king. Yeah. You're right.

You're saying your king. And their king. And even if you're an atheist listening, he's your king.

Whoever it is, yeah. Could be king or, I don't know. We're in like 10 different countries now.

I'm dead serious, dude. Reaching the nations. I know it's wild.

The nations are being reached. I think most of them are like somebody clicks on it from that nation and then they don't listen. But there is a couple from Germany that like legit listen.

So yeah, it's awesome. So if you're listening, people from Germany, we appreciate you. I'm happy to have you here.

So on this episode of the gospel foundations, we are going to talk about reconciliation. So we've been talking about these foundational building blocks, understanding of the good news, the gospel, the good news to us humans on earth. With our sin as frail as we may be, we need good news.

I know I need it. I know you need it. We see obviously the depravity of mankind on a daily basis, even in our own hearts, as we are continually doing foolish things.

And maybe our hearts are so hardened that we don't even know we're doing evil, foolish things. But I want to implore you that what we're talking about today is very, very important to the state of your soul. And if you don't know Christ, listen to these words.

And at the end of it, I pray that it cuts you deep and you are convicted, that you need to be reconciled to God. That is your biggest issue. We do need to be reconciled to each other in a sense, but your biggest issue and the thrust of this passage and second Corinthians are going to be talking about today is to be reconciled to God.

So keep that in mind as we move forward. And I pray that you really do hear us here and what we're saying. So in second Corinthians, verse, sorry, second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17, because I want there to be it's coming on the heels of a passage.

We, we're going to get to 21, which we had already talked about. But this is what comes before that, which is grounded in verse 21. So starting in verse 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God.

There's your Calvinism right there. It's there. It's established.

All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ. God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sent who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Amen. So for our sake, it's a reminder Paul brings that at the end as a reminder of that ministry of reconciliation we have. So when Bryce and I talked about a few episodes, episodes back about this great transaction, double imputation that we see here, he made him who knew no sin to be sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

Paul is reminding them this is that ministry of reconciliation, that message that we're sending out, that Christ is sending us out as ambassadors from his kingdom that we talked about that is going to go to the ends of the earth. So evangelism is that mechanism by which the knowledge of God covers the earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those in the kingdom of God. Yeah.

So that's why I was imploring you who if you don't know Christ, listening, be reconciled to God. That's why Paul says that he's imploring you because you do not want to be caught on the wrong side of this tidal wave of God's kingdom that's going to cover as the seas cover the earth. There's a tidal wave coming and you want to be in the arc of Christ.

You want to have, you want to have, hit yourself in him for this storm coming. So this ministry of reconciliation, I want to note there are a lot of kind of social gospel presentations of this text that the main thrust of it is the ministry of racial reconciliation in America. The racial problems that we have in America is addressed in this text exactly.

It is as a byproduct of it that we will not, obviously racism is a sin, that will be addressed if we are reconciled to God. But if we're trying to be reconciled to each other without being reconciled to God, that does that will not create true reconciliation. There will always be animosity between people and we'll just spring up some other artificial arbitrary difference between humans to hate each other.

If it's not race then it'll be classism. If it's not classism it'll be I don't know a host of things. I can't even, I can't, there's many reasons why humans don't like other humans.

And if we're not reconciled to God we will just conjure up another reason not to be reconciled to each other. So the main thrust of this passage is the oldest passed away, the newest come. You've been reconciled to God if you know Christ and we've been reconciled to God in such a way that we would go out and have that same message which is the good news which is why this is central.

This is a foundation to the gospel that you would tell somebody that you need to be reconciled to God because the antithesis of reconciliation is enmity. You have been put at odds with God. Okay so I've been reading one for a little bit.

Is there anything you want to pick up? Yeah one thing to bring up is in Psalm 51 David prays to God and says against you and you alone oh Lord have I sinned. And this is the point of this passage here right we can dispel of all racial reconciliation because we have sinned against God. God alone is who we have sinned against and we need to be reconciled to him because the state of our soul is blackened.

It's not like John Locke said where we start off neutral in a blank slate. Right we start off as a blackened slate. We are not neutral we are against an anti-God from birth.

Right in sin David prays in Psalm 31 and sin was I conceived. Right he was born in iniquity. Right so there's this estrangement this enmity as Rocky said that we have with God.

But notice the glories of this passage that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself and he was not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. So notice our trespasses have been done away with. We've been reconciled to God and this is another episode but just a quick allusion Romans 5 1 says that we now have peace with God through Christ.

Right we're reconciled to him there's no longer enmity there's no longer strife. We've been reconciled to God on the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ. Kind of an ejector part and that's why we started this series in redemption in our fall.

Yeah. That is when Bryce was reading that verse just there not reconciling the world to himself not counting how again what again how does he connect those two thoughts reconciling the world to himself by doing what not counting their trespasses against them and forgiving them. Our fall you must have the bad news.

It's right here in the text. What's the good news of reconciliation to God is what our trespasses are not counted against us. You must preach on sin.

You must tell people about sin. You must call them to repent. Yeah.

If you don't do that you have no gospel. That's all I want to say. That you can't.

Reconciliation literally mandates that there's a strange but you can't have you can't be reconciled to God if you're not estranged from him. Yeah. If there's no fall.

Yeah. So you like Rocky said yeah we if we're going to have the ministry of reconciliation that implies that we have a ministry of proclaiming the sin of man right that we look to the Lord God and recognize that we do not measure. Yes.

So you're going to the Romans right. Yeah. OK.

So in Romans 5 I'm going to start in verse 6 and just read this whole thing because it's just so good. 6 verses 6 through 11 it says for while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly for one will scarcely die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die. But God shows his love for us and that while we were sinners there it is or sin while we were sinners Christ died for us since therefore we now have been justified by his blood much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God for if while we were enemies we were reconciled we were enemies and now we're reconciled that's that they follow you're an enemy and then you reconcile the God by the death of his son much more now that we were that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life more than that we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation you guys catch that we rejoice in God there has been something amazing that has happened our souls have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb and now we should have joy we should rejoice in the God of our salvation right to God alone be the glory because God alone is our salvation and and this is so beautiful with reconciliation we were enemies of God and even still while we were enemies Jesus showed us such a way that we love our enemies how did he love his enemies he died for them redeemed them made them into a beautiful spotless image and this is this is the glories of the gospel right here we were enemies and we are now reconciled and he loved them not by telling them they didn't have sin but telling them they had sin yeah and that he must go die for them and if there's anybody who lacks a assurance of their salvation you find all the assurance that you need in Christ if you are trusting in Jesus if you have believed that he is the son of God who died for your sins and you believe in it you've repented of your sins and put your faith in Christ you're saved you're reconciled to God so if you struggle with assurance you can rest assure that Christ has saved you if you have repented and believed in him there's your assurance it's not based on you like Rocky had already mentioned God is the one who's worked these things so if you've noticed his transformation if you've been truly changed you're saved God has done a miraculous work in your life you are an enemy and in Christ has conquered you the king has put you under his feet he's taken dominion over your life and he has now made you into something brand spanking new brand spanking new brand spanking new that's a common phrase no it is it's just i didn't expect you to go there brand spanking new baby yep and and as my wife says it be what it be bb it be what i be bb brand spanking new and i be what it be bb wow what a way to end that just really good last five minutes of your speech my monologue your monologue that's good good good i'm good i've done good by blood not inherently good yeah made good there we are all right um yeah i think we walked through the text so uh thanks for tuning in to the for the king podcast you can check us out on facebook i have a i have a website for the king podcast.com and you can reach out to me at for the king podcast at gmail.com if you have a question or an inquiry jude chapter one because there's one chapter verse 24 and 25 now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy to the only god our savior through jesus christ our lord be glory majesty dominion and authority before all time and now and forever amen solely dale Gloria do do do do do do

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