Thursday, July 19, 2012

the greatest reconciliation


...if your entire life is best characterized by James 4:1-4—no God, God is not in your thoughts or in your heart.  You go day to day, decision to decision, and somehow God’s not in the equation, then what this passage is telling you is that you are the enemy of God.  You are resisting His plan and He is resisting yours.  But Jesus Christ—listen—made peace through the blood of His cross.  It’s called reconciling enemies... I love this text.  This is so important.  Here’s what Jesus did.  Here’s what Jesus still does.  In Colossians 1:19…  For in Him—that’s Jesus—all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of His cross.  And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, became a minister.  The gospel, the good news, what Jesus came to do in this world is to die for our sins, to die, to make right what has been made wrong. 

Everything bad in the world is a result of sin.  Everything.  I mean you talk about tsunamis or floods or tornados, that’s what we call natural catastrophes--sin.  I mean you talk about cancer, death.  You want to talk about divorce.  You want to talk about wars in homes and in churches.  Listen to me, everything bad in the world is a result of sin.  But, listen.  The worst thing that sin caused is alienation of God’s creation from Him the Creator.  Alienated in our minds and in our hearts because of our evil deeds and Jesus came to make that right by dying on the cross in our place.  So that if James 4:1-4 is what best kind of characterizes your life, you need to come to the cross of Jesus Christ and trust what He did and ask Him to make right what sin has made wrong.  

taken from a sermon dated 5/13/2012 by Pastor Jeff Tague at Calvary Baptist Church, Plainfield, IN

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