Luke 24 - Prophecy Fulfillment and Hope
Tom Shrader begins a three-week Incarnation series by examining how Jesus opened the Scriptures to the discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus, showing them that all Old Testament prophecy pointed to Him. He traces the first Messianic prophecy in Genesis 3:15 through to its fulfillment in Christ's virgin birth and sacrificial death. The teaching emphasizes that Christmas and Easter are inseparable parts of God's eternal plan to reconcile sinners to Himself through Jesus.
“We make a huge mistake if we separate Christmas from Easter.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: The Incarnation
Recorded: 2011
Duration: 43 min
Themes: prophecy, hope, fulfillment, incarnation, christmas, easter, scripture, messiah, new believer, first christmas as christian, discouraged, seeking meaning, questioning faith, spiritual seeker, young adult, growing in faith
Scripture: Luke 24:13-35, Genesis 3:14-15, Matthew 1:18-23, Acts 2:22-24, Romans 5:1-10, John 5:39, Acts 8:35, 1 John 3:8, Acts 4:12
Theological Themes: messianic prophecy, christology, biblical interpretation, old testament fulfillment, virgin birth, atonement, redemption, covenant theology
Full Transcript
Open your Bibles to Luke chapter 24. If you don't have a Bible, we probably don't have enough to go around based on this new setup, but just raise your hand and they'll get you there. If you get a Bible from us, you're going to open it to page 69 once you get to the New Testament.
We start today a three-week series called The Incarnation. What we're doing is looking at the promise that God would indeed send to us a Messiah. Then we'll look next week at the life of the Messiah, Jesus in particular, what can we learn from Him? And then on the third week, we'll talk about the theological truth of Him being fully God and fully man and the reality of that, what it does in our lives. And that will lead us up to Christmas Eve service.
Just in terms of way of teaching, let me remind you, Justin will be here. Justin's teaching here next week. Tim will be teaching at the Tempe mission. I'll be teaching in Arcadia next week. So Justin will be teaching here and we look forward to that. We had great response and we're starting to try to allow each of the different missions to experience as much of the teaching team as we can. So just so you know, in terms of that initial launch, getting ready, things are going real well and we look forward to January 9th when we'll all be out here celebrating together and then beginning the following week, we'll start our study in the book of James.
More Than Just the Manger
What we're looking at today is not just the event of the birth of Christ, we'll go ahead and call it Christmas, I'm alright with that, but bigger than that. It's not just the manger, but it's to go from the manger through His life to the cross to the resurrection and what that means for us.
So familiar territory for many, for some of you, and we need to remember this, there's always people for whom this is brand new stuff. I remember my first Christmas as a Christian and I had been obviously through, I had been through 29 Christmases, but this was my first as a Christian and I just remember everything that Christmas was different. The songs were different and by that I mean they were the same songs but I understood what they meant. It was just a wonderful time. So you may be a person who's in that process right now, it may be that this year, in the last 12 months, God saved you, and we're excited that you're here, we're excited that you're growing and that God has you here and I can tell you this will be a really special Christmas, you'll remember it.
But the Christmas changes, I think, if I really understand Christ. Years ago, there was a quote I used in one of our Christmas Eve services and my daughter Haley loved it and this is back when it wasn't as easy to generate something in the computer and graphics as it is now, but I remember really working hard myself on this and put it on a background and make it cool and frame it and Haley had a bookshelf in her room and I remember just sitting it on her bookshelf and here's what it said, she loved it, I did too, that's why I used it.
The Other Side of Christmas
Here's the side of Christmas that isn't often told. Those soft little hands fashioned by the Holy Spirit in Mary's wombs were made so that nails might be driven through them. Those baby feet, pink and unable to walk, would one day walk up a dusty hill to be nailed to a cross. That sweet infant's head with sparkling eyes and eager mouth was formed so that someday men might force a crown of thorns onto it. That tender body, warm and soft, wrapped in swaddling clothes, would one day be ripped open by a spear. And the last sentence is, Jesus was born to die.
So that's what we want to do. We make a huge mistake if we separate Christmas from Easter. What I want to do this morning is to go back really even before the foundations of the earth so that we can see that Christmas was part of God's eternal plan. Just like the cross, just like the resurrection.
The Road to Emmaus
In Luke chapter 24 verse 13, we arrive at a time when Jesus has been crucified and He's risen. And there's two men, two people who are on the road to a village named Emmaus. It's about seven miles from Jerusalem. Verse 14, and they were talking with each other about all the things that had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them. But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him and He said to them, "What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you walk?" And they stood still looking sad.
And one of them, named Cleopas, answered to Him, "Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem unaware of the things that have happened here these days?" And He said to them, "What things?" They said to Him, "The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word, in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him up to the sentence of death and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things have happened. But also some of the women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning, they did not find His body and they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women had said, but Him they did not see."
So make sure you get the scene here. Here we are walking these two people, Cleopas, some scholars, and it is speculation, but sometimes that is fun, we don't hang our hat on it. There is a Cleopas that we meet in John chapter 19 verse 25, and he is actually Jesus' uncle. It might be that Cleopas, we don't know. These two are walking along and they are devastated, confused, filled with grief, uncertain what has happened, disappointed. They probably felt just like this, it would have been something. The reason I know the feeling is because
I have experienced it myself five times this year now. So they are coming along and they are just filled with grief. This is kind of interesting to me. The empty tomb does not provide them any comfort, it only adds to the confusion. Because they are not certain if the body has been stolen by grave robbers, the Romans.
We say this every Easter to you. It is not that we celebrate the empty tomb, we celebrate the risen Christ. They encounter this man, and He said, what are you guys talking about? They begin to stop, and they are going, are you the only guy that is here that has not heard about this? To me, a little sarcasm. So we have sarcasm, grief, confusion, depression, disappointment. So just a normal day.
Their Misplaced Hope
They share about their hope. Do you see it? It is tucked in verse 21. We were hoping that He was going to redeem Israel. We thought this was it. They were looking for a temporal Messiah. They had been told that there is one who is coming who is going to make everything right. They were thinking, and we understand it, economically, politically, earthly kingdom.
We see people like that all the time. I will have people that will say to me, I tried Jesus, and it did not work. Kind of like, I tried that Crest, and I am a Colgate guy. I am not trying to belittle that at all. What I am saying is, somebody either shared with them a false gospel, or left an unrealistic expectation with them.
If you think coming to Christ solves all of your earthly problems, you are really mistaken. You are still going to have computer chip lighting boards that do not work. You are still going to get cancer. You are still going to have people that you love who die. You are going to look around the world and see it is senseless, and so will these things that happen to you. You will start to engage in this discussion about, why me? I am a follower of Christ. A follower of Christ does not guarantee me a simple, easy, smooth life.
So maybe you have been preached a gospel, or just somehow just extrapolated and said, you know, I bet if I come to Jesus all my problems go away. They don't. You have perspective on those problems now. Now you look at your life in light of eternity.
Jesus Opens the Scriptures
So they share all of this with Jesus. Verse 25, He says, said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary for Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?" He reminds them that Jesus regularly, and the frequency of it, and it seems to me the intensity of it, increases as He arrived closer to the cross. He said, I told you this was going to happen.
Then He does this. He sat down and He begins with Moses and all the prophets and He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all of scripture. He took the Old Testament and He opened it up and He said, look at this and it all points to me.
At one point in Jesus' ministry He was confronted by the Pharisees and Jesus confronts them. It is recorded in John 5:39, "You diligently study the scriptures because you think by them you will possess eternal life. These scriptures testify about me." When Philip encounters the Ethiopian eunuch on the road and the eunuch is sitting and reading from Isaiah, Luke tells us in Acts 8:35, "Philip began with that very passage from the scripture and told him the good news about Jesus." Isaiah was talking about Jesus.
Peter is in the house of the Gentile Cornelius and Peter records these words in his sermon, "Jesus commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the one whom God appointed judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about Him, that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness."
Christ the Central Son of Scripture
J.C. Ryle speaks of this very verse and he talks about how do we explain this? He goes on and essentially says we have to understand that the scripture points to Jesus. Here is a summary paragraph, let it be settled principle in our minds in reading the Bible that Christ is the central son, S-U-N, of the whole book. The key of Bible knowledge is Jesus Christ.
So what I want to do is go back and take one prophecy. It's the first of the prophecies. They say there are about 62 prophecies that speak of the Messiah all fulfilled in Jesus Christ. As kind of a side note to that, fulfilled prophecy is to me one of the compelling arguments for the authenticity of scripture.
The Evidence of Fulfilled Prophecy
Hugh Ross, interesting character, we had him come and speak years ago at a place and I had never met him before. A friend of mine said you ought to have this guy speak and he was hugely unimpressive. He got up to the podium and I'm going to do this just exactly like he did it. "My name is Hugh Ross and since I was seven years old I wanted to be an astrophysicist." So I said to the guy next to me, what's an astrophysicist? He said I think that's the guy that invented AstroTurf. So apparently Hugh at seven was sharper than we were.
He wrote an article called "Fulfilled Prophecy, Evidence of the Reliability of the Bible." He makes the point, what happened to Hugh as a scientist is he set out to debunk religion. Not just Christianity, every religion. So he noted that any religion worth anything has a sacred book. He said if I can take a sacred book and I can find an error in that book, therefore that book is not perfect and I can dismiss it.
So he started to work his way through it. He saved the Bible until last because he assumed it might be the most challenging and he worked his way through every book. He had no problems. He came to the Bible and his own testimony is, I couldn't find anything in there that was error.
He talks about having 2,500 prophecies in the scripture, 2,000 of which have come to pass, fulfilled to the letter, 500 not yet because they're futuristic. In this little pamphlet he cites 13 prophecies that were specific over a period of many years from many authors pointing to the Messiah and Jesus fulfilling all 13 of these prophecies. Ross writes
The Mathematical Impossibility of Chance Fulfillment
Since these 13 prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence of all 13 is about 1 in 10 to the 138th power. 138 equals the sum of all the exponents of the 10 in the probability estimates above.
For the sake of putting the figure into perspective, this probability can be compared to the statistical chance that the second law of thermodynamics will reverse in a given situation. For example, that a gas engine will refrigerate itself during the combustion cycle or heat will flow from a cold body to a hot body—the chance of that equals 1 in 10 to the 80th power.
Stating it simply, which I was happy to read, based on these 13 prophecies alone, the Bible record is said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics. My next sentence is my favorite: "Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimate of probability of the chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited herein." I'm just going to go with his. I don't think I'll work out my own.
Here's the point: You look at these prophecies, and I do think they speak, among other things, to the reliability of Scripture.
The First Prophecy: The Promise of a Redeemer
If we want to go, and we're not going through all of them, I'm going to take one prophecy and go all the way to the front of the book, to the book of Genesis, to the first prophecy regarding Jesus, and specifically His virgin birth.
Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2: God's created, man is in the garden, Adam and Eve are naked, unashamed. Chapter 3, Genesis chapter 3, we get the explanation for how the world is and why the world is the way that it is. Man sinned, and when man sinned, he brought death into the world.
Adam and Eve are in paradise, naked, unashamed. The serpent comes, tempts them, they eat. Immediately they recognize their deficiency, they recognize that they're naked, they attempt to cover themselves up, and by the end of chapter 3, God has taken away their leaf covering and replaced it with a skin, with a sacrifice covering, with a death, blood sacrifice.
God's Curse and Promise
When God confronts Adam and Eve, they hide, then they try to excuse their sin, and finally, they say that they ate. Verse 14: "The Lord God said to the serpent"—so here is God's curse to the serpent. He's going to deal with Adam, He's going to deal with Eve.
"Cursed are you more than any cattle, and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go, and the dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel."
When we get to verse 15, we come to what one author calls "the most remarkable verse in the Bible." It's called by the early church fathers the "pro evangelium," which means "the first preaching of the gospel." It's the clearest promise, the first appearing in the Bible of a coming Redeemer.
Grace in the Midst of Judgment
Another author writes, "As God addresses Satan with a curse, there is so much grace in the heart of God and forgiveness that is so consistent with His nature." The God who is by nature a Savior, God who desires to save sinners and forgive them, puts the very curse in a glimmer of the gospel. Grace shines through the curse of Satan.
Martin Luther, referring to Genesis 3:15, writes, "This text embraces and comprehends within itself everything noble and glorious that is to be found anywhere in Scripture."
One author, talking about the verse and taking us through it, comments on Luther's comment. He says this: "Now we understand when Luther is reading the verse, and he says that everything that can be comprehended in the purposes of God can be found somewhere in this verse. Great doctrines of regeneration, new birth, transformation, conversion, doctrines of forgiveness, doctrines of grace, the wonderful truth of election even are found in this verse."
Amazingly, the gospel with all its saving purposes finds its entrance into the Bible in the curse on Satan. The gospel is first given then, not as a promise to man, but as a judgment to Satan.
The Seed of the Woman
The key phrase in here is, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, your seed, her seed." It's the only time that we see in Scripture this reference to the seed of the woman.
Now clearly I'm certain that over a period of thousands of years this was always something that was a little bit foggy, but we're sitting here 6,000 years later and we can look back and we go, "There's the picture." And all of the scholars will point to it and say, here's what's meant in this phrase, "her seed." It's God pointing out that this will be someone who comes not from a lineage of man, but from the lineage of God. He will be born in a supernatural way. Again, like I said, we've got an advantage of time that they didn't have.
One of the authors commenting on this writes, "Without a doubt we have here the most remarkable prophecy of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are those today who tell us the virgin birth is not important, but in fact it's one of the most important doctrines concerning the Lord. Here we have a remarkable prophecy which cannot be explained in any other terms than it finds its fulfillment in the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ."
The Uniqueness of This Promise
This concept of the seed of the woman is unique. Nowhere else in the Bible do you find such an expression occurring. Everywhere else in the Scripture, the descendant is reckoned through the male line. It is the seed of the man that is the line of descendancy and genealogy of the Bible. But this is different. He's saying, "No, something's going to happen here."
And when you stop, just stop and think about this: This is all part of God's plan from the very beginning. It's not that God had a plan A, and then Adam screwed it up and He went to plan B, and then he screwed it up more, and now there's plan C, D, Q, R, A3, A8. God had a plan. And we've said it to you many times, and it really
Genesis tells the beautiful story of God's redemptive plan. In my Bible, Genesis 1 and 2 is on a single page—the story of creation. Genesis 3 is on page 3—the story of man screwing it up. Then from page 4 through page 1268 is the story of God making it right again.
God from the beginning said, "We know there's sin, we know it separates you from me, but I have a plan." It's the plan of redemption. Over a period of thousands of years, you'll see pictures of that plan. You'll see things like the sacrifice of the Lamb and the holy days that point to the one that's coming. But behold, there will be a point in time where one can cry out—even he was prophesied, the coming of John the Baptist, who would cry out in the wilderness, "Make way the path of the Lord, behold, right there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."
The Story of Redemption
When we look at the scripture, we see this beautiful story unfold of God's redemption, God's plan, God's grace and God's mercy. Right here in Genesis 3, when God is fully entitled to judgment, to wrath, to death, they've been told, they've been warned, it's been clear. God didn't stutter, He didn't stammer. From the very beginning, He said, "If you eat this, you're going to die."
God at that moment could have sent Adam and Eve and every other person that's ever lived into eternal separation from Him. But God in His grace and mercy provides salvation for you and me. There's 61 other prophecies there in the Old Testament.
Jesus Destroys the Works of the Devil
Let's move now to the New Testament, to the Gospel of Matthew. Satan came into the world and he brought with him sin and rebellion and destruction. John tells us in 1 John 3:8 that the Son of God, Jesus, appeared for the purpose that He might destroy the works of the devil. That's what happens when Jesus comes into this earth.
Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, begins this genealogy of Jesus. When we get to verse 18, we see a very human experience. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they'd come together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away. But when he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.'"
Matthew 1:22: "Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and she shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel,' which means God with us."
Scripture Points to Jesus
Here's the fulfillment. Jesus is walking along with these two, and He takes the scriptures—Moses, prophets, all the way through—and says, "They point to me." If I want to understand the Old Testament, I have to understand it in the context of, here comes Jesus. This is what it points to.
The Human Side of the Story
Here's this very human episode, and every time I talk about it, I feel, and you probably can say amen to this, inadequate in the presentation of it. I'm afraid that we're so familiar that the minute I begin reading, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows," you start to go, "Whatever, we've heard this, let's sing Silent Night." I mean, that's how that goes, and I'm okay with all of that. I understand it's familiar.
My fear is that, number one, it's familiar, and number two, we sterilize it. We sterilize it from the human side of it. There was a movie that came out, like three years ago, maybe four years ago, about Mary. I don't know what it was, but it was really good. A friend of mine didn't like it, I liked it, because there was so much of it from the human side.
I mean, here's Joseph, here's Mary, they're engaged to be married. Now you may look at that and go, "Why do they use the word husband there?" Because once they were engaged, it was as though they were married, though they did not live together, they did not come together physically. In fact, to break off an engagement, you need a formal decree of separation or divorce.
The Reality of the Situation
So here's this young man, and this young girl, maybe 12, 13, 14 years old. She becomes pregnant, so you've got her trying to figure out, "What the heck is going on here?" Joseph—okay, boys—Mary comes to you and says, "I'm pregnant," and you're going to go, "Who was it? Him? Him? Mort. It was Mort. I never trusted Mort." And she's going to go, "No, no, no, no, no."
Here you go, dads, your daughter's going to come to you and say, "Hey, this is awkward, but I'm pregnant." And the dad's going to go, "I knew, I didn't trust that Joseph from the beginning. I didn't approve of this engagement." I mean, that's just how the flow's going to be, isn't it? And so when your daughter said to you, "Dad, I'm pregnant," and you go, "Who was it?" And she says, "The Holy Spirit." That's a tough deal, right? That's not easy. Go ahead, don't make it human, let it be human.
So when the angel appears to Joseph, the angel says, "Do not be afraid"—not of me, not of that—"to take Mary as your wife. Because in fact, what she's telling you and what's going on is true. She is indeed pregnant, and it's the act of the Holy Spirit coming upon her. And you're going to have a son. And you're going to name this son Jesus. You're going to name this son Jesus because He has a mission. He's here for a purpose, a reason, to save His people from their sin." The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil. That's what He's going to do.
God's Eternal Plan Revealed
Hymn we, that Christmas carol we sing, "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." Here they come together. This is the fulfillment of that prophecy. Matthew tells us this. This took place looking back at all of these other prophecies. Matthew quotes Old Testament sixty times, more than any other gospel writer, maybe any other New Testament writer aside from Paul. This is the fulfillment.
When we come, we understand the Lord. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God comes to earth in this supernatural, but at the same time very natural way, and He is fully God and fully man, like us in every way except sin. Jesus comes, why? Because we need a Savior. He comes to save His people from their sin.
Did He accomplish this? That's what we're going to drive to, but as I was putting the lesson together, it occurred to me there's some of you that maybe are in town visiting people, and we're not going to see you again, or you're here from the other side of town, you're just with friends or whatever. Somehow God got you here today, and I think it probably was important for me to spend more time on prophecies, but I didn't want to do that at the expense of not being able to close the loop for you and to give you the message that you're going to hear four times in the next three weeks.
Peter's Powerful Proclamation
Turn to the book of Acts, chapter 2, it's page 92. Acts chapter 2, verse 22, and Peter is delivering this amazing sermon. God's going to use it to save thousands of people. He's explaining the day of Pentecost, so he quotes from the Old Testament, and then he begins to share the gospel in Acts chapter 2, verse 22.
"Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. This man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death."
This was God's plan from the beginning. How long has this plan been in place? We can trace it all the way back to Genesis 3:15. It's been God's plan from the very beginning. So when we get to Easter, and we get to Good Friday, we start asking, who killed Jesus? The Father did, and the Son voluntarily laid down His life. It's God's predetermined plan before the foundations of the earth. There's no other way for man to be saved.
Jesus: The Only Way
I didn't mention the book pack—there's probably about 80 of them left, and there's five or six books in there. We do it for you every Christmas where we put together five or six books, usually of value, in this case about 85 bucks, and we put in a gift card and sell it for $40. They're not just junk books. There's a book in there on daily devotionals for families, and I've had three or four dads say they're using it, they have been using it, love it. There's the new Tim Keller book, but there's this little book, and I hadn't seen it before.
It's from 2010, a little book called "Jesus, the Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to Be Saved?" by John Piper. I have a friend who is really, really, really smart and has read a ton of stuff. I had breakfast with him on Thursday, and he had gotten the book pack last Sunday and purchased it and kind of discovered this little book, 123 small pages. He had this thing all yellowed up and marked down, and he's saying, "This is really, really, really good stuff." When you're all done, here's what he says: Jesus is the only way.
See, that was God's predetermined plan. There is no other way. That's what Peter and John say, and it's recorded in Acts chapter 4, verse 12: there's no other way to the Father but through the Son.
Victory Over Death
In that passage in front of you, verse 24: "But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power." That's what Paul writes: "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
There's a song that you hear all the time, another one of the Christmas carols. So I'm listening the other day to a secular radio station, the Christmas station, and I'm hearing this song: "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, glory to the newborn King! Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled! Joyful, all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies, with th' angelic host proclaim, 'Christ is born in Bethlehem!'" It's just going out, and I'm sure there's just a bunch of people singing along. It's a catchy little tune.
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, glory to the newborn King! Peace on earth and mercy mild"—here's the sentence I want to focus on—"God and sinners reconciled."
The Heart of the Gospel
See, that's the story. That's what Jesus talked to them about when He opened the Scriptures from Moses to the prophets. He said it talked about Him. When we go back to Genesis 3:15 and we come all the way forward, they all point to Him. What about Him? His death and His resurrection. Through His death and resurrection, God and sinner reconciled.
Don't we say this to you all the time? You intuitively know—I'm going to say by the time you're twelve, but it's probably way before that. By the time you're twelve, you understand something is really wrong with you and with the world. You may not know what it is; you just know something's not right. It just doesn't seem right. What's wrong is Genesis 3: we sinned. The only thing that can make it right is Christ's death and resurrection.
One more term. Romans chapter 5, it's page 121. God and sinner reconciled. Romans chapter 5, verse 1: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have..."
So he said now I have peace—I have not the peace of God, that's what I have, because I have peace with Him. Now my life can exhibit love, joy, peace, because I'm in right relationship. I have peace with Him. The hostilities that occurred between us have been resolved—God and sinner reconciled.
How did it happen? Here in Romans 5 verse 6: "While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "But God demonstrated His own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10: "For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." God put us back in right relationship, reconciled.
Reconciliation Requires Previous Hostility
So if I say to you that Bob and I have been reconciled, if that's all the information you have about either one of us in our relationship, I say Bob and I are reconciled. From that you can deduce accurately there were some pre-existing hostilities. Something was wrong, something was wrong in the relationship.
Here's what happens in Genesis 3: man sins, all sinners now occupy the world. Every one of us, our heart is now filled with sin. We're by nature sinners. We're separated from God. The wage of sin is death. I'm separated from God. And as far back as essentially creation, God has said I'm going to provide a way for salvation. It's going to be through the virgin birth. It's going to be through Jesus. He is here to save His people from their sin.
A Source of Great Joy
I guess I'm saying two things. For those of us who know this, this is a source—I know it's familiar—but it's a source of great joy. The amazing love. You sang this, I could sing of His love forever. Sometimes it feels like you do, huh? I could sing of His love forever.
You know what happens at the end of the story, by the way, in Luke 24? Jesus opens their eyes, they see who He is, and they race back to tell people about Him and what He's done in their life. There's a so what to that.
I have a friend who talks about when he first became a follower of Christ, and he says, "I was ignorance on fire." Everywhere I went and everybody I talked to, it became an occasion to share the gospel. That should be—isn't it—that should be the most natural thing in the world.
Our Testimony
Every time I'm watching some sort of infomercial on television, every one of them as part of that infomercial has a segment that's called a testimony. "I took this pill and I feel better. I did these crunches—this is all theoretical now—I did these crunches and look at these, a six-pack."
This is what I was, this is what I am, this is how it happened, and now we can say that. This is who I was: I was a sinner. This is how I am: I'm reconciled. In fact, He calls me a saint. This is how it happened: Jesus came, lived, and died, and there was a moment in time where I believed in Him.
That's the whole incarnation. God comes in the flesh, prophesied for thousands of years, fulfilled in Christ, now applied to our heart. That's the good news. That's Emmanuel, God with us. The Word became flesh, dwelt among us. We can see Him. It was Jesus.
Do You Know This Truth?
Do you know that truth? Some of you don't, and so our prayer is that you'll talk to the person who brought you here today, or you'll talk to one of the staff people that will be in the front here at the conference center after the service. That's, by the way, available to all of you. You'll see our pastoral staff gathered here in front of the platform after the service. They're here to share, to answer questions, but especially to pray with those of you who have prayer requests.
Every week, as Tyler mentioned, we pray for the things that are on those cards as a staff, but also every week I hear stories of people who came, and just the joy of praying, sharing with one another.
Next week we're going to talk more about the life of Christ, the lessons that we can glean from God in the flesh. We'll look at that next week.
Father, help us see these amazing truths. God, if there are people here who are in the condition that those two were on the road to Emmaus, that their eyes were not open, we pray that You'd open their eyes, their hearts, that You'd draw them close to You, that this might be a day of redemption. Father, thank You for the good news. Thank You that indeed Jesus came to save His people from their sin, and He accomplished that in the cross. Emmanuel, God with us.
Father, we pray that as Your people who have been redeemed, we would now become ministers, servants, ambassadors of reconciliation to our world. God, You have brought us to Yourself. You've saved us for a reason. Now will You use us? God, let us proclaim the truth, and then we pray that You would bless that, that You would save many, that we as a church, Redemption Church, would be an instrument You would use for the proclamation of the gospel and the demonstration of the gospel to our city, to our states, and around the world. God, we pray these things to You in Christ's name. Amen.