MEASURE UPON MEASURE – SEPARATION – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 4
It is hard to split this Second Consequence of man’s sin to make two messages. It is too big for one talk but does not split into two properly. That has made the first Part bigger and the second Part smaller. Please understand the two Parts are really one.
The second consequence is SEPARATION. We saw how that resulted in Adam and Eve being alienated from God with mankind becoming cut off from the open communion with their God. However Jesus identified with that separation, made it His own, became separated from the Father in being forsaken on the cross. It is all to deep for us to understand. Now we are going to look at what God restored and how He brought His children into greater blessings than Adam ever had.
WHAT THE LORD RESTORED (That which He did not take away)
(a). THE FIRST GRACIOUS ASPECT OF RESTORATION - UNION
We have just seen the Saviour’s Road for the second consequence of sin in the Fall and how He identified with the resultant separation. Now we will consider what He restored and there are two aspects to highlight. The first of these is “UNION”. Our sins separated us from God but with the sin problem having been thoroughly dealt with, and the separation removed, there is now a wonderful union we have with our God, realised when we are converted. He has broken down the middle wall of partition between us and has made us the living sons of the living God. We are united to God by the blood of Christ through the accomplishment of Calvary.
He was separated from the Father that we might never be separated ever again, so that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. The love of God has brought us into that union. Separation is estrangement, and it was never God’s intention in the creation of human beings that they would ever live in estrangement, but the deceitfulness of sin changed all that. Separation is the path of misery but union is the path of joy. What greater connection can any puny human being have that to be in union with the blessed Lord who died for us?
How blessed is the Saviour’s achievement for us. Once we were rebels from God’s kingdom, but in Christ, we are united with Jesus Christ in heavenly joy and fellowship. Do you praise God for that? Sometimes I wonder if Christians are too ungrateful, and church rituals and procedures and formats become the most important aspects in Christian gatherings. It is wrong when they do because it is like putting Christ outside the door as the Laodiceans did. Dwell on what He achieved for you.
{{Romans 8:35-39 “WHO SHALL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, SHALL BE ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”}}
How wonderful! He has bonded us in an inseparable union which can not be broken, and how our faltering faith needs such assurance from the word. It is possible for a hen to lose a chicken on occasions but he has united us into one body through the baptism of the Spirit and no one can remove us from the Father’s hand. Not one chick can ever be unaccounted for. Aren’t these superb blessings, multiplied one on the other? What excellent things He has done for us, and to think that it was necessary for Him to be separated in order that we may never be separated. What a great debt we owe Him. We have been bought at huge cost and that suggests the paradox of the gospel - salvation was purchased with the greatest possible price, yet it is entirely free to all who believe.
All the members of the Body are present in {{Revelation 5:9-10 “And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And Thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”}}. All are united in unified praise and worship to the Lamb who was slain.
There pictured, is a scene of unity, His Body the Church, marvellously united in praise, never to know separation from God again. John uses the term, “a new song” in verse 9. There will be many revelations in this song we can not know until then, but we are allowed just a glimpse of it here in two verses.
It was also John who penned this verse in {{1 John 3:1 “SEE HOW GREAT A LOVE the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”}}
We are united in the Father’s love, children and offspring of His, but that union will have a correct perspective of SEPARATION FOR US; the world should be separated from us because the world does not know us, for we should be separated unto Christ. Not to be separated from the world system of godlessness is to be one who has compromised the faith he/she has confessed.
(b). THE SECOND GRACIOUS ASPECT OF RESTORATION - COMMUNION
The second aspect of restored blessing in separation’s removal, is COMMUNION. Because of the basis of our union with the Godhead, there is now a perfect, spotless and an eternal communion with our God. Estrangement has been confronted and abolished. No more will there be a running away to hide from our Creator’s voice as it were in the cool of the day; rather we ought to welcome His voice, as that of our dearest, earthly companion. There ought to be the welcomed communion for it rests solidly on the greatest basis of all union, all underpinned by the love of God and renewed and purified by the blood of Christ.
It is John again who touches on this communion thought, found in {{1 John 1:3 “What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have FELLOWSHIP with us; and indeed OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER, AND WITH HIS SON JESUS CHRIST.”}}
The focus of this verse is the Persons with whom we fellowship, none other than the Father and the Son. How memorable would be the day if any one of us met in seclusion for several hours with both the Monarch of Great Britain and the President of the United States (even if the King of Britain has gone WOKE). Perhaps we could think of no greater honour but there is one. Our fellowship is with the Creator of the most distant star, the Designer of the most intricate atom, with the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. How often we little appreciate and value it; nevertheless the communion was gained only at the most extreme cost and that is the basis for our response.
This communion extends from the vertical line just considered to the horizontal, that is the communion with our fellow believers. We saw how enmity and separation happened between person and person through the Fall. Now we can have a deep communion with one another because we are all children of the living God, adopted through a blood relationship into God’s family. That communion is precious and ought to be encouraged and nurtured.
It must have been very precious for the early believers in the first few chapters of Acts to know honest and respected fellowship with their fellows in the Lord. Not only were we strangers to God once, and to one another, but we have been brought nigh to God and to our fellow saints by the blood of Christ. Now we walk in His all-revealing light, not in the dark recesses of the hidden places as night creatures, for we are now the children of the day.
Fellowship was vital in the early Church and they had to strive to keep it healthy. How subtle sin is that wants to destroy fellowship. However there is another aspect of fellowship highlighted in this verse – {{Philippians 3:10 “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and THE FELLOWSHIP OF HIS SUFFERINGS, being conformed to His death.”}}. Fellowship (union, communion) with Christ can mean fellowship with suffering. As I write this there is a speedy move to sinfulness in the current world as it quickly degenerates at the end of the age. Lawlessness abounds as does wickedness. Consequently there is increased suffering for the Christian who determines to be faithful to the Lord. More and more the truth of “the fellowship of His sufferings” will become more evident as it is right now in Africa and the Middle East, and increasingly so for Britain.
WHY DID GOD CREATE THE UNIVERSE?
Why did God create the universe in the first place? I often think about this and sometimes ponder, “What was there before God created all that we see and know?” God is eternal and was there a limitless eternity be fore God in the most recent times created everything? No one knows.
Why then, in that universe, did God create human beings? It is one of those unanswerable ponderances and I was interested to read something on Bible.org –
[[ A couple of years ago a guy who was burned out from riding his bike across the country stopped at the church and gave me his bike, including everything on it - a backpack tent, saddlebags, and a number of bike tools. Included among the tools were a couple of gizmos that I had no idea what they were for. Since then, Daniel and I have figured out what one of them does, but the purpose for the other one still eludes us. Tools that you don’t know the purpose for, are of no use.
More important than knowing the purpose for tools, is knowing the purpose for your life. Why did God create human beings? What is the reason God has put us on this planet? Sometimes we may feel like the man who said, “I’ve got a clock that tells me when to get up -- but some days I need one to tell me why.” It is not surprising that Genesis, the book of origins, tells us early on why God created people.
To understand our text, we need to understand the sweep of God’s purpose as revealed throughout the Scriptures. Behind God’s purpose in creating man is His conflict with Satan and the fallen angels. Before he fell into sin, Satan “had the seal of perfection,” and was “in Eden, the garden of God.” (The only biblical hints of Satan’s fall are in Isaiah 14:12-15 & Ezekiel 28:12-16.). It is possible that Satan, before his fall, ruled an earlier earth under God. When he rebelled and led a number of angelic forces with him, God brought a judgment on that original creation, resulting in the chaos, emptiness, and darkness of Genesis 1:2 (the “gap theory”). In the recreated earth, God’s purpose is to have man on earth reflecting His image and having dominion over the earth under His sovereignty. Even if you do not accept the “gap theory,” it is clear that God put man on the earth TO REFLECT HIS IMAGE AND TO RULE OVER THE CREATION (Genesis 1:26, 28). ]] (Stephen J. Cole)
In a way we would struggle to explain how God created us in His own image but we marred that image through disobedience and sin. That brought separation, but the restoration of the Lord Jesus has restored the image of God so that we know Him and can come into His presence. From separation to COMMUNION. From separation to FELLOWSHIP. It is all so lovely!
The Lord has not only restored union and communion and fellowship, but has restored them in greater measure and has lifted us to a plane higher than what Adam could have known in his innocence before the Fall. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
