MEASURE UPON MEASURE – DEATH – THE RESTORATION OF GOD - Part 12 (Section 4)
We have been considering the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience. By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. All have died because all are sinners. There are six results of that sin – guilt and shame; separation; cursing; sorrow; the current one which is death; and next time, condemnation.
Death is finality and I have devoted more time to it than to other consequences but it has been difficult to divide up this whole message into sections. Therefore a few of the sections are smaller than my normal messages. We spent time looking at The Saviour’s Road as He identified with our sin in His ministry here and ultimately, becoming the Lamb of God who died sacrificially for the sins of the world.
Two smaller sections remain and these will deal with the restoration of what Adam lost. Through Adam, all died, but in Christ all can be alive. That is what we are now going to do as we look at what Christ has restored – He restored what He did not take away.
WHAT CHRIST HAS RESTORED – THAT WHICH HE DID NOT TAKE AWAY
Now it remains to map out His restoration in the most serious of all consequence; that of death.
The Lord gave an illustration once when He was with His disciples. He told of a seed of wheat remaining unspent, and of another dying. The seed that died to itself brought forth much fruit. Christ became that grain of wheat, crushed by man and God, who died to Himself but out of His death has come a multiplied increase, fruitfully producing blessing upon blessing. He restored what He did not take away. Sin produced death. Death has cut us off from God.
That concept of the fine wheat being crushed and made into the finest flour and bread is an image taken up by one of the most notable martyrs of the Christian faith. Ignatius of Antioch, also known as Ignatius Theophorus, was an early Christian writer and Patriarch of Antioch. While en route to Rome in A.D. 110, where he met his martyrdom in the arena in the reign of Trajan, Ignatius wrote a series of letters.
In one of them Ignatius of left behind a profound statement that continues to captivate the hearts and minds of believers even to this day: "I AM GOD'S WHEAT, AND I SHALL BE GROUND BY THE TEETH OF BEASTS, THAT I MAY BECOME THE PURE BREAD OF CHRIST." This quote, while succinct and straightforward, holds immense meaning and offers valuable insights into the nature of dying to oneself. That image is drawn from the grain of wheat dying.
The Lord Jesus’ restoration blessings will be examined from three aspects.
[A]. THE FIRST RESTORATION BLESSING – ACCEPTANCE
If you are one of these people who at times likes to observe others, then you will notice sometimes at parties, or conferences or gatherings, EVEN in a church setting to our shame, a person who is not fitting in, a loner. The person may be new, or out of his or her depth – but the reason is not the critical part – the acceptance is. To be in a situation and not to be accepted does hurt when you feel rejected for no apparent reason. “No apparent reason” is most likely snobbery or exclusion from a social, or “in” group. Rejection is not being accepted in the “in group”. Even churches are guilty of this where cliques operate. Thank God there are people who migrate to the loner to make that one feel welcome. We must do it as Christians, but sadly some don’t and some churches don’t.
What did our Lord do? He practised acceptance. He was there for the broken-hearted, the rejected of society. He accepted the leper, and the demonic of Luke 8, and the outcast cripple, and the blind, and the needy, the prostitute, the tax collector. His parable known as The Good Samaritan, saw rejection and acceptance in action. The wounded, needy one, was rejected by the very ones who should have been the first to reach out.
In a sense this parable sees a reject accepting another reject. Samaritans were looked down on, rejects of the followers of Jeroboam. Who better to understand the plight of the one rejected and abandoned than Another who was rejected of men, abandoned and crucified? We speak of the Lord. In that He underwent all these things, He is then able to draw near to those who are the unaccepted of society to bring them into the blessings of God. His ministry as High Priest is marvellous.
Meeting the woman at the well in John 4 was no coincidence for it was determined in eternity past to happen. This woman certainly was not accepted by society or by the self-righteous ones who had no compassion to understand her position, but the Lord did. Once rejected and now accepted in the Lord, this woman rejoices in heaven today that Christ accepted her in her sin, and died for her, tasting death in her place, so that she is a partaker of the living water freely available.
Sinner, please partake of that living water. You may feel the rejection of society but Jesus Christ walked that road for you. Out of His death has come acceptance. You can be accepted in the beloved! Do not delay that decision to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour.
The first of these restoration blessings is acceptance and we examine it further. His appropriated death has brought us night to God. We are now accepted in the beloved one if our faith has been nailed to His finished work. We have been tenderly led by the hand of the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep and has now brought us from the world and its lusts to our heavenly Father’s pasture.
{{Ephesians 2:3-5 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest, but God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, MADE US ALIVE TOGETHER WITH CHRIST (by grace you have been saved)}}
There He adopted us as sons and daughters of the living God, having baptised us into the one body of the Church, the Bride of the Lamb. The Father recognises the work of the Son on our behalf, and seals our redemption, and welcomes our reconciliation and grants our sanctification and signs our adoption papers to bestow on us the full rights of sonship in His family. He then clothes us in the fine white linen garments of righteousness. And how we long for the final consummation when all our blessings will be a close living reality (Romans 8:23).
If Christ has accepted us so lovingly, then what must we do to others? {{Romans 15:7 “Wherefore, ACCEPT ONE ANOTHER, JUST AS CHRIST ALSO ACCEPTED US to the glory of God”}}
To win Your bride what depths of woe were Thine,
Scorned and betrayed, beset by powers malign!
Your pierced hands, Your riven side revealed
The strength of love that by Your death was sealed. (Mrs A M Hayward)
Already you should be able to appreciate how these present blessings exceed the earthbound perfection which Adam knew and lost. We need always to remember that the only ground we have for acceptance is the shed blood of Christ. Standing in God’s presence, we are not as Adam and Eve were; guilty, shameful, separated and lost. We stand confidently in the presence of our Father but the work was not ours. It was our Lord who endured the cross, but ours are the blessings. Adam had an earthly paradise but we have a heavenly one.
ADAM AND EVE ARE EXCEPTIONAL; ARE UNIQUE. They had Eden’s paradise on earth in a sinless state when they lived in the garden. Then they were expelled into a world of sin and shame and separation and sorrow and violence. At that point they needed a personal relationship with God other than they had known, and that was to be through sacrifice, and I truly believe they trusted in the Lord God because they knew what they had lost. Then when they died they went to Paradise which is also called Abraham’s bosom. At the ascension of the Lord when He led the captive ones captive, they went to heaven because their sins had the ultimate atonement at the cross.
No other human beings had that experience of four states of living. All of us since the cross just have two. The first is sinners who have the penalty of death over our heads. The second is an eternity either in heaven, or one of separation from God, ultimately in the lake of fire. Through one man sin entered into the world and all are dead in the natural life, but through the obedience of the Second Adam, life and forgiveness are freely available. 1 Corinthians 15:45-49.
It should be a humbling experience when we come to understand that God’s love and grace reached to us, sinners deserving of death before our God. Once afar off, now enfolded in God’s tender care for He has accepted us and blessed us in the heavenly places as His adopted children.
The Old Testament character of Mephibosheth was alienated from all blessing, residing at a place of no pasture, lame and rejected. Then king David extended grace and mercy to that one who could not help himself and raised him from his circumstances and caused him to sit at the king’s very own table. He became as one of the king’s sons, adopted into the king’s family. He was the recipient of full acceptance.
That is a beautiful type of what the Lord has done for us as grace and mercy carried the Calvary work to completion. Christ took our separation of death, making it His own, but rose from death, marking us out for sonship. Does your heart not warm when you give thought to your acceptance in God? It ought to! It is a precious relationship He has purchased and transcends all the disappointments and failures and hurts of this world, for the relationship is bonded by God’s love and riveted by the bands of Christ’s death. Such joy and peace flow from our acceptance and adoption in Him as we follow our Great Shepherd of the Sheep and no one can snatch us from the Father’s hand.
So important is the eternal nature of Christ’s work that He will ever be remembered as the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world. This will be the theme of praise for us in a future day when His whole Church is gathered in heaven, when Christ will be the centre of His people. Revelation chapter 5 is a heavenly scene of the most sincere and victorious song ever sung. The whole centre of the chapter is the Lamb, adored and worshipped by His redeemed Church. To select fragments from this glorious chapter would seem to deprive it of its richness, but suffice to say that the Lord is viewed as, “a Lamb standing, as if slain”; receiving the select group who, “fell down before the Lamb”, the recipient of the angels’ statement, “Worthy is the Lamb.” Revelation 5:9-14.
Revelation 15:3 refers to the singing of the song of the Lamb. Chapter 19:6-9 details the marriage supper of the Lamb where there will be an everlasting union enacted between Christ and all His redeemed people just prior to His returning to earth in the glorious coming to reign. He will always be remembered as the Lamb because He died for our sins and took our place. That sacrifice is critically central to every relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this message we have looked at what the Lord Jesus restored in place of death caused by our fore parents. In the next message we look at more of what the Lord restored in place of death.
