“Intercessory Prayer” - ‘The Case for Jesus Christ’ - (part 3)

The last time, we considered the inter-faith issues that the Church is currently facing.

We saw how the sense of spiritual lostness that plagues man is obvious in his quest for fulfillment and his search for God to meet man’s emptiness.

And I mentioned that we are becoming a sort of ‘religious melting-pot’ in which the world expects the Church to alter its message to accommodate the world’s views.

The Church is being asked to consider other faiths as alternative ways to God and to abandon Christ’s announcement of ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’.

With this push toward these ‘alternative ways’, I tried to point out two main matters for us, as Christians, to keep in mind.

The first of these was that we can disagree - which we very definitely must, if we are born from above by the Holy Spirit - yes, we must disagree to that request without, - however, - being disagreeable ourselves - in our approach, in our attitudes, in our conduct.

I do not think that the Lord is asking very much of us when He tells us to be ‘long-suffering, to be patient, to be kind, not to be boastful, nor vainglorious, not be rude, arrogant, inflated with pride, not act unbecomingly, not to display ourselves haughtily, and to learn to pay no attention to a  wrong we are called to suffer’ - all means of growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(You may have recognized that as having been taken from 
1 Corinthians 13, an important Scriptural rule for the nourishing of all relationships we have.)

In addition to showing people of other faiths the love of Christ, even though we disagree with their concepts, I had also stated that the second matter to consider is what and with whom we deal.

That is, we deal with various religious systems - systems against which the Church is defenseless.

Only God is able to change anything within the systems, if that is what His desire is in His course of salvation history.

It is the people He seeks to change at this time.

We can see this in Paul’s case so vividly.

The name, ‘Saul of Tarsus’, the one who was tenaciously steeped in a system, was changed, by the Spirit of God Who drew him out of the system, to ‘Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ’.

And the same rule applies today - a rule the Church is obliged to recognize and heed if we are to continue on in the history of God’s salvation plan.

The message of Christ being the point of human existence - that message as being a non-negotiable fact - brings us to the next point which we will look at this evening: that is, the saving activity of God through the Church today that upholds the fact that all things culminate in Christ.

Let me start, first, by saying that God, through the entire history of His salvation in the Old Testament record of it, revealed that the center of man’s being is in God Himself.

‘Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness,’ was the divine creative decree.

That is, let us make man from the Center of Our Being, breathe the breath of life into him, make him a living being.

The deep reality of the Old Testament is the fact of the nature of sin in the way sin corrupts everything and sets in motion moral decay - decay that has robbed man of the true Center of his being.

God’s special revelation of Himself in wrath against sin emphasized the antithesis of man’s sinful being to God’s holy Being.

As we read through the Old Testament part of God’s salvation history, we are constantly reminded of God’s incompatibility with sin - sin that separates man from the true Center of Being - and we constantly are reminded of God’s wrath in dealing with that antithesis.

Now - what is the problem most of us have when we read through this past Old Testament history - of seeing what all was required to meet God’s righteousness and of seeing the revelation of His wrath toward unrighteousness?

The problem we have is that we substitute the way we react and think as the way God acts and thinks.

We see His reaction of His wrath toward sin and we tend to look upon God as a severe, harsh Being, ready to slap our hands with every wrong step we take.

And, now, we must do penance to get back on His right side again - we must appease Him in some way.

That is how the Old Testament revelation of God appears to some of us, as we read through its history.

But - we must see that this part of the revelation of Himself in wrath is God’s only impressive and substantial way of showing man that the presence of sin in man has pushed man off-center from God’s intent for him.

And it shows us so clearly that Who Jesus Christ was upon the earth, what He did in order to execute the recovery plan of the Triune God, was another indication of God’s progressive development of the revelation of Himself, of the unfolding of His will to the minds of men - to reveal Himself in a new and living way.

And, as the drama of redemption unfolds, we see, then, that the Bible is not a story of God’s steady anger, as some seem to think.

This unfolding of the drama of redemption would show a loving God, a God Who is not malicious, as we are, not spiteful as we are, not ill-tempered as we are, not vindictive as we are.

And - it would cause us to see that it would be through the coming of Jesus Christ that man would be given a clearer sight into the fuller revelation of God’s design of salvation.

It would be in Him that man would recover the center of man’s being. 

And - the revelation of His wrath would reveal how Christ would be the divine Antithesis to that wrath - Christ would be the final revelation of God Himself to humanity.

‘...for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.’ (1 Jn 4:9)

In His great love, He would send Himself through His Son - His Son Who was made a quickening spirit and/or a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45) so that men would be able to turn to Him without fear of God’s wrath coming down upon them.

In short, what was to come in His Son is the reason for the full revelation of God’s wrath seen in the Old Testament.

The full revelation of His love in and through His Son would cover sinful man with the quickening Spirit that Christ was to be made in man. 

It would be in His Son that man would have recovered the center of his being and would be brought home to God.

And - this is what completes the message the Church is to articulate to the world.

This entire revelation of salvation in Christ - from the beginning to end as the entire Bible presents Him - is the aspect the Church needs to assess.

And - it must do so by affirming the ultimate mystery of Christ - to recognize the need to present God’s thought in Christ as it has progressed in His salvation history.

The revelation of God’s wrath against sin and the revelation of Jesus Christ’s work to destroy sin’s distorting power affirms the mystery of the unity of God, the Son, with God, the Father.

It affirms the mystery of the completeness of the full humanity and the full divinity in Jesus Christ Who brings home to His Father all who come to God through Him.

The divine design was for Christ to be the Way for that to happen.

The Church is to remain alive to this truth of Jesus Christ always.

It has the obligation and the calling to proclaim the message that Christianity is not an ‘I-It’ relationship, in which the emphasis is on the person, what the person does, how much better it is for the person, how much more in control of life the person will be.

This is how the Gospel truth seems to be presented today - 
‘I, Me, Mine’ is the all-important ‘truth’, the all-important ‘way’ to real life.

For example, have we heard people say, or perhaps, even approached it this way ourselves, to explain the Gospel truth; ‘You need an experience of Jesus Christ: if you accept and live by it, you will really have life by the tail.

You will feel much better, you will be able to really face life.’

By this kind of an approach, we are putting the emphasis on the person - all is dependent on the person.

Listen, Prov 20:6 says, ‘Most men will proclaim their own goodness’ - man needs no encouragement there.

When the Church encourages along this line, it is missing the point of the Gospel.

But the opposite approach is what the Church’s obligation is in presenting the Gospel news - it is to present truth which requires a confrontation with the Gospel.

The appeal is not made to Christianity because it is ‘good
for the person’ but because the truth is being presented in such a way that the person stands under God - it is God he squarely must face in the light of the work and Person of Jesus Christ.

It is to bring it to an ‘I-Thou’ relationship - a relationship with the One Who is the very Center of the universe - a relationship that has been established by divine initiative because God became united to humanity in the incarnation of Christ.

It needs to say that the Bible is the authoritative interpretation of God’s activity in His salvation history.

And that activity takes us to the work and Person of Jesus Christ in Whom it is centered and in Whom the Church places its faith and under Whom the Church lives.

It needs to say that - in both the Old and the New Testament - there is a crystal-clear, unclouded revelation of God’s nature.

And that the nearer we get to the heart of the Good News, the message of the Bible, the nearer we see God’s complete, plain, and final revelation in Christ.

The Church in Acts 3-5 was given its first taste of this fact.

Peter and John announced the restoration act of God when the lame man at the temple received healing.

To the astonished men of Israel, they declared, in 3:12-16: ‘Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety, we had made him walk.

The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Son, Jesus, Whom you delivered up...you denied the Holy and Righteous One...and killed the Prince of Life, Whom God hath raised from the dead...

And the Name of Jesus, in virtue of faith in His Name, hath made this man strong...’.

Peter then went on to explain Jesus in terms of Old Testament prophecy and messianic expectation.

And he expressed the eternal truth of the meaning of Jesus - the truth of His eternal nature - the truth of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Who ably addresses humanity’s problems for all time and eternity.

The truth about the human situation, - what it is in its sinfulness - the truth about personal involvement in that situation, - how all have sinned and come short of God’s glory - the truth about the way Jesus Christ met this human situation, how Christ overcame sin by His death and resurrection, how God now looks at sinful man covered by His Son’s righteoueness - how He is now ministering His power and life in sinful man from His exalted, heavenly place - and how a person is affected by the embracing of His truth - that is the essence of the proclamation that cannot be compromised.

The Church must seek to be free - to be related to Jesus Christ in a real way by allowing Him - the truth about Him in Scripture - to be its final point of reference and its primary message to our present culture.

In case you are having difficulty in receiving this message - of God moving on in the revelation of Himself in wrath in the Old Testament to the revelation of Himself in love in the New Testament - let me remind you that Paul’s doctrine of God underwent a drastic change starting from the day he met Christ and onward.

Up to that point, Paul saw only God’s justice, His wrath that punished, His holiness that required every jot and tittle to be strictly observed lest God become angry.

But - when Paul met Christ, the revelation was completed with the emphasis on God as a loving and merciful God - a God of unconditional love, a God of everlasting mercy, a God of unlimited forgiveness.

He learned that God’s glory was to be seen in the face of Jesus Christ Who communicated God’s full character.

There is where he was to look and where he could see love, mercy, faithfulness, perfect and complete forgiveness, no matter what he had done or what he had not done.

In other words, his understanding of God was deepened when he met Christ - it went beyond the revelation he knew of God from the Old Testament and from his ancestral teaching. 

God was recovering and saving humanity in Christ, Paul discovered.  

His statement that ‘God was reconciling the world unto Himself in Christ’ (2 Cor 5:19) speaks of his discovery that God was personally involved in the death and resurrection of His Son.

The life of Jesus had been opened up to him.

The fact of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, set him free from guilt, it set him free from the gnawing sense of futility, it set him free from the grappling power of sin itself.

It was the love of Jesus plus the power of that love that brought him into the center of his being in God.

‘For in Him we live, and move, and have our being’, he declared in Acts 17:28.

This was the heartbeat of Paul’s ministry: an ambassador, crying out the message of the Cross of Christ: - God reconciling the world to Himself - bringing man ‘home’ to Himself through His salvation activity in Christ.

This was the driving force of his ministry: ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me’. (Gal 2:20)

There it is - God recovered Paul, a man in man’s humanity, and had ‘brought him home to Himself’.

Christ was now the absorbing center of Paul’s life.

To Paul, God through Jesus Christ, had made Himself a saving God and He was no longer to be feared.

Revered - yes; feared - no!  His nature had been opened up to a loving, merciful, forgiving revelation of Himself - and that is where Paul chose to live!

It was through Christ that God opened the window to God’s love and this was and is now the only way to interpret God’s revelation of Himself in the Old Testament.

God did something through Christ and offered it to humanity as the means of making the divine Being the center of man’s being and the way to finding fulfillment and life.

God’s infinite love and wisdom desired all to be encompassed in Christ, His Son, for His revelation has made Him all in all, everything - Savior, Lord, the Alpha, the Omega, the Way, the Truth, the Life - absolutely everything.

He made Him to be the point of all human existence.

This is the truth which has been revealed and has been passed down in history.

It is unchangeable!

Our conviction about it, our adherence to it, our propagation of it, is to be carried out with the firm conviction of its truth.

And with the understanding that ‘everything’ - the whole of creation - is continuing to move towards Him - towards God in Christ Jesus - expect it - look for it - pray for it.

In closing, let me pass on one more thought. 
 
We have a limited vision of what God is able to do in Christ and how He is able to use other faiths in bringing the whole of creation to this apex, to this point.

We do not know how God works in any one’s life - His ways are beyond and above ours.

And - we cannot tell what keeps some or what leads others away from accepting His matchless plan of salvation through    His Son.

It may be that a judging Christian like me - and others in His Church - who caused them to reject Christ’s atoning work - and, if so, I ask the Lord’s forgiving love to cover and to draw them in, in spite of our harsh, critical, judgmental ways.

But - in spite of our blunders, it still holds true that 
‘...God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that we might live through Him.’

So, on the basis of how deep the magnitude of His wrath toward evil was as it was shown in the Old Testament, and, on the basis of what He has done through His Son to draw man to Himself, I must be faithful to God’s revelation of Himself in Christ. 

And I have to say to my friends of other faiths, lovingly and in the blessing of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, that Christ is absolute and non-negotiable as the point of human existence - we stand firm about this one fact.

Everything swings on the work He did - the work of the Cross - His death, His resurrection, and His ascension - everything culminates in Him.

This is the hinge of the world’s history and the door that opened God’s salvation history to the world.

Yes - it is true - that decisive event does threaten other faiths - there is no doubt about it.

But - we have to remember that Jesus’ death called into question the religion of those who had rejected Him and crucified Him.

Paul later came up against that decisive event - and had   to encounter, face to face, the crucified, risen and ascended Christ - he could not elude it.

And, it is the same today - to a person or a religion that refuses to accept or tries to circumvent this point in the history of God’s salvation work - the day will come when it must be faced.

To this, we stand true and we stand firm: ‘Jesus Christ is the same - yesterday, today, and forever.’

He is the mystery of life and death.

The truth is that He is the point of human existence - the fullness of all Life.

He completes His mission by being the Way to bring man home to God, the Father - to bring man home to the very center of his being.

I trust we will ponder these things once again - pray about them, let the Holy Spirit minister to our hearts - minister toward the enlargement of Jesus Christ within each of us.

And - pray that He will cause us to be faithful to Jesus Christ - to uphold Him, His work, and His Person in all our dealings with each other and with those who do not agree. So be it!

Let us pray together before we leave tonight:

[Pray]

SONG: ‘Jesus, what a wonder You are.
        You are so gentle, so pure, and so kind...etc.’