Unblameable

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much. And hello again, dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Everything alright at your house? Oh, I trust so, bless your heart. Glad to be back with you. We’re looking at Colossians chapter 1, “It pleased the Father that in Him,” that is in our Lord Jesus Christ, this is Colossians 1:19, “should all fullness dwell.” Now, it says, “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and ye are complete in him,” that’s over in chapter 2:10, we won’t get to that for some days, “But in him should all fullness dwell.” Now, how does that become mine? You remember the last time we got together. We remarked that you have to go to Calvary to start the process, having made peace through the blood of his cross, to reconcile all things unto himself, and that includes you, verse 21, “who were at one time alienated and enemies in your mind because of your wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death.”

How does reconciliation take place? In the plan of God, the Lord Jesus Christ came down the stairways of the stars, born in Bethlehem, placed with tender hands by his mother Mary in the manger, which ordinarily would have been full of hay or grain for the feed for the animals, and there to start life in a very poor family to live for 33 years a life, a perfect life of service and teaching and truth, and then to die on the cross of Calvary as God’s Passover Lamb. John the Baptist looked at the Lord Jesus as our Savior began his public ministry at about age 30. And as the Lord Jesus walked toward him, John the Baptist said with the wisdom given by the Spirit of God who dwelt within him, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world.” Our Lord Jesus was the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament sacrifices that involved the shedding of blood. And now it said with his own blood, he’s entered into the holiest of all, there to make intercession and sacrifice for us. And so it says he reconciled us in the body of his flesh through death. He paid our penalty, every penalty that you ever could incur because of the sin that dwells within you and the sin that mars your record of conduct, everything has been expunged by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. You, however, must receive that pardon. If you don’t receive the pardon, you won’t be pardoned. It’s there for you.

“He is the propitiation for our sins,” says the apostle John, “And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The atonement on Calvary is sufficient for every person who ever did live, does live or ever will live. Jesus died a death that was eternally valid. It was infinitely worthwhile in that it reaches potentially to every heart. You, my dear friend, however, if you’ve never bowed before the Lord Jesus and accepted him as your Lord and trusted him to save you, you don’t partake of that as yet, you’re still out in the cold, you’re still an alien. You’re still lost, just as lost today as though you had been in hell for a million years. And the one thing, the one thing that God is waiting for you to do is to bow before him and ask for forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, don’t hesitate another moment, bow your heart and say, “Lord God, be merciful to me, a sinner, and save me now for Jesus’ sake. I accept him as my Lord. I confess my sins. I repent of my sins, and I want to live for God. Make me God’s child.” You pray that prayer, God will answer you, and you will know the joy and the thrill and the holy awe of having been reconciled to God because Jesus died for every one of your sins. The body of his flesh through death.

Now, what does he want really to do? Well, he wants not only to get you to Heaven, but he wants to make you exhibit A of what God’s grace can do. He said, “to present you, he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy, unblameable, unreprovable in his sight.” What is God’s ultimate plan for you, beloved? He wants to place you as exhibit A yonder in the glory in his presence and say, “Look what my grace can do.” To present you holy, that’s the first thing. Get rid of the idea that what you do for God is the most important. Now, the Bible does talk about serving God. The apostle Paul spoke about labor, “Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily,” he said, “I do work hard.” And the purpose of being saved, according to Ephesians 2:10, “He has created us in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” And the closing verses of Titus says, “Let our people learn to maintain good works, and our Lord Jesus gave himself for us that he might purify unto himself of a people for his own possession, zealous of good works.” So there’s plenty of evidence in the Bible that you need to work for the Lord. I’m not downgrading that, okay? The fact is, however, that before you ever do anything for God, he wants you to be something for God. And so he says, that he might present you holy. Holy in his sight.

Oh, what happens when you open your life to the Lord Jesus Christ and he becomes your Lord and the blessed Holy Spirit comes in to dwell within you because you’re now a believer? What happens? Well, my brother-in-law, Torrey Johnson, used to say in the 1930s when he was beginning his preaching when he talked about the Holy Spirit, I remember him saying this in a campaign one time when we were working together, he said, “If you get acquainted with the Holy Spirit and He takes charge of your life, He’ll live up to His Name. He’s the Holy Spirit, and He’ll make you holy. He’s the Holy Spirit and He’ll make you spiritually effective.” That’s a pretty good idea, isn’t it? Holy, the quality of God’s very nature infused into yours and into mine that he might present you holy. How holy are you? Now, you don’t have to tell me or tell anybody else, but that’s a question, penetrating as it is, that is highly important for you and for me to answer in the presence of God. Holiness is the quality of sharing the very nature of God through the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Word of God as it’s applied to your life. “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto, according to thy word.”

So if you wanna modify your conduct and your attitude, let the Word of God work in your life. Paul said, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another,” and so on. So the real meaning of the word holy as it applies to you and to me is the quality of sharing in the very nature of God because of the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit and because of the effect of the applied Word of God, the Bible. Now, let me ask you again. In the light of those criteria, how holy are we? What Jesus wants is to present you in the presence of His glory, in His sight, holy. Well, that’s only half the story as those of you who’ve studied your Bible know. My record and my performance along with yours may at times be highly unsatisfactory. We have some bad days, and even our best days are marred with human fallibility and mistakes, isn’t it true? How in the world then are we gonna measure up to the concepts that I’ve just been giving you?

The fact is the Lord Jesus Christ declares you because of His sacrifice for you, because of your faith in Him, He declares you holy, and God’s righteousness is imputed to you. That is, it’s reckoned to you. It’s placed, so to speak, on your account by your wonderful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. “He ever liveth,” the writer to the Hebrews says, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him.” Beloved, you may be discouraged with your performance today. You may say, “Oh, I’ll never learn. I’ll never be any different. I’m always tripped up. I’m so imperfect. I’ve got such a record of failures in this or that or the other area.” All of this may be true. But Jesus knows He isn’t ashamed of you. The Bible says that, “For this cause he’s not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” He has accepted you as one of his own family, and he is presenting you, beloved, now, this minute, before the presence of a Holy God without any flaw whatsoever. So there you have the combination, a heavenly perfection and an earthly improvement working along side-by-side to present you holy.

Now, he says unblameable. Unblameable. This is a realistic statement that recognizes there are some things for which we have to take the blame. At this point, the Lord Jesus steps in and he says, “I’ll take the blame. I already paid for it.” I’ll take the blame. I already paid for it. When I was about four or five, I threw a ball, I thought, in the right direction. We lived at the corner of 18th and Euclid in Cleveland, Ohio. Most of that area is now a parking lot, but in those days, it was a large two-story or two-and-a-half story building that housed the Spencerian Commercial School. My father was the janitor, and we had a basement flat. He and my sister Mildred and I called that home sweet home for a while. Now, my problem then, and I suppose yet, I haven’t tested it out recently, but my problem then was that if I threw something it was sure to go the wrong direction. And if I threw a ball, it would inevitably curve toward a window. [chuckle] Have you had had that problem, fellows? Anyhow, as a boy of about four or five, I remember one time having thrown a ball and, you guessed it, it went right straight through a window on the ground-floor level of this building where we lived. I was devastated. I was absolutely crushed. What am I going to do now? The window’s broken, and well, the only thing I could do is to hunt up my father and tell him about it and maybe I’d get a spanking or whatever. And who was going to repair the window?

So I went on in, I remember walking up the long entrance way there and going through the doors and going straight ahead, taking a right turn that would lead down some steps into the boiler room, off of which there was a tool room where my father oftentimes could be found working on some broken door closer or some lock or whatever it may be. He was a handy man with many skills of being able to fix things. Hence there enough sure I found him. With tears I said, “Oh I threw this ball and the window’s broken,” and I was crying. Well, he gave me a big hug, he said, “Boy, I saw what happened.” He says, “I just happened to have a piece of glass all ready that fits that window.” He said, “Come on, we’ll fix it.” And so he took me by the hand, and in the other hand, he had a pane of glass. And in the pocket of his coveralls, he had the putty and the little steel triangles and all of that. And long before I can tell you about it, the window was fixed. “I saw what happened and I’m all ready.” Beloved, Jesus says that to you today. “I saw what happened and I’m all ready, ’cause I already paid for it.” Hallelujah.

Dear Father, today, thank you for providing for our holiness, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!