Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians chapter five, verse fourteen. For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, Yay, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature or a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and is given to us the ministry of reconciliation. to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and have committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead. be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Colossians chapter one, verse eighteen. And he is the head of the church, and he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven, and you that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, Yet now, as he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight. May God bless the reading of his precious words. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we bow before thee once more. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the early hours this morning when we gather to remember our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for thy word which we read and talked about this morning. And we thank thee, Lord, that we are here once more on the Lord's day evening to listen to the ministry of the word of Christ. O God, we pray that thou take charge of this meeting. We have no ability. We have no power. We have no strength. But thou art our strength. Thou art our power. We pray the Holy Spirit might take the things of Christ tonight and reveal them to our waiting heart. Give us the same fresh glimpses of the wonderful things thou hast done for us in the personal work of thy beloved Son. Speak to every heart, we pray thee. We ask it in the precious name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Now, before the conference season started, Way back in December, I gave a series of talks on what I called some of the wonderful things that happened when I was saved. If you recall, we were saying we little knew the moment God saved us, all the wonderful blessings that he gave us just then. It's taken me many years, and I'm still learning, day by day, more and more, of what happened that moment when I accepted Christ by faith. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved, and we are wonderfully happy when that takes place. And then as the days go by, and we read more and more from the precious Word of God, we find that at that moment, tremendous things took place. That moment we became a child of God. As many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name. And I stepped out of Adam into Christ at that very moment. I didn't know anything about it, but all this took place in God's wonderful plan and scheme for me. That moment I received an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, reserved for me in heaven. Some of us don't possess many things down here on earth. but we've got an inheritance up there in the glory of heaven. And God gave it to us. That moment we accepted Christ as our Savior. What do you call it? It's fringe benefit? I don't know. It's something extra. Something extra we got in addition to our salvation when God saved us. And I talked about one or two things. I talked about forgiveness. Remember we had a night on the subject of forgiveness. I remember when I was a young man. I went to a series of Bible studies. In the city where we lived, we used to have a Saturday evening young people's rally. We didn't call it that in those days. I think we called it a young people's meeting. And in the city where we lived, there were, at that time, I think there were about twenty-eight meetings like this, assemblies. And we all got together, all young people on a Saturday night in a central hall. And I remember one year they took for subjects Saturday night studies. conversational Bible readings. We young people didn't say anything, we just listened, and the elder brethren talked about these wonderful truths. And I remember they took up subjects like faith, justification, reconciliation, forgiveness, all these great Bible names. And I learned so much, but you know, right in the middle of that season, I was drafted into the Army. It was in World War I. and I had to go away and I never finished it. But I remember so much the great teaching we got from these subjects. And so I picked up a few of these subjects and I spoke about forgiveness one night last fall. Then another Sunday night I spoke about justification, another great blessing that came to us when God saved us. Then we spoke about redemption. And tonight I hope for the will of God to speak about the subject of reconciliation. These are all long words. Forgiveness, justification, redemption, reconciliation. As guilty sinners in God's sight, we need forgiveness. We could never get to heaven if God did not forgive us our sins. And as guilty sinners, God is forgiveness. The moment we accepted Christ as our Savior, He forgave us all our sins. So the psalmist can say, My sins are behind His back, buried in the depths of the sea. As far as the East is from the West, so far as they removed our transgressions from, forgiven. And then as those condemned, we were under the condemnation of God, shut up to judgment. Just like a murderer in the condemned cell, there was no hope for us. And when God saved us, do you know what He did? He justifies. Now to justify a person, something's got to take place, some great transaction, whereby God himself can justly do this thing because God is holy and God is just, and God cannot do anything that's not in perfect keeping with His holy character. But He justifies. We are lost sinners, condemned, and He's justified us. Because on a righteous basis, The Lord Jesus bore all the penalty that was due to me. He bore upon the cross. And on that righteous basis, God can say, all the debt is paid. All the price is paid. And he reckons me just as if I had never sinned at all. Marvelous thing. That's justification. All the sins take away. We'll come to that later when we get to that wonderful verse in the twenty-first verse of the fifth chapter of the second Corinthians. The Lord Jesus bore our sins, and God has put them away. And He written, Me now, justified, made just in His presence. And then we talked about redemption. Now why do we need redemption? I think we explained it, if you remember, and we've got the tapes on all these subjects if you'd like them. We explained it this way. The children of Israel were down in bondage in Egypt. and God came down and redeemed them. The blood was sprinkled on the doorpost and the two sideposts of the door, and they were sheltered by the blood. But the next day God brought them through the Red Sea and redeemed them by His mighty power. And they were redeemed out of the house of bondage, out of slavery, and you and I were slaves to sin and Satan. In bondage we were. Oh, I expect many could tell a story. I have met men in my life. God saved me when I was only ten, so I don't know much about these things. But I have met men who were in bondage and slavery to drink, drink, drink. And God saved them in an instant. The fetters were all snapped. And they came out of that awful bondage and slavery to that awful thing called drink. And there are other things. bondage. We were in bondage under a cruel Pharaoh, worse than Pharaoh of Egypt, under Satan himself. And the Lord redeemed us, bought us out. To redeem is to buy somebody out of the slave market of sin and set them free. That's what he did. Now tonight I want to go a step further and talk about reconciliation. Now what does that mean? I looked up the dictionary. And in the dictionary, the American dictionary it says, to reconcile. To render no longer opposed. To render no longer opposed. Now, how do we explain this? You see, I've got an enemy that's opposed to me. And when we become reconciled, he's no longer opposed. Now the New Testament, the Bible speaks about us as sinners as being opposed to God. If you notice in Romans five the words I read, you read in verse five, it says, in verse six, in Romans five, it says, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. The Bible called us ungodly. That's before we were saved. And then in verse... say in verse six, pardon, in verse six we were without strength and we were ungodly in verse six. And then in verse eight, God commanded his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And then in verse nine, verse ten, for if when we were enemies we were reconciled to us, So here are four descriptions of our original state before God saved us. Without strength, ungodly, sinners, enemies to God. Now reconciliation means that God has changed everything and we're no longer enemies. Reconciliation, one definition was to make compatible. I'm an ungodly sinner. God can have no fellowship with me at all because of my sin. God is holy. God cannot look upon sin. But through the reconciliation, I am made compatible with God. God can have fellowship with me. That's what reconciliation is. It's one of the New Testament words. Reconciliation, I think the word itself only comes about nine times in the whole Bible. someone or something is thoroughly changed and adjusted to something which is according to a standard. Now you take a watch and you want to have it set. It doesn't keep good time. You take it to the watchmaker and he compares it with a proper chronometer, a thing that never moves, never loses. It's a perfect timepiece. He compares this and adjusts it until this is compatible with that. God is holy and perfect. He never changes or varies. We're sinners. And God has made us compatible with himself. This is, I think, is some idea of the meaning of the word reconciliation. In the Old Testament, look at Leviticus eight, verse five, fifteen, a moment. In Leviticus eight, fifteen, You get some idea of the meaning of the word in the Old Testament. Let's read verse fourteen. Leviticus eight. And he brought the bullock for the sin offering. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the bullock for the sin offering. And he slew it. And Moses took the blood and put it upon the horns of the altar round about with his finger. and purified the altar and poured the blood at the bottom of the altar and sanctified it to make reconciliation upon it. He made reconciliation for the sins of the people. By that blood, somehow the gap between God and men on account of their sin was bridged. And reconciliation was made. by the blood. That was in the Old Testament. That's only a picture of what took place in the New Testament. Now, Second Corinthians five tells us about a reconciliation which is universal. What I mean to say it's for the whole world. Second Corinthians five, and verse nineteen says, to which that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Reconciling the world unto himself. See men is without excuse today. God has made reconciliation, so it's possible for man to come to God. Now we make mistakes sometimes, particularly in our hymnology, you know. At Christmas time we sing about God and sinners reconcile. That's not right. God was never other than reconcile. We had to be reconciled. Sinners have to be reconciled to God. Not God reconciled to man. He's no reconciled. He's all right. He hasn't changed. God, he's the standard. We're the ones that went wrong. We have to be reconciled to God, not God to us. He ever was reconciled to us. But through the cross of Christ, he made it possible for a sinner to be reconciled to God. The cross of Christ has rendered the world savable. But from the cross of Christ, it would have been impossible. We would have been shut up and outside for all eternity. You see, when Adam sinned in the garden, until then, until Adam sinned, we read that God came down into the garden and he had fellowship with the man and woman he had made. And God looked upon Adam and looked upon Eve and looked upon all his wondrous creation. And it says he was well pleased with everything. Everything was beautiful. But the enemy came in. You know the story. Satan came in. And Satan tempted Eve. And she dragged Adam into it. And together they fell into sin. And they were separated from God. And when God came walking in the garden that evening. You find fellowship with Adam? God uses a strange cry he'd never used before. He said, Adam, where are thou? Adam, where are thou? Adam, where are thou? And Adam was hiding behind a tree. He was afraid of God because he had sinned. A gray gap had come between God and that. Sin had separated. Sin had broken down the fellowship. Sin had made Adam a guilty person. And he was ashamed. and he was guilty, he'd offended against God, he'd disobeyed God, he'd broken God's rule and God's command, and Adam fell. And Romans five verse twelve tells us that as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin so death passed upon all men because all sin. Adam brought that in. And at the end of the third chapter of Genesis, the picture so changed. At the beginning there's that garden with all the joy and the fellowship between God. And at the end of the chapter, there cherubim there with a flaming sword, keeping the way of the tree of life, and Adam and Eve driven out of the garden separately from God. Enemy. And their will and their mind was against God. And it tells us in the New Testament that our minds and our wills were contrary to God. Let me read you a few verses in Ephesians. Ephesians four. Ephesians four and verse This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts. This was opposition before God saved us, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them. And how many men there are in the world today, clever men, professors, leaders of thought, and leaders in the wisdom of this world, so-called, which God looks upon as the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. And these men, with all their knowledge and all their wisdom, they're ignorant. He speaks of the ignorance which is in them. They're alienated from the life of God. And so they don't recognize God. Take one simple little thing, not simple, but one thing. Take this story of creation. God has clearly told us here how he made the world. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But in their ignorance, these wise men of this world, they don't want to accept what God says. So they sat down and surmised and surmised and surmised and tried to think out some possible means for all this world to come into being as it is. And they brought about a fabulous thing. Volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes on evolution. And it's all utter rot and folly and nonsense. The whole thing from beginning to end. And we send our kids to school and universities. And this is the nonsense they're teaching them all the time. Foreign, alien to the Word of God. Nothing to do with the Word of God. And our youngsters have to go and listen to this and have it instilled into their minds. Thank God, some of us were brought up in a day when they didn't do that. They taught us the Bible in the school where I went. They don't do that anymore because of the wonderful wisdom they have today. They cut God out, and God calls them. They're alienated from the life of God, so they ignorance that is in them because of the blindness, the blindness of their heart. Alienated from God. And that's the position. And the world is getting worse. Let's go back to Ephesians two. He talks a little bit about our own lives. He's speaking to the Ephesians, of course. It says, You hath he quickened. Chapter two, verse one, you who were dead in trespasses and sin. When and in times past he walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. among whom also we all had our manner of living in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. That's our position, as it was before God came into our lives. Now, at the cross of Calvary, God brought about a reconciliation. so that man in his ignorance, man in his folly, man in his sin, man as an enemy to God can be reconciled and become a friend of God. That's what reconciliation means, to make an enemy a friend, to reconcile. God had to be reconciled to us, but we have to be reconciled to him. So he says, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing their trespasses unto them, and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Because of the cross of Christ, God does not impute to these people their trespasses. He can cover it up. He can forgive it through the cross of Christ, through the blood of Christ, if they will only check. If they will only make that one simple move, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. And that moment they reconciled to God. So I say then, great things took place that moment when I accepted Christ as my Savior. And this was one of those wonderful things that took place at that moment. Verse twenty. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God. God reconciled the world to himself, but God reconciled the individual to himself. The individual. Be ye reconciled to God. That's the gospel. That's the message we have to preach. Colossians Colossians one twenty-one says, Let's read twenty-two, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven, and you, verse twenty-two, you that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked words, yet now as he reckons. I'm reading that to prove again what the Bible says about it. You who were enemies, alienated and enemies, alienated from God and enemies of God. Now, it'd be very hard to get a truth like this over to some people. I sometimes think we can talk a language here which we understand, but I sometimes think when strangers come in here, I wonder if they understand. You take a case of a man or a woman that has spent years and years in a church, became members of that church, probably born again, but they've never had this kind of teaching. There are many that are, I suppose, they're saved, but they have never known the real position they were in before salvation. The teaching has never been brought home to them. They don't read the Bible. They don't know their state before they were saved. And they tell some people, this is what God thinks about you. An enemy, by which it works. An enemy of God. They say, I'm not an enemy of God. I've been a church all my life. But that's what God says about us. God says that we were enemies. And we were alienated by our wicked minds, alienated from God. And that's why we needed to be reconciled. So that's the theory. The New Testament teaching of reconciliation. Now then, in this wonderful chapter, two Corinthians chapter five, Paul takes up this theory and he says, now God has given this reconciliation teaching to you. That's to say, when I am saved and I become reconciled to God, God gives me the responsibility of telling this to somebody else. Let's read it. Verse seventeen. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. I'm reconciled to God. My position before God has changed. Instead of an enemy, now I'm a friend of God. Instead of being outside, I'm his child. Instead of being opposed to God, now I'm on God's side. And God immediately gives me the business of telling other people about this. Let's read it. all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. That's what he's done with us. Reconciled us to God by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. God's given that ministry to us. This is our business now. We have to preach the gospel. We're not all preachers. I'm convinced it is a mistake to think that everybody saved can be a preacher. That's an utter mistake. God has given gifts to men. To some he's given the gifts of an evangelist, some teachers and pastors and so on. But he has given that to all men. But we can all be ambassadors. I don't have to preach to be an ambassador. And it says he has... He has given to us the ministry of reconciliation to witness that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and has committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. This is the position. We now have become ambassadors. An ambassador is one who represents his country and his government in a foreign country. When I lived in Greece, We used to get invited sometimes. We were British subjects in those days, and we were invited on special occasions like the King's birthday. There was a King reigning in those days when we were there, or certain English holidays. We were invited to the British Embassy. And there was a beautiful house there in Athens, and we used to go and shake hands with the Ambassador. the representative of the King of Great Britain in Greece. We used to shake hands with him and go in and have some of his coffee or tea or whatever he had, his cake, and spend a few moments there in the British Embassy. He represented Great Britain in Greece. He was the ambassador. You go up to Washington, D.C., and there are certain districts of Washington, and you see this embassy and that embassy, and as you go down the road, the different homes or great houses there where the ambassadors of these different countries live, with the flag of their country flying over their embassies where they live. They represent in this country their king or their government or their country. Now we are ambassadors. An ambassador does not interfere with the politics of the country in which he lives. He can't do that because he's a foreigner. All he can do is report back to his own country what's going on and take orders from his own country, from his own president or his own king or whoever it is he's serving, and he has to fulfill and carry out the orders from headquarters, from his own country, carry them out there in the country in which he lives. Because it's much easier today than it used to be in the old days when everything was done by mail and telegram and so on. Now they can talk to one another over the air wherever they are, and they get immediate contact with the headquarters in Washington, D.C., whatever country the United States ambassadors are in, they can keep in contact all the time, and they do just what they're told from headquarters. That's where we are today. We are in constant communication with headquarters. You see, it's taken the human race a long, long time to get to this stage when we've got radar. A long, long time when you can be five or six thousand miles away and talk immediately with headquarters. They had to wait for messages to be taken across the ocean. But we've been in this state ever since the Lord put us here. We are in constant communication with headquarters. God's in touch with us and we're in touch with God. And he places us as ambassadors wherever he puts us. Most of us are retired here. But how well we remember the days when we worked in an office or in a factory or in a workshop or in a school or a college and we were there as ambassadors for the Lord Jesus. That's our business. Now what have we got to do? It says, We then, now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. God has given unto us the word of reconciliation. And we have to go into the enemy camp. These men that are alienated by their wicked minds against God, These men who through their ignorance are alienated from God, we have to go to them and say, God has made a reconciliation. You can come to God. He's your enemy. But things are all... He is not your enemy. You're his enemy. You're against God. But God has made a reconciliation whereby you can come to him. And the bridge can be... The gap can be bridged. And the great distance between God and men can be... covered up immediately through reconciliation. And then he goes on to explain it. He says, I pray you in Christ's stead be reconciled to God for he hath made him. Here's one of the greatest verses in the whole Bible. Two Corinthians five twenty one. He hath made him who knew no sin. He who knew no sin. He's made him to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. I used to look at this verse, like Moses of old, as it were, I used to take the shoes from off my feet, and I used to say to the Lord, I'd love to preach on that verse. I'd love to preach on that verse. But to me it was such a tremendous verse. I couldn't find words to describe it. He has made him to be sin for us. Can you fathom that? The Holy Spotless Son of God. He who knew no sin. He who hated sin. To the Lord Jesus Christ, sin is black and ugly and unclean. He could touch the leper, but he was never defiled by his leprosy. He could touch the sinner, but sin didn't affect him. I mean to say he was clean and pure, the Holy Son of God, and sin was black to him. And he has made him to be sin. Can you fathom it? I don't think we'll ever understand how the Holy Son of God was made sin, that ugly, awful thing that God hates. This is how God brought about reconciliation. His son went to the place called Calvary, and there he bore in his own body our sins upon the tree. And all that the throne of God demanded that man might be reconciled to God. It was all accomplished at the place called Calvary. And in those hours of darkness and pain and shame, the Lord Jesus bore to the utmost all that the throne of God demanded that man might be reconciled to God. And we can go out now as ambassadors and preach reconciliation and say the Lord Jesus paid the price. The Lord Jesus met the claim whereby you can come back to God and we can go to men and tell them, be reconciled to God. Not God has to be reconciled to you. He is reconciled. God has paid the price in his Son. We have to be reconciled to God. And so wherever we are at school, in a college, in an office, in a workshop, wherever we are day by day, as we meet men and women, we can go out with this message and say, Be ye reconciled to God, because the Lord Jesus paid the utmost price at the place called Calvary. He has made him to be sinned for us, and you know sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We were unclean and away from him. We have now become the righteousness of God. in Christ Jesus. This is the message. I love that hymn. I was looking for it in our book, but it's not there. Ahim, I expect some of you know, I am a stranger here within a foreign land. Ambassador to being of realms beyond the sea. This is the message that I bring. A message angels saying would sing, O be erect. be reconciled to God. That's how angels would love to tell this story, but they can't. Obedied, reconciled to God. One closing thought. Let's go back to Colossians again. The reconciliation which was accomplished at the cross of Christ, it doesn't only stop with our salvation and us being reconciled to God. The whole universe. You see, the whole scene has gone wrong through Adam's sin. There were no thorns growing in the field before Adam sinned. There was no death before Adam sinned. There was no toil and sweat like we have today before Adam sinned. All that came in by Adam sinned. But in Colossians chapter one and verse, I read it just now, verse twenty, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself. By the cross of Christ, God is going in the coming day to reconcile all things to himself, not only us sinners, but he's going to reconcile all things. By him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. and the Lord Jesus is going to reign supreme over everything, and all will be reconciled to him. No more enmity with God. No more enemies of God. The whole universe will bow at his feet and bring their homage to him. They will be reconciled to God, the whole universe, through the death of Christ, through the cross of Christ. Beloved, what kind of Christians we ought to be when we consider the great thing that happened. when the Lord Jesus died for us at Calvary's cross. And reconciliation is one of those things which God gave us when we accepted Christ as our personal Savior. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we bow before thee and praise thy holy name. We thank thee that in Christ we have redemption, that in Christ we have forgiveness, in Christ We have this wonderful reconciliation. We who were enemies from thee have been reconciled to thee by the cross of Christ. Help us, Lord, we pray thee, that we might walk as men and women whose minds and beings are all reconciled to thyself, under thy sway, under thy control, waiting for thy leading day by day. And we pray that from here at Park of the Palm, the word of reconciliation might go out, that we as ambassadors for Jesus Christ might go out and tell men, Be ye reconciled to God. God has made a way possible for you to come back to him. Help us to take the gospel. Use us for thy glory, we pray thee. So, Lord, we thank you for another Lord's day and for thy precious word and seek thy parting blessing. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.