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Here is this week's message from our Sunday morning worship experience.
I want to have you turn to the book of Romans, the book of Romans.
The apostle Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit.
From these words to the church of Rome, we are going to go to chapter 5 and read beginning at verse 6.
Beginning a brand new collection of teaching this Sunday that is going to carry us into Easter Sunday.
I have titled this, The Seven Places That Jesus Shed His Blood.
It is important for us to understand that there is power in the blood of Jesus.
The scripture says that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of our sins.
I am going to talk about that this morning as you go to the book of Romans chapter 5.
We are going to begin reading at verse 6.
I remind you that you can follow along with us with our app notes.
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You can follow along with us there on the Victory Church app if you haven't downloaded that.
You need to because then you can also find out what is happening here at the church,
how you can be praying for our missionaries of the week.
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I read this to you this morning, Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Pin these words. This is the word of God.
For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely or rarely, that means for a righteous man, will one die.
Yet perhaps for a good man, some would even dare to die.
But listen to this.
But God demonstrates, he exemplifies, he shows his own love toward us, me and you, humanity, us.
In that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Somebody give him praise for that right there.
Verse nine, much more than having now been justified by his blood.
Somebody say by his blood.
Being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son.
Much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
And not only that, but we also rejoice through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
I want to share with you a message over the next few moments that I've titled, The Road to Reconciliation.
Would you please bow your heads and prayer with me this morning?
Father, thank you Lord for this privilege, this opportunity that we have this morning to gather together around your word.
You said that your word brings light.
Lord, on this path, on our faith journey, Lord, give us light that we might know how to follow you.
Open up our hearts to receive what you have for us today.
Speak in this place, O God.
We haven't come here to hear a sermon, to sing a song, or attend a service, but we've come here in this moment to hear from heaven.
Do what only you can do.
Holy Spirit, speak to our hearts and our lives that we might believe your word, receive your word, and obey your word.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thank you, listen.
Has anyone ever, you ever said to someone or someone said to you, you had to be there.
You had to be there.
And what you were saying to that person, what that person was saying to you was, you missed it.
And I don't know about you, but I don't want to miss it.
But here's the hard part.
When you say that to someone, oftentimes they don't really know what they're missing.
So they don't really understand what it is that they've missed out on.
I wonder this morning if there are some of us here that were missing out on something.
Could it be that God has something for you that you're missing out on today?
I remember when I got my first iPhone.
Anybody go back to that moment, your first smartphone, first iPhone?
I just started working here at the church and Pastor Dave said, hey, we're going to go over to AT&T.
We're going to pick up your iPhone.
I was like, oh, sweet, that's cool.
Never had an iPhone. I had the Razor, y'all.
How many of y'all remember that? The Razor phone, right?
And you had to text five times to get to a letter.
You know what I mean? When you were texting, it was just crazy.
And so we went to AT&T, picked up the iPhone.
Come on, the 3S. I go way back, the 3S.
Anybody got a 3S in here today?
Okay, just checking.
But I went home that very day.
And I told my wife, Angela, I said, hey, you got a check.
Look at this. This is the iPhone 3S.
You need one of these. You have to have one of these.
She was totally unimpressed.
She was like, I don't need that. I got my own phone.
She's got the Nokia flip phone or whatever.
I don't know what she had.
And she was like, I don't need that. I'm fine with my phone.
And I was like, you don't get it.
So I kept on telling her about this. And then the week later,
I actually went and bought her her own iPhone 3S.
And it was life-changing, right?
For her as well.
And she hasn't put down the phone since, right?
So...
And I can say that because you know how it is with your phones.
Your phone is attached to you.
Especially it changed when you went to having a smartphone.
But people can tell us all that they want to about how we need a certain thing.
And we're missing out on something by not having access to it and not experiencing it.
And I feel like that that is the way that it is for us as followers of Jesus, right?
I mean, we want our family to know Him.
We want our friends to know Him.
We want our coworkers to know Jesus, the joy of knowing Jesus
and following Him and the life that comes to our life from following Him.
But it's hard to convince people of something that they're missing.
I don't want any of us to miss out, though, on experiencing all that God has for us.
Hosea chapter 4 verse 6 says this,
My people perish for a lack of knowledge.
In other words, you don't have to perish.
You don't have to lack.
You don't have to be experienced brokenness.
You don't have to experience various troubles in your own strength
and go through life on your own.
You see, the reality is that you only perish because you have a lack of knowledge.
The truth is that God has provided everything for us to live a godly life
and to experience all that He intends for us to fulfill our calling.
And today I want you to know and receive the benefits of salvation
that are yours through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I want you to hear this truth of this passage today
that I've put together in a sentence from our text.
It says this,
Because Jesus shed His blood,
I can be reconciled, you can be reconciled, we can be reconciled to God by faith,
having the burden of our sins removed and the benefits of salvation released.
That's a lot.
That's a lot there.
There's a lot in that statement.
And I want to unpack this for you in this message entitled,
The Road to Reconciliation.
So this morning we're going to go into a subject of theology known as soteriology.
So if you want to feel smart, you can write down that word
and you can go talk to somebody about soteriology.
Really, it means this, the doctrine of salvation.
Salvation, I want to talk to you about this morning.
And as we're on the road to reconciliation,
it's important for you to understand and to know that that word reconciliation
is just an aspect of the salvation that you enter into as you put your faith and trust in Jesus.
Salvation began in the heart of God.
It's God's intention to save each and every one of us.
God is not, His intentions is not that any of us would perish,
that all of us would repent and come to the knowledge of the truth.
And so on this road of reconciliation over the next few weeks, over the next two weeks,
I want to talk to you about the various places that Jesus shed His blood
so that we can understand the benefits that are afforded to us
through the salvation that Jesus has provided for us.
I don't want you to miss out and I don't want to miss out on any of the promises
that God has declared over our life.
I want to receive His promises, receive what He has provided for me through His shed blood.
And so reconciliation is almost the end process.
Salvation happens when we put our faith in Jesus,
but salvation was initiated in the heart of God.
And we can be on this road, we can travel, we can journey on this road to reconciliation.
And it's knowable, this road is knowable.
It's understandable for us, firstly because of the motivation of reconciliation.
This is the character of God Himself.
The Scriptures that I read earlier says that when we were without strength,
in other words, we were weak.
In due time, Christ died for the ungodly.
So not only were we weak, but we were wicked.
Paul is telling us the story about the human condition.
Every one of us, each person in this world, we were every one of us born in sin.
Isaiah the prophet says that we, all of us, like sheep have gone astray.
We all of us have sinned.
We've all fallen short of the glory of God and we were without strength.
We were ungodly.
But God demonstrated His love toward us and that why we were still sinners.
Listen, we were sinners.
In other words, we were wayward.
That word sin means to miss the mark in the Greek language.
It's almost giving you the picture of an archer who is pulling back the bow
and putting his arrow and shooting toward a target and he's unable to hit the target.
You and I are unable to meet the requirements, the standard of God.
All of us were conceived, the Scripture says, in sin.
Every one of us, we were born in sin and we miss the mark.
We fall short of what God requires.
But that's the bad news.
The bad news is that we were without strength.
We were ungodly.
We were sinners.
Come on, we were enemies of God in verse 10.
Meaning this, if you are lost and you don't have faith in Jesus,
you are actually an enemy of God.
This goes against the entire philosophy and mindset and understanding of our society,
of our culture, of man-centered philosophy.
Man-centered philosophy says that we are innately good.
You see, the reality is we are not innately good, we are innately bad.
We are innately selfish and any of us who have had children,
you know the truth of that statement.
When you're trying to sleep through the night and you can't sleep,
your child wants to wake up because they're hungry or because they're not tired.
We are born in sin.
We are shaped in sin.
We want what we want when we want it and how we want it.
We are born in sin and we are enemies of God.
And we are separated from God as a result of our sin.
Somebody say that's bad news.
So, thanks for coming to church today.
But I've got some good news for you this morning.
And I have a question.
I want to ask you, to ask yourself,
what was it that motivated Jesus's coming to earth and dying for our sin?
To find the answer to this question that's all important,
we have to actually look at the nature and the character of God himself.
This was his motivation of reconciliation.
You see, man was separated, human kind was separated.
They were sinners.
They were ungodly.
We talked about how they were enemies and they were without strength.
They could not please God in their own ability.
This is known as the justice of God.
This is an attribute of God, a characteristic of God himself where he is just.
Meaning this, that he always does what is right.
And he requires us to do what is right.
But on the other aspect, on the other side of his nature and his character is his love.
God is sacrificial.
He's always looking out for the greatest good of people.
He loves us.
His love is unconditional.
It's sacrificial.
It's intentional.
And it desires our highest good.
You see, the bad news is that we are separated from God.
But the good news is that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son
that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.
These two characteristics of God have been brought together in the wisdom of God.
Justice required that God find a way for the penalty or his wrath that was due for our sins to be paid.
But his love reached out to us and made the initial step so that we could be reconciled to God
and have our sins paid for so that we could have relationship with God.
While we were still weak, wicked, wayward and warlike, Jesus died for us.
And this is the good news.
He didn't just die for his friends.
He didn't die for those that were in relationship with him.
No, he died for his enemies.
He died for those who had crucified him.
He died for those that were totally against him.
They were ungodly.
He died for me and for you.
Imagine you're eating a meal and a restaurant with your son.
And at that moment you're eating at this restaurant.
A gunman comes in and he starts to shoot people.
This could be a reality in the society that we live in, unfortunately.
Begins to shoot people.
And by the time he's done shooting, 11 people are dead.
This is not just a theory.
This is not just something that we can conceive.
It's actually happening and it actually did happen.
What would be your immediate response?
Would your immediate response would be to hide?
Would it be to run?
Would it be to attack the gunman and overpower him?
Or maybe your response would be to protect your son.
This actually happened to a man named James Kidd of Wheaton, Illinois.
He was sitting his son who was stationed at Fort Bragg at the military base.
And they went to an Italian restaurant there.
They were eating.
The gunman came in.
He began to shoot.
And this man threw himself, this father, through himself in front of his son.
He was hit in the back and succumbed to his wounds.
He died there that day.
And his wife said this about him.
That he was a good man, a good father and a good husband.
He died saving his son.
What more can you say?
Now, I want you to imagine this.
Suppose that shooter that came into that room that day began shooting
and then turned the gun on himself and that father jumped in front of the gunman
and that gunman shot him as he was trying to protect the gunman.
You say to me, that would never happen.
Yeah, it's totally against our human nature that someone would die for their enemies.
However, that while, here's the truth, that while man does not do that, this is what God does.
This is what God did in Christ.
That's exactly what happened at Calvary.
Jesus Christ died for the sins of his enemies.
He died to deliver those who hated him.
And this is God's love.
And if there's ever any doubt in your mind to the reality and the truth of the love of God,
maybe you ask yourself with all the things that are wrong in a society and everything that is wrong in my life,
how could God be a God of love?
I challenge you to look back at the place called Calvary.
There you're going to see a holy God, a sinless God, the Creator, dying for the creature that hates him.
Watch as his life leaves his body.
Watch as his blood runs down the cross.
Listen as his blood drips and great pools on the ground.
Hear him as he gasps for his last breath and gives his life as a sacrifice for sin.
Look at the broken and the bleeding form of the Son of God hanging there lifeless on that cross.
And tell me that God does not love you.
The motivation for our reconciliation is both the love and the justice of God.
Because Jesus shed his blood, I can be reconciled to God.
You can be reconciled to God.
Secondly, I want to tell you that the road to reconciliation is not only knowable because of the character of God,
but it's also possible because of the shed blood of Christ.
This is the measure of our reconciliation.
Verse 9,
Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.
Much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
The measure of reconciliation is the price that he paid for our reconciliation.
And that is the blood of Jesus.
You see that word, reconcile, that we've been talking about today that we hear frequently in this passage of Scripture that has to deal with salvation.
Let me define it for you.
It's a Greek word that is an accounting term that means to change or exchange as coins for others equivalent value.
Listen to this.
Relationally, it means to change from enmity to friendship.
This is what Jesus did for us in shedding his blood, the price that he paid for you and I for our salvation through his blood.
He reconciled us.
Now, I'm going to go back here and maybe date myself and my age.
How many of you grew up having a checkbook, reconciling a checkbook, writing?
How many of you still do that, right?
They don't teach this in school, right?
And then you're reconciling your checkbook, but you have a bank account, you have a bank statement.
And if that bank statement does not agree with your checkbook, then you've got to reconcile the two statements.
In other words, something is wrong that needs to be fixed in your checkbook.
And the only way to get to reconciliation is find out where the problem is, right?
You can't just sit back and say, oh, it's all going to work out.
You've got to get to the bottom of where the problem is.
This is what Jesus has come to do for us.
He's our fix to the error of sin, and he came to reconcile us back to God.
He lived for 33 years to fulfill all righteousness and to bring us into balance with God's righteousness.
And this he did because we could not do it for ourselves.
He reconciled us, and the measure of his reconciliation was his shed blood on the cross.
Let me give you some characteristics of this shed blood.
First and foremost, this blood is perfect or sinless blood.
Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 says,
He made him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
So it's not only a perfect or sinless blood sacrifice, but it's also a particular blood.
It's unique.
Hebrews chapter 9 verse 12 says this,
He did not enter by means of the blood through goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once and for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal salvation.
How many of you know the song?
Nothing but the blood.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood.
O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.
There's no other fountain.
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
I love verse 2.
For my part in this I see nothing but the blood of Jesus.
For my cleansing this my plea, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
There is only one way to enter into salvation, and that is through the shed blood of Jesus.
That is the price that he paid so that you and I could be justified, so that you and I could be reconciled, so that you and I could actually be saved.
He took the punishment upon himself.
He shed the blood that we should have shed.
Our own blood should have been shed according to the righteous requirements of the law.
He took our place so that we could be set free.
It's perfect blood.
It's particular blood.
It's also precious or valuable blood.
This is what 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 18 and 19 says,
Knowing that you are not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,
you were redeemed though by the precious blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot.
This is perfect blood.
This is the blood of a person who lived a sinless life.
A sinless life.
A life that you and I could not live.
Finally, it's powerful blood or it's victorious blood.
Revelation chapter 12 verse 11 says this,
They overcame or they overcame, they were victorious in him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony.
And they did not love their lives until the death.
This is talking about the followers of Jesus in the last days standing before the throne room of God.
So the road to reconciliation is possible only because of the shed blood of Jesus.
And what is the value of something determined by the price that someone is willing to pay for it?
You might be in this place today and you feel unimportant, unworthy or some way inferior.
And that's an indication that you don't understand the value that God set upon you because of the price that he paid for you.
God loved you so much that he was willing to pay the ultimate price, the price of the death of his son in his shed blood.
This was the only way for us to be reconciled or made friends with God, to have peace with God.
It's through the shed blood of Jesus.
It's possible, reconciliation is possible because of the blood of Jesus.
And finally, the road of reconciliation is knowable because of the character of God.
It's possible because of the shed blood of Christ.
And finally, it's available because of the ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of reconciliation.
This is what reconciliation, the salvation that God purchased for us through his blood.
This is what it does for us. Listen to this.
It's the removal of sin's burden and the releasing of salvation's benefits.
I want you to get that.
You see, when Jesus died for you and for me, he not only removed sin's burden, but he also released salvation's blessing to us.
There are benefits of this salvation.
There is blessing that comes to our life as a result of the shed blood of Jesus in salvation.
Paul tells us what happens when we are reconciled to God.
He says this, notice these benefits.
Our position is that we are justified in verse 8.
That word justified is a legal term. It means just as you have never sinned.
In other words, he took our legal penalty upon himself that we might be set free.
It's to declare a person not guilty.
The next benefit of this reconciliation is our protection.
Remember, he says that we are saved from wrath.
The wrath of God that should have rested upon us, Jesus took upon himself becoming our protection.
So the benefits are our position.
We're justified, our protection that we're saved from wrath.
Notice that it says that he is our reconciliation.
This means that peace has been made with God between mankind and God.
And finally, he's our preservation.
We are saved by his life.
And so what is the result of that?
How now shall we live?
What is should be our response?
In verse 11, the apostle Paul says this, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
He says not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received.
Somebody say received, received the reconciliation.
The road to reconciliation is available, but it is not automatic.
It has to be received.
It's not something that is going to happen automatically,
but it's an invitation to you and I to receive reconciliation.
Be saved.
What the Lord is calling out to you today, if you've never had the burden of your sin removed,
if you've never repented of your sin, if you've never asked God to come into your life,
to forgive you of all your sins, his plea to you today is to be reconciled.
Allow him to remove the burden and the guilt and the shame of your sin today.
You were born in sin.
You need a savior.
You need someone to come rescue you.
Maybe you're in this place today and you've received the removal of that burden.
Your eternity is secure in God and you have eternal life.
Can I tell you something today?
There's something more than just receiving eternal life when we give our life to Christ
and we are saved.
There are the benefits or the blessings that salvation provides.
We're going to talk about these over the next few weeks,
but salvation and the benefits of this salvation that the Lord Jesus has provided
is available to you today, but it has to be received by faith.
And so I want to invite you even right now to stand up on your feet all across this room.
We're going to receive communion right now.
And as you prepare your communion elements, the band is going to come.
They're going to lead us in worship.
Jesus came that the removal of sin's burden would happen.
That we would receive the removal of that sin and the releasing of God's benefits.
Now we are reconciled.
We have been made friends with God.
We have peace with God.
There are the physical and emotional benefits of our healing.
The Scripture says that by Jesus' stripes we were healed.
The Scripture says that Jesus in Gethsemane shed great drops of blood.
Jesus' blood that we might be emotionally healed.
Jesus' blood on his hands, he would, were pierced in his feet were pierced
so that we could receive deliverance so that we would be restored to our right place
and to receive authority from God so that we could walk right.
So the things that we had touched could be redeemed.
So that now we could walk with God and go to where he called us to go.
We received salvation's benefits because the shed blood of Jesus provided us these blessings, these benefits.
Reconciliation is available but it's not automatic.
It has to be received.
The blessings and the benefits of salvation must be received.
And today as we are gathered around this communion table and this moment together,
as you take that cup, that cup with the juice in there represents a symbolic of the shed blood of Jesus.
The blood of Jesus was shed so that your sins, though they are great, and many would be forgiven.
That shed blood was poured out that you might receive healing physically and emotionally.
Are you in need of healing today?
That shed blood was poured out so that you and I might have peace with God
and we might be restored into relationship with God.
This morning as you take that cup and you receive, you can receive now, you can take that cup, that juice.
I want you to bow your head and close your eyes all across this room.
I want you to receive, just receive forgiveness from Jesus.
It's because he shed his blood that we could be made right with God, that we were justified.
It's because of his shed blood that we were redeemed, that we were reconciled, that we were restored to relationship with God.
Thank you for listening to this week's podcast.
Our vision is that you would experience Victory Church as a place to call home.
We do this by encountering God through worship, embracing community through relationship,
and expanding the kingdom of God through service.
Find out more about Victory at victorywinchester.com.