Welcome to the Sunday morning service at Bible Baptist Church in Hampton, Georgia, where Pastor Lauren Regeer opens God's Word each week to provide us with biblically based teaching that helps you meet life head on. Thank you for joining us and may your hearts be blessed as God's Word is taught. And now here is Pastor Lauren Regeer. Take your Bibles, please, and let's finish our final installment in the series on forgiveness or wrestling with forgiveness. I started preparing this message and found out that I'm going to have to finish it tonight, which is probably a good thing. But we're going to preach on Messiah, the Messiah's final lifeline, the last lifeline of mercy, forgiveness. We just heard a trio sing about that. And we're thankful for the truth that we find forgiveness at the cross. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 18. This passage is becoming familiar to you. It's been our main text, our primary text as we've looked at the topic of forgiveness. And all things, verse 18, 2 Corinthians 5, all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself. What a wonderful, what a wonderful promise or what a wonderful benefit, that is, because of the cross, to Himself by Jesus Christ, and have given to us the ministry of reconciliation. All of us this morning are ordained by God to be reconcilers, to the wit, or that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word, gospel, of reconciliation. Now then, square your shoulders because you are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. No one has to leave the doors of this church this morning without a proper relationship with God. God offers to us. He invites us to himself. that we might be reconciled to him. Why? Verse 21, for he hath made him to be sin, to carry the weight of our sin, the payment, the penalty was put upon him who knew no sin, that we might be, praise the Lord, hallelujah, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. What a great exchange. Father, we pray for your help this morning, cast ourselves upon your great grace." What a wonderful book it is, holding our hands and to preach and to teach and to live. to be energized by. And Lord, we're thankful that it is a living book. We pray that You would, by Your Spirit, make it real to us today. In Jesus' name, for His sake, amen. Forgiveness, really, as we've mentioned just by review a little bit, forgiveness is to release from a debt or to set free. And it's based, of course, upon true confession, or an agreement between parties that there has indeed been a debt or a trespass or a sin or an offense that has broken fellowship." Anytime sin enters a relationship, fellowship is broken. Sin is a divider. Have you noticed that? If you're married very long, you notice that. Or in any relationship you have, when sin enters, offense comes and these offenses divide. Forgiveness can only be truly effective when a spirit of reconciliation, as we read in our text, is present. That is someone who wants to be a reconciler of the relationship. He wants the relationship to be renewed or restored back to where it's healthy again, full again, right again. This usually in the relationship is the most spiritual person. I found that to be true. Those that are most concerned about relationships tend to be the most spiritual. They're the ones that are most aggressive about fellowships broken. They take the initiative to restore broken fellowships because they want things to be right between folks around them. The Bible says, Galatians 6, you who are spiritual, when someone is taken in offense, You who are spiritual, restore those in spirit of meekness. And so it is the spiritual party usually that has the most concern about this, to regain unity. And I've said it before in this series, I'll repeat it again. Unity is not the absence of conflict. It's the presence of a reconciling spirit. Someone who really cares about this fellowship restored. The goal then in forgiveness is not to just put band-aids on recurring bad habits. Sorry, sorry, sorry, oops, sorry. I did that again. No. But it's to build broken relationships into spiritually growing, God-honoring fellowships. Growing relationships, true. Confession of sin, we mentioned this, will bring humble contrition about sin, a turning from it that's real and that will yield itself to willing, if need be, restoration. Once you're truly right with someone that you have offended, you want to go beyond saying, will you please forgive me? I was wrong to what can I do to repay the debt that I owe? Remember the man who said, Lord, I'm going to be right with you and if it takes paying up to four, that was the Jewish law, up to fourfold, I'll do it. Well, that's restoration. And that brings a relationship full cycle. So it's not just about saying, I'm sorry, but rebuilding to even a better level than before the offense, the fellowship that was lost. Reconciliation is the goal when we wrestle with the idea of forgiveness. Understand as unsavory as it might be to humble yourself and go to someone, the goal in this is that your relationship would sing again. You would enjoy what God calls a healthy, spiritual, God-honoring relationship. So, God has a role in all this. Colossians chapter 2 and verse 13 says, He forgave you all your sins. And verse 14 of the same chapter, here's what God did with your sin. We sang about it a couple times this morning. He blotted out Colossians 2.14. He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances. You're long, and Dan Klum knows all about these handwritings of debt. He deals with figures and taxes. God took all the debt you owed Him, and He nailed it to the cross, and He paid the debt you owed. in order that you might be made fit and acceptable and right for heaven. So his role is the one who only justly can pay for your sins. And so all your offenses that were lingering before a holy God are paid for. The penalty has been paid, and you don't have to live a life where you're out of fellowship with God or others because of the payment Christ has made. The church, in fact, you have a role to play in forgiveness. The Bible says, Ephesians, we ought to quote this together, Ephesians 4, 32, and be kind one to another. Tenderhearted. What? forgiving one another. Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you, we reflect God's very spirit to lost humanity when we live in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. Are you good at repenting? Are you good at reconciling what is broken? Then you're acting like God. Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. It may be such a thing as you're seated this morning in this place. There's a name or face that comes up in your mind of someone that is out of sorts with you. God, by His precious Spirit, as He so hapt to do, is touching your heart and saying, but what about that one? In fact, we are told in Matthew 5, 24 that God is so concerned about human relationships that He says, even before you leave your gift at the temple, do what? Go be reconciled. Reflect the love that I have for you, the fellowship that I have made for you by going and working this thing out. Then the church has a role to play in forgiveness. According to Matthew 18, what if someone says, what if it doesn't work? I've tried, I've tried. They just won't get it and they won't quit sinning over and over against me. Well, the church has been given the role of helping reconcile people to one another. So you are to go to tell someone, an elder in the church or a deacon, a spiritually mature person, come with me. You go to that person and plead with them to change. That doesn't work then. Finally, the full force of the church, the accountability of the church with tears in their eyes ought to remind them that this is your last opportunity within the context of the church to make it right. Please do what you can. And they exert pressure on that relationship. that it might be right because certainly the church of all places ought to be those who express the love of Christ in situations where there is difficulties and offenses. Here's what he says, "'All things are of God, who hath reconciled us,' verse 18, "'to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.'" Why, Pastor, have you spent so many messages, four or five now, on this theme? Because it is, in fact, the calling of the church to live in reconciled relationships. We of all organizations, and I'm not calling the church an organization, but we of all entities ought to know how to find reconciliation in our family lives. The church has been redeem, reconcile, justify, sanctify. We have the example of the Lord Jesus Christ for us as a church to live in broken. It's almost like Babe Ruth going up to bat and he's got the bat upside down. You say, no, there's something wrong with that picture. Babe Ruth, you of all people ought to know how to hold a bat. The church of all places and people ought to know what it takes to love on one another and forgive and reconcile. Now, when Brother Craig Hammer tried to play the trumpet this week, we didn't think any more ill of him because he doesn't know how to. We found that out, didn't we? He does not know how to play the trumpet, even after that quick lesson in front of everybody. Some of you missed that session, but a brother Mike called Craig Hammer up here to just play the trumpet, an instrument he doesn't play at all, and he didn't do so well. Yet the church often struggles with her relationships. We ought to be, of all people, the church ought to be the one organism that knows how to get along with one another because we have the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. See ourselves like Dr. Brehmer's daughter, Dr. Stephen Brehmer, who's on faculty at Dallas Theological Seminary. He tells of his daughter one day, Sarah, little girl, came by where he was studying for a Bible lesson, and she, right in front of him, misbehaved very badly. And so he, right on the spot, takes her back and spanks her, and she, in turn, starts spanking him on the leg. And so he stopped her and he said to her, listen, Sarah, no, children don't spank their parents. Well, she wandered off and came back in about a minute or two and she says, daddy, who is it? So who spanks mommies and daddies? Truth is, the point is, all of us must tend our relationships, whether we're children or adults. We must understand that God makes a priority of healthy spiritual relationships. The subject of forgiveness is essentially tied to the issue of sin. For if you were not a sinner, would you need to be forgiven? No. If you were not a sinner, you would need a payment or an advocate, a savior, a mediator. You wouldn't need atonement. The cross would be unnecessary. Judgment would be pointless. If you weren't a sinner, spankings would be out. But God has given parents the joy, I say that in quotes, of spanking their children in order that they might reflect to that child not only the fear of the Lord, the consequence of sin, but reflect the very heart of God that is hurt. When fellowship is dividing relationships, a child that's never spanked grows up without seeing or feeling the consequence of those little minor offenses as he's young and often has a poor image of God. The message today, really, too, this morning and this evening, wrap up the series we've had on forgiveness. What is it? Well, it's to release from a debt. What's the goal? A new relationship. What's my responsibility in this? My responsibility is immediately to stop once there's an offense against me or I've offended someone. It is so important, the heart and priority of God, that I've got to stop. I've got to drop, ecce, drop my gift at the altar, run to the one I've offended or the one who is offending me and say, please let's get this right and then come back and worship. Wow. And then what if it doesn't work? We meant to tell it to the church. It always works. God's way always works. Well, today's message may be a little bit odd to you, but I'm going to really paint a picture of God's final olive branch to the world. It's really the kingdom, the messianic kingdom that is yet to come. The millennial reign when forgiveness comes into its fullest bloom. It is a glorious 1,000 year, literal year reign of the Lord upon this earth when once again the olive branch has reached out to humanity. Let's begin. I want to set the table for this message. We'll really get to the main characteristics of this wonderful kingdom tonight. Let me set the stage for you about how God loves you and wants you to be right with Him. As a preacher, it is my joy not only to explain verses of Scripture, that I come across in an expository way, but it also is my joy from time to time to give you a panoramic view of God's heart towards you. And as I preach, it's a joy for me to let you know God loves you. And He wants you to be right with Him. And don't waste your life putting Him aside in the priority of worship. He made you for that. So let's begin, just really a couple points this morning, but we'll spend a little bit of time on them, with the priority of the Bible. If I were to ask you, in fact pass out just a paper with one question, what is the Bible all about? Has anyone ever asked you that? Put it in a nutshell. Has anybody really ever talked to you about the priority of the Bible? Well, you often would say, well, I know, you raise your hand, it is God's revelation. Christians will often say, well, it is where God's will is revealed for us. Good answer. Some people are even more practical, more specific. They would say, well, it's the text for child rearing or marriage repair or moral living or financial success. We hear a lot about that, don't we? Or go to the Bible, it'll tell you about that. Or science, or history. In all these things, God has something to say. But I would have to mark your paper off. Or at least I'd have to put that little, like, teacher, nice try. Ever get that? Nice try. You can do better. Listen in class. Or worse yet, come see me. What is the Bible about the revelation of God? Certainly. But why? Why this book? Why the Bible? What's the disclosure of His law? Yes. Creation of all things? Yes. The story of Calvary? Warmer. The timeline of mankind's journey? Okay. But if this is simply the revelation of God, doesn't God know God? He does. Doesn't God know God's will? He does. So this has a, even though, and I appreciate Brother DeRuvo teaching the class, on the sovereignty of God through the ages, we could say rightly that this book is about God's glory and His sovereign plan through the ages. True. But this book has a distinctively human element in that God doesn't reveal Himself for His own sake. He knows His time. He knows His plan. He knows His own will. He knows His own moral attributes. He knows His own character. He knows it all. So why this book? I know it's hard to make us think on a Sunday morning, but I want you to. Back to our text verse, all things are of God, comma. Isn't that true? Yes. Theologians, all things are of God, by His design, for His glory. Reformers, the Reformers had it right. God has given us a God-focused, cross-centered book. But don't miss this. This book is not an exhaustive work on who God is. It starts with the assumption that God is. In the beginning, God. No explanation. There He is. It just assumes God is. And God made you with a conscience, a skylight, a moral compass that knows there is a God because you're made in His image. John 21-25 says, the world itself could not contain the books if they were written about the subject of God. Here's the key, and if you put this down on your paper, the little quiz I gave you, what's the Bible about? Be fun, wouldn't it? Teach like a big class. It is about how you can be reconciled to Him, God. It is full of invitations for you to know Him, for you to come, for you to bring your thirst to Him and find in Him living water. I love this book. You can put a knife in it, someone said, anywhere and it bleeds. God is expressing His wonderful pursuit of the human heart. And so He gave us a book, 66 of them together. He used 40 men on three continents over 1600 years. One author, of course, the Holy Spirit breathed supernaturally the very heart and Word of God so that every word is inerrant and infallible and comes from His heart and the theme, the purpose is not so that God would simply just express all there is to know about God, but it is so that mankind could know there is a way to get to heaven. There's a way to know that God. Aren't you glad that someone took the Bible, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God and opened it and said to you somewhere in your life, you, a lost sinner separated eternally from God, can find access and acceptability with Him by depending 100% fully upon His finished work. Oh, what great news that was. That God gave me a book. that tells me how I can be rightly related to Him. How precious are the pages of this book. How precious is the revelation of this book that I could be His son. I love that little phrase in his high priestly prayer, John 17. He puts it all in a nutshell. As he's praying, Lord Jesus Christ simply uses this little phrase, Lord I pray that they may be where I am. You think about that. You think about that for just a moment. that God, even before you were born, saw you, loved you, and expressed His heart for you, His passion for you, and He said, even those who will yet come to me, Lord, I just pray that they will be where, Father, I pray that they will be with me. All of you have a dating experience story that led to marriage. We had our troubles, Robin and I did, as we dated. I had to figure her out and she had to figure me out. She's still working on that. And I had so many misconceptions about relationships. I had dated once in high school, that's because my mother made me, scared of the opposite gender, really shy, But there came a point as we dated through, and it was rough, she worked with me, but as we dated through college where I knew that I wanted to spend my life with her and no one else. And isn't it amazing that God, who had the most glorious neighborhood in all of the universe and beyond, whispers these words in prayer to His Father, I want them to be where I am, with me. I don't know what that does for you. If that doesn't light a fire in your human heart, your wood's wet. has been pursuing you. He's given us a book that is full of these wonderful invitations, these lifelines of hope. It was written for our hope, a map to heaven, invitation to God, a cure for sin, pardon from hell, the only way to life and fellowship, the only certificate of reconciliation is found at the cross. And Jesus, who loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, said, I want them to have a way to spend eternity with Me. Hence, again, a great transcending principle about forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't so that we can just walk around church happier than we were before we were forgiven, patched up relationships, no. The greater context is that we are not only saved and reconciled, we want others to know about this wonderful relationship. I wonder, how many of you work with people that are not reconciled to God and the second follow is this, do you even care about it? Ah, that God loves me and made a way. So the Bible tells us, pursuing us, invites us. Then quickly in the next five minutes or so, the priority of course is that God of the Bible wants to be rightly related to you, reconciled to you. And secondly, the priority of reconciliation is seen by repeated opportunities. If you don't mind just getting in a hot air balloon very quickly and taking a quick ride across history. And again, this would be great where we would be a class this morning. The history of mankind is nothing more than a series or displays of grace. God reaching out to men and men turning away from God, straying from God. If you're running from Him this morning, let me warn you that to run from God is the worst thing you could ever do. God is reaching to men and women, and some are turning away from God, straying, and I hope that's not you. We've had three dogs, and I've had three dogs in my adult life, no cats. The first was Tessie. We gave her the best food. We really loved her, but she was a wanderer, got a taste for the neighbor's ducks, couldn't stay home after that. And one day chasing a car, I'm sure on her way to eating a duck, She lost the battle under a tire. Valencia, black lab puppy, I've told you about this dog. He came to our porch because someone dropped him off. Little puppy shivering in the cold. Robin loved him and fed him with eggs and crackers, toast, warm milk. But he was a wanderer too, part hound, came back one day with a red bandana on his neck and the smell of bacon grease on his breath. He'd wandered off to the neighbor's house who must have loved him more than we. I'm pretty sure that dog never got saved. It ran off also and never returned. Another dog that we didn't have a chance to name only lasted three days, wandered off chasing cars. And do you know the goodness of God often is spurned by us. Every wonderful grace God has given us in this dispensation, you think about how many people have turned their backs on the Lord. Oh, I love it that God is always reaching out to man. May I quickly remind you, He made an ideal garden and He put man there. He's not a walrus, not a wildebeest, but He created man with the appetite for God, the ability to worship. And what did He do? In that ideal, perfect setting, God showed up. He walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, but Adam and Eve, the one prohibition they had, they went ahead and broke God's one prohibition and they chose to sin. Their relationship was broken and God didn't do this and say, I'm done with man, but He figured out a way to reach out to us again. The world became so corrupted that God had to wash it clean. A great flood, he saved Noah and seven others. A rainbow said to Noah and his family, I'll never destroy the world this way again by water. You'd think with a fresh slate that man now would simply occupy his thoughts with God continually and only, but actually the opposite happened. Man's heart was so continually, fully occupied with sin and self. It got worse and worse. They corrupted it by sin. Fellowship was broken. But God made a promise to one man, Abraham. He said, I'm going to, through you, through your family, your seed, your nation, bless the world with a Redeemer. So he gave to this people a land of promise, but they turned and ran from it. through sin, they were exiled or sent or went to Egypt. And after 400 years there or so, God gave them a deliverer, a land of promise. Even on their way to the land of promise, they turned their back on the God that gave them quail and manna every day. So they got to this land of promise finally through the leadership of Joshua. And oh, what a wonderful campaign. Those 32 city states were destroyed by the grace of God, a wonderful military campaign. And hear this land flowing with milk and honey. You would think that then, then God's extension of grace and mercy, they would never turn their back on that one true living God. What a wonderful convocation message it was. As Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve God and I enjoin you to serve. And all God's people said, we're going to do that. And then came the judges when every man did what was right in his own eyes. Pitiful time. And God sent them a king. A man after God's own heart. David. Remember that? Again, another olive branch, another extension of God's mercy and grace. A king who set up a kingdom and loved the Lord, though not perfectly, but after one king came and one king went. In fact, Israel had 19 and not one of those kings loved God. Not one was a good king. God finally said, it's enough. He sent them where? Two places. He sent the northern ten tribes where? To Assyria. 722 BC, and he sent the southern tribe of Judah. Where did he send them? Babylon, 586. And there God exercised punishment and got their attention, gave them prophets like Daniel, who reminded them that God's grace still perseveres and God still loves us and still reaches out to us and still cares about us, though we be in captivity. Some of you today running from God and God is trying to get your attention, understand something, no matter how far you go, God still loves you. He brings them back. Nehemiah, Ezra, Zerubbabel build another temple, second temple. And you would think, wouldn't you, that surrounding that temple, though not as glorious as Solomon's, they would certainly never leave the God they loved. The next 434 years were horrible years as once again We're taking a hot air balloon ride once again. They stray to idolatry and false gods and God sends in one prophet after another and every prophet says, Love God! Be reconciled to God! You may have somebody in your life right now that's looking you in the eye and saying, You're not doing what's right. Come back to God. That's the greatest friend you'll ever have. Prophets were really the friends of Israel. They didn't know it. In the fullness of time, when things were bleak, fullness of time, the Old Testament ends with the word curse. God sends a son, a boy. A baby boy, born of a virgin girl by the name of Mary, exact time that God prescribed it, and there standing at the gates of Jerusalem after his three years of ministry, the Son of God, weeps. He just stops and he weeps. What does he say? Jerusalem. He just stops the procession right there at the gate of Jerusalem. He says, Oh, Jerusalem, if you only knew in this your day, the things that would have made for your peace. I have come after 4,000 years to say again in another way, the Messiah is here. I am he. I am the father of one. If you only saw me, you could be reconciled at this moment. And what did they do to that one? They hung him on a cruel cross. They crucified him. And even as he was being crucified, he sang the greatest song that's ever been sung to the ones who were crucifying him, to the Jews that surrounded him, to us in effect, to all of us. He sang, it is finished. Redemption's price has been paid. All your sins I am carrying because I want you to be right with me." How incredible, how extravagant that love is. That we who hated God, dead in our trespasses and sins, would be saved by one who loved us anyway. There on the cross, His blood was shed for my sins and for yours. Then, as He left, He said, I'm coming back. I'm coming back, but I'm sending the Holy Spirit And what a day we live in. God again is extending to us grace and mercy by ways unmeasurable, incomparable even to his day, right? It was more of a local ministry, but greater things. This is the day of greater things, the church age, the day of grace and my. We have letters from missionaries where people are getting saved just from missionaries I know all over the world. Where were you when the message of grace came to you? God found you by missionaries, by radio, by bloggers. I mean there are so many hooks in the water today. God is reaching out to win the lost. And listen, we have this moment of time and pretty soon, and this is what the message tonight is about, there will be a period of seven years where God says it's enough. And the world will go through, as soon as the church is ushered out of here, the world will go through seven years of the greatest tribulation it has ever known. Three and a half years of man on man trouble, and then three and a half years of God on Jacob trouble. Jacob's troubles. And if God does not intervene, everybody would die. But when it's over, three quarters of the world's population is dead. And then comes what I call the last final lifeline of mercy and what a time it will be. As God for the last time in human history says, here is your last chance to be forgiven. If you're here this morning and are not saved now, don't anticipate that you might be around for that last thousand years. Come to Christ now. I think it's 1 Corinthians 6, 2 that says, now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation. Let's pray together. Father, how grateful we are for your great extensions of grace throughout the ages. Father, we come to you now in the spirit of gratitude, knowing that you love us, you gave yourself for us, and you continually invite us to yourself. Thank you for joining us today. Please tune in each week for new messages from Pastor Lauren Regeer at Bible Baptist Church in Hampton, Georgia. Until next time, may the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you.