We can be as close to God as we want to be.

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Reading: James 4:8

Visit thestorychanger.life for more resources on changing our story with God’s Story.

Jo De Blois is Chief of Staff at Puritan Reformed Seminary.

For a culture that says there are no morals, we have surprisingly severe penalties for moral failures. Hardly a day goes by without amoral celebrities condemning other amoral celebrities for their ‘immoral’ views of sex, gender, race, global warming, COVID vaccines, or Donald Trump.

Where does our much-denied but irresistible moral sense come from? In chapter 7 of Telling a Better Story Josh Chatrow trains us to guide people from the secular narrative of morality to the sacred narrative.

Listen here.

Podcast Notes

Reading: Romans 2:12-16

Visit thestorychanger.life for more resources on changing our story with God’s Story.

How much are you worth? What dollar figure would you put on your value? Everyone wants to be highly valued, to feel that they are worth a lot. How is that calculated?

In Chapter 7 of Telling a Better Story, Josh Chatrow guides us from a false to a true valuation.

Listen here.

Podcast Notes

Reading: Acts 20:28

Visit thestorychanger.life for more resources on changing our story with God’s Story.

INTRODUCTION

There are many conflicts in the world right now. Ukraine v Russia, China v Taiwan, Israel v Palestine, North Sudan v South Sudan, North Korea v South Korea. Conflicts cause instability, uncertainty, and anxiety as well as the loss of life and limb. Great conflict means great cost.

When I was growing up there was a huge peace movement. Millions of people all over the world would gather for protests and demonstrations in the campaign against war and for peace. At the time, the greatest fear was nuclear war between the USA and Russia. That would have been a great conflict with a great cost. We can understand why the peace movement was so popular. Who wouldn’t want to be part of preventing or solving such a great conflict with such a great cost.

That peace movement has faded as that risk has faded. Yet, the greatest ever conflict remains unresolved and I’m here to recruit peace campaigners. What greater purpose can there be than being part of a movement that resolves the world’s greatest conflict? What’s the greatest conflict in the world and how can I help resolve it?

BACKGROUND

Paul was in a conflict with spiritual enemies in Corinth who were seducing the Corinthians away from Paul and turning them against Paul. He therefore calls them to be reconciled not only to himself but to God, the latter being a far greater problem than the former.

How can we make peace?

1. GOD MAKES PEACE FOR US (18-19)

We are at war with God (and vice versa)

Look at the most frequent word in this passage? “Reconciled (18)…reconciliation (18)…reconciling (19)… reconciliation (19)…reconciled (20).” What does this 5x ‘reconcile’ tell us? It tells us about a serious conflict. The two parties are God and humanity and the cause of the conflict is sin. Human sin has made humanity hostile and opposed to God and has made God hostile and opposed to humanity (Rom. 1:18). It’s a mutual (two-sided) hostility but the two sides are very different. God’s war against us is just and justified, but our war against God is neither just nor justified. Like all conflicts, it results in distrust, disrespect, division, distance, debt, damage, and devastation, but this is on a greater scale than any other conflict.

God makes peace for us and with us

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself…that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (18-19).

This peace is from God. The great change he had spoken of (16-17) was from God and was based upon reconciliation. No reconciliation, no transformation. The transformation and reconciliation were not partly or mainly from God, but fully from God. All this is from God (17) and brings us to himself (18). He didn’t commission a third party to make peace, but did it himself. The wronged party initiated peace, accomplished it, and offers it. We don’t make peace with God, but God makes peace for us. We don’t make peace with God but receive peace from God.

This peace required God to sacrifice his Son. God could not forget sin, overlook sin, minimize sin, or excuse sin. He had to deal with it and the only way he could deal with it was to punish it, which he did in Christ. Christ was the battlefield in which God fought with sin and totally defeated it so that he could forgive sins. God deals with his justified objective hostility through Christ and with our unjustified subjective hostility through the Spirit. God counted his Son as the most guilty sinner ever and focused all his hostility upon him like a magnifying glass focuses the sun to burn.

This peace results in reconciliation. God was able to reconcile sinners from all over the world to himself because he counted sins against Christ instead of counting their trespasses against them (18-19), and because he counted Christ’s righteousness as theirs (21). See the war zone becoming a peace zone.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Are you at war with God and is God at war with you? This is the greatest conflict with the greatest cost. Who do you think will win? Take the truce!

How many of your sins did God count as Christ’s? This great exchange should cause a great embrace. Count your sins being transferred and count his perfections being transferred to you. Take the truce!

WE MAKE WAR
GOD MAKES PEACE

How can I join this peace movement?

2. GOD URGES PEACE THROUGH US

God gave us the ministry of reconciliation (18),…by entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (19). Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (20).

Having made peace through Christ, God announces peace through Christians. He calls all Christians to be his ambassadors of world peace, to announce news of his peace to all, and plead with all to accept it. He does not assume that all the Corinthians have been reconciled to God. Neither does he assume that because they have been reconciled to God that they are reconciled to him or each other.

• We plead with authority not apology.
• We plead with passion, affection, and emotion, not cool, calm, and collected.
• We plead with full-time faithfulness not part-time carelessness.
• We plead with urgency not indifference.

Rev. Charles Simeon preached in Cambridge University church for fifty years and was greatly used of God to revive England and send many missionaries around the world. In his commentary, Kent Hughes described the famous silhouette national Gallery pictures of Rev. Charles Simeon preaching and quoted from his obituary:

And after having urged all his hearers to accept the proffered mercy, he reminded them that there were those present to whom he had preached Christ for more than thirty years, but they continued indifferent to the Saviour’s love; and pursuing this train of expostulation for some time, he at length became quite overpowered by his feeling, and he sank down in the pulpit and burst into a flood of tears.

Charles Spurgeon used to say that’d once he had fired every gospel arrow, he would put himself in the bow and fire himself at his hearers. David Wilkerson ministered to gangs and wrote The Cross and the Switchblade about his spiritual burden for gang members and how God brought many of them to Christ. Look up YouTube for his sermon on spiritual anguish. It’s the closest modern equivalent to the passion of this passage I’ve ever come across. It’s the embodiment of the ministry of reconciliation.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

Are you an ambassador for Christ? God makes peace with other hostile enemies through you. God has called you to the ministry of reconciliation. Who is he sending you to this week?

Are you pleading for Christ? We appeal, we implore, we urge, we plead for Christ on behalf of Christ. God has tied the success of the Gospel to the truth of the message and the temperature of the message.

THE TEMPERATURE OF THE MESSAGE
AFFECTS THE TRUTH OF THE MESSAGE

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What are the signs of humanity’s conflict with God?

2. What were/are the signs of your conflict with God?

3. How was the Son of God made sin without becoming a sinner?

4. Who do you know that is a good example of a pleader/persuader?

5. How important is emotion in evangelism?

6. How will you demonstrate that you are an ambassador for Christ?

PDF OF SERMON NOTES.

INTRODUCTION

“Obeying God is hard….is painful…is impossible…is misery.” We’ve all thought something like that. Some of us have said something like that. We have obeyed God without a problem and with pleasure for years but then God calls us to face a challenge that provokes thoughts and words like these.

Obedience is easy and happy when everything is going our way. But what about when it crosses our wills, when it involves loss, when it means sacrifice, when it hurts us or people we love? Where can we find the power to obey, especially the power to obey with pleasure?

Sometimes we feel like a power plant of obedience and pleasure. Other times we feel like a flat battery chilled by the biting cold of hard providences. Where can we find the power to obey, especially the power to obey with pleasure?

Sometimes we feel inner power to obey God’s law. Other times we feel like it’s all external, with God up there telling us to jump to impossible heights. Where can we find the power to obey, especially the power to obey with pleasure? That’s the question Jeremiah answers in Jeremiah 31.

BACKGROUND

We built the biblical framework for calling the Ten Commandments the Ten Pleasures by looking at The Path to Pleasure. Then we looked at the person The Person who is our Pleasure, by seeing Christ in the Law. Today we want to look at the power of our pleasure.

Remember the first part of our framework which placed the law in a particular place and order: Redemption, Relationship, Rules, Reward. This order is assumed in this the second part of the framework. In other words, we are assuming that we have experienced redemption and are in a relationship with Jesus. Only then can we find pleasure in the law and in Jesus. But still the question remains: Where can we find the power to obey, especially the power to obey with pleasure?

That’s the question the people of Judah were asking Jeremiah the prophet when God was carrying them into Babylonian exile for their centuries of disobedience to his law. God had chastised their disobedience many times over the decades, but now the ultimate divine sanction was being enforced. Will there ever be a day when we have the power to obey, and obey happily? Where can we find the power to obey, especially the power to obey with pleasure? Jeremiah’s answer is that the Old Testament time of small internal help is going to be replaced with massive internal power in the New Testament (31:31-32).

The Hebrew word for ‘new’ in Jeremiah 31:31 does not mean something completely unprecedented or something entirely new. It means a ‘renewal’ and suggests the taking of an existing covenant and putting it into a new form. It’s like a valuable antique chair that’s been renewed, recovered, and restored, not a brand new Steelcase chair. The difference between the Old and New Covenant therefore is not the difference between no power and power, but the difference between watch battery power and nuclear power.

What does God put inside us?

1. I WILL BE YOUR POWERFUL INNER KING

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts (33).

Although God’s moral law was written perfectly in the hearts of our first parents, Adam and Eve, the fall almost obliterated its inscription. This is why God summarized it and engraved it on stone in the Ten Commandments. It is this same law which will be written in the hearts of God’s people in the New Covenant. What is promised is not a removal of existing law, nor a replacing of it, but a new writer writing the old law in a new place.

Wider: It will be written not just on a couple of stone tablets but on an innumerable number of human hearts (Ps. 119:11; Deut. 11:18).

Deeper: Stones can only be scratched on the surface. Hearts can take much deeper impressions. God would put it so deeply within his people that it would be a warm internal delight to them, not a cold external prescription (Dt. 10:16 ;30:6).

Stronger: We all obey the law better when we see the police in front of us. How much more if a police officer lived inside us. Although God had generally used mediators to communicate his law in the Old Testament, now he was promising that he would directly write it on the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, giving both a greater awareness of the law and a greater power to obey the law. God’s people will carry a King around with them.

Longer: The fulfillment of this promise commenced with the coming of Christ, the incarnate Law, and at Pentecost with the outpouring of the Spirit (Ezek. 36:24-32). Both events injected a new power to obey into the Christian’s experience. The promise continues to be fulfilled in the believer’s sanctification by the Spirit’s and empowering (2 Cor. 3:3, 18). The promise will be consummated at the second coming of Christ when the law of God will be written on the heart of every covenant child in such a way that they simply cannot disobey it and never want to disobey it.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

“I have an inner King.” In every challenge King Jesus is with me by his Spirit to empower me to obey his will. Whenever I’m tempted to give up or give in, I remember I have the King within.

A KING WITHIN 
MEANS POWER WITHIN

But how do I know God’s will?

2. I WILL BE YOUR POWERFUL INNER TEACHER

And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord (34).

Wider: There will be no religiously privileged elite or nation, but knowledge of God will extend to all ages and classes, “from the least of them to the greatest.”

Deeper: To ‘know the Lord’ is much more than knowing about the Lord. It’s a living, personal, relational, intimate, spiritual knowledge.

Stronger: As the pandemic has proven, screens are no substitute for in-person teaching. Having a teacher helps us to learn better, understand better, and use our knowledge better.

Longer: The fulfillment of this promise commenced with the first coming of Christ. He bypassed all the Jewish teachers and spoke directly to the people the words of truth. The promise continues to be fulfilled as His people are taught by the Holy Spirit (1 Jn. 2:20,27). The consummation of the promise will climax in glory with full face to face knowledge of Jesus (1 Cor. 13:12).

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

“I have an inside teacher.” God uses external pastors and Sunday school teachers, but he also gives us an internal teacher to be with us more than an hour or two every Sunday.

HAVING INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
MEANS I HAVE INSIDE POWER

So what happens when I know God’s will and can do God’s will, but don’t?

3. I WILL BE YOUR POWERFUL INNER PRIEST

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (34).

Wider: It was largely Jews who could access God’s forgiveness in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, the message of forgiveness is sent into all the world. In the Old Testament, sacrifices covered ceremonial sins, but in the New Testament it covers all sins.

Deeper: The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins (Heb 10:4). They could only cleanse the skin but not the conscience (Heb. 9:13 ff). The could allow temporary access to the Tabernacle but not permanent access to God’s presence. But here is a promise of a far deeper forgiveness.

Stronger: In the upper room, Christ announced that the New Covenant was to be inaugurated through the shedding of His blood. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Matt. 26:27-28).

Longer: Forgiveness of sin would be part of the New Covenant only because God provided a substitute to pay the penalty required of man. This forgiveness then is able to commence because of the first coming of Christ and his sacrificial death. The forgiveness continues to be promised and enjoyed through the Gospel of Christ. The final and full assurance of forgiveness will be consummated at Christ’s second coming.

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

 ”I have an inner priest.” I don’t need to travel to Jerusalem for a priest but can access him anywhere any time knowing that he is ready to forgive me all my sins and give me all the grace I need (Hebrews 4:14-16). Unforgiven sin weakens our resolve against sin, but forgiven sin strengthens our resolve to forsake sin (Ps. 130: 4). Keep God’s snow-white-forgiveness before you at all times.

UNFORGIVEN SIN WEAKENS US TO STOP SIN
FORGIVEN SIN STRENGTHENS US TO STOP SIN

Prophet, priest, and King sound very official. Is there anything more personal?

4. I WILL BE YOUR POWERFUL INNER HUSBAND

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people (33).

Wider: In the Old Testament God promised to be Israel’s husband in a special and unique way. In the New testament he promises to be the husband of all his people all over the world (Matt. 28:19-20).

Deeper: In the New Testament, the relationship is more personal than national (Eph. 5:22-33), more one-on-one than one-on-nation. Our spiritual husband and head not only loves a people but individual persons. He promises to be with each of his people by his Spirit, and will never leave or forsake them.

Stronger: This relational promise is the essential and central element of the New Covenant, just as it was the essential element of the old administrations of the Covenant of Grace. The New Covenant would not abolish the old but fulfill its ideals (Westminster Confession of Faith 19:7). God promised to marry His people and his powerful grace will ensure the marriage is successful and unbreakable.

Longer: The fulfillment of this promise commenced with the first coming of Christ, who is Immanuel (God with us). It continues to be fulfilled as His people live in a married relationship with Him (Eph. 5:22ff). But the full enjoyment of that marriage union will not be consummated until Christ’s second coming (Rev. 19:6-9).

CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY

“I have an inner husband” (Isa. 54:5). Instead of the law coming from Sinai, the law comes from the Son. Instead of coming with thunder and lightning, it comes with grace and peace. Instead of the covenant form being largely legal, it is largely personal. In addition to the promises, we have the person.

THE JUDGE IS OUR HUSBAND
OUR HUSBAND IS THE JUDGE

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What commandments have you found hard to obey or found no pleasure in obeying?

2. If ‘new’ means ‘renewed’ not ‘brand new,’ how does that affect the place of God’s law in our lives.

3. What are the ‘three C’s’ and how do they help you understand prophecy?

4. What are the three ways in which the New Covenant is superior to the Old?

5. How can you increase your power to obey and your pleasure in obedience?

6. How does this sermon change your view of the law?

PDF OF SERMON NOTES

Meribeth encourages us to recline at the Gospel table.

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Reading: Luke 22:14, 27.

Visit thestorychanger.life for more resources on changing our story with God’s Story.

Meribeth Schierbeek is a biblical counselor for woman.