Sunday, 17th October 2021
Pastor Robert Morris (Guest Speaker)
God created us to belong to Him and to belong to family. All of us want to belong, and most of us did something growing up that we shouldn’t have done, only because we wanted to belong. We do something because we were born with the desire to belong.
Genesis 3:7-10 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Adam said he heard God’s voice and hid himself because he was afraid. What was he afraid of? He hid himself because he felt he didn’t belong. As soon as sin entered to the world, we are separated from the God, and we don’t feel belonged.
1 WE WERE BORN REJECTED
Isaiah 59:2 ‘But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear.’
Romans 3:23 ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’
God is saying that even though we sinned in the past and even though we don’t sin anymore, we still fall short of the glory of God. Many Greek word has military root, the peace of God will guard our heart, it means let the peace of God provides a garrison to our heart. Sinning in the Bible also means to miss the target, everyone misses the bullseye. This is the way we were born, rejected, and separated from God. God is a Holy God and how can a Holy God come close to a sinful person? Furthermore, we have to be perfect to be accepted, and that’s impossible.
2 JESUS IS THE PERFECT OFFERING
Leviticus 22:21 ‘And whoever offers a sacrifice of a peace offering to the Lord, to fulfill his vow, or a freewill offering from the cattle or the sheep, it must be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no defect in it.’
The Perfect One came and became the Perfect Offering. He made us perfect, not in our performance or our progress, but in our possession. So, we can have a relationship with God. Jesus took away all our sins, He couldn’t need any sin because that will disqualify us to be perfect. The only way we can be made perfect is by grace.
Hebrews 12:22-23 ‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect.’
Matthew 5:48 ‘Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.’
3 WE WERE BORN AGAIN ACCEPTED
Not only we need to be perfect, but we also need to be as perfect as God is. We were born rejected but we were born again accepted.
Ephesians 1:6 ‘To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.’
Mark 9:41 ‘For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.’
We might be caught up in the doing but we miss out the being. If we belong to God, we belong to His family. If our church is where God calls us in, then jump in and be part of the family! We belong here that’s why God brought us here.
Psalm 68:6 ‘God sets the solitary in families; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity; But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.’
The reason that we have be accepted by God is because God rejected Jesus in our place. Jesus is our substitute, He took our place, He became a sin offering for us. Jesus was rejected so we can be accepted. He was not only rejected by God but also by God’s family. If we are a believer, God is never going to reject us and forsake us, because He has already rejected Jesus for us.
Isaiah 53:3 ‘He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.’
Mark 8:31 ‘And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.’
Psalm 118:22 ‘The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone.’
Acts 4:11 This is the ‘stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’
Romans 5:8 ‘But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’
I John 4:19 ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’
We feel we don’t belong, and nothing can fix it except a relationship with God. God demonstrated His love for us even if there is no reason to love us. God loves us because we belong to Him, we are His children. Do we believe we belong to Christ, and we belong to Christ’s Body?