Day 20 ~ The Purpose Driven Life ~ Restoring Broken Fellowship
God through Christ must claim the greatest restoration
of fellowship there is.
In “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren on day 20 we examine the restoration of broken fellowship. When reading through this chapter in the book it came to me that what has to be the greatest restoration of fellowship was actually what God had done to redeem his fellowship with man.
It is obviously important to realise that God in his all knowing would have understood that man could not fulfil the Mosaic law. What is interesting however is that God expected more from his creation than even we could realise. The old Testament is the shadow of expectation of the coming Christ.
God wrote history to encompass the full miracle of the Messiah. Then, gracious and abundantly good God took man’s hand and recorded that history in the book we call the old Testament.
In the Old Testament, we are presented with God the eternal father and creator and glimpses of the Holy Spirit, and Christ’s shadow falls backwards on this period. God conducts history in a proclamation of the coming Messiah.
The Exodus reflects God’s release of the Jews from a regime by the final act of the sacrifice of the lamb. Exodus 12 The blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the Jewish homes protects the incumbent families from the wrath of the reaper of the firstborns. This act on the night of Passover is the nail in the coffin which convinces Pharaoh that God’s people should leave Egypt.
1500 years later, the Jewish people, under the Mosaic law, were struggling and in dire straits after years of occupation by Babylon and the subsequent invasion by the Roman Empire. God at this stage had withdrawn many of his blessings which had rested on the temple. His presence as a cloud had waned, the holy of holies had been stripped of its ornaments and the Ark of the covenant was lost in history.
Then God sends His Son chosen to be the sacrificial unblemished lamb that would be crucified to restore relationship with God across all the nations of the earth.
John 1:29b John the baptist said,“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
Look also at ; (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22)
The covenant given to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) and referred to in Galatians 3:16 “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,”meaning many, but “and to your seed,” meaning One, who is Christ.” (BSB) is the ultimate restoration of the relationship between God and man.
And then, if it is not enough that we can be declared righteous through the blood of Christ, this reconciliation gift from God gets even better. And as my faithful and wonderful wife would say there is a “But wait!”
God says “But wait!” God says “I will leave you my helper and advocate!”.
Man replies “What? So we can approach him asking questions to get help from him?”
God says “No, but wait. It gets even better I am going to put him inside you?”
Man asks “What? And what would he be doing there?”
God says “He will represent me God the Father and my son Jesus Christ.!”
And all man has to do, is submit his ear and accept this gift in all its abundance from our most gracious God.
And so God trumps us on restoration and leads by example with true luvacta.
Further background material ; http://purposedriven.com/day20/
A bit of joy for Christmas https://www.facebook.com/samuelsrad/videos/659806177471913/