Kingdom's Keys Fellowship
Where God's Kingdom Meets Man's Heart.
Pentecost 95 There's Bad News and Good News
Pentecost 95 There’s Bad News and Good News
A saddened and frustrated architect looks at a collapsed building he had designed, goes back to his drawing board, surveys every detail of his blueprints and, in anger, sweeps his arm across the tables scattering the blueprints across the floor. What went wrong? Where are the flaws? Was it his design? No one is perfect but he had checked every drawing and had his subordinates recheck them. He begins to survey every step of the construction from the engineering to the laborers hired. After two months he finds the reason, a sub-contractor’s changing the concrete quality thus weakening the entire foundation, all for the promise of making an extra buck. A few moments of temptation to cut corners, greedily change the consistency of the material and cover the condition with a few dollars to a building inspector. Fortunately there was no one in the building but the time and loss plus the rippling effect on the community caused considerable damage economically and socially.
But there’s more to the story. Some of the concrete workers saw what was going on but, fearing the loss of their job, said nothing. Another group of workers who were watching the pouring of the concrete thought that it looked different but also said nothing. A couple of labor supervisors were busy reprimanding some of the workers when they should have been present at the pouring, a disciplinary thing that could have been done at another time. A young assistant engineer, brand new on the job, just learning the process, was asked to take the place of the supervising engineer who took the day off. The architect himself trusted that the job would be done to his specifications and never visited the site. To cap it all off no one had checked into the performance record of the contractors, opting instead to take the lowest bids on the job.
Translate this story into the spiritual dimension and we have a parallel to Paul’s assessment of sinful humanity in Romans 3:10-12, “As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
Now that’s the bad news but then comes the good news, “ 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Ro.3:21-26).”
When you lose the vertical dimension there is no way to be right in the horizontal. This is why the Cross of Jesus brings humanity to face the truth that unless we live first in spiritual reality we are lost in the horizontal. Put another way, if we don’t live by the Spirit of God whom we can’t see and who made what we can see then the world is just a non-moral free for all. If there was ever a time in history to make that truth come alive, it’s now. God’s recovery plan is simple, faith in His Son Jesus who can make the mind logical about the unseen. Through trusting Him the heart is transformed and motivated to bring the invisible relational dimension to bear on every physical behavior.
Here’s how The Message Bible puts it, “But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.”
What a time to be a partner in His plan. Stay tuned……..
A saddened and frustrated architect looks at a collapsed building he had designed, goes back to his drawing board, surveys every detail of his blueprints and, in anger, sweeps his arm across the tables scattering the blueprints across the floor. What went wrong? Where are the flaws? Was it his design? No one is perfect but he had checked every drawing and had his subordinates recheck them. He begins to survey every step of the construction from the engineering to the laborers hired. After two months he finds the reason, a sub-contractor’s changing the concrete quality thus weakening the entire foundation, all for the promise of making an extra buck. A few moments of temptation to cut corners, greedily change the consistency of the material and cover the condition with a few dollars to a building inspector. Fortunately there was no one in the building but the time and loss plus the rippling effect on the community caused considerable damage economically and socially.
But there’s more to the story. Some of the concrete workers saw what was going on but, fearing the loss of their job, said nothing. Another group of workers who were watching the pouring of the concrete thought that it looked different but also said nothing. A couple of labor supervisors were busy reprimanding some of the workers when they should have been present at the pouring, a disciplinary thing that could have been done at another time. A young assistant engineer, brand new on the job, just learning the process, was asked to take the place of the supervising engineer who took the day off. The architect himself trusted that the job would be done to his specifications and never visited the site. To cap it all off no one had checked into the performance record of the contractors, opting instead to take the lowest bids on the job.
Translate this story into the spiritual dimension and we have a parallel to Paul’s assessment of sinful humanity in Romans 3:10-12, “As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
Now that’s the bad news but then comes the good news, “ 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus (Ro.3:21-26).”
When you lose the vertical dimension there is no way to be right in the horizontal. This is why the Cross of Jesus brings humanity to face the truth that unless we live first in spiritual reality we are lost in the horizontal. Put another way, if we don’t live by the Spirit of God whom we can’t see and who made what we can see then the world is just a non-moral free for all. If there was ever a time in history to make that truth come alive, it’s now. God’s recovery plan is simple, faith in His Son Jesus who can make the mind logical about the unseen. Through trusting Him the heart is transformed and motivated to bring the invisible relational dimension to bear on every physical behavior.
Here’s how The Message Bible puts it, “But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.”
What a time to be a partner in His plan. Stay tuned……..
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