CHRIST'S VICTORY

Many meetings took place as a result of one man dying on the Cross:

Only God could do what man could never accomplish!

1. Only God could plan such an event that could turn out this perfect.
2. Only God could shed blood to create life.
3. Only God could use pain to bring healing.
4. Only God could allow injustice to satisfy justice.
5. Only God could accept rejection to restore acceptance.
6. Only God could use such an evil act to accomplish so much good.
7. Only God could transform an act of amazing love into such violence and vice versa.

From a tree (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) the devil accomplished his greatest victory, but also suffered his greatest defeat from a tree (the Cross of Calvary)!

The first Adam succumbed to temptation in a garden (Eden), and the last Adam overcame His greatest temptation in a garden (Gethsemane)!

Psalm 85:10 gives a beautiful description of the Cross of Jesus.
"Loving kindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other."

I. The Cross was a meeting between God and humanity.

1. He not only is a God of loving kindness.
Loving Kindness means - His mercy, kindness, love and forgiveness.

2. He is also a God of truth.
Truth represents His integrity and justice.

God does not merely represent peace and safety, or wholeness and rest, He also is righteousness (holiness and purity).
Without righteousness there can be no peace.

The dilemma is this: A truly holy, righteous, just and true God cannot simply forgive.

God could not just grant mercy to or bestow peace on a fallen humanity without compromising His character.
Sin cannot be excused, it must be judged and with it the sinner.

Question:
How can this holy, yet loving, God marry the two - grace and truth, and righteousness and peace?

THE CROSS!

On the Cross loving kindness and truth met, and Righteousness and peace kissed each other, and God embraced humanity!

In one sovereign act of wisdom, God satisfied both His love, His justice, and established righteousness as well as peace.

Psalm 71:19
"And Your righteousness, O God, is very high, who have done great things. O God, who is like You?"

Numbers 14:18
"The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression."

II. When this took place Christ's ministry of reconciliation was being accomplished:

2 Corinthians 5:18, 19
"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

We now represent Christ in His intercession.

2 Corinthians 5:18 says He "gave us the ministry of reconciliation."

In other words, we release the fruit of what He did through His act of intercession.
We bring individuals to God in prayer asking the Father to meet with them.

We have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

We are to create a meeting between God and humans, releasing the fruit of Christ's work to that other person.
The church needs to send teams of intercessors into some of the darkest corners of our City.
We must go to our city for the sole purpose of prayer, creating meetings between God and humanity.

III. Our responsibility is to enforce the victory as we also meet the powers of darkness.

Jesus fully accomplished the task of breaking the authority of Satan.
Jesus removed his legal hold upon the human race.
We, through prayers of intercession, meet the powers of darkness, and enforce the victory Christ accomplished when He met them in His work on the Cross.
We are not literally re-doing what Christ did; we are re-presenting what He did and extending His work

Jeremiah 8:22
"Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?"

Isaiah 53:3-5
"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.
He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all--all but the sin.

Hebrews 4:15
"For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted just as we are, yet without sin."

And He wants to touch us with the same compassion, that we also might be the bearer of others burdens.

Think about it:

Hebrews 12:24
"And to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel."

2 Corinthians 3:6
"Who also has made us able ministers of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive."

Christ has made us "able ministers" of the New Testament.

It was Jesus who secured and guarantees those benefits and we are able distributors of what Christ already accomplished!


  Dale Boehs

04.15.2008