Reconciliation — Vance Havner

I want to read two passages that have two big words in them, and somehow we've gotten the idea today that nobody understands what some of these big words mean, and therefore we have to have a new version that gets around to where we can take it in.

They say that the idiom of Isaac Watts in our songs, young people can't comprehend that, so we have to get some new ones that they can. And yet they're studying Shakespeare in the old idiom, and the pre-meds are studying medical technology or terminology in the old idiom, law students are studying legal phraseology, and that's pretty rough.

But they say you have to have sort of a new idiom for all of this. If they don't know what it means, we ought to tell them, if we know. We ought to know. Gypsy Smith said when he started out to preach, he couldn't pronounce some of the big words in the Bible, and he had a little system, though, said he'd read until he came to one of those big words, and then he'd talk a little while, and then he'd start reading again on the other side of that big word.

I'm not going to do that, I'm going to read right through it. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17,. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, old things are become new.

Reconciliation Through Christ

But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God, for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Then 1 John 2, verse 2, he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. We have reached a sad day in America when everybody seems to be mad at everybody, calling each other names, unable to agree on anything.

At the same time, we've never had so many conferences, symposiums. You know what a symposium is, it's where we pool our ignorance. We've got a lot of them. Committee meetings. The other day somebody got worried about so many overlapping committees in Washington.

Guess what they did? They appointed a new committee to study the overlapping committees. The more we get together, the further we come apart. Will Rogers used to say, one sure way to prevent wars is to abolish peace conferences.

I think Will had something there. Somehow the idea has gotten around, if we can talk things over enough, we can settle all our problems. All we need is understanding. And these books on child psychology, they can explain all Junior's pranks and aberrations by double-jointed words that nobody understands.

Junior bit the meter man, Junior kicked the cook. Junior's antisocial now, according to the book. Junior smashed the clock and lamp, Junior hacked the tree. Destructive trends are treated in chapters two and three.

Junior threw his milk at mom, Junior screamed from awe. Notes on self-assertiveness are found in chapter four. Junior tossed his shoes and socks out into the rain. Negation, that, unnormal, disregarded the stain.

Junior got in Grandpop's room, tore up his fishing line. That's to gain attention, see page 89. But Grandpop sees the slipper and yanked Junior across his knee, for Grandpop hadn't read a book since 1893.

The title of that poem is On Getting Behind With One's Reading. I think maybe we ought to, once in a while. All we need is understanding. The burglar, when he breaks into your house, he doesn't mean any harm, just hungry for fellowship.

And the gangster will throw his gun away if you have a chat with him. Dialogue, that's the word. That's the answer to everything. War can be prevented if we have enough summit conferences. As long as they're talking, they're not shooting.

But I happen to remember that they started shooting at Pearl Harbor when they were still talking in Washington. The big word today is reconciliation. It's the unpardonable sin to disagree on anything.

Just smile a smile, and as you smile another smiles, and soon there's miles and miles of smiles and life's worthwhile if you but smile. According to this doctrine, Elijah would have had a panel discussion with the prophets of Baal.

Our Lord would have worked out a program of peaceful coexistence with the Pharisees. And Luther would have had a summit conference with the Pope. These apostles of reconciliation imagine that communism can be won over by negotiation.

But communism is a moral cancer. And if you don't get the cancer, the cancer will get you. There is no such thing as peaceful coexistence with cancer or with communism. And those who would have us to forgive the communists say that Jesus forgave the thief on the cross.

He forgave one thief on one cross. Jesus was and is the great reconciler, but before we consider what he came to reconcile, we'd better know what he does not reconcile. Some things, beloved, are not negotiable, they're not settled by compromise, they cannot be arbitrated, they're irreconcilable.

What Cannot Be Reconciled

Righteousness and unrighteousness, what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? The only way that unrighteousness can have fellowship with righteousness is by becoming righteous. Through faith in Christ who becomes our righteousness, imputed, imparted, implanted, when we're born again, when the sinner becomes a saint by being reconciled to God.

Our Lord said in Matthew 12, 30, he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. It's one of the greatest texts on soul winning, I've ever known, never heard a preacher preach on it in my life in that connection.

There aren't but two kinds of people, those that are with him and those that are not with him, gatherers and scatterers, there isn't any such thing as an inactive church member. If you're not gathering, you're scattering.

If you're not drawing people to Jesus, you are by that very thing driving people away from Jesus. Light and darkness, you can't get them together. What communion hath light with darkness? No twilight zones.

Black and white have been smudged into indefinite gray now, but right is still right and wrong is still wrong, and truth and error cannot be reconciled. The same fountain cannot send forth both bitter water and sweet.

Two cannot walk together except to be agreed. The New Testament takes a firm stand against false doctrine and in language utterly foreign to the compromisers today who want to blend into one fellowship, men who doubt or deny the word of God with those who believe it.

You can't mix the church and the world. What concord hath Christ with Belial? A concord is the Latin-ish form of the word in the original from which we get the musical term symphony. You've heard about the unfinished symphony.

This is the impossible symphony. There is no harmony, no concord between Christ and Belial. What part hath he that believeth with an infidel? The temple of God with idols. The friendship of the world is enmity with God.

Whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. That doesn't make for amalgamation and togetherness between the church and the world.

Jesus said in Matthew 10 .16, I send you forth not as white sheep among black sheep. I send you as sheep among wolves. The Bible is full of vivid imagery and many of the figures are from the animal world, the mule, the dog, the sow, the fox, the sheep and the goats.

Evil men are spoken of as wolves, God's people as sheep under the great shepherd, 23rd Psalm, John 10, sheep of his pasture. There are no other two animals on earth so unalike as wolves and sheep, opposite ends of the spectrum.

The wolf is the symbol of all that's vicious and violent and rapacious and destructive and the sheep is a figure for all that's gentle and innocent and peaceful and benign. There's no way on earth to establish peaceful coexistence between wolves and sheep.

They lie down together in the kingdom age and the sheep won't be inside the wolf. But we'll have to wait until then. There are those who are trying to establish liaison and rapport between the wolves and the sheep, between the church and the world, evil and good.

Some try to smooth out the differences. They say, well, the good is not so good and the bad is not so bad, but God sees only the wolves and the sheep, the lost and the saved, the once born and the twice born.

That's the real race issue today and you never hear much about that, the once born and the twice born. The trouble is most of this world today is run by the once born. That makes it a little rough on the twice born.

The wolves are out to destroy the sheep. The idea that this world is kindly disposed toward the church is a lot of eye wash. The true shepherd does not invite the wolf into the fold in the hope of establishing communication.

He lays down his life for the sheep. It's about time we got wise to what we're up against in this world of darkness, a demonic world masterminded by the devil. Sometimes these wolves wear sheep's clothing, Matthew 7 .15.

They creep into pulpits and into churches and would deceive the very elect if they could. Satan as an angel of light is much more dangerous than Satan as a roaring lion. Paul warned the Ephesian elders against double trouble in Acts 20, verse 29, for I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

That's trouble from the outside. Then trouble on the inside, also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. The church always has to watch for wolves from the outside and wolves from the inside, some of them in sheep's clothing.

Violent opposition from without, and in this age of anarchy in the world, apostasy in the professing church, and apathy even, God help us, in the true church, these wolves would destroy. One of my favorite Presidents, in fact, I think my favorite President was Theodore Roosevelt.

He said, if you're an American and something else, you're not an American. I remember during the First World War how he thundered against so-called German-Americans over here who had a divided loyalty.

He called them hyphenated Americans. He said, America is not a polyglot boarding house, and neither is the church. Today the natural man can't understand the things of God to begin with. You might as well try to describe a sunset to a blind man, play music to a deaf man.

You might as well talk nuclear physics to a wooden Indian in front of a cigar store as to talk about the things of God, the man never has been born again. He doesn't know anything about that. Sometimes I think we Southern Baptists have just about rededicated ourselves to death over this country.

Unsanctified flesh that never has died in sin is parading down aisles in the old Adam Improvement Society, and God couldn't use them if they rededicated themselves a thousand times, because God can't use old Adam.

The New Birth and the Flesh

Brother Smith told you he preached about that verse, not many wise, mighty, and noble, and then told us who had been called. God doesn't call many of that crowd, not the wise, the intellectuals, trying to get to heaven head first.

You get their heart first. The only thing I know of that's got its head and heart in the same place is cabbage, and you're no cabbage. You're getting a heart first. Then not many mighty. How many Presidents of the United States can you think of that you believe were born again spirit-filled New Testament Christians?

Pretty discouraging, isn't it? And then not many noble. That's the blue bloods, bragging about their ancestry all the time. The trouble about the ancestry business is it's like potatoes, the best part is usually under the ground.

So God isn't saving many out of that crowd, either. And why is he saving this other crowd that Harold preached about? Why? That no flesh should glow in his presence, because God can't use old Adam. And then there's another verse that ought to be hung up in every church over the country.

They that are in the flesh cannot please God. That's just out of the question. Jesus said, you're my friends if you do the things I command you. But it also says in this book that if you're the friend of the world, you're the enemy of God.

Now, you may do business with people of this world. We have to. Paul said you have to live out there among them to reach them. You don't get off in a cave somewhere like the old mystics did in the Middle Ages.

I think they were not mystics, most of them were mystics. You can't get holier by hiding in a hole. It takes more than a hole to make you holier. You've got to be out there where the action is and where the need is.

And you can belong to the same profession, somebody in the world. You might go to a concert and listen to Beethoven or go on a fishing trip with him. But when it comes to the matters of the soul, a Christian is a sheep among wolves, he's a citizen of another country, he belongs to another race, he's a member of another nationality.

And well, Mr. Letourneau used to say that what bothered him was not the wolfishness of the wolves but the sheepishness of the sheep. And we've got too many sheepish sheep today that are not standing up to the Lord like they ought to.

Christians in the World but Not of It

We need to make a new study of that old word, world. One of the words is cosmos, you get cosmology and even cosmetics from that word, and John says more about it than anybody else in the Bible. It's amazing how much John has to say about the world.

You won't find but 15 references to it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and Paul said it only 47 times, and John 105. And in John 17, if you want to know where you belong with regard to this world, Jesus located you in the 17th chapter of John, the high priestly prayer of our Lord.

He said we've been saved out of this world, we're still in the world, but we're not out of the world. But we've been saved out of the world to go right back into the world, to win people out of the world, and that's the only business we've got in this world.

Now, that's where you belong, if you can get located. And you need not be surprised if you're not popular with this world. Jesus said, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before I hated you.

I want to know what you're going to do with this popularity business with this next verse. This is the only one I know of in the New Testament where the word world shows up five times in one verse. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own, but because you're not of the world, but I've chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hated you.

Not much popularity in that, is there? Therefore the world hates you. Now, the only way this gap can be bridged between all these things that can't be reconciled, darkness and evil and belial or whatever you want to call it, is by the cross of Jesus Christ.

The Cross as the Basis of Reconciliation

Well, what did he come to reconcile? I read it to you a while ago. I like the word, even the living Bible has to say reconcile, they can't find a better word for it. They generally find another one, they can.

Man is not right with God, he's estranged from God, he's a rebel, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? How are you going to get a holy God and a sinful man together?

Man couldn't do it, but God did. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. You have the sinless Son of God on one hand who knew no sin, no sin in him, but all sin on him, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

And his Son became our sin. That is reconciliation. But there has to be a moral basis for it. Some people say, oh, it's needed, it's repentance. Oh, no, repentance is a requirement, but it's not the basis.

There must be a way by which the demands of a holy God could be met so that God could be righteous and merciful both, just and justifier. You see, when a man breaks the law, he has to do more than say he's sorry because there's still a penalty in there somewhere.

That's why we have this big word, propitiation. That speaks of the mercy seat, sprinkled with blood, the righteous sentence of the law was carried out by offering a lamb without blemish, and so the judgment seat became a mercy seat.

It's not a matter of placating an angry God. Some people have the idea that God is mad at us and Jesus had to die to get him in good humor. That's not what the Bible teaches. God undertook it himself and was in Christ taking care of this situation.

Jesus paid it all. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now, that's the ministry and that's the message of reconciliation, calling on men to get right with God, not by works of their own, but by finished work already done.

We don't make peace with God. You can't. It's been made, already made. But until we accept it in Christ, not ours, now, that's where the repentance comes in and the faith comes in. These are requirements, but not the basis.

You see, God is propitiated and the sinner is reconciled. That's the greatest deal that was ever arranged in all time and eternity. Now, let's be perfectly clear about Jesus Christ, the Reconciler. He didn't come down here to reconcile light and darkness, righteousness and unrighteousness.

Christ was to be the faith and unbelief, the temple of God and idols. Can't do it. He came to reconcile sinful men to a holy God, cost him his life. I preach a free salvation, but I don't preach a cheap salvation.

It costs the Father his Son. It costs the Son his life in order to provide propitiation that there might be reconciliation, that there might be a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, that sinners plunged beneath that flood might lose their guilty stains, that that old dying thief might rejoice to see that fountain in his day, and that I and you, as vile as he is, might wash all our sins away.

That precious blood will never lose its power. For all the ransomed church of God is saved from sin no more, and ever since by faith I sowed that stream, his flowing womb supply, redeeming love's been the theme, will be the dye.

And when this poor, lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave, then in the nobler, sweeter song I'll sing his power to save. That's what it's all about. I'm an ambassador. I'm in the reconciling business.

Be ye reconciled to God, who made his Son to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. He's going to take care of the past and the present, and here I am. You know, this old world is a rag, and you're a rag.

I hate to make you feel worse going out than you did when you came in, you're a rag, looking at me through those bifocals. You've got your teeth in your pocket, maybe, and you're going to pieces. You started dying the day you were born.

I heard about a little modernist preacher, and he said, we ought to quit using that word salvation, we ought to say salvage. Now, isn't that a cuter remark? You salvage a thing, you salvage the same old rag.

Salvation is a brand-new job. I don't want to be towed into heaven behind a wrecking crew, I want to go in there and I'm going to have a new outfit one of these days. Many of you know that a little over a year ago, a sweet little lady that went with me all over America for 33 and a half years went to heaven.

Hope Beyond Death and Bodily Renewal

She died at 315 Sunday morning, and I preached at 11. I didn't know whether I could or not, but I did. I talked about John the Baptist sending that delegation to Jesus, saying, Are you the one? Now, that was a low mark for John the Baptist.

He'd stood on the Jordan and said, He is the one. It's one thing to stand on Jordan and give it, and another thing to stay in jail and take it. Jesus sent word back to him, and thank God on the day that John the Baptist said the worst thing he ever said about Jesus.

Jesus said the best thing he ever said about John the Baptist. That's just like him. He said, Go back and tell him I'm running on schedule, blind or seeing, deaf or hearing, lepers or cleansed, who are having the gospel preached.

Then he gave us what I call the forgotten beatitude. I never hear anybody quote that one. We know the one in the Sermon on the Mount and so on. Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. Blessed is the man who never gets upset by the way I run my business.

I said, Lord, I don't understand it. If I ever needed it, Sarah, I do now. But you know how to run your business, and I'm not fussing. You better get to that place and learn the forgotten beatitude. When I sat by that bedside for two days and held a hand that was already cold and only that monitor on the table beeping, hard action kept going by machinery, I said, Lord, I never saw anybody more completely wrecked in her facial expression than a different personality by this wretched Cushing's disease that she had.

I said, Lord, help me to remember the way she did look and think about how she's going to look and forget how she does look. Then I got to thinking about that verse that said when they took my Lord down from the cross, his visage was so marred that you couldn't tell that he was a man.

I said, thank God he went through all that, but all folks who get mummied up down here by sin and disease and all the rest of it, if they trust Christ, they'll have a new visage over there one of these days.

We were down at Charleston three years ago, and I was holding a meeting at that old First Baptist Church where I used to be a pastor, snapped a little picture of her down there on the battery, let it lie in the road, didn't develop the rest of the road, let it lie in the camera for a year and a half.

Then one day I thought about it and I had the rest of the film developed. There she stood, and it was kind of a surprise and a shock. Then I got to thinking that just as that road and that picture had lain for a year and a half in the darkness of that camera, so her body lies in the quietness of a little Quaker graveyard in North Carolina.

But one of these days the great photographer is going to turn negative, in the positive. That's when death is going to be swallowed up with victory, friend. Oh, brother, don't you see what happened on that cross, all of that?

We've got it coming to us. I've got a sermon on living in the great until. If anybody asks you what time it is, you tell them it's until. Well, they may start thinking. Then you can show them just one until after, and the New Testament is full of it, 15 or 20 untils.

You know about them, until he subdued all things, put all enemies under his feet, times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, fulness of the Gentiles be coming, and so on. We're living now in the great until.

As my dear one lay unable any longer to talk, but still by some strange unaccountable reason able to write and scribble after a session, called for a pad and pencil, and I put this one away. I'm going through things I can't tell you about until, and that's it.

So I'm sort of living in a double-until now, because all that was taken care of on the cross. My friend, he's the great reconciler. But it must be the Christ of the cross, because a crossless Christ is as powerless as a Christless cross.

A Christ without the cross is as powerless as the cross without Jesus. They said when he hung there, let him now come down from the cross and we'll believe him. That's what the world is saying today. They'll take Jesus as their teacher, they're not kicking about that.

They'll take the example, they're not fussing about that. They'll take the paragon, but they don't want the propitiation. They won't hear that. That's why it's a reproach and a scandal to this world. I'm glad I'm in a pulpit shaped like a cross.

Vertical and Horizontal Reconciliation

I wish I had one like this all over the country, and then you've got another one out here. Now, I hope every time you come here after this that you will think about this, because you've got a vertical beam up and down, and you've got the horizontal beam right and left.

This represents man and God, the relationship between man and God, up and down. That was taken care of on the cross. This represents man to man. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind.

That's this one. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. That's this one. And on this hang all the law and the prophets. There it is. Our Catholic friends make the sign of the cross. I don't carry a crucifix, but in my meditation, a good many times, I find myself saying, Lord, how are we doing?

How is everything this way between me and thee? I give that some study. Then I say, Lord, how am I doing this way? Have you done that lately? That's one way you can make the sign of the cross with some meaning to it.

I think nothing better could ever happen to us than that. Let me ask you tonight, how is everything vertically between you and God? Nothing between my soul and the Savior, so that his blessed face is not seen.

That was written by a great black preacher in Philadelphia, and his son led singing for me in Grand Rapids, Toledo, Rockford, Illinois, Charlie Tindley, Jr. I used to get into conviction every time he sang his daddy's songs, Take Your Burden to the Lord and Leave It There, but especially this one, nothing between my soul and the Savior.

I'm not thinking so much about occasional sins and faults, and we all have them, and of course they ought to be confessed and cleansed. But is there tonight a point of rebellion in your life, something between you and God that's habitual, habitual rebellion?

Jesus said to the church at Ephesus, Pergamum and Thyatira, I've got something against you. I wish our churches would take a little study in that today and say, Lord, what have you got against me? What does God have against you as an individual?

Examining Personal Holiness and Rebellion

Is there any deliberate, habitual rebellion against God in your life? Is it omission, something that you ought to do and not do, and you're not doing? The good that I would, I do not. Is it commission, the evil that I would not, that I do.

Is it a sin of the Spirit? Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. Disposition. It's not how you act at the Lord's table that tells a tale, it's how you act at the breakfast table.

It takes two cups of coffee to make you fit to live with in the morning, and you ought to go to the morner's meal. How about your disposition? That's what God saved you for, to make you like Jesus. That's the meaning of predestination.

I've heard some preachers try to explain it, it's one reason why I quit. But I know the purpose of it. I was predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son. Now are you any more like Jesus than you were 10 years ago?

Ought to be. That's what it's all about. It's your disposition. Growl all day and wonder why your dog is tired at night. Watch it! The worst enemies Jesus had when he was on earth were not the bums and the bootleggers.

Do you realize that the worst enemies and the crowd that spearheaded the move that hung him on the cross were folks that went to church, prayed in public, read the Bible, all of them tithers, lived clean moral lives, separated from the world and went to hell.

And he said, if your righteousness doesn't exceed that, you won't make it, and publicans and harlots will get there before you. That's our problem, and we fill churches with a tremendous majority, I'm afraid, of that variety.

Or is it something doubtful in your life, whatsoever is not of faith, it's sin, if it's got a question mark after it, you ought to give it up to God, if it's all right, he'll give it back to you, if it's not all right, you didn't need it anyhow.

Let him straighten out that old question mark into an exclamation point. Turn it all over to him. And then how about you and somebody else? Is there something between you and somebody else that you have not tried to straighten out?

Maybe you couldn't, but you haven't even tried. Jesus said, if you bring your gift to the altar, if you bring your duplex envelope to church on Sunday, and remember that your brother has ought against you, hang on to that envelope until you get right with your brother.

That sure would ruin a lot of offerings on Sunday morning over the country. I heard a woman say she was a teacher of a lady's Bible class 10 years before she ever got right with God. She said, I went down to an old Methodist altar in Nelton and said, Lord, I'll go to Africa, I'll go to India, I'll go anywhere, and God said, I don't want you in Africa, I don't want you in India, I want you to get right with Susie, right here in the Church.

She said, I hadn't thought about that. I started over, Lord, I'll go to Africa, she said, I'd rather go to Africa, any time than get right with Susie in the Church. The Lord said, you've got to get right with Susie, right here in the Church.

That's the way revival starts. I had a meeting up in the mountains of western North Carolina not long ago, and a fellow hunted up somebody he'd cheated in a horse deal 25 years ago. Not only apologized, but paid him back the money he'd chipped him out of.

Reconciliation in Families and Relationships

That's revival. Let me tell you, after a year of sorrow, you tell that good man, that good woman to be your side tonight, what they mean to you. Because if you don't, the day will come and you'll give every blessed thing you've got for one day, any old day, with them.

And if there's anything wrong, straighten it out before you retire. There's a lot of sin in our Church families today, we think they're little things, but they spoil the testimony. God isn't pleased, and we're not growing in grace.

Sometimes the teenagers, sometimes the kids need to go home and say, Dad, Mother, I've not been acting like a Christian, I'm ashamed of myself, forgive me. Sometimes parents need to say that to their children, the Bible says so.

Everything all right at home? How are you doing this way? How are you doing this way? When God's people get right both ways, that's revival. Not a lot of noise, necessarily, it's just a new beginning of obedience to God.

Now, you look like we're all pretty well satisfied here tonight, but I've faced crowds too long to take them for granted. I'm just going to give you the opportunity, and then Brother Taylor is going to finish up.

I want the choir to sing softly, Jesus keep me near the cross. And would you be humble enough, and I'm not asking for the usual parade of rededicators, I'm not interested in that at all, I'd rather have three people down here that mean business with God tonight.

And if you've been convicted by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God that there's something wrong this way or this way, and you need to get right with God. Now, it'll take a lot of grace and gumption to get up and come down with everybody looking at you and kneel here and tell the Lord that that's what it takes.

Tell him what it is and then get up on your knees prepared to do something about it with that person that's at odds with you or whatever the trouble may be. It's that simple and it's just that difficult.

That's the way victory lies.