Acceptance by God.

So, acceptance. Yeah, it's a real privilege to be able to talk about this this morning. As I said, we've got three topics. We've got acceptance, faith, and time. All three of these are fundamental issues in the Christian growth, fundamental principles of a Christian life. And of course, we're talking about acceptance with God. And we wanted this topic to be right up front because understanding that you're accepted by God is critical. Without understanding that, you're not gonna go very far in the Christian life. That's just a fact. And I wanna start with a really important question this morning that I want you guys to think about.

As a Christian, are you confident that you have acceptance with God? How do you respond to that question? What kind of thoughts come into your mind when we ask that question? Can you have confidence about this? Should you have confidence about this? You know, a lot of people would respond to that thinking, well, that's arrogant. It's arrogant to think that you could have confidence that you're accepted with God. Is it? Is that arrogance? What does the word acceptance mean?

Let's begin there. The dictionary definition just says this. The action or, okay, how do we want to go on this? I should give a warning up front. For those of you who don't know me, I am from Canada. And we've got some words that we say a little differently. And I didn't realize this was in my first slide, actually.

But in Canada, you can say process or process. And now, thanks to Nick, every time I get to this word, I just, I'll like stop, I'll stall out, and I'm like, which way do I go here? Should we go American or Canadian today? The action or process of being received as adequate or suitable typically to be admitted into a group. That's just a dictionary definition. Now I'm all tongue-tied, thanks Nick. But it's a relationship word, okay? It's a relationship word.

And it carries, it really has the idea of belonging built into it. This acceptance being received into or admitted into a group. And as people, we all have a need to belong. We have really a deep desire to belong. We look for acceptance, just even on a human level, we're talking now, right? We all want to belong. We have an idea, very, very naturally, of what is acceptable culturally or within a certain subculture, right? What it takes to fit in. Even just in the way that we dress or do our hair. Now of course what's acceptable culturally keeps changing, right?

So what's interesting, I was thinking about this and I thought we'll have a little fun. I thought it would be interesting to see a snapshot of what it looked like to be acceptable throughout our lifespan. And I thought what better way to do that than to look at some actual snapshots of some of the older folks when you were younger. Now, I do have permission from your wives to share these photos. So, I thought it was good to travel back in time and look at some of the things that were deemed acceptable maybe 70 years ago.

So, I don't know if we want to call out who we think this fellow is. Anyone know who that is? This is our dear friend, Roger, okay? Working there at the bandsaw, and I thought, you know, I actually don't know if Roger's style has changed in 70 years. I think he still owns that sweater. Okay, so, but, you know, that was acceptable. Now, the next photo, we discovered that cameras hadn't been invented when he was a teenager, so we have a more recent photo. Anyone know who this guy is? Do you still own those shades, Mike? Yeah? OK. All right. And don't spend too much time on this photo, but the shorts are pretty cool. OK. Anyone know who?

Is Courtney in the room here? Where'd Courtney go? What's that? Courtney left. Oh, no. Okay, well, we'll have to come back to this. This is our dear friend, Courtney, and his hairdo when he was young. Now, this one, I don't think this—oh, there he is! So, apparently that hairdo was acceptable for young men when Courtney was, you know, that might be back in almost. Anyway, this next fellow. Now, I don't think this was his normal hair. We got this one from his mom, right? So, anyone know who that is? Anyone want to take a guess? That is JD. That is JD. As a young man, apparently he had a black Afro. He also had some good shades. Now, I have no idea who this is, but we found this photo somewhere in my mom's photo box.

So, anyway, it's pretty obvious that as people, especially as young people, we really seek acceptance. Some more desperately than others, right? But what's going on mentally when we try to keep up with certain styles, right? We want to fit in. We want to fit in with a certain group of people, and that's really the key. It's relational. Okay?

So to understand acceptance, we have to understand that it's about having a relationship. So when we're talking about acceptance with God, we're talking about having a relationship with him. And as a Christian, you have a relationship with God because he accepts you. But understanding the reason why God accepts you changes everything. That has a huge impact on your Christian life. So when we're talking about being accepted by God, we have to realize that it's not like the acceptance that we sought with our peers when we were in high school. We will never gain acceptance with God by trying to live up to a certain standard.

Jeremiah 17 verse nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Genesis 8, 21 tells us that the intent of man's heart is evil from his use. Romans 5, 10 says that we were enemies of God. And Romans 8, 7 says that we were hostile toward God. And God can't have a relationship with people who are hostile against him.

Habakkuk 1, 13 says, your eyes are too pure to approve evil. You cannot look on wickedness with favor. So that brings us to a really important question. How do we gain acceptance with God? As evil, wicked, hostile enemies of God, who gets to enter into a loving relationship with Him? And how? On what basis do we enter into that relationship? And this is really the most important question that any human being can ever answer. And the Bible answers it very, very definitely. We're just gonna go through a string of verses here.

We all know John 3.16, I think. For God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 6.40, for this is the will of my father that everyone who beholds the son and believes in him will have eternal life and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

John 11, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies and everyone who believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? Acts 1043, of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. Romans 10 verse 11, for the scripture says whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. 1 John 5, 1, whoever believes that Jesus is a Christ is born of God.

If you thought there was only John 3, 16 in the Bible, we missed some verses. We could go on and on and on with this. The Bible's very clear. When you put your faith in the work that Jesus did on the cross, you are saved, you have eternal life, you're brought into a relationship with God.

Now, faith is really just the noun for the verb believe. Believe is the verb form of the noun faith. And that's what's required. And what we need to understand is that what God offers is available to every single person as a free gift. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no one may boast. So our side of this is faith. That's it. Our side is faith.

And Mike's gonna be talking about faith later this morning, but it's really, really important to understand. Because on our side of the ledger, that's the only requirement in order to have acceptance or a relationship with God. But what we really need to come to understand is God's side. Because our responsibility is only to put faith in what He's done. but we need to understand what God has done. Even if we accepted Jesus' payment for our sin penalty, that hadn't changed us at all. We would just go from being guilty sinners to pardoned sinners, but we'd still be sinners. And in order to be made acceptable to God, something had to change.

And the moment you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God undertook to do something with you in order to bring you into a relationship with himself. The Bible says that the moment you put your faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit baptized you into Christ Jesus.

But what in the world does that mean? Galatians 3, 26-27 says this, For you are all sons of God. Notice, that's that close personal relationship. You have an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, or with God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice that it's through faith. Okay, so that's our side. Our side to entering into this relationship is faith. Okay, but notice verse 27.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. That's God's side. He's the one who baptized us into Christ. Now, this isn't water baptism. The word baptism, in English, we automatically think of getting dunked in water, but in the Greek, the word that we translate is just a transliteration. And it literally means to be placed into or to be permanently identified with him.

And you might be wondering, Nick was wondering, why do we have a jar of pickles up front here? Because, frankly, I think pickles are the best illustration of the word baptism. You might think that's really weird. But they're actually, in studying the word baptism in the Greek language, you'll find that there is an ancient pickle recipe that uses the word baptized. And the whole idea is that first you wash the pickles, But then you baptize them, you place them into the pickling brine. Now, you're not placing pickles in, are you? I said that wrong. You don't wash the pickles, you wash the cucumbers.

And then you place them, you baptize them into the brine, the solution. And what happens? They stay in there, right? And they take on, they receive a whole new identity. You try to tell a three-year-old that a pickle is a cucumber and they'll laugh at you because they know that's not the same thing. It is a totally different thing. It's a new thing. And that is what is going on with the word baptism.

You were so identified with the Lord Jesus Christ that you are no longer identified with who you were. You have this new identity, permanently identified with Jesus Christ. And, you know, almost 90 times the New Testament says that we are in Christ. As a Christian, you are in Christ.

You know, and it can be hard to wrap our heads around what that means, but the one thing that I found that really helps with understanding this is if you understand that you were, from the moment that you came into existence, you were in Adam. The very first created man, you were in him. First Corinthians, 1522 says, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. Those are the two, the only two men that you could be in, is Adam and Christ. And I think that helps us to get our heads around a little bit what it means to be in Christ, because you were in Adam your whole life, until the day that you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay? But that doesn't mean that you were aware of it. And it also doesn't mean that you didn't have a personal, individual identity. It's not something that you felt. It has to do with the kind of person that you were. You shared in Adam's nature even though you didn't know it. And now, you have been separated from Adam and you have been identified with Christ. I taught this to a group of children, I almost put these on today, at a VBS program, because you might think this was really challenging to understand, and it is in some ways, but I sold this from a friend of mine, but I had these two hats, and I wore this one as I talked about what it meant to be in Adam, identified with Adam. And when I got to talking about how we've been separated, removed from Him, and placed in Christ Jesus, I changed hats.

And they got it. You know, they actually seemed to grasp what was going on, at least to some degree. And I know they're goofy, but it stuck. And, no worries, you just have a minor disaster in the back row. No. But in some ways it's so simple, even though it's such a profound thing, right?

You were in Adam, and the moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God took you out of Adam and identified you with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't go too far into that truth this morning, but this is something really important to begin to understand as a Christian. That you're no longer identified with Adam and his sinful race, you're now permanently identified with the Lord Jesus Christ. Before God, you are no longer in Adam, you are in Christ. And God sees us as righteous. Not because of what you are, but because of who Jesus is. God actually sees you as righteous in his son. That is our standing or our position before God.

And that is the answer to how God can accept you into a relationship with himself. He couldn't accept you as that wretched, vile sinner. He had to accept you in his beloved son, a new creation in the Lord Jesus Christ. So again, our responsibility is to place our faith in Jesus Christ and in his work on the cross. And God's part, his responsibility is to remove us from Adam's race and recreate us in union with his son, Jesus Christ. And on that basis, God the Father can accept us. And that is the only legitimate basis. That is the only way that we can have a relationship with God.

So hopefully that's clear, even though it's basic. Like I said, we can continue to learn these things and study them and discover the depths of these things the rest of our lives and on through eternity. But if we understand at a very fundamental level that we are no longer in Adam, but we are in the Lord Jesus Christ, then we understand the basis upon which God accepts us into a relationship with himself. But I want to return to a question that I asked right at the beginning, okay?

As a Christian, are you confident that you have acceptance with God? And I mentioned that some people think that this is arrogance, to know that God accepts you. But if we think about that, the only way that this could be arrogant is if I had earned it or deserved it in some way, right? If our concept of acceptance with God has something to do with the fact that I deserve it or I earn it or I could work for it, then it might be arrogant to say that you have confidence, that you have acceptance of God, but that has nothing to do with it, right? Our works, our efforts, our striving has nothing to do with the reason that God has accepted us, okay? If we have put our faith in Jesus Christ as our savior, then we should, we can and we should have total confidence that God accepts us.

And we can know that just on the basis of his word. And it's not gonna change. Our acceptance with God is an irreversible work. He's joined us to his beloved son. He's recreated us in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why I said, pickles are not going back. Thank goodness, right? Pickles are not going back. Okay? And on that basis, God brought you into a relationship with himself, and he's never going to change it. Nothing that you can do or not do will ever change the relationship that you have with God.

Now, we want to make this practical here. Some people get worried when we start to talk like this. Why? Why do Christians get worried when we start to talk about the fact that we can have complete and total assurance that God accepts us totally, permanently, irreversibly? Because they think that this teaching is going to lead to careless living, sinful living in the Christian life. And They think along these lines that if you know that nothing will ever change your acceptance with God, well, doesn't that give free reign to sin? And I think if we're honest, we all kind of have to grapple with this. You know, if I know that no matter what I do, I'm in Christ, I've got assurance of that, and it's never gonna change, well, I could do whatever I want, right? That's kind of just a logical conclusion that we could draw.

But what does that question do? What does that very form of thinking do? It calls into question the way that God has done things. It assumes that God doesn't know what he's doing. Well, God can't just give assurance like that. He's got to keep us wondering if we're still in line. So there's actually a lot of arrogance in that line of thinking, really questioning God, questioning the way that God has done things.

Sure, it's well intended, right? It's like, well, we don't want to live Wildly, we don't wanna live in sin. Maybe we shouldn't have total assurance. Maybe we gotta keep a little bit of doubt in there. So just to keep us in line, right? But we don't have to try to protect God. God's not worried about this.

He knows what he's doing. He's offered us this relationship by grace apart from works because that's the only way possible. And he knew that. He knew that we had no other way. No other way that we could ever have a relationship with him. Right? And so he willingly offered us this relationship purely by grace apart from works or any merit of our own, knowing that some believers would use that as a license to sin. He knew that, and he wasn't afraid of that. He still offered this relationship by grace apart from works. Okay?

And I think that it's really helpful to us if we begin to understand our relationship with God more like a parent-child relationship and not so much like a junior high clique, okay? You know, it's hard work to be accepted by our peers at school, right? But that's not the way it is between a parent and child, at least it should not be, right?

Every child has a relationship with their parents from the moment that they are conceived or adopted. Every child has a relationship with their parent, and they didn't have to work for it, did they? In the same way when we receive God's gift of salvation, we are adopted as his children, and nothing can break that relationship. It's like the parent-child relationship. That's why the Bible uses that as an analogy.

If something could break the parent-child relationship, then most of us would have been gone by the time we were two years old, right? If our parents could get rid of us, they probably would have at that point in life. But as parents, we don't love our kids because they're such good kids, right? We love them because they're ours, they're our children. A child may rebel against his parents, and they often do, right? And a loving parent will discipline their children, but that doesn't mean they stop loving them, right? And it certainly doesn't mean that the parent-child relationship is over, right?

I don't think we got this slide. The prodigal son, the parable of the prodigal son, I think illustrates this beautifully, right? We have a son that just utterly disgraces his father, you know, walks away and squanders his father's wealth. you know, and he comes back, and he comes back with this mentality, wow, I, you know, he knows his wretchedness, and he comes back, and he's intending to say, oh, you know, Father, I've been so awful, you know, would you please please accept me back, just as a slave. He doesn't expect to come back as a son, he just expects to be able to come back at least to, you know, eat there. But what does the father do? Had the father ever in his mind thought, well, that's no longer my son, not for a moment, right? The son was always his son, and he always knew that even though the son didn't. So nothing could break that relationship, and that's what our relationship with God is like. Nothing can break that.

Now, if we think about children who are unsure of whether their parents accept them, that's a really, really crushing weight to bear for a child. And they will struggle. They will really struggle in life if they are not assured of their parents' acceptance of them.

And it's no different for us as God's children. If we're always wondering whether God actually accept us, then we're going to struggle in the Christian life. We're going to have a lot of doubts, and the Christian life will be a constant battle. And there's my picture. When children are confident that their parents love them, it gives them a stable environment in which they can thrive. So with the confidence that we are accepted by God as his children, we can stop struggling to live the Christian life.

And we can start to learn that the life that he has for us is one that he wants to live through us. We're not struggling for his acceptance, right? We're willing to receive what he wants to do through us. And of course, there's a lot more to learn about how that all practically works out, but now we're starting from the right place. When we're starting from the understanding that God accepts us unconditionally, then we're starting the Christian life on the right foundation. Instead of being like children who never know whether they really belong, we're resting in the calm assurance that we are God's children. We're starting from that place. And now, we want to clarify something important.

Because sometimes people think that because we have this perfect acceptance with God that it means that God will never be displeased with what we do. And that's not true. I don't want to paint that picture. Okay, you know, Paul wanted to live a life that pleased the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 9, he says, Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. Implying what? Well, that we might not be. That we're not always pleasing to him.

Romans 12, 2 says, And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. So the things that God desires for us are good and acceptable. It's really no different than the parent-child, if we stick on that illustration. A parent who unconditionally loves and accepts their child will have certain expectations of their child, right?

Why? Because they know what's best for them. They want their child to learn and grow and become mature, and when that child is in rebellion against those expectations, right, is the parent pleased with them? No, right? Not because it harms the parent, no, because it harms the child. The child is rebelling against what's good for them, and a loving parent will discipline his children. But that does not mean that the parent's love for the child is diminished or changed in any way or lost. It's actually just the opposite.

As parents, we discipline our children because we love them, and God's no different. Hebrews 12, six through seven says, For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives. For it is for discipline that you endure. God, sorry, it is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" Notice the word sons in there. Okay. He disciplines you because you are his son. You're still accepted. You still have a relationship. That hasn't changed. It's never going to change. His discipline doesn't change that, right? It's out of love.

So don't confuse God's acceptance of you as his child with this idea that he approves of everything that you do. He can love you and accept you and maintain a relationship with you even though he doesn't approve of everything that you're doing. God can be very displeased with what we do, but he will never reject us.

So instead, what will he do? He will do whatever it takes to bring us along into the life that he wants for us. And doesn't he know what's best for us? Of course he does, right? So let's draw some of these things together here. As God's children, we can be at rest about the fact that we have acceptance with God. We need to be at rest in that fact. Okay?

And we received that relationship simply by putting our faith in the gospel, trusting the fact of what Jesus did on the cross for our sins. That was our part, faith. And at that moment, the Holy Spirit baptized us into union with Jesus Christ. He took us out of Adam and placed us in Jesus Christ. And on that basis, God the Father accepts us unconditionally. We've been adopted by God as his children, and we now have an unbreakable, unchangeable relationship with him.

And while some people might want to use that as a license to sin, the reality is that this confidence is the only foundation for a Christian life that's truly pleasing to God. It enlarges our appreciation for God's grace. And as God's children, he will discipline us when we're in disobedience, but it's because he loves us, and he wants what's best for us. And so as we learn to rest in the truth that we have an unbreakable, unchangeable relationship with God, and that it's totally by grace apart from anything that we did to deserve it, and we begin to realize that God has a certain life that he wants for us, then we can begin to rest assured that God has provided everything that's needed for that life, everything that's needed to fulfill those expectations. They're not expectations of things that we can do, but expectations that are things that he wants to actually accomplish in and through us as his children.

That's all I've got to say about acceptance this morning. And I hope that that leaves some room for questions. Hopefully that brings some thoughts to mind, just thinking, well, how does that work? How does that make sense in the Christian life? So we're going to now take a short break. We're a little bit ahead of schedule, and that's fine.