Sermon Tone Analysis

Have you ever had something escape you, because it was just out of your reach?

I would guess we’ve all experienced this in multiple ways.

I think about athletics, and how the ball or the puck can be just beyond the reach of the player.

This can be the play that decides the game!

Maybe you took a fall, and it happened partly because when you reached out to hold something and steady yourself, it was just out of your reach.

Maybe you have dropped a dish, and because it was beyond your grasp, it fell and broke.

This idea can also be applied more figuratively.

We might say that a job promotion is just beyond our reach.

Or we might try to call or text someone about something, but we were unable to “reach” them.

In all these examples, when something good is just beyond our reach, we often think back to that critical moment with regret!

We remember how close it was, and we think of all the difficulty and pain that would have been avoided if that thing had not been beyond our reach.

As I said, I think we have all experienced this situation in one form or another.

That is part of being human and finite.

But did you know that in a sense, God also experiences this sort of thing?

There are things that, in a way, are beyond His reach as well.

And when that is true, it brings an infinite amount of regret.

In a just a few moments, we will consider what it means to be beyond the reach of God.

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Good morning, and welcome to Truth for Today, a weekly radio ministry of Bible Baptist Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

My name is Ethan Custer, and I serve as the assistant under Pastor Mike Custer, the regular host of this broadcast.

We at Bible Baptist Church desire to be a spiritual blessing to you however we can.

Our building is located west of I-29 at 6367 Gateway Drive in Grand Forks.

We meet several times each week to worship God, and our purpose in life is to obey and please the Lord Jesus Christ in all that we do.

Our source of truth and guide for living is the Authorized King James Bible, the Word of God in the English language.

In it He offers solutions for every one of life’s problems!

If we can help you in any way, please let us know.

We desire to have that opportunity.

I’ll be giving our contact information at the end of the broadcast, so I hope you’ll stick around.

Probably every one of us knows what it means to have something beyond our reach.

That is why helping each other is so important, because what is beyond my reach may not be beyond yours, and vice versa.

We can be spared a lot of regret if we’ll help one another.

We are accustomed to things being beyond our reach, because we are flawed and limited people.

But God shouldn’t have that problem, should He?

There is nothing is beyond His reach, is there?

Consider the power of God displayed in the words of Jesus Christ in John chapter 10.

When a person is forgiven of their sins by God the Father and is given the gift of eternal life, they are God’s child FOREVER!

It is impossible to lose your salvation.

Once you are saved, you are always saved.

Christ tells us that the saved—His sheep—are in the Father’s hand, and nothing can take them out.

God is all-powerful, and He is fully capable of guaranteeing your eternal destiny!

Do you know Christ as your Saviour today?

If so, you may rejoice in having received the guarantee of a home in Heaven.

However, even while God has all power and is able to keep a sinner’s salvation eternally secure, Scripture reveals a condition that we might say is beyond the reach of God.

There is something even God cannot fix; there are people even God cannot reach!

As we examine this idea, I hope that you will listen carefully, and allow God’s Holy Spirit to show you truth.

If you are in this condition today, I hope you will be honest with yourself about it.

Otherwise, you will remain out of the reach of God.

First, I want us to consider a very sad declaration that Jesus Christ made to the Jews of His day.

We read Christ’s words in Matthew 23.

As we’ll read later, these verses follow a lengthy, exhaustive excoriation by the Lord toward religious Jews.

But in these last verses, His tone changes from reproach and anger, to regret and grief.

It is such a sad statement on what might have been, and what would be instead.

Remember, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

He is fully God, Who was sent to earth to live as a man among sinners.

He is sinless, and He shed His blood and died for sinners, rising again from the dead after three days, so that sinners could trade their sin for His righteousness, and be pardoned by God and receive the gift of eternal life.

Jesus Christ is the Creator, according to John chapter 1.

He is omnipotent, which means He has all power.

There is nothing too hard for God, as we read in Jeremiah 32:37, which says:

With these things being true, how could Jesus Christ express such regret, as though He was unable to bring about good results?

We regret circumstances where the good outcome was just beyond our reach.

But the Son of God is speaking in very similar terms here!

Is there something that is beyond His reach…beyond the reach of God?

What does this mean?

To help us gain some perspective on these verses, let’s go to the Old Testament.

This is an important detail to note!

Through the prophet Isaiah, God is making it clear that HE is unchanged.

He is still infinite—He is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely powerful, and infinitely loving.

He is infinitely holy, and infinitely just.

He has not changed, and never will.

Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the Lord, I change not...” However, there is a limiting factor.

God has not changed, and His power has not been diminished, but there is still separation between sinners and God.

Though God is all-powerful, it is possible for sinners to be beyond His reach.

It is possible for God’s help to be unavailable, for God’s love to be distant, and for God’s forgiveness to be powerless to pardon you.

And the reason this is possible is sin.

You might say, “How can sin be the reason for this?

Everyone sins, and many people are still going to Heaven.

Why does God forgive some sinners, but not others?”

This is a good question, and it is one that Scripture answers for us.

First, we must understand that salvation does not come through works that we accomplish.

Salvation only comes through the work of God.

Jesus, in speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, said this:

Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Bible is clear that we cannot save ourselves.

If we could, then Jesus Christ died on the cross in vain.

Why would we need to come to the Father through Christ, if there was another way of salvation, through our own works?

Salvation is God’s work, and in that work, He forgives us and cleanses us from the filth of our sin.

That is the blessing of forgiveness—we don’t have to pay the penalty that we justly deserve as a result of our sin!

With this being true, how can our sin put us out of the reach of God?

Could it be that the severity of our sin puts us out of the reach of God?

Or perhaps it is the frequency of our sin?

Yet the apostle Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Paul, speaking of himself, writes this to Timothy!

So Paul first describes many kinds of heinous sin, and says that the saved people in the church at Corinth used to be those kinds of sinners, but they had been forgiven and cleansed by God through Christ.

And then he says in 1 Timothy that he is the chief of sinners, but that he also has been forgiven because of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

So if horrible sinners, and even the chief of sinners can be saved, how is sin the reason that a person may be beyond the reach of God?

If sin could put us beyond the reach of God, wouldn’t it have been true of these individuals?

So far, we’ve talked about how sin brings death, but life comes through Jesus Christ.

We’ve talked about how salvation is the gift of God, not the result of man’s works.

We’ve talked about how forgiveness of sins can apply to all kinds of sinners.

But there is one thing we haven’t yet talked about, and that is how the gift of God is applied to one’s life.