ACCESS | Sevin Cortez

How do we reach God?

In this sermon, come discover what it means to approach God freely through Christ as Pastor Selvin Cortez continues our series “Being a Christian Is…”

This message explores the biblical story of access to God and how when Christ came, He restored what was lost. Through His sacrifice, the barrier between humanity and God was removed.  
If you want to grow closer to God, this message is for you. Enjoy! 

REFERENCE: Ephesians 2:18

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to New Life Church. We're going to start there. Welcome. What a great, great service. And one of the things that I was telling the prayer team as we as we started today was wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be great that as we're singing that song, as we're singing how great God is, that he would interrupt that moment and we would see him. And as we're singing, how great thou art, that he would interrupt that moment and we would be in his presence. And the next verse that we sing is at him. Wouldn't that be amazing? And I just was like, oh wow, if God were to interrupt us and and I'm giving God a free, free will, carte blanche, to interrupt my life, to interrupt my thoughts, to interrupt uh my routine of my day-to-day. Just interrupt me, find me where I am and interrupt me. God, interrupt our lives. Show us who you are. And that's my prayer for New Life Church, that God would reveal his heart even greater, even deeper into your life and into our life and corporately as a church as we move forward. Last week's message, yes, it was something else, something that that hit me. I've been listening to it all week long. And God has been has made us alive. Being a Christian is being made alive, being made alive. And now when we when we talked about it, alive for what? Because salvation is not just uh bringing you from an eternal separation from God to heaven. That's part of salvation, and that's a key motivator to salvation. Yes, God is taking us from eternal separation from him into an eternal living with him, an eternal home with him. Yes, to be in his presence. Now he's also asked us that this, this being alive, the purpose for this is to enter into a relationship with God. And when we enter into a relationship with God, that speaks of one single word. Access. And so we have this access. We have this access that God has given to us now that we have been made alive. We have access to God. And Ephesians 2 18 says, through Him, through Jesus, we both have access in one spirit to the Father. And so we see the Godhead presented in one single verse. Paul is showing us the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit coming together and saying that we have access to him. Ephesians 2 18. And then Romans 5 2 says this for hit through him, through Christ, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This idea of having access is so important throughout the entire scripture. And look, uh, some of you have traveled, you've been uh a little bit all over the place, and you've you've gone to different cities and different countries, different places. And I had the opportunity uh to travel recently, and and there's this one place at uh I don't know if you've been here, but at the airport, there's this one room, secret room, nobody knows about it except me. Um and and it's it's protected by these doors, right? And and it's these glass doors, and you go in there, and and if you want to open, normally glass doors, as you come into a glass door, they open automatically. These ones don't. They only open up for me. And uh, and and as you as you walk into that door, you've got to scan your ticket, your boarding pass. You gotta scan your boarding pass, and and depending on where you're sitting, right, the the the doors open up like it's it's magical. The doors open up to a whole new a whole new world. I don't know if you've ever been to Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, to this place, but it's a whole new world. You go in there, there's Wi-Fi everywhere in this room. There are charging ports at every seat in this room. There are lazy boys. You can you can sit there and wait hours. If your plane, if your flight gets delayed, no problem. You just sit back, relax. There's lazy boys, there's one that does massages for you. You can get you can get unlimited drinks. You can drink all the orange juice you want. Yeah, and and and you can have breakfast there, you can do all your work there. It's it's quiet. There's nobody laying on the ground or taking up four seats, right? None of that. It's it's through access. And and so so I was all excited. I scanned my ticket. I went in, I thought, this is this is heaven at Montreal. This is awesome. And then my next trip, silly me, I'm like, hey, nobody knows this except me. So I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go scan my ticket, and and I scanned my ticket, and I almost ran into the door. The doors didn't open. Uh, I was like, uh they must have forgot. It's uh it's Salvin. Hello, um, can you can you let me in? Can you let me in? And and this one lady, she uh she scanned her ticket. The doors open, so I was like, all right, I'm gonna walk in. I walked in, and then there's somebody else at the top of the stairs waiting for me, and they're saying, uh, could can we see your ticket? And I showed them my ticket, and they said, Uh we're sorry, sir. Uh uh, no, no, no, it's okay. I've been here before. They know me on the inside, they know who I am. They said, We're sorry, sir. Your ticket actually doesn't allow you access today. And I thought, this client of mine, uh, what did they do this time? And so uh access was denied. And yet the Bible talks about having access to heaven, which means, which means if we had access, if we have access now to heaven, at one point we didn't have access. We had lost our access to heaven. And to understand this, we got to go all the way back. So let's go all the way back to Genesis. Access that we once had. And so in Genesis, God makes Adam and Eve, and he puts them in the garden and he gives them access. They have access to him, they have fellowship with God, their life is flowing from him. There are no barriers, no glass walls that can hold them back from the presence of God. They have no priests, they have no sacrifices, no distance between them and God. They are living in heaven on earth. Wouldn't that be something? To wake up and see God standing there, to speak to him, to walk with him in the middle of the day, just to be around him in his presence. Genesis 2 9 says, and out of the ground the Lord made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that word in the midst. Those of you that that love to study the Bible, I want to invite you to study every single time the word midst, in between, in the middle of, in the middle of the garden, God plants these two trees, the tree of life that was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You see, God had made this garden for for Adam and Eve, and we were, we were, they were in the presence of Almighty God, and he puts these two amazing trees right there. One that is the tree of life, where they can grab onto and eat as much as they want. It wasn't the only tree there. There were many trees that they could eat from, but there was one specific one in the middle, in the midst of the garden. And beside that one, there was the other one. The one of the knowledge of good and evil. You see, God's design was never for religion. God's design was always for relationship. And so he put that tree there to say to them, Look, of all the trees you can eat. You can have of any tree you want, but this one of the knowledge of good and evil, don't eat from that one. Don't eat from that one, because if you do, you're gonna die. And I don't want that. And so God gave them a choice. You see, he had to give them a choice. Otherwise, how do you love? How do you love without a choice? How do how do you present love if you are programmed to love? So God didn't want robots, he didn't want to program his love into Adam's heart, he wanted Adam to choose willfully, freely to choose to obey and follow God. So he had to give him a choice. And well, we know what that choice ended up being. You see, the deepest longing of our heart is to have access. And so he wanted access. He wanted this access to whoa, there's there's more knowledge available, good and evil is available, there's there's something more available. Let me try this out. And so he reached out his hand, grabbed the fruit, and ate. And that's when access changed. That's when everything changed, and automatically access was denied. Access was denied at that point. And so if we read in Genesis chapter 3, verse 22 to 24, it's a little bit longer, but watch what happened. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Adam sinned, humanity was expelled from the garden. And in that moment, when Adam sinned, he had two choices. He could have run to the tree of life, or he could have run away from God. He chose to run away from God. He chose to run from God, not to God. And then God does something so important, so so impressive. He says, We've got to kick him out. And it may sound harsh and it may sound severe and and and and restrictive, but God was doing it out of love for Adam. Why? Why wouldn't he just keep him in the garden and let him eat of the tree of life? Because now the tree of life would have made him immortal in sin. So his sin would have now been immortalized every time he would take from the tree of life, he would receive the life of God in his sin. And so God said, No, you can't, you've got to stay back. And he put a flaming sword at the entrance. So he kicked them out. And he put a sword right there so that they couldn't go back. They couldn't receive that access they had again, that access that once was with God, they had no more. And it was buried off, it was barricaded by a flaming sword that danced back and forth. The Bible says that it would rotate and it would dance back and forth, almost like saying, Hey, come try. Try me. Try me. Take a step closer, see what happens. One more step. The Bible says that on either end there was cherubs, protectors of God's holiness. Now we don't have time to go into that in this message, but that's also a powerful, powerful image that God is protecting his holiness with two cherubs. And so now man starts this trek, this journey of separating himself from God. And God trying to draw near to man, trying to draw close to man, and man saying, No, we don't want you. We will be our own gods. In fact, not only will we be our own God, we will also reign from heaven the earth. And so they gathered together in a city called Babel, and they made a tower, and that tower was for the single purpose of elevating their own name because they want nothing to do with God. God is saying, you can't do that. Number one, you have no idea that the oxygen levels up there are less than down here. So you're just gonna die the higher you go up. And your name is not that great. Mine is. Let me show you my name. Let me show you that I want to come close to you. I want to tabernacle with you. I want to meet with you. And so God establishes a plan, a new form of access, but this access is limited. This limited access to God is is is now in the desert. So the people of Israel are in the desert. They're wandering all over. They have 40 years ahead of them in the desert, not knowing where they're going. They're going round and round and round in circles and circles. And God is saying, I want to meet you. I have heard your cry. I know the 400 years of slavery that you were that and oppression that you have lived. I want to rescue you. So God takes them out of Egypt into the wilderness. And in the wilderness, He establishes the Mosaic Covenant, the covenant of the Ten Commandments, and a new order in which he can meet with people. Now that was great and it was awesome. Because God's presence would come down. But only one person could enter into his presence. You see, the the place they would meet, the tabernacle they would meet at was split up into three different parts. And we've talked about this before, but there were three different parts the parking lot, the sanctuary, and then the most holy place where nobody could go, behind the screen. That was the divisions of the tabernacle of Moses. In the parking lot, everybody gathered. The all three million, five million people were out there gathered in the parking lot. And on the inside, it was just the people that worked in the tabernacle, the the Levites, they were on the first level. And then behind the screen was the Holy of Holies. And in that place, only one time per year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest, the top dog, he's the one that was able to go into the Holy of Holies. Now, if he had sin in his life, he'd drop dead right then and there. But if he did all the purifications, all the things that God had told him to do in order to sanctify himself, in order to enter into the Holy of Holies, then your sins and my sins, the sins of the people, would be forgiven only one time per year. And this is God saying, I want to draw near to you, but I am holy, and you're going to do it in this way. And so he says in Exodus 25, 8, he says, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell where? In their midst. And so there was a tabernacle, the place of meeting, the ark of the covenant, the presence of God was in this place. But access is limited. They don't have full access. Not anybody can enter in, only one guy, one time per year. But God was with them. And in Hebrews chapter 9, verse 7, it says, But into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. One man once a year had to enter with blood. Access existed, but it was limited because of sin. So this access is still not attainable. But all of that, everything you read in the Old Testament about the tabernacle, about the split between the place of meeting, the holy place, and the holy of holies, all of that, the dimensions in which it is built on, the wood that they used, the amount of stakes that they drove into the ground, all of it, the silver, the gold, the wood, the covering, the colored curtains, everything that makes up the tabernacle was just a shadow of something greater to come. And the writer of Hebrews says this in Hebrews 10, he says, For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, something greater was coming. Something more, more magnificent was on its way. For centuries, humanity lived this. Way with this tabernacle, but God said, sacrifices and holocausts, I don't want anymore. You see, Hebrew says that the high priest would go in for the unintentional sins of the people. People started to take advantage of this system. And they would say, Oh, okay, I sinned. What do I have to do? I have to bring a couple of doves? Okay, I have to bring a lamb. Okay, so I'll just do that. I'll keep living the way I want to live, and I'll just present my offering to the priest so that he can go in behind the curtain and offer this sacrifice for my sins. I'll be forgiven and all is well. God was saying, that's hey, that's that's not what I intended for in this picture. In this picture, I didn't intend for you to take advantage of the system. It is a system that was made so that I could draw near to you and that you would draw near to me and know what my statutes are. Know what I want for you. Be guided by the word of Moses over your life, be guided by it. They said, No, thank you. We'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

And for centuries they lived that way. And then we find we find this part.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Jesus comes onto the scene. And now Jesus is in his ministry, and he's going about healing the sick and bringing sight to the blind, and his name is starting to be heard in all of Judea, in all of Galilee, wherever he goes in Jerusalem, his name is starting to be heard as a prophet, as a teacher, as a healer. And he goes into the synagogue, the place of religious belief. He goes into the synagogue where all the Pharisees are. And there's this young man in there. He's standing there and he's looking at them. And to make matters worse, he enters the synagogue on a Saturday. And for the Jews of the time, entering the synagogue on a Saturday meant you were doing no work that day. They kept the Sabbath, they kept the Saturday holy. They did no work. They did nothing on that day. And this young man is standing there in the synagogue. Jesus looks at him. And this young man has an arm that is withered, that is dead. And he looks at this young man and he does something really, really interesting. It's recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This miracle. And it's really important because he calls this man. And you know, Jesus sees him and and he could have, he could have healed him right away. But he does something. He says, He says, Come here. Come. Come Fred.

unknown 26:00

Come.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

His name was Fred. His name was Fred. He said, Fred, come forward. And and he brings him forward in front of the whole church, in front of the whole synagogue. And he brings him forward. And he asks the Pharisees, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, to heal a man? To give life or death to a man? And he did this in front of everybody. He needed, thank you, he needed everybody to see him. And you're gonna see why in a second. Mark chapter 3, verse 1 to 5 says, Again he entered the synagogue. Jesus did. And a man was there with a withered hand, and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. It was a trap. They may have placed that young man in the room on purpose. And he said to the man with the withered hand, Come here. And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill? And they were silent. And he looked around them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their heart. And he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched out his hand, and his hand was restored. Jesus healed a man whose hand had been withered. Luke, the physician, actually records and tells us which hand it was. And he says it was his right hand that was withered, which means it brought shame that he couldn't move his arm. It brought shame to him, to his family. He couldn't work, he couldn't do anything. He was cast away because he could not work. And Jesus restores his life, restores his honor, restores his dignity, restores his strength. And that's what he can do today for you. That's what he can do in your life, in your thoughts, in your plans, in your goals, in your dreams. He can restore what was lost, what was withered away, what was dead. He can bring new life back into it. So being a Christian means access. This man had now access to God. Now, did you catch it? Did you catch it? It may have gone a little fast. And that was the purpose. I don't think you caught it. Jesus said to him, stretch out your hand. Remember, we just read that a few moments ago in Genesis? He drove out the man from the garden. And he said, Lest he reach out his hand to take from the tree of life. So Adam was not allowed to take from the tree of life. God said, We've got to kick him out because we don't, we he can't reach out his hand and grab from the tree of life. And now Jesus says the exact opposite. The exact same wording, but opposite to this young man. Now stretch out your hand and reach for me. Now stretch out your hand and reach for the tree of life. Now stretch out your hand and reach to me, who I am, the author and the finisher of your faith. Stretch out your hand. Stretch out your hand. The access that was lost in the garden. This denial of being able to grab from the fruit of the tree because of sin is now restored in Jesus. And he's saying it doesn't matter. He didn't ask the young man, hey, hey, hey, what did you do last night? What were you watching last night? In your private life, what are your thoughts? He didn't ask anything, he didn't ask him for his his resume, he didn't ask him for his accomplishments, he didn't ask him for anything. Reach out to me. I am the tree of life. Reach out to me, and that's what he's asking us to do today. He's asking us to reach out to him. He's asking us to take that step and say, I need you in my life. There are areas in my life that are dead. There are areas in my life I didn't think would come back to life. There are areas in my life that I I never thought would rise up again. Jesus says, Hey, you've got access to me. You've got access to me. Now wouldn't have it, wouldn't it have been great to be this young man who stretched out his hand and was healed in that moment. You're probably thinking, yes, Elvin, that's awesome. Man, I wish that could work for my life. Man, I wish I wish he was just here and I could just lay out and say, This is what I need. And so this story of Jesus stretching out, telling this young man to stretch out his hand was for him, but to us. Because it's just a shadow of what was about to happen. You see, this miracle, this particular miracle of the hand stretching out. What would happen if any human being, Adam or his sons, were to come close to that sword? What do you think would happen to them? If they wanted to go back into the Garden of Eden, they would surely die. Right? I'd be burned up instantly. You see, this miracle of stretching out, Jesus telling a young man to stretch out his hand and reach for him is the beginning of the Pharisees and the Herodites coming together and planning to kill Jesus. Up until this moment, yeah, he can heal the sick, he can make the lame to walk, he can open deaf ears, open blind eyes, yeah, that's fine, that's okay. Um, he's gaining a lot of popularity. All right, all right, that's that's fine, whatever, whatever. Uh, but if he heals on the Sabbath, we got him. If he heals on the Sabbath, we got him. And what was the one miracle that he wanted to do that specific Saturday? Was heal a man's hand and tell him, reach out, reach out. You see, that sword was planted in the middle of the garden. Uh at the east end of the garden. That sword was right there. And centuries later, Zechariah, a prophet of God, says this. Awake. God speaking through the prophet, he says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me, declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. Centuries after, Zechariah says this prophecy of God speaking through him, and God is saying, Arise, awake, O sword, and strike my shepherd, the one, the man that's standing next to me. And so we see Jesus on the cross. And in the ninth hour of that Friday evening, he expired his last breath, and a soldier grabs a spear. Symbol symbol of a sword and takes the spear and drives it into his side. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, my good shepherd, the man that stands beside me. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered in that moment. Jesus' disciples were scattered, all but one. It's the prophecy of Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

Some of you are probably getting it.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

If the sword is in Jesus' side, where is it not?

SPEAKER_02 37:59

It's no longer at the entrance of the Garden of Eden.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

It's no longer protecting the tree of life. It's no longer standing there saying, Hey, come try me, come test me. It's no longer there, it is now being used, and it was used on Jesus Christ on the cross. That the way into his presence, the way into the tree of life is now available for you and for me.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

The way to the tree, the way to his presence, the way into behind the curtain. Yes, yes, a great big yes, a great big amen. A great big shout of praise to God for what he did for Jesus, what he did on the cross. A great big shout. Because the doorway is open, the path to the tree of life is open.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

And in that moment, the Bible doesn't say this, but would you just allow me one second, one second, just to let my creativity fly? It just my my brain is going all over the place right now. But in the moment that Jesus died, the Bible says, the Bible says that the veil, the curtain that separated us from Him was rent, was torn from the top down. I imagine this moment that the sword was awakened, left the presence of God, split the curtain right down the middle, and struck our Lord so that now we have full access into his presence. Church, would you stand to your feet with me? Being a Christian. Being a Christian is not about what you do. Being a Christian is not about how good you can be. Being a Christian means having access to the lover of our souls. Being a Christian means I can come into his presence not once a year, not once in a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

I can dwell in his presence, I can be with him day and night and night and day. I can be with him.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

I can feel him inside of me. He is with us, he is with you, and you can take your dead dreams, you can take your withered hand, you can take your withered plans, you can present them to him, and he will breathe new life into them. He will breathe new life. He's asking one thing: would you reach out your hand? Would you reach out your hand? Would you extend your hand and touch him? Because he wants to bless you, church. Not only you, he wants to bless your family. He wants to bless your children, and he wants your children's children to have access to him.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

He wants to bless your generations, he wants to bless your finances, he wants to bless your family, your relationships, he wants to bless you at work, in your coming and in your going in the morning and in the evening, wherever you are. He wants to bless you, bless his name, bless his name, bless his name, bless his name, be upon you in a thousand, and a thousand generations.