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The Four Things God Doesn’t Know Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, AMEN Main Theme: John 3:16 is the Gospel (Good News) in a nutshell. According to these verses there are 4 things God doesn’t know: 1) He doesn’t know a sin He doesn’t hate, 2) a Sinner He doesn’t love, 3) a better way to save us, 4) a better time than now to accept and receive His love! 1) GOSPEL IN A NUTSHELL! Many of you have looked at the title of my sermon and thought: Wait a minute – I thought God knew everything! Well, according to John 3:16, there are four things God doesn’t know! This is not a part of a sermon series – today it stands alone and is actually based on the traditional text for the 3 year lectionary. Because it is my favorite text, and… seeing that it is the “Gospel in a nut shell”, I couldn’t NOT preach on it today. Let’s read it together…
2) HATED SIN! This is God’s Great plan of salvation! Of course it infers that someone needs saving! And if you pay attention to some of the words like: “condemned, judgment, darkness, evil deeds,” - you will recognize the first thing that God doesn’t know: 1) He doesn’t know a sin He doesn’t hate! Remember sin is anything that gets in the way of our loving God and living with Him according to His divine will! Sin separates us from His blessings, and in the worst case scenarios, sin has the potential to separate us from God Himself. Why? The Apostle Paul tells us in Roman’s 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death…” Total separation from the light and love of God is the last thing God wants – but beginning with Adam and Eve’s rebellion, sin has plagued our relationship with Him! And He hates it! Sin slowly poisons His creation! Sin rips His children away from the loving embrace that brings them unconditional love, faith, hope, and a flood of other blessings! 3) GOD HATES? See, God hates it when His children are hurling bombs and bullets at each other in Iraq! God hates it when thousands of children die of starvation every day when food abounds! God hates it when whole generations in Africa and around the world are dying of aides! God hates it when we destroy the environment and pollute the world He made! You can watch the daily news and see the killing, the abuse, the prejudice, the violence, the constant wars… fact is, it is easy to look at the world and see why God might hate sin! This is not His will! This is not how He designed it to be! So we ask: How could God love a world filled with so much selfishness? And if we look in the mirror, honestly, and face our own self-centeredness, we have to face a harder question: How could God love me? For I too am a sinner! And God hates sin! 4) WE DON’T! So most of us don’t! We don’t face the hard questions or the truth! We are like the cartoon I showed in a children’s sermon once:
How many of us are so afraid of facing our weaknesses and shortcomings that we don’t even want to hear it! Sometimes we don’t want to look God in the eyes, read the scriptures, or attend church because IF we admit that we are “broken” – we assume we know what God’s response would have to be to such brokenness… and that scares us! Because God doesn’t know a sin He doesn’t hate! 5) DEAD! We mentioned last week, that today’s modern society has discovered a unique way to deal with sin. Refuse to define it – and then the problem of “guilt” goes away. So in our postmodern world we declare NOBODY really knows what “the truth” is, so no one has to feel guilty about their lifestyle – because sin is just a matter of “interpretation” and “opinion.” Our research has shown that most college students today do not feel guilty about their lifestyles – so there’s nothing to fear! This attitude, of course, is not limited to college kids, and every generation has their fair share of people who refuse to see themselves as sinners. A young man in India who was heckling a missionary as he spoke, interrupted him by saying,
6) WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT! And even when we are brave enough to face the truth… we don’t know what to do about it! (second cartoon.)
But even when we KNOW what the problem is – WE’RE SINNERS – we still don’t what to do about it! We don’t want to be selfish, we don’t want to hurt others, we don’t mean to turn our backs on Christ, …but we all fall short! And it’s clear – God hates sin! “ What”, we wonder, “must God think of us?” 7) FEAR! I suspect that is why many of us avoid looking into God’s face, for fear of seeing a look of rejection! Sometimes we run from Christ when ever He gets close because IF we hang around Him we might have to face the truth and our greatest fears. Psychologists are only recently stating what God has known all along: We have to look at what we fear the most in order to be healed! Could that be why some of us resist “looking up” at Jesus? …the hater of sin! Could it be that we fear Him the most? 8) DON’T LOOK UP! When my kids were little, they loved “Whinny the Pooh” stories: my favorite was when Piglet and Pooh are anxiously following a set of animal tracks in the snow that Pooh suspects belongs to a tree climbing Jagular.
Well, the Jagular turns out just to be Tigger stuck in a tree, but Piglet’s first reaction is typical of our own. If you fear it, don’t look up at it! And perhaps the reason so many of us don’t look up to heaven enough, is because we KNOW that God hates sin! And we suspect and fear that Jesus is just waiting for us to look up so He can “drop down on us” with judgment! 9) SO LOVES SINNERS! But thankfully there is something else God doesn’t know: 2) God doesn’t know a SINNER He doesn’t love! If there is something you and I need to be reminded of over and over again - it is this: God hates sin, but He loves the sinner! He can separate the two! Oh, if only we could learn to do the same thing! Because it is God’s will to wash away the sin… and save the sinner! For some unphantomable reason, God loves us – and won’t give up on us! He doesn’t just love us “a little”; verse 16 says, "For God so loved the world…” and that means you and me! Sinners! That little word “SO” is key here! SO means there are no bounds to this divine love for you and me! Sinners! Unlike any human love you have ever experienced, God’s love for you is unconditional! Sometimes I wonder if everyone who hears those wonderful words can fully understand what they mean! 10) THE ROCK! It’s like the rebellious teenage daughter who was breaking her mother’s heart! Their struggle reached its height when the young girl was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. After posting bail for her daughter, the two did not speak to each other until the next afternoon. When the two came together the woman handed her a small wrapped gift. The girl flippantly opened it showed disgust when the box contained nothing but a small rock. She rolled her eyes and said, “What’s this for?” Her mother simply said, “Read the card.” She did and was overwhelmed by the words inside. Tears began streaming down her cheeks as she reached out to embrace her mom. The card said, “This rock is more than a million years old. That’s how long it will take before I give up on you!” God keeps trying to get this same message through to us. And I praise God that His love is so unrelenting and enduring. “For God SO loved the world…” that He sent us a Rock – Jesus Christ – to show us that He will never give up on us! 11) FORGIVEN AND LOVED! See, God doesn’t know a SINNER He doesn’t love! But the problem is, not enough people around us know that! Someone has calculated that some 200,000 people pass away every day. So every time you take a breathe, 4-5 people leave this world - most without knowing how much Jesus Christ loved them! …how much He longed to forgive them and bring them a full and abundant life! How might their lives have been different, if someone like us had shared those words with them: “For God so loved the world…” If you read any of the stories your friends send you on the internet, you probably ran across the one about a Spanish father and son whose relationship fell apart. The son ran away and the father set off to find him. He searched for months to no avail. Finally, in a desperate effort to find him, the father took out an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read “Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you, your father.” On Saturday, 800 young men named Paco showed up, looking for forgiveness and love from their Fathers. 12) GOD’S WAYS! Friends, our world is filled with sons and daughters who secretly sense that their relationship with God and others is not right, but they cannot imagine anyone could love or forgive them because of who they have been, and what they have done. They may even wish it could be so, but they hear themselves saying, “No, God hates sin! If I were God, and my creation turned their back on me… well… God must hate me too!” Someone needs to tell them that God’s ways are not our ways! Someone needs to boldly walk into their darkness with Christ’s light and help them see that God came to us in Christ, not to condemn and judge and punish, but to save! He came to cleanse, forgive, heal and renew our relationship! See, God’s ways are not our ways! For God doesn’t know a SINNER He doesn’t love! 13) SAVE OURSELVES? The third thing God “doesn’t know”: 3) God doesn’t know a better way to save us! Can you look at the cross and think of a better way to save us? I’ve tried and I can’t even come close! The Lord couldn’t wait for us to “save ourselves” – because we can’t! Ironically, every other religion in the world offers us a way to save ourselves, telling us that if we just work hard enough, or follow these 5 golden steps, or get reincarnated enough times, we can save ourselves. But Christianity stands alone in telling the truth – if we could “save ourselves” we would have done so long ago! But the truth is – we’re broken and cannot save ourselves! If you are the problem, then you cannot be the solution to that problem! Our good works don’t even begin to come close to erasing our sins! We cannot save ourselves, we must be saved by another! And that “other” is Jesus Christ! 14) A BETTER WAY? Was there a better way to save us than through Christ? I suppose it’s like that Father and Son who were taking a nature walk through the woods when they came across some ants working furiously to clear a path for ant travel! They worked as individuals and as a team – but to no avail. The father and son watched in silence for a long time until the boy finally said, “Dad, I wish I could help those ants.” But the father pointed out that his huge presence would send the little ants scurrying for safety. After some more silence the son spoke again, “You know dad, if I became an ant, became one of them for a short time, I could help them!” Naturally the boy did not have the power to become an ant, but God did have the power to empty Himself and become one of us! He then would work to remove the stumbling blocks in our paths – Sin, Satan, and Death! Only by becoming one of us could we be freed and begin to understand the nature of what we try to grasp today, “For God so loved the world…” It true: God doesn’t know a better way to save us! Because there isn’t one! 15) GREATER LOVE! A medieval monk once struggled (as we all do) to explain the greater love found in John 3:16. He simply waited until the shadows fell and the light ceased to come through the cathedral windows. When the congregation gathered to worship, he walked to the dark alter, lit a candle, and carried it to the crucifix. He started by illuminating the crown of thorns, then the two wounded hands, and finally the mark of the spear on His side. In the hush that fell, he blew out the candle and left. There was nothing else to say. Deep down inside everyone of us knows what the Apostle John whispered aloud: (John 15:13) “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” 16) GRACE! And so everything comes back down to God’s grace! Paul told the Ephesians and us, (Ephesians 2:8-9) “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves; it is a gift from God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” According to the world – unconditional love and God’s grace is not logical. And yet… God SO LOVED the world… and the cross was the best way to show that illogical love and demonstrate that divine grace! 17) A BETTER TIME! Which leads us to the fourth thing God does not know: 4) God does not know A BETTER TIME than now to accept and receive His love! We may not be able to fully describe it, define it, or even understand it, but that doesn’t stop your Lord and Savior from being here this morning and pouring out His life-giving love upon you! God wants you to know that He loves you so much, that He gave His “only begotten Son” for you; so that you may not perish, but have eternal life! And the moment to recognize, surrender to, and be transformed by His amazing love - is now! Not tomorrow, or next week, or next year – but now! His grace is here now, His mercy and forgiveness is here now, His wisdom, His gifts of hope, faith, and love: here, now! For you! There is not A BETTER TIME to accept and receive Him! 18) GOD DOESN’T KNOW! Friends, it’s true: there are things God doesn’t know! Because 1) God doesn’t know a sin He doesn’t hate, 2) a Sinner He doesn’t love, 3) a better way to save us, nor 4) a better time than now to accept and receive His love! Praise God! AMEN Sermon/Confessional Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, we confess we do not always understand or focus on your Great plan of Salvation. Either we don’t pay attention to our sins and don’t see ourselves as needing saving, or we can’t believe you could possible forgive us and we fear your judgment and rejection. But for what ever reason, we do not look up to you enough. Forgive us and help us to trust that your grace, mercy, and love are so great that we want only to get closer to you each and every day! Lord, your ways are so different than this world’s that we struggle to fully understand your love and grace, and often find ourselves trying to save ourselves by our works! We find it hard to accept such a wonderful and free life-giving gift – with no strings attached. Forgive us for wanting or thinking there is another way to salvation other than through your Son dying on the cross for our sins. Help us to see that NOW is the time to accept and receive you into our hearts! And now Lord, although you know us better than we know ourselves, listen as we share in a moment of silence, those other parts of our lives that need to be forgiven, washed clean, healed, and recommitted to you! (made anew.) (Silence) Lord, you have reminded us once again how great your love for us is! Thank you for choosing to separate the sin from the sinner, and loving us despite our weaknesses and brokenness! Thank you for sending your Son to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves – bring us back into a loving and eternal relationship with you! In Jesus Name We Pray. AMEN Assurance of Forgiveness: Friends, listen to the good news: The Lord, who “so loved the world”, …that Lord has mercifully heard your confession and eagerly forgives you all your sins. Go now, knowing that God’s ways are not the world’s ways – and that Christ’s love was poured out on the cross for you because of a greater love! And remember – not everyone knows that! Someone (like you) ought to share that Good News! Praise God! AMEN Opening prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, of all the things we talked about, and all the things we focused on this week – our “gift of salvation” was probably not at the top of our list. Many of us take your love and what you did for us on the cross so much for granted that your spectacular and sacrificial expression of love is forgotten in the midst of our busy and habitual routines! As we reflect upon our self-centeredness, we can do nothing but thank you again for drawing into this blessed hour of worship, that we may be reminded again of the greater love that awaits us! We thank you for that greater love that forgives our sins, and renews us! We thank you for that greater love that heals our wounds and guides us from darkness into the light! We thank you for that greater love that gives us purpose and places meaning into the busyness of everyday life! We thank you for the greater love that poured itself out for us on the cross! Help us now to receive that greater love, and then empower us to go back into the world to reflect that greater love to those who have forgotten or have yet to experience it! Receive our praise and our sincere thanks for your greater and life-giving love than cannot even be expressed in words! Help us to seek, surrender to, and absorb that love, and then expose others to that love through the things we say and do! In Jesus Name We Pray! AMEN! |
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