Faith In the Risen Lord - Habakkuk 1:1-2:4

Do We Love God - John 21

The scene opens at the Sea of Tiberias; the disciples fished all night and caught absolutely nothing. Jesus asks, "Children, do you have any fish?" to demonstrate that our best efforts are totally fruitless without him. We are called to be "fishers of men," pulling people from the violent, dark kingdom of the world (symbolized by the sea) into the kingdom of light. We are the branches and He is the vine; the end of our own strength and plans is the exact beginning of God's strength and plans. At Jesus' command, they catch 153 fish... the number represents an overflowing, complete haul, yet the net does not break. Peter is actively being "pruned" during this interaction... God must wound our pride to produce more spiritual fruit. We're like grapes, but the ultimate purpose of grapes is to be crushed into wine; every Christian must eventually feel the "blade" of the Word and affliction, to grow. The actual power resides in the hand that wields the weapon (God), not the weapon itself (us). Jesus cooks breakfast on the shore; the character of God is a festive welcome! Creation was the original house of hospitality, concluding with an invitation to a grand feast in Genesis. The Church is called to act as God's hospital in an inhospitable, messy world. We gather to get "heavenized" through Christ so we can go back out into our daily lives and be bread and wine to the world. Peter puts on his heavy outer garment before diving into the water, demonstrating his reinstatement as an apostolic priest and shepherd. When they're face-to-face, Jesus doesn't scold Peter for his past lies or failures; He simply and repeatedly asks, "Do you love me?" This restoration happens around a charcoal fire, directly mirroring (and redeeming!) the previous charcoal fire where Peter denied Jesus three times. Jesus equates loving him with feeding his sheep (teaching and sharing the Word with others)! God created the universe out of divine passion and a deep yearning to pour His love onto us, not because He was lonely or lacked anything. Earth is currently estranged from Heaven, but the incarnation at Jesus's birth brought the angelic choir to earth to begin restoring that harmony. God cascades his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit to empower us to love him; we lack the natural capacity to love him on our own! We must assess our own hearts, and love Jesus for exactly who He is, not for who we want Him to be, or how we prefer him to act.

The Love of the Trinity - John 3:16

A sermon not about how much we love the Trinity... but how the triune God loves us! 1. The Father... "For God so loved the world that he gave" - this is God the Father. Our Father is a loving father! Love is an action, according to God; God's love GAVE us his only son.  Love isn't feeling, but doing! God is a giver.  The Lord's prayer... We ask God for a lot! Because we have a good father who loves to give to our children. Luke 11:9... ask and it will be given. Our Father is quick to love, to give, to forgive us. His love is action! Abundant, sustaining. He provides, he gives!  For he so loved "the world"... He loves all of sinful mankind! He gave his son to the unlovable world! 2. The Son... He gave "his only Son"...  John 3:16 shows us HOW God loves us.  His son would be crucified and lifted up. He loves me so much that he sent me his son (so that we may kill him instead of dying ourselves!) Christianity is all about the cultivation of our private relationship with God. We must make sure we're spending time with God, or we will spiritually shrivel and die! We should be like a tree planted by the water! (Psalm 1) Go to God, who freely gives! He even sent his Son.  3. The Holy Spirit... "Whoever believes in him"... You're going to heaven ONLY because you believe in him.  "Believes" is present tense. It must be ongoing, not just a decision you made in the past! An ongoing belief. If you're a Christian, go to church, read his Word, repent of your sins continually.  Once saved, always saved, yes! But... if you walk away from the Lord, it may be that you're an example of bad soil rather than good. You may not have really been converted. If your belief isn't ongoing, in the present tense, it's not genuine. How do you continue to live your life? You'll know a tree by its fruit.  Yet it's not about your works; it's about the state of your heart. True belief results in faithful endurance to the end. Be all in! The Father so loved the world, that the Son came, and the Spirit awakened us. 4. Why must we believe? God is good, and we are not. He is perfect, and we are imperfect. The wages of our sin is death! We deserve to die when we meet the Judge. God cannot ignore evil, because he is good! Unless we receive the gift of the Son, then the holy, just wrath of God is on us!  We need help, and in Jesus, we have it! He absorbed God's wrath, so every sin we'll ever commit is paid for! This is the Gospel message! Revival... God pours out his spirit on the people, and they're induced to follow Jesus, to live righteously in holiness, following him!  But we must not yet to treat the symptoms of the world before we diagnose the disease. Symptoms would be greed, lust, poverty... The real disease of our culture is that the West has forgotten her King! We need an outpouring of the Holy Spirit! A revival of people submitting to and following Jesus Christ!  Receiving the gift of Christ gives us eternal life..  5. Humanity's hope... Eternal life!  John 17:3... To believe is to enter eternal life! Eternal life starts now, not only in the afterlife. You have access to God Almighty now!  And it lasts forever. To receive him is to have everlasting life! Through Jesus Christ, we don't have to be afraid of death.  Ps118:17... I shall not die, but live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.  We enter Heaven, and our first words will be "Thank you!!!" We start singing about the cross!  To receive the Lord is also to be under the love of the Son. A decision for Christ is to live eternally in his love!

B-Side - John 3:16

A little context before John 3:16... John 3 starts with Jesus and Nicodemus. v1-8... Jesus explains being "born again." Water birth = physical birth. Spirit birth = born of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual birth is driven completely by the Holy Spirit. Just like we didn't cause our physical birth, we did nothing to cause our spiritual birth. v9-20... In the book of John, the crucifixion is frequently framed as an hour of victory or glorification (Jesus being "lifted up" or "raised"). God's purpose in sending Jesus wasn't to condemn the world, but to save it. However, rejecting Jesus inherently means rejecting the Father, bringing condemnation. Humans naturally love darkness over light. Love and works are connected; you become what you love. Genuine faith produces fruit (walking in the light). To come to Jesus is to walk in the light! Back to v16, piece by piece... "For God so loved the world" translates best to "In this way, God loved the world." General love (love of the whole world) vs. covenantal love (love of the Church)... God loved the whole world enough to send His Son as an open invitation, even knowing many will reject Him. An example... loving spaghetti vs. loving your neighbors vs. loving your wife/kids. They are all "love," but very different kinds and depths. God's covenantal love for His people (the Church) is different; it's unbreakable and carries into eternity. Danger of liberal theology: They accept God's general love for the world but wrongly deny God's wrath, judgment, and hell for those who reject the gift. "...that He gave his only Son": Sending Jesus is the supreme act of love. Jesus is a greater gift than solving world hunger, wars, or curing cancer. He's the greatest gift to humanity! "...his only Son": Jesus is the unique Son of the Father. He was not created ("begotten" is often misread as created). He is God, the Word, from the beginning, and took on human flesh. An Old Testament parallel... Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22). Isaac was the "son of the promise." The big difference: God stopped Abraham and provided a substitute ram, but there was no substitute for Jesus. God did not spare his own Son (Romans 8:32) The order of salvation... a the theological debate: which comes first, Regeneration or Faith? Regeneration (awakening by the Spirit) must logically precede Faith. Because humans are spiritually dead by nature, God must first turn on the lights and soften the heart before a person even has the ability to believe! This is why prayer is necessary for evangelism... you can preach until you are blue in the face, but God has to prepare their heart first. So! We aren't loved because we believe. We are ALREADY loved by God, and our belief is a direct response to that love. Responding to God requires two simultaneous actions: belief and repentance. Rejecting the darkness, and turning toward the light!

B-Side - Mark 12:18-27

Mark 12:18-27 - Confrontation passages, Day 3 This is the third day of Jesus's confrontation passages in Mark. First the Sanhedrin challenged him, then the Pharisees, and now it's the Sadducees' turn! The religious leadership is challenging his teaching and authority. They denied the resurrection, didn't believe in an afterlife. They were so conservative they only trusted the first five books of Moses (the Torah). So Jesus responded to them using only those books :-) The question of "whose wife is she in the afterlife"... we explore the apocryphal book of Tobit a story of Sarah who is described as having multiple husbands who were killed before she could consummate the marriages. Despite her grief, she decided it would be selfish to kill herself. The Sadducees may be referencing this story. The Sadducees assumed that if Heaven existed, it would just be a continuation of earthly family dynamics, human drama, etc. John 11:25, an "I Am" statement from Jesus... "I am the resurrection and the life"... to accept him is to accept the resurrection! By dying on the cross, Jesus destroyed the one who held the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). Satan has no claim over a believer. At conversion, the "old man" dies. The believer is made alive in Christ, and our legal debt of sin is nailed to the cross (Colossians 2). We have no need to fear death, as we've already died! Our life is eternal, and our victory is secured. This is our hope, our song! The great and mighty acts of our Lord. Jesus says that when the dead rise, they neither marry nor are given in marriage; they are "like angels in heaven." The family of God is those whoever does the will of God, who are brought together by Jesus Christ. The last bit, v26-27... Jesus then brilliantly uses a text from the only books the Sadducees accept (Exodus/Moses at the burning bush). God said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." He is the God of the living, not the dead. Jesus tells them, "You are quite wrong." The Sadducees read the Bible with a predetermined assumption (no afterlife), which threw their entire worldview off. Warning: Like a rocket ship off by one degree, bringing our own assumptions or failing to take the "whole counsel of God" (all 66 books) can lead us to disastrous belief systems. The Sadducees' question treated the hypothetical woman like property: "Whose wife/property will she be?" Jesus's answer dignifies her. In Heaven, we are not property to be owned, or objects for abuse. We are like the angels, children of the living God, dwelling in perfect harmony together, in God's presence! In his presence is fullness of joy, no more tears, no more sorrow!

Eternal Love - Mark 12:18-27

How do we know when our interpretation of the Scripture is correct? Jesus points back to Scripture to answer. Don't let one verse stand on its own authority, but read it in the whole context of the Bible! That's the basis of sound doctrine. v18... Sadducees believed there's no resurrection, no afterlife. They exalted the pentateuch over all else, and it's not resurrection-focused. To their thinking, man is largely in charge of his own destiny. Jesus will respond to their question from the pentateuch!  Sadducees look at marriage as a permanent institution, even in the afterlife. v24... They're off track because they know neither the scriptures nor the power of God!  Sometimes the most learned people are the most backwards and wrong. The Sadducees' education focused on cherry-picking verses in a limited context.  Jeremiah 22:29... God's word is like fire, like a hammer! Hebrews 4:12: it's sharper than a two-edged sword. If the Bible is true, we can trust it completely! All Scripture is breathed out by God.  How do we ensure we're not being led astray in our reading of Scripture? We use Scripture to interpret Scripture! 2 Timothy 3:16... It's all breathed by God, profitable for teaching. It will tell you who God is! Profitable for reproof. For correction, restoration! We need God to constantly lead us in the way. We must be complete, and equipped for every good work. Let the Word beat you up! It'll equip you for every good work. Store his Word in your heart, prepare yourself for reasonable service, so you're ready to serve instantly, in season and out of season.  Your family needs you to be in the Word! Your wife needs a godly husband, your kids need a godly father. Be ready for every good work. The Sadducees were also ignorant of the power of God over death. Believing in the resurrection is an elementary requirement of Christianity. Our country has been raised without God for generations, and the culture no longer believes in life after death. There's no accountability for sin.  Christ died and rose again, so when we die, we will rise again!  v25... Resurrection is not optional; we WILL rise after death, either to eternal life or eternal judgment. Marriage is indeed for a lifetime, but not for eternity! v26-27... He is the God of the living! Is God's love limited by the grave? No! He's faithful until death, and beyond. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord! His steadfast love endures forever! 1 Corinthians 13... Love is patient, kind... He's describing the love of Jesus for his people.  If you know you're a sinner in need of a savior... His love for you cannot be broken! You're never closer to your deceased loved ones than when you're worshipping God! There is no death in his presence. Death is just a beginning for the believer!  Romans 8:31... If God is for us, who can be against us? It's God who justifies!  Who can separate us from God's love? Nobody. Nothing. We are more than conquerors through him! Because he loves us, we live! His love is forever fixed on you! There's no condemnation for you. And because of his love for us, we will love him all the days of our lives!