Message: The Love of God
Luke 24: 1-8
Listen link is a video: https://www.facebook.com/LakeCityEvangelicalPresbyterianChurch/videos/1299639350241374/
Suppose you had a superpower that enabled you to travel around the world, way faster than the speed of light, in the blink of an eye. And suppose that as you traveled around covering the entire surface area of human habitation, you also had the power to instantly suck up every coronas virus in existence, sucking them off surfaces so no one could get infected, and even sucking them out of people so nobody could get sick and everyone sick would instantly be cured. Would you do it?
I bet you would. But now suppose that if you did, then you would get terribly sick from the virus, and it would hurt a lot, and soon after your trip to cure all, you would die. Then would you do it? Would you sacrifice your own life if it would save the whole world? That’s harder. But I’m willing to bet that some of you would do that too. After all, don’t lots of ordinary men and women become soldiers to fight for freedom and save the world from evil, knowing they might give up their own lives in the process? And you might be even more willing if you knew that you could come back to life again after you suffered all that for the sake of everyone else.
But now, suppose all of that is what your child could do. Would you tell your child to go and do it? Would you send your only begotten son into the world, so that the world might be saved? I bet you love your own child too much to ask him to give up his life for everyone one else. You’d rather die than ask him to save your life by dying for you, right? It would have to be his decision, right? Well, Jesus, the Son of God, loves you so much that he firmly decided that he would do for you what you cannot do for yourself and rescue you from the clutches of sin and death
That’s what we’re talking about today. Not the wrath of God because of sin. No, we’re talking about the love of God that would go to such lengths to forgive sin, to restore order, to make peace with the enemy, to save the world, and lead it into a glorious future!
The dawning of that glorious future is seen in the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose completion of the task and victory over death is what we celebrate today, and every day that we thank God that he is alive!
The gospels would never have been written if Christ is not risen. None of Jesus’ followers would have dared to risk their lives by pretending that Jesus was risen. They were too scared to believe what they thought was impossible, until Jesus proved to them, that it really had happened! Jesus conquered death itself. First time anyone had ever done that. I don’t mean just rise from the dead either. Others had done that. There had been others before who were restored to life through prayer over their dead bodies. But they knew better than to expect to live forever after that. Even Lazarus who was raised by Jesus just a few days before Jesus’ crucifixion must have felt that Jesus had only put off a demise that was still inevitable for Lazarus.
And of course, none of them had the power to raise themselves. But in John 10:17-18 it is recorded that Jesus’ said, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” You know even on the cross, if Jesus had not said, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And then deliberately breathed his last, he would not have died there.
Only Jesus has ever displayed that kind of authoritative power, to lay his life down, by his own will and then take it up again after he had conquered death. But Jesus’ death and resurrection were not just a show of power. That power actually accomplished something too. It wipes away the penalty of death for our sins. The wages of sin is death, and all of us should be paid for the sins we have committed. But Jesus paid it all for us! Therefore, in Christ no one has to die! Jesus’ resurrection means that death has lost its eternal grip on everyone! Everyone who wants to be with God gets to be with God forever through faith in Jesus Christ!
This is an extreme promise! Forever! Jesus is the extremest person you will ever meet. Now I know that proper grammar would have had me say most extreme. But I deliberately wanted to say extremest. That is because in our world we normal people are kind of afraid of extremists. We don’t want to meet any, and we sure don’t want to be one. But I say that if you are a Christian you are by that faith in Jesus a beneficiary of a God’s extremest grace. And that makes you an extremist
Think of the extreme measures to which God went to secure our salvation. He went from one extreme to the other, from extreme glory, to extreme suffering. So extreme that the God who cannot die, died for you! He is the highest, the holiest, far above all rule and authority. God is above all things, at the top, at the extremely highest end of existence. In some theologies they say immutable. That means unchangeable. Nothing can touch God. Nothing can move God. No one can conquer God. No one can hurt God. And certainly no one could kill God. He is extremest life!
The only way that such a God could die is if he himself willed it, or allowed it. It would be extremest love and humility for God to let his own creation kill him. Think of a creator, a painter who painted a picture of a man holding a knife. Now you know that knife can’t hurt the painter. It’s just a glob of paint. The man in the picture isn’t even alive. He is no threat to the painter who painted him. It is like that between God and his creation. There is no way anything God created could in any way be any kind of threat to the creator.
But if the painter could somehow breathe life into the paint and make the whole picture come alive, and then if the painter could somehow become paint and throw himself onto the canvas and participate in the life he gave his creation; if you can imagine that, you are starting to get just an inkling of how extreme it was for God to join us here on this earth as a man who walked among us.
In connection with that, anyone who believes in the God we proclaim becomes an extremist by association. We might want to shy away from that, but it is true. Anyone who really loves Jesus is kind of a fanatic about the gospel. And what is wrong with that? How comes it’s OK to be a football fan but it’s not OK to be a Jesus fan? I found a web site called fanatics.com. It is for sports fans! I guess it’s ok to be a sports fan because it’s just a diversion. Sports have no lasting impact in world history. You can be crazy about sports and that’s OK because it’s not going to make any difference in the long run.
But in religion or politics it is considered bad to be a fanatic, a person whose enthusiasm or zeal for something is extreme or beyond normal limits. On principle I would agree. But normal limits are not what they used to be. Today, our culture insists on tolerance. It is supposed to be normal for everybody to believe that truth is relative. There are no absolutes. It is considered to be normal for people to have faith in something. But you are also required to believe that other faiths are just as legitimate as yours no matter how different they are.
Therefore, today if you claim that Jesus is the way, the Truth and the Life, the only path to salvation, you will be labeled as an extremist fanatic! In other words, if you agree with Jesus’ own statements about His authority over all life, you are an extremist. Are you afraid of that? Or can you live with that label for the sake of Jesus’ glory?
Christianity offends people by claiming that Christ is the only King. Christianity offends people because that claim is not just a religious claim. It is a political claim. One day all people in every land will all live in one Kingdom, God’s Kingdom! That exclusive claim, the reason why the Christians were saying “Jesus is Lord” is the reason that the Roman Empire threw Christians to the lions. You were supposed to say, “Caesar is Lord.” Not Jesus. In addition, that exclusive claim that Jesus is the only God is also the reason that Christians are mocked in many places even to this day. We are called extremist fanatics if we dare to believe that Jesus in the only way to eternal life. But think how much it matters to hold out for that! Jesus did not give us the option to recognize Him as one awesome prophet among many. Allegiance to Him, faith in Jesus, demands exclusivity.
A person who runs a business is allowed to decide what he will sell, when he will sell it, to whom he will sell it, and what forms of payment he will accept. Most people call that fair. But when the Creator draws tight lines around our approach to Him, they call it unfair. It’s ok for me to exclude certain things from my business. But it is not ok for God to exclude certain things from His business? Why?
There are other more dangerous extremists. In North Korea today, there are Christians risking death. They break the laws of their country to smuggle Bibles and hands them out to people who need to know that God is real. In North Korea, it is illegal to say, “God is real,” because Kim Il Sung and members of his family have been presented as deities. The people are supposed to worship them. Therefore, when North Korean Christian introduce the gospel, it is customary for them to say, “God is real,” as it is a direct challenge to North Korea’s government propaganda upholding Kim Il Sung and his family as gods. It’s exactly like the early Christian saying, “Jesus is Lord,” instead of, “Caesar is Lord.”
That is the good kind of extreme crazy love that will change the world. And that kind of extreme faith is what has always been at work changing the world and that explains why there is a church alive today. The extreme Christians who stay close to God in their devotion are the ones who are willing to make the sacrifices it takes to reach sinners and keep the church alive. They are the ones who obey the great commandment to love God and neighbor with everything they’ve got. They have the spirit in them to love with an otherish love.
You want that kind of love to be more real in your life? Here’s how. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is risen! He is alive! Accept his offer of forgiveness for sin. To do that, look back over your life and think about the mistakes you’ve made, the ways you’ve hurt people, the selfish things you have done. Think about whether you have ever truly agreed with God about how evil your behaviors have been. If your first thought is, “Wait. I’m not that bad.” Then you don’t get it. Pride is standing in your way and keeping you from seeing your life from God’s point of view. He says in His word, “All your righteousness is as filthy rags.”
That’s Isaiah 64:6 and it is talking about every single person who ever lived, except for Jesus. It is an extreme judgment that absolutely condemns to death everyone who does not receive God’s extreme loving mercy to cover the sins that bring death. I accept the verdict as it applies to me. My righteousness is as filthy rags. But I am not depending upon my righteousness to get God to let me into Heaven. I trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord who offered himself for my sins and everyone else’s sins too. He changed my life! I love Him, because He loved me first. He still loves me even though I am still not perfect. But he changed me from being a person who just wanted a nice life into being a person who wants to honor God with the eternal life he has given me to live.
If you accept the verdict handed down, that you are guilty of sin and deserving of death, then you can also begin to appreciate the extremest grace that operates in Jesus’ death and resurrection on your behalf. You know, when the disciples discovered or were told about the empty tomb, they were not innocent of wrong doing and they had not yet received the forgiveness Christ would offer them. Think about it. Peter had denied he even knew the Lord. Then Jesus died before Peter got a chance to apologize.
So when Peter began to face the fact that Jesus, whom he had promised to protect, that Jesus whom he had failed to protect, might be alive again, do you really think Peter started to look forward to seeing Jesus again? He had wept bitterly on the night he betrayed the Lord. He accepted the guilty verdict and knew himself to be a weak hearted coward. He knew he didn’t deserve to be called a disciple of Christ. He knew he deserved to be demoted and kicked out of the kingdom. So how can anyone imagine Peter would have been looking forward to seeing Jesus face to face?
What about the rest of the disciples? They had all run away. They had all let him down. Don’t you think at least one of them responded to the news of Jesus’ possible resurrection by thinking or saying, “Oh no! I hope not! This is terrible! What if he comes after me? What will he do? What will he say?” And these were the nice people who didn’t want him killed! They were the ones who were trying to be good! But now they knew all their goodness didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was, if Jesus is alive, what would he do with them?
Jesus is alive! How do you feel about meeting him? What would he do with you? I am here to announce to you that he will treat you just like he treated his own disciples. He forgives! He restores! And he has work for you to do! Celebrate life! Be filled with the Holy Spirit! Rejoice in the fellowship of believers! Have a close relationship with God! Love one another! Go into the world and make disciples, sharing with all the other sinners the same extremest good news, that Jesus is alive and that means there is forgiveness of sin and victory over death! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!
Let us pray!
Luke 24: 1-8
Listen link is a video: https://www.facebook.com/LakeCityEvangelicalPresbyterianChurch/videos/1299639350241374/
Suppose you had a superpower that enabled you to travel around the world, way faster than the speed of light, in the blink of an eye. And suppose that as you traveled around covering the entire surface area of human habitation, you also had the power to instantly suck up every coronas virus in existence, sucking them off surfaces so no one could get infected, and even sucking them out of people so nobody could get sick and everyone sick would instantly be cured. Would you do it?
I bet you would. But now suppose that if you did, then you would get terribly sick from the virus, and it would hurt a lot, and soon after your trip to cure all, you would die. Then would you do it? Would you sacrifice your own life if it would save the whole world? That’s harder. But I’m willing to bet that some of you would do that too. After all, don’t lots of ordinary men and women become soldiers to fight for freedom and save the world from evil, knowing they might give up their own lives in the process? And you might be even more willing if you knew that you could come back to life again after you suffered all that for the sake of everyone else.
But now, suppose all of that is what your child could do. Would you tell your child to go and do it? Would you send your only begotten son into the world, so that the world might be saved? I bet you love your own child too much to ask him to give up his life for everyone one else. You’d rather die than ask him to save your life by dying for you, right? It would have to be his decision, right? Well, Jesus, the Son of God, loves you so much that he firmly decided that he would do for you what you cannot do for yourself and rescue you from the clutches of sin and death
That’s what we’re talking about today. Not the wrath of God because of sin. No, we’re talking about the love of God that would go to such lengths to forgive sin, to restore order, to make peace with the enemy, to save the world, and lead it into a glorious future!
The dawning of that glorious future is seen in the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose completion of the task and victory over death is what we celebrate today, and every day that we thank God that he is alive!
The gospels would never have been written if Christ is not risen. None of Jesus’ followers would have dared to risk their lives by pretending that Jesus was risen. They were too scared to believe what they thought was impossible, until Jesus proved to them, that it really had happened! Jesus conquered death itself. First time anyone had ever done that. I don’t mean just rise from the dead either. Others had done that. There had been others before who were restored to life through prayer over their dead bodies. But they knew better than to expect to live forever after that. Even Lazarus who was raised by Jesus just a few days before Jesus’ crucifixion must have felt that Jesus had only put off a demise that was still inevitable for Lazarus.
And of course, none of them had the power to raise themselves. But in John 10:17-18 it is recorded that Jesus’ said, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” You know even on the cross, if Jesus had not said, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.” And then deliberately breathed his last, he would not have died there.
Only Jesus has ever displayed that kind of authoritative power, to lay his life down, by his own will and then take it up again after he had conquered death. But Jesus’ death and resurrection were not just a show of power. That power actually accomplished something too. It wipes away the penalty of death for our sins. The wages of sin is death, and all of us should be paid for the sins we have committed. But Jesus paid it all for us! Therefore, in Christ no one has to die! Jesus’ resurrection means that death has lost its eternal grip on everyone! Everyone who wants to be with God gets to be with God forever through faith in Jesus Christ!
This is an extreme promise! Forever! Jesus is the extremest person you will ever meet. Now I know that proper grammar would have had me say most extreme. But I deliberately wanted to say extremest. That is because in our world we normal people are kind of afraid of extremists. We don’t want to meet any, and we sure don’t want to be one. But I say that if you are a Christian you are by that faith in Jesus a beneficiary of a God’s extremest grace. And that makes you an extremist
Think of the extreme measures to which God went to secure our salvation. He went from one extreme to the other, from extreme glory, to extreme suffering. So extreme that the God who cannot die, died for you! He is the highest, the holiest, far above all rule and authority. God is above all things, at the top, at the extremely highest end of existence. In some theologies they say immutable. That means unchangeable. Nothing can touch God. Nothing can move God. No one can conquer God. No one can hurt God. And certainly no one could kill God. He is extremest life!
The only way that such a God could die is if he himself willed it, or allowed it. It would be extremest love and humility for God to let his own creation kill him. Think of a creator, a painter who painted a picture of a man holding a knife. Now you know that knife can’t hurt the painter. It’s just a glob of paint. The man in the picture isn’t even alive. He is no threat to the painter who painted him. It is like that between God and his creation. There is no way anything God created could in any way be any kind of threat to the creator.
But if the painter could somehow breathe life into the paint and make the whole picture come alive, and then if the painter could somehow become paint and throw himself onto the canvas and participate in the life he gave his creation; if you can imagine that, you are starting to get just an inkling of how extreme it was for God to join us here on this earth as a man who walked among us.
In connection with that, anyone who believes in the God we proclaim becomes an extremist by association. We might want to shy away from that, but it is true. Anyone who really loves Jesus is kind of a fanatic about the gospel. And what is wrong with that? How comes it’s OK to be a football fan but it’s not OK to be a Jesus fan? I found a web site called fanatics.com. It is for sports fans! I guess it’s ok to be a sports fan because it’s just a diversion. Sports have no lasting impact in world history. You can be crazy about sports and that’s OK because it’s not going to make any difference in the long run.
But in religion or politics it is considered bad to be a fanatic, a person whose enthusiasm or zeal for something is extreme or beyond normal limits. On principle I would agree. But normal limits are not what they used to be. Today, our culture insists on tolerance. It is supposed to be normal for everybody to believe that truth is relative. There are no absolutes. It is considered to be normal for people to have faith in something. But you are also required to believe that other faiths are just as legitimate as yours no matter how different they are.
Therefore, today if you claim that Jesus is the way, the Truth and the Life, the only path to salvation, you will be labeled as an extremist fanatic! In other words, if you agree with Jesus’ own statements about His authority over all life, you are an extremist. Are you afraid of that? Or can you live with that label for the sake of Jesus’ glory?
Christianity offends people by claiming that Christ is the only King. Christianity offends people because that claim is not just a religious claim. It is a political claim. One day all people in every land will all live in one Kingdom, God’s Kingdom! That exclusive claim, the reason why the Christians were saying “Jesus is Lord” is the reason that the Roman Empire threw Christians to the lions. You were supposed to say, “Caesar is Lord.” Not Jesus. In addition, that exclusive claim that Jesus is the only God is also the reason that Christians are mocked in many places even to this day. We are called extremist fanatics if we dare to believe that Jesus in the only way to eternal life. But think how much it matters to hold out for that! Jesus did not give us the option to recognize Him as one awesome prophet among many. Allegiance to Him, faith in Jesus, demands exclusivity.
A person who runs a business is allowed to decide what he will sell, when he will sell it, to whom he will sell it, and what forms of payment he will accept. Most people call that fair. But when the Creator draws tight lines around our approach to Him, they call it unfair. It’s ok for me to exclude certain things from my business. But it is not ok for God to exclude certain things from His business? Why?
There are other more dangerous extremists. In North Korea today, there are Christians risking death. They break the laws of their country to smuggle Bibles and hands them out to people who need to know that God is real. In North Korea, it is illegal to say, “God is real,” because Kim Il Sung and members of his family have been presented as deities. The people are supposed to worship them. Therefore, when North Korean Christian introduce the gospel, it is customary for them to say, “God is real,” as it is a direct challenge to North Korea’s government propaganda upholding Kim Il Sung and his family as gods. It’s exactly like the early Christian saying, “Jesus is Lord,” instead of, “Caesar is Lord.”
That is the good kind of extreme crazy love that will change the world. And that kind of extreme faith is what has always been at work changing the world and that explains why there is a church alive today. The extreme Christians who stay close to God in their devotion are the ones who are willing to make the sacrifices it takes to reach sinners and keep the church alive. They are the ones who obey the great commandment to love God and neighbor with everything they’ve got. They have the spirit in them to love with an otherish love.
You want that kind of love to be more real in your life? Here’s how. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is risen! He is alive! Accept his offer of forgiveness for sin. To do that, look back over your life and think about the mistakes you’ve made, the ways you’ve hurt people, the selfish things you have done. Think about whether you have ever truly agreed with God about how evil your behaviors have been. If your first thought is, “Wait. I’m not that bad.” Then you don’t get it. Pride is standing in your way and keeping you from seeing your life from God’s point of view. He says in His word, “All your righteousness is as filthy rags.”
That’s Isaiah 64:6 and it is talking about every single person who ever lived, except for Jesus. It is an extreme judgment that absolutely condemns to death everyone who does not receive God’s extreme loving mercy to cover the sins that bring death. I accept the verdict as it applies to me. My righteousness is as filthy rags. But I am not depending upon my righteousness to get God to let me into Heaven. I trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord who offered himself for my sins and everyone else’s sins too. He changed my life! I love Him, because He loved me first. He still loves me even though I am still not perfect. But he changed me from being a person who just wanted a nice life into being a person who wants to honor God with the eternal life he has given me to live.
If you accept the verdict handed down, that you are guilty of sin and deserving of death, then you can also begin to appreciate the extremest grace that operates in Jesus’ death and resurrection on your behalf. You know, when the disciples discovered or were told about the empty tomb, they were not innocent of wrong doing and they had not yet received the forgiveness Christ would offer them. Think about it. Peter had denied he even knew the Lord. Then Jesus died before Peter got a chance to apologize.
So when Peter began to face the fact that Jesus, whom he had promised to protect, that Jesus whom he had failed to protect, might be alive again, do you really think Peter started to look forward to seeing Jesus again? He had wept bitterly on the night he betrayed the Lord. He accepted the guilty verdict and knew himself to be a weak hearted coward. He knew he didn’t deserve to be called a disciple of Christ. He knew he deserved to be demoted and kicked out of the kingdom. So how can anyone imagine Peter would have been looking forward to seeing Jesus face to face?
What about the rest of the disciples? They had all run away. They had all let him down. Don’t you think at least one of them responded to the news of Jesus’ possible resurrection by thinking or saying, “Oh no! I hope not! This is terrible! What if he comes after me? What will he do? What will he say?” And these were the nice people who didn’t want him killed! They were the ones who were trying to be good! But now they knew all their goodness didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was, if Jesus is alive, what would he do with them?
Jesus is alive! How do you feel about meeting him? What would he do with you? I am here to announce to you that he will treat you just like he treated his own disciples. He forgives! He restores! And he has work for you to do! Celebrate life! Be filled with the Holy Spirit! Rejoice in the fellowship of believers! Have a close relationship with God! Love one another! Go into the world and make disciples, sharing with all the other sinners the same extremest good news, that Jesus is alive and that means there is forgiveness of sin and victory over death! Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!
Let us pray!
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