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The Mission Church of the Nazarene in Hammond, Indiana sermons either preached by Rev. Robbie Cansler or by Rev. Jennifer Jensen.
Episodes
Sunday May 27, 2018
Sunday May 27, 2018
Next week our series that will run through November 2019 begins - Love Letter from God: A Journey through Scripture. We hope you will join us for this series that will start in Genesis and end in Revelation and give us a picture of the Love of God as written in every book of the Bible.
Link to the video referenced in the message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw
Transcript:
Please stand together for the reading of God's Word:
Isaiah 6:1-8 New International Version (NIV)
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted,seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King,the Lord Almighty.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. Let the words I say be the thoughts of your heart articulated by my voice to your people. May they with the power of the Holy Spirit guide us into greater understanding, deeper faith, and abundant, fruitful lives that point only to you. To the glory of the father, the majesty of the son, and the power of the Holy Spirit be given all we offer. Amen
There are some things that you can use an analogy to describe – things that are otherwise hard to understand, you can take this thing or that thing that is easier to describe and help someone understand a difficult topic. In the Forrest Gump movie, we all learned what an analogy was: Life is a like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get.
We use analogies to help us understand church things, too. We talk about sin and how it is like a captor – it holds us prisoner and keeps us away from a relationship with God.
But it is not only difficult, it is heresy to develop an analogy for one theological concept.
Watch this… [play video of Lutheran Satire Irish Twins]
At the very end of that video, Patrick said this:
The Trinity is a mystery which cannot be comprehended by human reason but is understood only through faith and is best confessed in the words of the Athanasian Creed which states that we worship one God in trinity and trinity in unity neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance that we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct person is God and LORD and that the deity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one: Equal in glory, co-equal in majesty
Which is a very fancy way of saying we can’t say anything about the Trinity without saying a bunch of words, if we want to avoid heresy.
The trinity is a mystery – we will never understand it completely. Aside from describing it with a lot of words as Athanasius did, we can also understand it (a little) in terms of the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jesus says it best: In John 16:7-15:
But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”
Clear as mud, right?
Jesus is telling us that the Holy Spirit is sent from both the Son and the Father, and that the Son is sent from the Father. The relationship between and among them is continuous and involves both being sent and going out. Each person of the trinity is moving and working together and they work independently, but only in this way: according to who they are in the Godhead. They are so connected as to be inseparable and yet so individual as to require distinction.
I set this stage so that you might know what it was, exactly, that Isaiah saw.
On one hand, what he saw was likely just a snapshot, a vision that didn’t exactly equal the throne room.
On the other hand, Isaiah was overwhelmed with a sense of his own otherness – his own sinfulness – his intrusion on someone else’s space where he did not belong
He knew where he was and Whose presence he had encountered, but he certainly did not understand what was happening:
I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
As a vision, this has physical ramifications – shaking buildings and filling them with smoke are actual results of heavenly creatures speaking!
Isaiah is aware of his own limitations as he is in the presence of a holy God.
Isaiah recognizes that he is here but is unworthy of admittance because holiness points out sinfulness – it always does.
You know that - if you’ve ever visited someone who has a white carpet and white furniture and there are no spots on any of them – you know that person has no children and probably still spends a ton of time cleaning and washing and getting rid of dirt. Why? Because even the tiniest spot would stand out in a space that void of color.
In the same way the holiness of God highlights every unholy thing about us, to the extent that we, too, are unworthy of standing in God’s presence without his intervention.
For Isaiah, the piece of coal touches his lips as a symbol of purification. For us, the same happens at our regeneration in Christ and later in our sanctification: God intervenes to create holiness where before there had only been sinfulness.
But God doesn’t stop there: not with Isaiah and not with us.
Isaiah’s purification has been done for a reason, and it is the invitation for him to participate in the very work of God. You see, the beauty of the trinity is that as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work together to redeem the world – they invite us to join in the work: The sending and sent God sends US to be messengers and ambassadors. The sending and sent God ASKS us to join in the work.
This invitation to Isaiah:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
Is an invitation to a man who has been touched by the divine, who has been spared the wretchedness of his sin, and who has seen the very God who would invite obedience in the way of holiness.
It is, indeed the invitation we live with today – the invitation to live and work and love and give and be according to the holiness God has given us. It is the invitation to be included in the work of the Trinity, to be SENT, just as the Godhead sends God. It is a wondrous mystery and it is one that is as real for us as it was for Isaiah, who stood in a shaking building and responded as we all can, as hopefully we all want to:
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
As we celebrate communion this morning, we do so remembering that every instance of participating at the table of God is a renewed invitation and sending. We are invited to participate and we are sent to be Holy men and women of God in the world where we are. May you always respond with “Here am I. Send me!”
Sunday Jun 03, 2018
Sunday Jun 03, 2018
Transcript for the Hearing Impaired:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
I John 4:7-8
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
Henry Moorhouse was a wild young man who, by age sixteen, was a gambler, gang-leader, and thief. But during the Revival of 1859, Henry gave his life to Jesus. While D.L. Moody was in Great Britain, he met this man, and Moorhouse said to Moody, “I am thinking of going to America.” “Well,” said Moody, “if you should ever be in Chicago, come down to my place and I will give you a chance to preach.”
Now Mr. Moody was not two-faced, he was merely trying to be polite, but mentally he was saying, “I hope he won’t come.” There are so many people, you know, who want to preach, even though God never meant them to, and Mr. Moody was not quite sure of Mr. Moorhouse.
Mr. Moody was rather taken back one day when, just before leaving for a series of meetings, he received a telegram from Moorhouse which stated that he had just arrived in New York and that he would be in Chicago on Sunday. “And now I’m going away,” Moody thought, “and I told him he could preach here.” So he told his wife and his committee that a young Englishman was coming and to allow him to preach once. “If the people enjoy him,” Moody added, “then put him on again.”
When Moody returned he asked his wife, “Well, what about that young preacher?”
“Oh, he is a better preacher than you are.”
“Why?” said Moody. “He is telling sinners that God loves them. He is wrong! God doesn’t love sinners!”
“Well, go and hear him.” replied his wife.
“Why? Is he still preaching?” asked Mr. Moody.
“Yes, he has been preaching all week and has taken only one text, John 3:16.”
That evening he went to hear Moorhouse preach. The young man stood up in the pulpit and said, “If you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse,” said the young man, “you will find my text.” Moody later recalled, “He preached a most extraordinary sermon from that verse…. I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out, and I could not keep back the tears. It was like news from a far country. I just drank it in.”
Night after night, Moorhouse preached from John 3:16, and it had a life-changing effect on D. L. Moody. “I have never forgotten those nights,” Moody said later. “I have preached a different Gospel since, and I have had more power with God and man since then.”
Later, when Moorhouse fell ill and was on his deathbed, he looked up and told his friends, “If it were the Lord’s will to raise me again, I should like to preach from the text, ‘God so loved the world.’”
Those five words serve as the catalyst for the sermon series we begin today. God so loved the world. It is the underscore of everything – God loves us. God loved us. But what does love mean here? What kind of love does God have for us? Does God love us like our parents love us? Does God love us like our friends love us? Does God love us like a boyfriend or girlfriend? What does the love of God look like? How is it possible that God’s love could be so compelling and so provocative and so immense that it could be proclaimed over and over and have impact? What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God’s love for us isn’t like any other love we know: every other love we see in life is one that could fail us.
God’s love never fails.
God IS love – the apostle John who spent close time with Jesus, enough that he calls himself the “one whom Jesus loved” in his Gospel, and calls US beloved through out his letters, tells us that this is the lens through which we can read all of Scripture. He says that God IS love and that when we review all that is and was and will be by first acknowledging that truth, we can trust all we are and all we will be to that God.
Because God loves us.
God loves you when you lie
God loves you when you cheat
God loves you when you gossip
God loves you when you hate
God loves you when you are angry
God loves you when you are sad
God loves you when you are sick
God loves you when you are healthy
God loves you in every moment and in every situation you find yourself
God loves you when you cannot see it
God loves you when you are angry with God
God loves you when you don’t believe in God
God loves you more than I can tell you, more than you can understand, more than you can see, more than you have ever seen
And God tells us this truth OVER and OVER in this book.
The wonder of the Bible is not just that it has come to us, but even more that it comes to us with a solid continuous message: YOU ARE LOVED by the GOD WHO IS LOVE.
God loves you.
God loves me.
God loves every person in this world who was, who is, and who will be.
Maybe you had great parents who loved you perfectly. Maybe you have had a great boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife who loved you very well and made sure you knew it.
Maybe you have a child or a grandchild and you love them with a love you cannot articulate and you cannot express adequately
God loves better. God loves bigger. God loves more. All of that perfect love that we might know in our lives – those are mere shadows, mere slivers of what it looks like when we look for the immensity and fullness of God’s love
Maybe you have lived your whole life and never heard someone say “I love you” or maybe those words only came with pain and heart ache and sorrow. Maybe those words always came with conditions and rules and you knew that if you broke any of the parts that you were supposed to uphold – you knew it would cost you the love.
God’s love isn’t like that.
God loves us, God loves you, God loves without condition. God wants you to understand that love, God wants you to see it, or at least a glimpse of it.
God would say to you, right now, today without any hesitation: I love you.
Can you hear it?
Over the course of the next year and a half, you are going to hear it every week.
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Partial Transcript:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Genesis 12:1-7a
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him;
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
I love to read. I went on strike in Kindergarten because we weren’t learning to read there, so my mom promised to teach me to read over the summer. By the time I went back to first grade I was reading at a fifth grade level; by the time I went to third, I was reading at a college level. I tell you all of this to let you know that when it comes to books, I am a fan. I love horror stories and love stories and adventure stories. Dystopian novels are fun, but I also love histories and biographies. If you print it on a page, I probably would love to read it. All good books start well. The Bible is no exception. Genesis is one of my favorite books in the Bible. It tells us about the beginnings of the world and the way God was at work from the start. God created, God was disappointed, God promised: and then God set a plan in motion that is still at work today: a redemptive covenant that would restore the relationship we need and had with God. We were loved from the first page and we are loved to this day, by a God who started out planning redemption with an old man named Abram.
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Jun 24, 2018
Sunday Jun 24, 2018
Partial Transcript:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Exodus 14:10-14
As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
Americans are really fond of a ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ philosophy. We love stories of the poor child who becomes a mogul through hard work and perseverance. All the better if they never went to college, but learned all they needed to know by the school of experience. We have even created “Bible Verses” in our minds to underscore it: The Lord helps those who help themselves, we say, as though that is in the Bible. Or God won’t give us more than we can handle, when the real truth is: our lives are OFTEN, if not ALWAYS more than WE can handle.
Scripture is actually pretty clear that we are pretty hopeless and hapless and helpless on our own. The Israelites were certainly not in any position to help themselves. This part of the story is the moment right before they cross the Red Sea, which happens miraculously and as a further testament to the fact that they, in fact, did NOT rescue themselves. They couldn’t. God helped them anyway – God did what they could not even start to plan. But let’s recap how they got here:
Exodus summary:
400 years have gone by since Joseph, and the new rulers don’t care about some centuries old famine some foreigner saved them from. The new ruler is, in fact, pretty glad that because of whatever happened back in the day, Egypt has some free labor.
But man oh man are there a lot of them.
So, pharaoh starts killing off the Hebrew boys. I’m not sure how that would have made for a sturdy future workforce of manual labor, but it didn’t work anyway – the midwives wouldn’t obey and moms were hiding their babies and finally, Moses was born. His mom put him in the Nile when she couldn’t hide him any longer and he is found by an Egyptian princess. Moses grew up in the palace and was well taken care of, educated, and protected. When he’s 40, he sees first hand the oppression of his people and he takes matters into his own hands: he kills an Egyptian. Everyone knows he did it, too. So he flees. He had somewhat hoped to rescue his people. But he couldn’t do it on his own terms. He’s gone for 40 years. He gets married, becomes a shepherd, the old days of being a great Egyptian adoptee long forgotten in a shameful past.
Then one day, God shows up. God reveals himself as the “I AM” – one of the most profound and incredible revelations of God’s self in all of scripture: I am is not ever in the past tense. I am is not in the future tense. I am is here and now and always IS. It is one of the statements Jesus uses about himself in John that gets him in trouble, and it is one of the most powerful 2 word descriptions of any deity anywhere: I AM. The one who goes before and behind and is with us everywhere IS the I AM. And what God does – boy, howdy!
God had always intended to use Moses for rescuing the Hebrews – but God’s plan was a little more awe-inspiring than a simple revolution. God shows up as a burning/not burning bush in the middle of a wilderness to reclaim and rescue his people.
And he does it through the most reluctant of heroes.
Moses has learned his lesson. He’s not interested in saving anybody anymore. He just wants to work for his father-in-law and die in piece.
And God says nope.
Moses is now EIGHTY years old, folks. I know people who no longer want to walk a dog, let alone rescue a million people from captivity at that age! In fact, I know folks who CAN’T do anything more…but I digress
Moses finally agrees, but his older brother has to speak for him.
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Jul 01, 2018
Sunday Jul 01, 2018
TRANSCRIPT with timestamp:
00.00 - 00.02
So we continue today our .
00.03 - 00.15
Series called love letter from God . Today we are talking about . Leviticus . And it is our .
00.16 - 00.21
Fourth message in the series . We started with a message on John 3:16 .
00.22 - 00.27
And then we have moved from Genesis to Exodus and now we find ourselves in Leviticus .
00.28 - 00.35
As always we start with our Key verse for the entire series which is John 3:16 .
00.35 - 00.51
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life . And then I'll ask you to stand as we read the verses for today's message . They’re .
00.52 - 01.11
From Leviticus. Chapter 19 verses 1 and 2 and then Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 18 . The Lord said to Moses speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them be holy because the Lord your God and holy .
01.13 - 01.22
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbor as yourself . I am .
01.22 - 01.23
The Lord .
01.24 - 01.41
Let us pray . Hide me behind your cross Lord . May my words be your heart . You have told us You love us . Help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives . Amen . You may be seated .
01.47 - 01.49
I presently have three animals at home .
01.49 - 02.17
Two guinea pigs and a dog named Bear . I know that some of you have more . Some of you might have less. My dog Bear is an older dog . He is about 13 and when we got him he was already 5 . So he came to us with some very bad habits . Some of which we have been able to help him out of and some of which we have not . He was a rescue .
02.18 - 02.27
And at first when we first got him he was very afraid of us . He was particularly afraid of my husband but he was very afraid of us generally .
02.28 - 02.51
We had to teach him that we wouldn't hurt him and that everything that we did was actually for his benefit . We taught him that. And even though we taught him that, and he is much better now sometimes he still gets afraid or worried and he came with a cage .
02.52 - 03.22
And when he gets like that he'll put himself in there and sometimes he'll stay there for a couple of days and he only come out at night and get food but then he'll go back to his cage . We never know why we made him mad . Or what we did . Maybe to frighten him but . He he does that every now and again . And . He puts himself back in that cage because that's where he's most comfortable and in many ways teaching our dog to trust us .
03.22 - 03.45
Is very similar to what God is trying to do here for the Israelites . Reading Leviticus is not an easy task . I know of many people who have said they started trying to read through the whole bible they are going to do the whole Bible in an entire year and they start reading Leviticus and they say . What . Happened? .
03.46 - 04.25
This is hard . Genesis is great . It has lots of story we talked about Genesis stuff happening every single page . Even exodus . There's all kinds of really good stuff in there too right . We read of God's rescue of the Israelites from Egypt . We read of everything that's happening in there . There's so much stuff happening and then we get to Leviticus – I almost want a screeching brakes sound . Because . We get there and it's . Rules. And odd rules very difficult rules rules that we don't understand .
04.25 - 04.39
Because they're not really meant for us . But what's happening here if you understand it can make Leviticus .
04.41 - 04.59
Lively . It may still be really tough to read but what's happening here is God is teaching people who live their whole lives in captivity . How to live as free people .
05.01 - 05.07
In a place that doesn't have any rules in a place that didn't have any ruler .
05.09 - 05.23
God is teaching them something they have no context for . They don't know how to do it They’ve lived their entire lives from the time they were born until the time they get old under the rule of others .
05.24 - 05.37
Pharoah and Egyptian masters . Who told them what they can do what work they can do when they can do it .
05.38 - 05.41
And what materials they could use to do it with .
05.42 - 06.02
So here they are . They've been rescued . They're hanging out at the base of Mount Sinai right now . Moses has been up to the top of the mountain . He's come down with the Ten Commandments which they promptly broke . He's gone back up to the top of the mountain . And . He's come down .
06.02 - 06.19
And he has words to say to them that are who God is and really the summary of Leviticus is found in these two little passages that I read this morning . I am the Lord your God
06.21 - 06.26
Be holy as I am holy .
06.26 - 06.28
Love your neighbor as yourself .
06.32 - 06.54
There's a whole lot of detail in between those things and all over the book of Leviticus and you find pieces of evidence of how God is and what God means . God expects them to live differently from the nations they're going to encounter .
06.55 - 07.03
From the nations they are going to live among when they reach the promised land . And he's giving them those instructions right now .
07.04 - 07.21
And as part of those instructions there are a lot of things that we don't understand and don't make any sense to us . But they were in place for them because they were very different from the way the world worked for them right then . And it is when we get to the Gospels that we hear Jesus say Look .
07.22 - 08.09
You missed the point when God gave you those rules . The point is love God . Love your neighbor as yourself . Those are really the two big commandments . All the rest of it you won’t do when you do those two . But you have to see what it looks like and the Israelites didn't have . The convenience of an entire book that told them what guards would look like . We do . Well this is a book that shows us . This . Dynamic . That God intends for all of us now .
08.11 - 08.35
God says when you love me when you love me you will love your neighbor It’ll happen . It's a vertical . Love God . And a horizontal . Love others . Because . Beloved! .
08.39 - 09.03
When each of us knows we are loved . We can love others . We can give ourselves away . Because the cost to us is not so great when we can see the love we have . The love that's been given to us . It's not so hard to give it back away .
09.05 - 09.10
Do you remember my dog right, Bear . Just talked about him two minutes ago .
09.11 - 09.43
When we first got him he would often Barkin snap and growl at people he didn't know . He still does that on occasion because he learned that people could be mean . And most of the time nowadays he still just barks at them but if they bend down and they start to pet him . He will stop . Because he has learned that when someone is kind to him when someone pats him . He can stop being afraid .
09.46 - 10.18
That's what God is telling us in the book of Leviticus . If you trust me . If you can learn to love me then the rest of these rules will be simple enough . Because you will begin to give away what you've received . You will start to love others because you know you are loved . If you just read Leviticus as a book of do's and don'ts that are somehow a prerequisite or necessary for God to love you .
10.20 - 10.41
You're not going to get very far . When you read them the other way . When you read them . As an extension of God's love . Meant to show the worst things that we can do to each other . Aren’t the things God wants for us .
10.43 - 10.51
Aren’t the things God wants from us . Then reading Leviticus takes a different .
10.52 - 10.52
Turn .
10.57 - 11.07
When we read Leviticus through the lens of saying be holy like I am holy love your neighbor as yourself .
11.07 - 11.20
We see a whole different picture . And I know I've preached on this a little bit before . But I want to make sure that we don't forget that little . Last phrase .
11.21 - 11.42
In that verse . Love your neighbor as yourself . I think that we forget that the . Prerequisite . For loving others . Is . Loving ourselves .
11.43 - 11.55
Usually doesn't mean much if we say love your neighbor as yourself . And you don't love yourself . That means some things like Sabbath, which God sets up are
11.57 - 12.05
important . Like Rest. Important. Honoring your Parents
12.07 - 12.14
Not stealing not lying . All of those things are ways that you .
12.15 - 12.16
Love yourself .
12.18 - 12.30
You love God . And then from that you love others . But in case you're wondering sometimes we do forget this .
12.32 - 12.39
The Israelites certainly did many times we’re going to talk about that a lot . As we continue through our series in the next few weeks .
12.40 - 12.57
Yeah pretty much the rest of the Old Testament . We're going to talk about how the Israelites did not get this . But that's okay . We don't always get it either and we have the benefits of Jesus and the Holy Spirit filling us and empowering us to do its .
13.02 - 13.33
This week . I had an opportunity to mess that up myself . I got really annoyed at somebody . In a parking lot . And I didn't just let it go . Or spend a minute maybe calming down . I was mad . It was hot . And I got out of my car and I was yelling across the parking lot .
13.33 - 13.50
Now the whole time I was in the store is like what is wrong with you . Hello . I felt really bad pretty quickly . But . There are days and moments .
13.51 - 14.35
When our love for our neighbor our love for ourselves and our love for God falls short . That's why we actively confess that . In our communion . Prayer . Every week . We say Holy God we come before you in humility for we do not live as we ought . We do not love you with our whole heart and mind and strength . We do not love our neighbor as ourselves . So we pray in all humility that you will change our hearts and minds that you will show us again how to love others the way you love us that you will put power and courage in our hearts to do your will .
14.35 - 15.01
This is a prayer that reminds us that even as Holiness people even as people who believe that Sanctification is possible that the Holy Spirit can work in our rise and change our hearts and move us forward . We know we get it wrong sometimes . And our loving God says that when we get it wrong . When we mess it up .
15.02 - 15.04
There is grace for us .
15.04 - 15.19
We should do better . We can do better . Because we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us . So we confess to it's . We ask forgiveness for it . And we accept the grace that is offered in exchange for it.
15.21 - 15.30
And we don't leave here today believing that we have to sin . We do not every day say Oh, God! i know i have sinned .
15.33 - 15.36
Because we didn't have to live that way . We are free .
15.42 - 15.57
We know that that freedom that we have in Christ allows us to live better to choose otherwise . But . We leave here knowing that IF We do . If we screw up .
15.58 - 16.02
We don't have to leave in fear .
16.02 - 16.13
We don't have to be defeated . We can question the grace of a God . Who has a way for us to be holy as God is holy .
16.15 - 16.26
Love our neighbors as ourselves . As we've been doing every week in the series . I will now Remind you .
16.27 - 17.02
Of what it looks like to say that the love of God is in every page of scripture . What does it mean to say God loves . God loves us enough to create us to form us from the dust . God loved us enough to let us fail to let us choose our own way over Goods to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat in heartbreak and sorrow and death. God loved us enough to provide a rescue . A way back .
17.04 - 17.33
Through Wanderer's murderers adulterers defaulters promise breakers foreigners strangers and lovers . God loved us enough . To show us mothers and judges and Kings and Prophets who loved and spoke for God . And kept reminding us of the promise of redemption . God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up .
17.33 - 17.39
And how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing .
17.39 - 17.50
God loved us enough to send us Jesus . The only begotten Son of God to preach and live peace Grace hope joy and love .
17.52 - 18.04
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected to see him die to see him buried . God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead .
18.04 - 18.21
And send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him . God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus an abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirits redeemed free loved .
18.23 - 18.26
God loves us enough to still let us choose our own destiny .
18.28 - 18.38
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever of resurrection from the dead and judgment . God loved us enough .
18.39 - 18.51
God loves us enough . God will always love us enough . For God so loved the world . God .
18.51 - 19.00
Loves you . God loves you . God loves you . God loves . You .
19.01 - 19.13
God loves you . God wants you to know that . God wants you to live in it . God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved .
19.15 - 19.35
And God's love is expressed to us every week . Most tangibly as we gather at this table . The Son who died and yet lives . Gave everything . So we could know the depths of God's love . So come . Drink the wine .
19.36 - 19.50
Eat the bread . Know you are loved . God loves you . Go . Love the world with him .
Sunday Jul 08, 2018
Sunday Jul 08, 2018
TRANSCRIPT:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Numbers 13:26 – 33
They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anakcome from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
In the 1990s, there was a craze that I never understood. Called the Magic Eye, it had to do with these pictures that looked like prisms of color oddly put together. Supposedly, if you squinted just right at these images, you could see a 3D picture that was completely unrelated to the blotches. The reason I say supposedly is that I never saw these pictures. Even as I prepared to preach this week and I visited the Magic Eye website and even tried their special “this is how you do it picture” that is supposed to make it easy to do. Even when I knew what the underlying image was supposed to look like – For me, it does not work. I could not see these special graphics, no matter how hard I tried. The thing is, though, that the pictures are there. Just because I cannot see them does not mean they aren’t real. The 3D picture, in fact, is the foundation of the 2 dimensional pattern that is readily apparent. According to mentalfloss.com, the process works like this:
“A Magic Eye image starts with a programmer creating the hidden image…as a grayscale, smooth gradient depth map where dark points that should be furthest away are darker and closer points are in lighter shades. Then, they create a 2D pattern to camouflage that image. Finally, a computer program using a Magic Eye-patented algorithm takes the image model and the pattern and orients repeating patterns to the intended depth of the hidden image. When someone looks at a Magic Eye, the repeating pattern feeds the brain the depth information encoded into it, and the brain perceives the hidden picture” For whatever reason, I am incapable of seeing the hidden picture. The repeating patterns are all I can see. What is right in front of me in the image is the limit of my ability to view the picture.
Here's what’s happening in Numbers so far:
The people were counted as they continued to learn at Mt. Sinai all of God’s commands for them and their worship.
When they finally left Mt. Sinai, they began marching across the desert, headed for the promised land, the land of Canaan that God had promised throughout time to this point to them.
Along the way, they had some challenges. They had no food, so God provided manna. They had no water, so God provided water.
They complained about only eating manna, so God provided meat.
Moses became overwhelmed with the responsibility for the whole camp, so God provided 70 elders who ALSO had the gift of the Holy Spirit and could share the burden.
When they arrived at the edge of the promised land, God told Moses to send 12 spies into the land. They were leaders of their tribes. They went in and looked around, they brought back fruit and spent 40 days exploring the land.
The rest of Numbers hangs on the decision the Israelites make here. If they go forward, we’ll read of their conquest and their disbursement of the land. If they refuse…we’ll read of God’s displeasure with them. Here’s what happened:
When they got back, 10 men were afflicted with the same kind of blindness I have – they couldn’t see through the pattern on top to the real picture underneath.
Oh, they saw the abundance – the land flowing with milk and honey. And the incredible fruit that could be harvested. BUT they also saw all the obstacles as insurmountable – the fortified cities, the giants, the strength of those they would have to oppose to move in.
Only Caleb (and Joshua) saw it differently.
They recognized the presence of the obstacles. But they knew that the God who fed them and gave them water and delivered them from Egypt could defeat these enemies, too.
Caleb said “we should go, we can do it” and the other 10 argued against him. The people were persuaded by the 10 and refused to go. And God was not happy – “How long will these people continue to treat me with contempt?” Moses pleaded for their lives, and God forgave them – but he denied access to the promised land for the people for 40 years – one year for every day the spies were gone.
God did this to allow the adults, the ones who made the decision to die off and then the children would go in and do what their parents refused to do.
Caleb and Joshua were the only exceptions. The rest of Numbers is the story of a people who kept rebelling and kept being forgiven. There is a great story about a man named Balaam and his donkey in Numbers – Balaam was hired to curse the Israelites by the Moabite king, and God wouldn’t let him curse them. At one point the donkey talks to Balaam about this.
In the end, the defeat the Israelites believed they would suffer, because they couldn’t see past the obstacles, they did suffer because they couldn’t be obedient to the God who had provided and protected them all along.
But Caleb and Joshua, two who believed in the God they followed. Two who understood the reality of God – who could see more than what was in front of them, who could see that the God of rescue could do what he said.
In the next book, Deuteronomy, we will see all the details of the journey through the wilderness for 40 years and what happens along the way is more of God’s provision, more of God’s protection. More of God being God.
The great thing is that we have even more examples of God being God than the Israelites did. So when we can’t see past the obstacles in front of us, we ought to be able to say with Caleb, “let’s go”. Because we ought to be able to see the faithfulness of God in our lives and the lives of those around us – over and over.
We have seen a lot of obstacles for our church here in Momence: lack of money, lack of resources, lack of interest.
But when we look around at all God has brought us through, we should be able to see past some of those and wonder what it is that God will do next. Because God keeps working, even when we can’t see what he’s doing. God keeps moving, even when we can’t see where he’s going. And God asks us to say with Caleb, where ever God wants us, what ever God wants us to do:
“Let’s go”
As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Jul 15, 2018
Sunday Jul 15, 2018
Transcript:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Deuteronomy 5:6-21
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
Just a quick recap of where we have been so far. And it’s appropriate to do it today, because that’s exactly what Deuteronomy is – a speech, wrapped in a little context, that is given just before the children of Israel cross over Jordan to take on the daunting and yet do-able task of conquering the land. The land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs of this incredible homeless for now nation in the desert between Egypt and Canaan.
In Genesis, we were created and we fell, but God promised this land to Abraham along with descendants for him and his barren wife that would number more than they could count. God continued that promise through Isaac, and then Jacob, also known as Israel.
Jacob’s son Joseph wound up in Egypt by nefarious things – his brothers sold him out of jealousy. Joseph eventually, after false accusations and prison, reunited with his brothers and rescued them from famine, by bringing them all to Egypt.
In Exodus, 400 years later, Moses was born into a nation that had become pretty large and was enslaved to the Egyptians. Moses had some missteps of his own, but he ultimately lead the children of Israel out of Egypt – across the Red Sea on dry land – and then to the foot of Mount Sinai.
There, the people received the law.
There, the people rebelled for the first time by forming a golden calf.
In Leviticus, we read the full text of the law and it’s purpose for setting apart the children of Israel as holy people who love God and neighbor.
Eventually, as we read in Numbers, the people arrived at the Jordan the first time.
They sent spies.
The spies (save 2) said that while the land was plentiful, it was also dangerous.
The majority won the argument.
God withheld the promise for them for 40 years.
And that is where we find the children of Israel now – 40 years after the first spies were sent in, they have arrived back at the edge of the Jordan. This is Deuteronomy’s purpose: to remind the people of where they have been, since all of those here now were young children when their parents screwed it up the first time.
Moses, who was originally going to be part of this, also had disobeyed God and been refused entry to the promised land. He’s gone up on a mountain, and though 120 years old at this point, he has seen the land that was promised.
Moses needs to remind the people of all that has happened and what they can expect if they disobey going forward – because that is the crux of the promises of God – obedience to God’s law draws them closer to God and puts them in the seat of blessing. The closer they live to what God has called them to do and be, the more God blesses their nation as a whole by drawing closer to them.
But disobedience and rebellion – these will cause God to turn away from them, God will still love them, but when their hearts are not tuned to God’s, things will be devastating and harsh for them.
God always gives us choices.
God always lets us make the wrong one and God always has grace enough to welcome us back if we choose God again.
This morning, driving in to church, I messed up. I turned earlier off Georgetown road than I intended, and was going way faster than the posted 30 mph speed limit, because I forgot where I was.
I should have gotten a ticket.
I was entitled to a ticket.
But I got a warning.
That’s grace.
And that’s what God does over and over for the Israelites as they make their way across the Jordan and into the promised land.
We’ll learn more about that as we move into the rest of the Old Testament, but the reason God gave them this whole speech in the book of Deuteronomy, was to remind them of their promise at Mt. Sinai, and to give them another opportunity to hear the whole thing, as a people. And to warn them.
This morning’s warning wasn’t the first one I’ve gotten in recent months.
A few weeks ago, I was speeding on 2nd street in front of the school.
I got a warning from the Momence police then.
But this morning, I messed up again. I will try harder not to do it going forward, but I forget to think about speed when I’m driving. Or I think “I won’t get caught…” But the truth is, at some point, I’m going to get the ticket I deserve. And I won’t have any excuses about why I got it – I will have deserved it. I’ve gotten plenty of warnings, that’s for sure.
The children of Israel are the same – they are getting this warning. They will get others, but still they were going to mess it up and they were going to get it wrong. EVEN with the warnings, they were going to rebel.
You see, many people look at the 10 commandments, which we read this morning, as a cage – a restriction to doing all the fun things.
But the reality is – they are a guard rail. They keep you from going off the edge. Because God’s judgement for us isn’t just about being committed to God – it is about avoiding the consequences for all the bad choices.
When I speed, I risk an accident. Thus the rules about not speeding.
When we violate God’s law, we risk all kinds of negative consequences. Thus the rules about putting God first, worshiping God appropriately, and not hurting others.
God knew the Israelites were going into a land where the idol worship was devastating and horrible – children were sacrificed, worship involved rituals that defiled bodies and ruined hearts and minds.
And God knew that these practices were not just disrespectful to God, but that they held the power to ruin the children of Israel as a nation of people who stood apart from the rest of the world and lived in a way that was kinder and gentler than those around them.
Hear the rules again:
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
“You shall not murder.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
When we talked about the law in Leviticus, we talked about how God’s law is always vertical first, and horizontal second – God’s law turns our attention to him first and then to others – God’s protection for us against consequences includes caring about what happens to other people, because of our relationship with God.
All of scripture reminds us, over and over, that when we are in right relationship with God, everything we do reflects that.
And that is what God is reminding the Israelites of in Deuteronomy, by recapping everything they’ve been through to this point and restating the law for them.
But God knows they won’t make it.
And God knows WE can’t make it.
That is why we have the key verse, the verse that our series hangs on – God’s love for us, his desire that we DO make it, that we DO get there in obedience and love, was revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and set out for us in the shape of a cross. We love because God loved us. When we surrender to Jesus, when we live in the shadow of that cross, when we celebrate the gift of Jesus, we are embracing the law that God gave to give us life. The commandments that turn us toward God and then, align us with God’s heart, by turning us toward each other.
As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Jul 22, 2018
Sunday Jul 22, 2018
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Joshua 1:1-9
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Let us pray
Hide me behind your cross, Lord. May my words be your heart in my voice to your people. You have told us you love us, help us to know your love and live it every day of our lives. Amen
In the Old Testament, who besides Adam and Eve has no parents?
Joshua, son of Nun
That’s a preacher joke. They are kind of like dad jokes, but even funnier.
In all seriousness, we now find ourselves at the book of Joshua. And Joshua tells us the story of the conquering nation of Israel as they move into the land that was promised to them. Joshua will lead them. But Joshua is pretty new at being the only leader – his mentor and friend, Moses has just died. And so God comes to Joshua and gives him this pep talk. It is a pretty compelling pep talk – but it is a reminder that whatever else moving into the promised land might be, easy is not going to be one of the terms used to describe it.
Listen as God tells Joshua some important things about his next steps:
Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
You will lead. You need to obey. And I will be with you.
IN those things, Joshua is urged, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or discouraged. You will do what I have called you to.
You will lead; they will inherit.
You need to obey; you will be successful in what you do.
You need to be brave and encouraged: I will be with you.
And then the whole book of Joshua is an exercise in exactly that:
God helps them cross a flooded river Jordan on dry land
God helps them investigate Jericho, the first city they must fight against
God gives them Jericho by leading them in a strange battle practice and defeating their enemies for them
God helps them save Rahab, the woman who protected their spies and includes her in the lineage of Jesus
God helps them conquer city after city and people after people throughout the Promised Land.
Until they are finally able to rest.
Each tribe is awarded their inheritance, and each prepares to inhabit the land God has given them.
And at the end of Joshua, Joshua’s last proclamation to them, includes this admonition for them to decide always to follow God (Joshua 24:15):
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
The people agree to serve the LORD who has rescued them and established them in the promised land.
Because God’s promises have all been true: God was with them in this task. God was with Joshua in this task. God gave them strength and courage when they lacked it, and God gave them all that had been promised from the beginning.
And for a long time – the rest of that generation and a few more, the people were obedient to God.
What does the story of Joshua and the fulfillment of those promises say to us? How can we see God’s love for us in the ways God worked in this place and this time?
The story of Joshua and his leadership that you read in scripture is a reminder that when God calls us to do something, God is faithful to what has been promised. All of these stories from Genesis to Joshua (and the rest of scripture, too, of course) are a picture of God’s faithfulness. If God commands us or calls us or promises us: God will do it.
So – when we are obedient to God’s call on our lives (which is to be followers of Christ and ambassadors of our hope in him) we can accept the same promises that God makes to Joshua at the very beginning of this book:
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. God will be with you wherever you go.
We can stand tall in the face of adversity. We can fight through challenges and hardships. We can live out our faith and we can do it with strength and courage, because we know God is faithful. Because we know God has promised that God will be with us – wherever we go.
Our commitment to following Jesus means we do not stay where we are. We do not remain stagnant in our faith. We do not live the same as everyone else – instead we love others even when its hard. We live our faith by standing up for those who can’t speak. We live our faith by being strong and courageous for those who don’t have strength and courage.
We cannot stay on this side of the Jordan river and wait for the battle to come to us, either.
We need to be moving and setting out and walking further into the call to be active followers.
You can’t follow if you aren’t moving.
So where can we go? We go by taking food to those who need it. We go by giving sacrificially. We go by doing projects around the church. We go by standing up for someone who is being bullied. We go by showing others we love them when they look most unlovable. NO matter what it looks like, we GO because we have been called and we GO knowing that we can Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. God will be with you wherever you go.
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As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Aug 05, 2018
Sunday Aug 05, 2018
**NOTE - the message from Judges had significant technical difficulties. I will re-record at another date**
Transcript for this week's message: Ruth
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Ruth 1
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilionalso died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-lawprepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”
At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.
--
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
There is a prayer that is cited to St. Francis of Assissi, although it may well have been an anonymous prayer:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.
And in many ways, this is the best summary of the book of Ruth there is. I have read to you the first chapter, which is the devastating story of loss, but coupled with it, we see Ruth’s commitment to being an instrument of God’s love to her mother-in-law, although it costs her much.
Ruth is leaving her homeland behind, going to the land of her enemies, and believing that all Naomi has told her of God. We see desperation and loss and tragic circumstances, and we hear Naomi say that she is bitter and sad. Yet, Ruth comes alongside her and walks with her.
This book is different from the ones that come before it. It speaks of God in a new way – not as an active interventionist – although God is certainly still active, but as One who works through those who believe.
God does not speak in this book as in prior books, to judges or prophets or through bushes or directly to those who would do things – rather, God speaks through others who move and do what God would have them do, not because they get a divine message, but because they are living out their faith in response to the circumstances around them.
Naomi and Ruth are not supernatural characters. They don’t have some sort of underlying power that we don’t know about – they are simply women who love each other and loved the same people and are grieving and leaning in to what God has for them – even though God doesn’t directly tell them anything. God doesn’t do wonders and signs in this account, but this is God’s work through the ordinary people who need each other.
Listen to how this account of Ruth and Naomi’s life together closes out:
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”
Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Ruth is better to Naomi than seven sons – she has loved well and given everything over for her mother-in-law and she has been rewarded with God’s blessing: not only is she the great-grandmother of a boy who would be King of her nation, but she is now in the lineage of the King of Kings – King Jesus, who would redeem us all. Ruth’s love for Naomi opened up blessing to Naomi, too, and made it possible for Naomi to shed the bitterness she once knew and exchange it for the kind of joy that only comes from being loved well.
The Hebrew text uses a word: hesed to reflect this beautiful version of God’s love. It is the work of God’s loving kindness through the hands and feet of the people who believe in God.
Hesed is what we are called to be to one another, through Christ. It is HESED that brought Jesus to us as a man and God. It is HESED that should be our life of holiness in every place and movement as we live Christlike lives.
We should be praying St. Francis’s prayer as our plea for God’s infusion of HESED in us that will give us the power and possibility to live out what God has called us to.
Ruth’s story is proof that God can and will use us if we are willing to be used.
This week, I urge you to think of the person who is in greatest need of seeing God at work in their lives, the person you know and work with or live near – someone who needs help to exchange their difficulty and hard attitude with the joy and peace that only comes from being loved as Jesus does. Give yourself away to them. Find one thing you can do, one thing you can say, one way you can love them. One way you can hesed:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.
---
As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.
Sunday Aug 12, 2018
Sunday Aug 12, 2018
Partial Transcript:
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that who ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
I Samuel 15:12-23
Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah. Saul went to the city of Amalek and set an ambush in the ravine. Then he said to the Kenites, “Go away, leave the Amalekites so that I do not destroy you along with them; for you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.” So the Kenites moved away from the Amalekites.
Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur,near the eastern border of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.
Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was angry, and he cried out to the Lord all that night.
Early in the morning Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”
When Samuel reached him, Saul said, “The Lord bless you! I have carried out the Lord’s instructions.”
But Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?”
Saul answered, “The soldiers brought them from the Amalekites; they spared the best of the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but we totally destroyed the rest.”
“Enough!” Samuel said to Saul. “Let me tell you what the Lord said to me last night.”
“Tell me,” Saul replied.
Samuel said, “Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel. And he sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people, the Amalekites; wage war against them until you have wiped them out.’ Why did you not obey the Lord? Why did you pounce on the plunder and do evil in the eyes of the Lord?”
“But I did obey the Lord,” Saul said. “I went on the mission the Lordassigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lordyour God at Gilgal.”
But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.”
Then Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned. I violated the Lord’s command and your instructions. I was afraid of the men and so I gave in to them. Now I beg you, forgive my sin and come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord.”
But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejectedthe word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel!”
As Samuel turned to leave, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. Samuel said to him, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you. He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.”
Saul replied, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel; come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord your God.” So Samuel went back with Saul, and Saul worshiped the Lord.
Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag king of the Amalekites.”
Agag came to him in chains. And he thought, “Surely the bitterness of death is past.”
But Samuel said,
“As your sword has made women childless,
so will your mother be childless among women.”
And Samuel put Agag to death before the Lord at Gilgal.
Then Samuel left for Ramah, but Saul went up to his home in Gibeah of Saul. Until the day Samuel died, he did not go to see Saul again, though Samuel mourned for him. And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.
--
Let us pray:
Hide me behind your cross, Lord Jesus. Articulate the Father’s heart through my voice and let the Holy Spirit breathe new life to us, opening our ears to hear the message of God. Amen
As we have learned about the children of Israel in these weeks of messages, we have repeatedly seen that God will tell them to do something and they will find ways to work around it. I Samuel is the first half of what was once a larger book (II Samuel is the second half), and it essentially tells the story of the last judge in Israel, who becomes a prophet and his dealings with the first and second Kings in Israel.
Because Samuel is judge for most of his adult life, but Israel begs for a King. Samuel reminds them that they have a King – God – but Israel wants a King that they can see and touch and talk to in person. God tells Samuel that they have not rejected him, but God and God will appoint a King for them. Samuel is to anoint him. Samuel warns the people that a king will demand things of them that they don’t want – and will likely try to take the honor that should be God’s for himself. But they demand a king anyway, and Samuel seeks God’s choice for the first king of Israel
Saul is chosen, although at the anointing ceremony, he hides behind luggage to avoid being in charge. The passage of scripture we have read this morning tells us that after a humble start, Saul quickly decided he was good enough and smart enough and fierce enough to be king without direction from God – and this is actually the 2nd time Saul has gotten in pretty big trouble.
The problem Saul has is a heart problem. It looks like an obedience problem, and it is, but the reason Saul has an obedience problem is because of his heart issue.
Saul has decided that he somehow has the wherewithal to be king under his own power and has set himself up as king of his own heart.
God has already given the command that God should be God and the only one worshiped – but Saul has figured that he deserves not only his own praise but also the praise of the people he governs and leads.
And therein lies the problem – Saul has done what the Israelites were warned about – he has become enamored with the results that God has blessed him with and determined they are of his own making. And he demands the people’s praise.
There’s a story in the Gospels that tell of a rich man who comes to Jesus and asks about eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell all he has and give it to the poor. The man walks away sad because he has been given so much.
Then Jesus says that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
That admonishment doesn’t mean no one who has means can get to God; it means that one who has means doesn’t think they NEED God. And that is Saul’s predicament as well.
Saul thinks he no longer needs the very one who chose him and put him in power and awarded him victory after victory. Saul thinks he is king enough and man enough to be victorious on his own. Samuel tries to warn him the first time he disobeys – in that moment, Saul actually set up an altar after a battle and did the sacrifice to God on his own, even though he was told to wait for Samuel. He did it because he wanted his subjects, who were getting restless waiting for Samuel after a battle, to see how much power and impressive skill he had – not a desire to worship God. Saul TELLS himself he wants to worship, but really he wants everyone to see how amazing he is.
And Samuel warns him of his folly.
But Saul doesn’t see.
And so this time, when Saul disobeys, God strips him of the anointing presence of the Holy Spirit which has been the blessing of Saul’s kingdom up to this point, and suddenly, Saul is no longer the king he once was.
God quickly anoints David, who at this point is a very young boy, serving as a shepherd in Bethlehem. David will come and serve under Saul, and then Saul will become jealous of David after he defeats Goliath and Saul is determined to kill David.
Because he sees how David has what he once did and recognizes that if he doesn’t kill David, David will become king in his place.
The rest of I Samuel is the telling of Saul’s pursuit of David and the ways God protected David. Saul ultimately takes his own life after a defeat in battle. II Samuel tells much of David’s story, and next week we’ll learn of the mistake that David made and how the result was somewhat different – because David’s heart was different.
But for today, I’d ask you to think about what things God might be asking you to give over for the sake of the Kingdom? What area do you feel as though you are “king” over in your life? What place do you need to ask God to work with you on, because you’ve said “thanks God, I’ve got this”?
We all find places to evict God as King of our lives – sometimes it’s in parenting, sometimes it’s in our jobs, sometimes it’s how we spend our money, sometimes it’s how we handle hard times. God shows us over and over that when God is given control or kingship over an area that we wanted to keep – God shows us that God’s way, God’s leadership, God’s direction is always covered with blessing. Sometimes that blessing is in resolution of our circumstance or in a better job, a better financial situation, better health. But sometimes God’s blessing is just the knowledge that God is working and God is not only at work in the situation, but that God is with us in it.
Because we don’t always get the promotion, even when God is king over our work life.
Because we don’t always get healed the way we want to, even when God is king over our health.
Because we don’t always get financial freedom, even when God is king over our money.
But we do get GOD. And God as King means that even if our lives are a mess from the world’s standards, our lives can be blessed by the Kingdom standard – because blessing, the best blessing, isn’t #blessed on a happy day of life, but it is God’s continual working presence in our lives and our hearts, so that everything we do is done with the focus of God’s kingdom, not our own.
---
As we have been doing every week in this series, I will remind you of what it looks like to say that the love of God is found in every page of Scripture:
What does it mean to say God loves?
God loved us enough to create us, to form us from the dust.
God loved us enough to let us fail, to let us choose our own way over God’s – to let us chain ourselves to sin and defeat and heartbreak and sorrow and death.
God loved us enough to provide a rescue, a way back: through wanderers, murderers, adulterers, defaulters, promise-breakers, foreigners, strangers, and lovers.
God loved us enough to show us mothers, judges, kings, and prophets who loved and spoke for God and kept reminding us of the promise of redemption
God loved us enough to show us how evil and wrong continually mess things up and how obedience to God fosters holiness and bestows blessing
God loved us enough to send us Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, to preach and live peace, grace, hope, joy, and love.
God loved us enough to see Jesus rejected, to see him die, to see him buried.
God loved us enough to raise Jesus from the dead and send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all we have in him and empower us to live like him.
God loved us enough to want us to live like Jesus – and abundant life infused with all the fruit of the Spirit, redeemed, free, loved.
God loved us enough to still let us choose our destiny.
God loved us enough to promise the hope of forever, of resurrection from the dead, and judgement.
God loved us enough, God loves us enough, God will always love us enough.
For God so loved the world…
God loves you.
God wants you to know it. God wants you to live in it.
God wants you to be able to love others because you know you are loved.
God’s love is expressed to us every week, most tangibly, as we gather at this table: The Son who died and yet lives, gave everything so we could know the depth of God’s love.
So, Come. Drink the wine. Eat the bread. Know you ARE loved.
God loves you. Go, love the world with him.