January 31, 2021
John 3:15-36
Lie: God doesn’t care if I sin
We have been going through a series titled, the lies we tell ourselves. Last week we looked at the lie, God only loves me if I’m good. As we saw last week that is a lie. God loves you. Period! God cares about you deeply. God wants the best for you. God is on your side. I hope that message seep deep within your soul.
But there is a lie that people who only understand the love of God superficially can fall into. The lie is this – God doesn’t really care about my sin. Or, to state the lie another way, “if God really loves me then it doesn’t matter what I do.”
We love verses like
John 3:16 (NIV)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
But we are not too sure about verses like
John 3:18 (NIV)
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Jesus tells us about the love of God, but he also says things like this.
John 3:36 (NIV)
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
What is this about the wrath of God?
The great American statesman and president Thomas Jefferson was a man of science who did not believe in miracles but really liked Jesus. Unfortunately, right next to Jesus’ ethical teachings are stories about miracles—feeding five thousand people with a sack lunch, walking on water, curing blindness. Jefferson resolved this conflict in a very pragmatic way. He took a pair of scissors and cut out the miracle stories. He was left with the teachings of Jesus. He also snipped out some of those teachings that were a bit incredible. In the end he had just the Jesus he wanted.
I have never taken scissors to the bible, but I have found it really easy to do this in my own way. I focus on the passages I like and skip over the passages I don’t like. How about you? Do you focus in on a loving God, but skip over those passages that talk about wrath and condemnation? Do you mentally cut out the words of Jesus that you don’t like?
This morning as we look at this, I hope that you will get a clearer view of God. I hope that you will come to see that the God that you think you want, is not really the God you want, and the God who is, is really the one you want.
There is a move in theology to downplay who God has revealed himself to be. In doing that they downplay the consequences of sin. Richard Nieburhr – a professor of theology at Yale summed up what some people were trying to do. He said they have “a God without wrath (who) brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
That is a problem. Come back with me to
John 3:36 (NIV)
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
I want you to see what Jesus is saying here. When you see the phrase “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,” you hearing Jesus repeat what he has already said in John 3:16.
John 3:16 (NIV)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Notice where the ability to believe in the Son comes from – it comes out of God’s love.
The last part of verse 36 says, whoever reject the son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains upon them. So, how do those two go together Love and wrath?
****
The first thing you need to know is that wrath is not an attribute of God. God is Good. God is love. God is Holy. God is righteous. But God is not wrath. Wrath is a response of God’s but it not part of the character of God.
The second thing that you need to know is that although some people associate wrath with rage – it is no where even close to rage.
The wrath of God is not like human wrath, which is a reckless and irrational passion. For example, God is never described by Paul as being angry. Anger is a human emotion that often leads us to being out of control. Wrath is different. God’s wrath is a mindful, objective, rational response. It is actually an act of love.
God is not indecisive when it comes to evil. God is fiercely and forcefully opposed to the things that destroy his precious people, which I am grateful for. It is a sign of God’s love: “God’s wrath must be understood in relation to his love.”[1]
To love is, in the words of Dallas Willard, “to will the good of another”; it’s not primarily an emotion. Love is a desire for the well-being of another, so much so that personal sacrifice would not stand in its way.[2]
That is what God’s love is like towards you. He desires your good. It is more than an emotion. He desires your well-being. So much so that he died for you. He knows that sin hurts you, it defaces you, it makes you less than, it wounds you and binds you. When you love someone in such a way as to want their best, and sin comes in and does what it does, of course it is going to illicit a response of wrath.
“Wrath is a necessary reaction of a loving and holy God, a good and beautiful God, to evil. God’s wrath is a temporary and just verdict on sin and evil. As J. I. Packer notes, “God’s wrath in the Bible is always judicial,” and is “a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil.” Packer concludes his point by asking, “Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as he did in good be a good God? Would a God who did not act adversely to evil in his world be morally perfect? Surely not.”[3]
Would you want a God who was OK with child molesters, and murders, and abusers? Would you want a God that was OK with those that destroyed the soul through hatred, and bullying and rage? If God was Ok with those things, then how could he be good?
James Bryant Smith says, “I want a God who hates anything that hurts me. Hate is a strong word, but a good one. Because the true God not only hates what destroys me (sin and alienation) but also has taken steps to destroy my destroyer, I love him. And because this God destroyed sin by making the supreme sacrifice himself, taking all of the guilt and pain and suffering of my sin upon himself, I love him with an everlasting love.[4]
God’s wrath always comes out of God’s love. I like the illustration that Robert Mulholland uses.
You are probably sitting or maybe standing or lying down while you watch this video because you are in perfect harmony with the law of gravity. Now pretend with me for a moment that the place that you are watching this service happened to be in the rooftop garden of a penthouse in a skyscraper.
When this video is over you decide to go to the restaurant down the street for dinner. What if, rather than taking the elevator, you decide simply to step off the edge of the roof? Does gravity suddenly become mean, punitive, vindictive, vengeful, retributive? Of course not! It simply continues to be gravity, and you quickly experience the deadly consequences of placing your life out of harmony with it.
Now, how does this relate to the wrath of God? We are created to find our fullness of life in loving union with God. When we live in such a relationship, our lives are integrated; we possess a deep inner stability and experience wholeness.
When, however, we step out of that loving union with God, when we rebel against this essential reality of our being, we begin to experience the disintegration, instability and brokenness that result from uprooting our lives from their true center. God’s relationship with us doesn’t change. God continues to be the One whose love enfolds and indwells us. Stepping out of that relationship creates the radical disruptions in our being. The pain and suffering those disruptions bring into our lives we call the “wrath of God.”[5] And, God does not step into to rescues us from those consequences when we continue to hang on to our sin.
God is against my sin because he is for me. He stands against my sin, and if I am for my sin, he will stand against me. We may be prone to excusing and rationalizing our sins – but God doesn’t do that.
God is not indifferent to my sin because it hurts me and therefore it hurts God – and God loves me. God is not indifferent to your sin either – because he loves you.
But here is the thing about God – he doesn’t make us feel bad or shame us into better behaviour. Nor does he use guilt or fear. God’s holy love moves into our lives and he cleanses and renews and restores – if we let him.
God is not up in heaven with a baseball bat waiting for you to screw up so that he can hit you over the head. God comes close to us in our sin and say, I want to heal the wounds that sin has inflicted on you and I want to change you so that you do not keep hurting yourself.
Revelation 3:20 (NIV) (in speaking to the people of God)
20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
He waits to be invited in, because he knows that when you are oriented towards sin, you cannot change yourself. He is there waiting for you respond to his love. He is waiting for you open the door. When that happens – he comes in and says let’s talk. Let’s have fellowship together. He takes our dark hearts and in love walks through them bringing his life and his forgiveness. He walks us into the grace of genuine repentances and restores our hearts to what they were made to be.
Smith says, “God cares deeply about sin because it destroys his precious children. God longs for holiness in us because it is the way to wholeness.” And he is right.
So, how about you? Have you bought into the lie that God doesn’t care about my sin? Or, God loves me so it really doesn’t matter what I do? Going down that road walks you into a world of pain.
Let me take a moment and talk about the God who is. God hates sin because God loves you. He understands what we often fail to understand, the sin brings death. Some people think, well my sin isn’t hurting anyone, or it is between two consenting adults, or if no one knows it doesn’t matter. But you cannot sin without hurting your own soul. Sin is poison to the soul. The more you indulge in it the sicker your soul becomes.
God knows that sin brings death. Some people think that God is against sin because we have somehow offended God. God is offended because of what sin does to you and to other. God’s ego is not wounded when you sin. He is not saying – How dare they do that to me. God’s heart is wounded, because he looks at them and says why do they do that to themselves and others.
******
I have known a number of people who cut themselves. You look at their wrists and they are all scared. It is not that they were trying to kill themselves. It was that they were wanting to experience pain because it is the only thing that broke through their numbness. I see people that I know like that and I see what they are doing to themselves and I have a deep sense of sorrow because I want so much more for them. I know that there is so much more for them.
When God sees us using the knife of sin to cut our souls, he has this deep sense of sorrows because he wants so much more for us, he knows that there is so much more for us.
That is what I love Ephesians 2:8–9 (NIV)
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
I love that word grace. It means undeserved favour. I have used the knife of sin to would my soul more often than I want to admit. I suspect you are the same. God doesn’t look at us and say “how stupid can you get? Or, you got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out. Or, you hurt my heart – you are on your own. No, he loves us. We don’t deserve his love – but he loves us.
His favour is towards us. He is on our side. His love hates what we have done to ourselves but his mercy, his forgiveness, his healing, his restoration, his favour is made available to us because he loves us in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve it. That is grace.
What he is asking of you is that you return his love. Will you open the door so that you can walk in relationship together? He understands that you cannot change yourself.
Just like people who cut themselves have a hard time stopping. Those of us who use the knife of sin on our souls can’t stop on our own. But as we start to really love Jesus in return for his love for us, we are transformed.
He helps us tell a new story, free from the lies that we have been telling ourselves. He shows us how to exercise ourselves spiritually so that he can move in us. He does supernatural thing in and around us – so that our faith rests on the power of God and makes us part of a community that makes a difference in our life.
Whether you have never given your life to Christ or whether you have been walking with Jesus for a while – but have bought into either lie that God is mad at me or that God is indifferent to my sin. Will you pray this prayer?
Lord Jesus, I hear you knocking at the door of my heart, so Lord I invite you in. I want a deep loving relationship with you. Lord, you know the state of my heart, and you know I can’t change myself. But I trust you to change me. Show me what I need to ask forgiveness for and what I need to turn from. Deliver me Oh God – have mercy on me.
Let’s Pray
Sermon Questions of January 31st, 2021
Part 5 The Lies we tell ourselves.
Lie 5: God doesn’t care if we sin.
Introduction
1. What are you thankful for this week?
2. Is there something that is “heavy on your mind” this week?
Digging In
3. The sermon talked about Thomas Jefferson cutting out the miracles of Jesus from his bible so that he could get the Jesus he wanted. Have you ever disregarded the hard saying of Jesus?
4. Read John 3:16-21 and John 3:31-36. What do these verses tell you about the wrath of God? (vs. 36)
5. What difference does it make to know that the wrath of God is not an attribute of God (part of his character) but a response from God that comes out of his love? What is the difference between wrath and rage?
6. Dallas Willard said Love is “to will the good of another”; it’s not primarily an emotion. Love is a desire for the well-being of another, so much so that personal sacrifice would not stand in its way.” If God loves us like this- then where does wrath come from.
7. How do you feel about the statement, “God is against my sin because he is for me. He stands against my sin, and if I am for my sin, he will stand against me?”
8. Could God be good and be indifferent to sin?
9. Read Revelations 3:19-20. Where is Jesus and what response is he looking for?
10. Read Ephesians 2:8-9 How does the wrath of God and the grace of God go together?
Application
11. Spend time considering if you could genuinely pray this prayer: “Lord Jesus, I hear you knocking at the door of my heart, so Lord I invite you in. I want a deep loving relationship with you. Lord, you know the state of my heart, and you know that I can’t change myself. But I trust you to change me. Show me what I need to ask forgiveness for and what I need to turn from. Deliver me Oh God – have mercy on me.”
[1] Smith, James Bryan. The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series Book 1) (pp. 120-121). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid., pg 119
[3] Ibid pg 120-121
[4] Ibid pg 125
[5] Mulholland Jr., M. Robert. The Deeper Journey (Transforming Resources) (p. 101). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.