Unexpected Jesus (Part 9): Does God Get Angry?

Well, hello again.

Uh, before we jump into the teaching today, I want to take just a few minutes to highlight a couple of things that are happening around Orchard Hill.

First, uh, this week is the last week to get the early bird price for Kids Fest.

So if you want to send your kids to Kids Fest, great to get them registered.

And you got a chance to hear a little bit about how significant that has been for some people as they look back at their life and their own spiritual journey.

So if you have kids, I just really want to encourage you to help make that a part of their summer.

Great thing to invite friends to and introduce them to the idea of Jesus and God and how God can make a difference in their lives, their families' lives.

So this week is the end of the early bird pricing on that.

Uh I also just wanted to uh to highlight that uh if you're on our email list, you received probably an email explaining about a care email that you could opt into.

And and what that is, is if you've ever uh walked around Wexford here with uh being a larger church and thought, I didn't know that that person was sick, I didn't know they had a baby, I didn't know that that person had died and that the funeral had happened, and you thought, I wish I had known.

Uh there aren't a lot of easy ways for us to communicate, and so what we've decided is that the easiest thing is to use something that's already in place, which is a care prayer email.

Prayers and praises are shared generally about twice a week, sometimes more if there's more stuff happening, but usually we'll wait until there's a few things together.

But that's something you can opt into.

You're not opting in to commit to anything.

You can pray, you can send cards, you can do nothing but read it, you can hit delete, whatever works for you.

But if you want to know what is happening in people's lives, not not church-wise, not announcements, but people's lives, that's the way that you can do that.

And so uh you can opt into that.

I think you can uh send something to info at orchardhillchurch.com and uh and be a part of that.

Also just want to mention that uh Lori had said that there is the Elios offering today at the back.

Uh that is just an extra offering that we receive on the fifth weekend of the month, which is this weekend.

And what that is, is those who maybe feel like they're just in a really good place financially, give a little extra.

And then what happens is the church is available to those within the congregation who have some special needs, acute needs for a season.

And uh, and I can just tell you that every month something is done on that front that helps somebody substantially inside the church family.

So uh that's what that is.

That's an opportunity for us just to, as a church, care for one another, an opportunity for you to partake in that as well.

I also just want to mention uh quickly that Easter is coming.

Uh it's uh April 21st.

Uh this year we have a couple of different things, new things happening.

Uh things are a little different than past years.

Uh, first, on Good Friday, we're going to have Good Friday and Good Friday on Thursday.

So uh so there will be a Good Friday service, Thursday at 7, Friday at 7, which is because uh the room has just been too full in recent years, so that will give us an opportunity just to accommodate more people.

And then Easter weekend, uh, we're going to on Easter Sunday have a 7, 9, 11, and 1 o'clock services.

Uh there will be 7 and 11, and it will be in the chapel, or 7 and 9 and 1, excuse me.

And then at 9 and 11 will be in the worship center and in the chapel.

If this is your church home and you've been around here for a long time, if your plans are flexible and you can go to the 7 or 1, that would be really great.

Especially if you're around and can come to either the 7 or 1 and then serve at the 9 or 11, um, that would be super.

Last year we had about 6,500 people come for Easter uh weekend, uh, which is more than twice what'll be around this weekend.

And so there's just a lot of uh people coming, a lot of opportunity to serve, a lot of opportunity to open up some seats for folks.

So if your plans are flexible and you can do that, that would be outstanding.

If they're not, uh, we understand, and come whenever is most convenient, but uh, but we just wanted to make a pitch for that as well.

Uh there'll be uh great worship experience in the chapel as well as in this space uh on that weekend.

I want to just uh take a moment and speak to one other thing, and this is not church related as much as uh in our in our city, and that is you've heard, I'm sure, about the Antoine Rose verdict and what all has has happened kind of since then with with uh people protesting and different things.

And I realize that to not say something says something, and certainly as a as a church, we don't feel the need to comment on every local or national event that happens, or all we'd ever do is comment on news stories.

And so that isn't what our our goal here is to comment on news stories.

But there are some news stories that are close to home or significant in a way that to not comment on them is to miss something, and certainly with with this being a local story and tied to the issue of race as tightly as it is, I think this is a significant issue just to make a few comments on.

And as a church, we certainly have uh racial diversity within our church and we celebrate that.

Certainly, we have people who are part of the law enforcement community and we celebrate them as being part of our church family.

And I realize that that what has happened in this instance is that many people have said this is a clear case of systemic racism in our culture because uh a white police officer shot a young black man in the back three times.

And if you're not familiar with the story, Antoine Rose was involved in a shooting, and uh when his car was pulled over, ran.

The officer shot him in the back three times.

Pittsburgh police dismissed him immediately, uh, and then the Allegheny County brought charges of a homicide against the officer.

And through the trial, the officer was not convicted of the homicide.

And so now people have said this is a this is a uh a demonstration of racial inequality in our country.

And then others have said very quickly, no, no, no, the the police have to have a right to do what they need to do.

And here's what I'd like to do is just simply read uh one proverb to you that I think speaks maybe to this situation.

And what I find is that uh often, actually not just often, always, God's word says things better than I could say them, and so let me just read this this verse to you.

Proverbs 17, 15, acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent, the Lord detests them both.

Let me read it again.

Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent, the Lord detests them both.

Some versions say it's an abomination to the Lord.

And here's what that says it says, do you want to know something that God hates?

God hates when people condemn the innocent or justify the guilty.

And this is an instance, if you just think about it, that very quickly we can take a narrative that we believe in and we can say, oh, that officer was clearly guilty, or clearly that officer is innocent.

And I'm not suggesting that we don't come to a point of landing this or saying what you think, but what I'm saying is is that it's significant to say, I'm not just going to take a narrative that I already believe in or I already think is true and say this reinforces my narrative, but I'm going to at least do some research, listen before I take a strong position.

Now, again, I'm not saying you don't at some point take a strong position, but to say I don't want to just use this to reinforce a narrative that I've already believed, but instead I want to make sure that I'm not just jumping to one side.

And and the other danger here is that you can, especially maybe if you're white and live in the suburbs, you can say, you know what, that this is is hard to figure out, and I just don't know what to think, what to feel, and you can become indifferent to this.

And it's possible to care about law and care about police officers and still care about the plight of individuals and people and people groups that have said this is a struggle.

And so as a church, I just want us to be the kinds of people who say we engage in the conversation well, we take positions that are informed, and we care about people on all sides of an issue.

So let me pray.

Father, I pray for our community as we work through an issue of race and law.

God, I pray that that as a church you would help each of us who's part of a church to, this church, to be people who care about other people, care about their stories, care about what's going on, and want to honor you with all that we do and say.

God, I pray today as we uh consider uh a portion of John 3 together, that you would let my words reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh years ago, one of the better known pastors in America was a man named Jonathan Edwards.

He later became the president of Princeton Seminary.

And whether you have ever heard this name or not, you may have heard of his most famous sermon.

His most famous sermon is a sermon that was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

And the reason that I say maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't, but but that sermon was influential in shaping New England at the time that he was a pastor there, as many people ended up believing in God during that message.

But the reason I mention that is because today, even to say sinners in the hands of an angry God feels uncouth in our broader society.

And people hear that and they say, that's not the way I like to think of God.

That's not the way that I like to consider who God is.

And what's happened as a result, I think, is that in many churches, what will happen is you'll hear a lot of banal messages around all kinds of themes that never deal with things like sin or God's anger or eternal destinies.

In fact, I did a very quick search knowing that this was in this text, which by the way, this is one of the reasons we teach straight through text.

As I didn't like choose this today, I didn't sit around in my study and go, I want to talk about sin and anger and God.

It's actually in the text that we're looking at.

And so this is what's driven this.

But but I looked at just some of the larger churches in our country's websites, and granted they may have like hidden it in the marketing.

Um, but but most of the messages that I saw were here's how you can be happy, here's how you can have a great life, here's what God wants for you.

Now, I'm not saying those things aren't true, but if you never get to this, then in some ways you're never actually dealing with the essence of Christianity.

We're been we've been working through the Gospel of John together, and as we do that, the these first chapters, we've called this the unexpected Jesus, because what we find here is that Jesus is not exactly as we expect.

Some people see God because of a reaction against kind of the Jonathan Edwards way of thinking of sinners in the hands of an angry God, and they just see a grandpa figure who's all love, who's all goodness, who's all kindness.

And others see a God who is angry.

But what we see in the Gospel of John and chapter three, especially, that we're looking at here, is we see a God who is capable of anger and love simultaneously.

And in order to appreciate the love of God, we need to understand the anger or the wrath of God.

And this all comes especially from the very last verse of John chapter 3, John 3, verse 36.

John 3 · chapter mention John 3:36

Here's what it says whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

But whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them.

And what we see here are three concepts that I believe are three of the hardest concepts in our culture to get our hands around.

So if you're kind of new to church today, you're coming back to church, you haven't been around church for a long time, somebody invited you to lunch later, and so you said, you know what, I'm gonna do church today, this will either be super helpful, or this will be confirmed everything that you say I don't like about Christianity.

But this is not in the fine print.

You know, when you get to uh uh kind of a website and you have to agree to something and you have to scroll way down and then hit accept.

This is not at the bottom of that accept document.

Okay, this is not in kind of the the end of the story.

This is part and parcel of what it means to understand who Jesus is and what God wants.

And so we're going to look at these concepts today.

First, the concept of sin.

And here's where we see this.

Verse 36, it says, Whoever believes in the sun has eternal life, but whoever rejects the sun will not see life.

And the word rejects here is a word that means basically not to be compliant.

The ESV translates it does not obey.

And what it's basically driving at here is this idea, and that is you can believe in the sun, have genuine faith, or you can be non-compliant to the sun.

And to be non-compliant is in essence the idea of sin.

There's a book that uh just came out recently.

It's called Girl Stop Apologizing.

The lady's name who wrote it is Rachel Hollis.

She had written a book earlier, Girl, Wash Your Face.

I didn't actually read the book because I wasn't drawn to the title, but but I saw two reviews of it.

And what caught my attention was the two reviews were from two very opposite sources.

One was BuzzFeed, uh, I read all kinds of things, and the other was the Gospel Coalition.

And if you're not familiar with these, you have on one side kind of the Gospel Coalition, which is a fairly conservative kind of Christian take on things, and then you have Buzzfeed, which is not.

And uh and so these two both had reviews of this book.

And the review that was in the BuzzFeed, a lady named Laura Turner, basically said, here's the problem with with her take, and here's how she described what the author does.

The author basically says, I was poor, I was struggling until I decided to believe in myself, and now I'm powerful.

And if you would stop apologizing and be yourself, you could be powerful and successful like me.

That's the BuzzFeed take on girls stop apologizing.

And she uses a phrase she calls curated imperfection, and she says, the problem with curated imperfection is that you say, All of my problems were in the past, but now I've learned from and grown from them, and now I have a new self-actualized self that can achieve or do anything.

And the critique coming from the secular side, from the buzzfeed side, was to say, really, now you're that much better than you used to be, and you just have learned to stop apologizing.

And then the more Christian critique said this uh Jen Osman writes that it's exhausting and damning, the advice of girl, stop apologizing.

And it leads to enslavement.

Because what it does is it says, I'm now the person who's got all the power in my own life.

And she said, our actual freedom starts when we actually start apologizing to a holy God.

But you see, in our day and age, what we want is we want to say, I don't have a God to answer to, I get to answer to myself.

And and the essence of that is actually sin.

Because what we're doing in that moment is we're saying, you know what?

I want to define for myself what my world should be, what everything should be like, rather than having a God define for me what it is.

And until we're comfortable with the idea of sin, we won't understand or appreciate the idea of God at all.

In fact, in the New Testament, there are a couple different words that are used for followers of Jesus.

One word is the word Christian.

Do you know how many times that word is used in the New Testament?

It's used three times.

Do you know there's another word that's used to describe a follower of Jesus?

It's the word disciple.

Do you know how many times that word is used?

You can guess by how I set this up.

269 times.

In other words, the idea of being a Christian, saying, I'm a Christian, I affirm a few things, is not the New Testament concept of a follower of Jesus.

A Christian is a disciple.

A Christian is somebody who says, I will do what God has called me to do, because a disciple was a learner.

A disciple was somebody who would say, you know what?

I'm going to actually attempt to do what this person that I've committed to following is telling me to do.

Now, sometimes we'll say, Well, wait a second, isn't isn't God working by grace?

Don't don't we end up being being right with God by what He's done, not what we do?

Absolutely.

But here's the issue.

For some people, the idea of sin can keep us from saying that that I'll be an actual follower because what we'll do is we'll say, you know what, God has done it, and I don't need to do anything.

But being a disciple means that we're engaged.

I remember as a kid, I don't remember much about this, but my mom put me in swim lessons.

I guess I was the kind of kid who would run and jump into water without a life jacket, according to my mom, and uh they'd have to jump in and get me.

And so she's like, we have to teach this kid to swim.

And so she put me in swim lessons, and I don't remember much about it, and I may have these names wrong, but but what I remember is there were a couple different groups.

Like you went in, you did a little quick swim test, and then they put you in a different group.

And I think the groups were sharks, like uh dolphins.

This was before it was probably politically incorrect to have sharks.

Sharks, dolphins, and minnows.

And I think I was in the minnows.

And I and I remember being offended by it as a as a child.

Like, I'm not a minnow, I should be a dolphin.

I want to be a shark.

I mean, I'm better than that.

And here's the issue.

And that is, when we come to following Jesus, it doesn't matter if you're a minnow or a dolphin or a shark, as long as you're engaged and you're moving forward and you say, I understand that the issue here is obedience, that being a disciple means I make a decision to do what Jesus says, then we come to understand this concept of sin.

But again, to modern ears, we don't like the idea of obedience.

We think of obedience as being something that we do for our dogs.

We send dogs to obedience training.

But but people, we don't need that.

Do you see the rub in our modern world?

But think of it this way: if you were to uh try to join a company with a really dynamic CEO and you were to go to work for this person, it would be crazy to say, I'm gonna go to work for this person and I want to learn from this person, but I'm not going to do what she says.

I'm gonna do whatever I want.

It would be crazy to say, I'm gonna join a team because I really want to be coached up by somebody, but you know what?

The coach doesn't know what they're doing, I'm gonna choose my own path.

Or I'm gonna join a band, and there's a wonderful conductor who knows how to bring out the best of all the bandmates to make them the the best they can be as a band, but I'm gonna play my own tune.

And yet sometimes that's what we do when we come to Jesus.

And so here we have this concept, this juxtaposition.

There's he who believes in the sun and the person who rejects the sun.

Doesn't do what the sun says.

And the truth is a lot of times we don't know why it's this way.

I remember when our kids were younger, one of my boys, uh, when we had had some new carpet on some stairs, took out an orange marker and colored on the on the stairs and on the wall a little bit.

And I remember being frustrated, like, like, really?

You know better than coloring on something.

I remember asking, why did you do this?

And you know what he said, right?

Same thing all your kids say when you ask them that question.

I don't know.

I have no idea why I did this.

And that is part of uh of our human condition, but understanding this is important.

Jesus at one point is talking about this.

This is in Luke chapter 6, and he says that the person who understands and follows his word is like the wise man who builds his house on the rock.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

When the storm comes, his house is secure.

But the person who doesn't do it, he says, is like the foolish person who builds his house on the sand.

And when the storm comes, that the house is washed away.

Notice, at least in that instance, what Jesus does.

He doesn't say it's the evil person, he says it's the foolish person.

In other words, saying, I'm going to cut my own path, I'm going to do my own thing, I'm only accountable to me, is ultimately foolish because what we're doing in that moment is we're saying, I know best for me, rather than saying there's a God who made me, who loves me, who created me, who knows best for me.

And I'll follow him.

So here we have this concept of sin, which again to many people is troublesome when it comes to understanding Christianity, but is really at the core of understanding faith.

But here's a second concept, and that's the concept of anger.

Verse 36 again says it this way whoever believes In the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

So here we get the word wrath, and the word means anger or indignation, and it's not a like explosive wrath or a wrath in the moment, but it's a settled anger that's being being talked about here.

And for many people, the idea of God being angry seems unworthy of God.

In fact, many people would say, you know what, I don't like to think of God like this.

And so this becomes troublesome.

Here's how Leon Morris, who wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John, writes about this.

He says, the wrath of God is a concept that's uncongenial to many modern students.

And various devices have been adopted to soften the expression or explain it away.

This cannot be done, however, without doing great violence to many passages of Scripture and without detracting from God's moral character.

Considering the first of these points, there are literally hundreds of passages in the Bible referring to God's wrath, and rejection of them all leaves us with a badly mutilated Bible.

And with reference to the second, if we abandon the idea of the wrath of God, we are left with a God who is not ready to react to moral evil.

We should not expect it, God's wrath, to fade away with the passage of time.

Anyone who continues in unbelief and disobedience can look for nothing other than the persisting wrath of God.

That is basic to our understanding of the gospel.

Unless we are saved from the peril, from true peril, there is no meaning in salvation.

Here's what he's pointing to, and that is he's saying that if you take wrath out of the equation and say, I just like to think of God as love, that that love isn't meaningless, and that ultimately to say that we have a God who isn't angry means that we have a God who doesn't deal with anything that's unpleasant or unjust in our world.

In fact, if you think about it, the the context here has John writing, John the gospel writer, writing about John the Baptist's reaction where John says that he's like a bridegroom, Jesus is, and he's kind of like a man who's coming along.

And the reason that I find that significant is if you are engaged to be married, and somebody spurns your love or betrays your love, what happens?

Or you're married and that happens.

What happens?

You get angry.

And your anger is justified.

It's right at that moment because what you're doing is you're saying, saying, you're threatening something that we hold dear.

You're threatening something that we believe matters.

In fact, we read this in Isaiah 62, verse 5.

Isaiah 62:5

That this analogy that John uses is actually much broader in the scriptures.

Here's what it says As a young man marries a young woman, so will your builder marry you.

As the bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will God rejoice over you.

I love that.

It says that God will rejoice over his people like a groom rejoices over his bride.

Well, one of the best moments in a wedding is when the bride appears at the back and the groom is standing here, and everyone turns and looks at the bride, and I often, because of where I get to stand, a lot of times get to get to be right next to the groom, and you see these guys who just all of a sudden are overcome by the moment where they're like, she's awesome.

You do know that's the best she'll ever look, right?

Just kidding, just kidding.

All right, I'm moving on.

Um the the the jealousy and fervor is what is in view here.

And if the girl or the guy before the wedding had said, I just went and hung out with my groomsman or best man or the opposite, whatever the case is, and we you know spent the night together, you wouldn't just say, Oh, it's all good.

You would say, There's something off here.

Maybe another way to think about it is the issue of addiction.

If you've ever dealt with addiction in somebody you love, you know how devastating it is.

And you don't simply go, well, addiction, I'm sorry you did.

There's something in you that says, I am angry at the people who would supply you at the situation, and I don't want you to be a part of that.

And that anger is part of having a love for somebody.

And that's what's happening here, where God says his wrath remains when you reject, because he says, I know what this can be.

I I have a I have a desire for you that you're not living in, and I know what's best for you.

But so often what we do is we say, I don't like the idea of God being angry rather than seeing it as a lover who feels spurned or feels like a parent or a loved one, a brother or sister who watches somebody ravaged by addiction.

And so we have a concept here of sin, we have a concept of anger, but there's one more concept that is troubling to many in our day and age.

And I'm going to say it's the concept of hell.

And here's what we see, verse 36 again whoever believes in the sun has eternal life.

But whoever rejects the sun will not see life.

So you have eternal life, and then you have the opposite.

And here it's not noted as the word hell, but hell is clearly stated in several places in the New Testament.

Now, some people will uh enjoy kind of saying, well, hell was a literal place, it was Gehenna, it was this kind of trash dump outside of uh of Jerusalem that Jesus was referring to.

So this isn't really talking about something all that bad.

But if you read through all of the images of the New Testament, my guess is that what you would do is you would say, this is much more concerning than what we tend to give it credit for.

Because what's happened is you you get these caricatures that people make of hell, like hell is a party for, you know, a bunch of people that'll go on for all eternity, and you know, I'm on the highway to hell, and isn't that great because it's gonna be good when I get there because my life's been good on the way there.

And we kind of trivialize the idea, and even sometimes the very images of fire and damnation leave us with this sense of saying, well, you know, that's just so otherworldly, I can't even imagine what that is.

Back to Jonathan Edwards in his famous message, he talks about a sinner dangling by a thread over the fires of hell, is the image that he uses.

I see, in our day and age, what we prefer to do is talk about how Jesus is going to make your life better.

But the truth is, your life may not necessarily be better.

The reason you come to Jesus is because of sin, because of God's wrath, and because of the promise of eternal life, and the promise that if we don't come to Jesus, that what awaits us is hell.

That's part of why we come to Jesus.

Not just to say, oh, I want my life to somehow be better.

And here's a place where Jesus actually articulates a little bit of what hell is like.

This is Mark chapter 9, verse 48.

Mark 9:48

When he's talking about hell, he says this, that it's where, and he quotes Isaiah again.

This is Isaiah 66, but he quotes it.

He says, it's where their worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.

And here's what he's talking about.

He's saying that that what hell will be is it won't just be a place out there like in the future and somewhere else.

I'm not saying it isn't that, but he's saying that that there's a sense in which hell becomes internal because the worm is eating you from the inside and causing you to struggle.

And the idea of fire not quenching is he's saying this will go on and on.

And there's another place where hell is referred to as a place of gnashing of the teeth.

You ever gnashed your teeth at something?

Do you know what gnashing of the teeth connotes?

It's that, oh, why did I do that?

Why was I, uh, I wish I hadn't done that.

I gnashed my teeth a while ago.

I was backing out of my drive, out of my garage, and somebody had parked a car right where I back out.

And I hit it.

And my first reaction was to was to jump out of my car and be like, who parked there?

But but you know what happens when you hit a parked car?

You have no one else to blame.

I mean, there is nothing you can do but say, ah, I hit a parked car, how stupid of me.

That's gnashing of the teeth.

Except here's what the implication is of what Jesus says is he says, their worm will not die, the fire will not be quenched, it's going to go on and on and on for all eternity.

And the picture in the Bible is not of God throwing people into hell against their will and them wanting to get out and them uh kind of burning in sulfur and God saying, ha ha ha, I put you there.

It's people being in internal torment because they say, Why was I so dumb and yet still refusing to change?

That's the picture that God gives us.

In fact, in Luke chapter 12, verse 4 and 5, Jesus says, This.

Luke 12:4

These are chilling words about this whole thing.

He says, This, I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that, they can do no more.

But I will tell you whom you should fear.

Fear him, who after your body has been killed, has the authority to throw you into hell.

Yes, fear him.

I know that this is heavy.

But my point in this is this is in this passage, but but more than that is to say this is not in the fine print of our New Testament and of our Bible and of our concept of God.

Now, what was happening in this context was that John the Baptist was baptizing people, Jesus' followers were baptizing people, and people had this debate about whose baptism was sufficient.

And what happened was they they got to a point where it was this petty debate over who was baptizing more people, basically, in the way that this was going.

But what we see in this passage is we see something about how to view these significant matters.

John says this in verse 29 the bride belongs to the bridegroom.

The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom.

Here's his point.

He says, Do you want to know where real joy is found?

It's in pointing people to the bridegroom, to Jesus.

Why?

Because that's when people get free.

If you are here and you've had a friend who's been bugging you for a long time to come to church to believe, and you're like, I can't believe I finally came, and this is the message.

Do you know why your friend keeps inviting you?

Because they believe this fully, and they say, I want you to have freedom, and their greatest joy will be if you believe what is true.

You see humility here, verse 30.

He says, He must become greater, I must become less.

Because what happened for John the Baptist here was he said, You know what, this isn't about me, this is ultimately about Jesus.

He's the bridegroom, he's the one we want to follow and acknowledge here.

And then we see just an acknowledgement that God's the one who gives any any kind of scope to anything that we do.

Verse 27, he says a person can receive only what's given him from heaven.

And so here he just basically bends his knee and says, you know what, this is ultimately God's deal.

But here's what I'd like to just end with.

I'd like to go back into this chapter just a little earlier and read you a couple of the verses that were covered last week.

Josiah, Rick, Joel, Brady all did great jobs covering these verses.

Because here's the issue: sin, anger, hell, what God wants for you is the opposite of those.

Those are hard concepts, but but what he wants to offer to you, wants you to experience is grace.

That Jesus came and did for you, what you can't do so that you don't have to live in your sins, but you can be a disciple, a follower, and live in grace.

He wants you to experience his love, and he wants you to experience the promise of eternal life.

Here's where we see it.

Verse 16 through 18 of John 3.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

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.

So let me just take a moment and try to apply this.

Maybe you're here today and you say, you know, this is the kind of thing that I don't like about Christianity, and I'm uncomfortable, and I can't wait till this ends so I can leave and get to my car and get home as quickly as I can.

Can I just encourage you, if you're feeling that, don't let this moment pass because you may be right now experiencing the work of God's Spirit drawing you and saying, you know that this is true.

And if that's you, maybe today is your day to say, I do choose to believe in the Son.

And as much as I may not want to acknowledge my sin, by acknowledging my sin, I acknowledge that I move from wrath to being love and from damnation to eternal life.

And the way that you take that step is you simply say, God, I believe in what Jesus has done on my behalf.

I know I'm sinful and I need a Savior.

Maybe you're here and you say, you know what, I've believed this for a long time.

This is the same message I've heard, I've known.

I don't necessarily love that that it's talked about all the time because it feels a little uncouth to me, too, but but but but I do believe it.

Can I just encourage you to say this?

And that is, if you really believe it, the most loving thing you can do is not conceal it, but encourage others to come and believe it as well.

I mentioned earlier that we have Easter coming.

It's a great time to invite people.

We have invitation cards out at the Connect Desk.

Uh, a great time just to say, come and check out this Jesus that I've come to believe in.

And so maybe for you, this year is just a time to say, do I really believe this?

And if so, maybe my action step is to be engaged in inviting some others and being the best man or the bridesmaid at the wedding and being able to point people to who Jesus really is.

But either way, my hope is that what you see is that we have a God who really is worthy of worship.

Because sin means that we put ourselves in a place where what we deserve is anger and wrath, but God in his mercy has Jesus Christ take that punishment for us so that he can give without qualification, without exception, radical love and eternal life.

And what that hopefully does for you, what it does for me is it moves me to say, this is a God that I want to follow.

This is a God I want to be discipled by.

This is a God that's worthy of saying, whatever you say, that's what I'm going to do.

Because of how great your work has been on my behalf.

Father, we ask today very simply that you would help each of us here to understand these concepts.

And as troubling as some of them may be at times, to not be troubled by them, but instead be moved to worship and awe and reverence and obedience by them.

And Father, I pray especially for for any who are here today who would just say, I don't know that I've ever actually believed.

I pray that even just in this moment, there would be an acknowledgement of sin before you and a request just simply to say, God, would you let Jesus be my savior, my substitute?

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for being here.

Have a great day.