Justification IRL, Part 2 (Romans 5:3-8) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: They say that they love me, but I have no clue if they just

love me because they're supposed to, or if they actually like me, right?

There's some people that I know that are like that, um, I'm like, not really

sure if they actually, like, I, I know you love me because like, you know,

you're a Christian, you're supposed to love me and whatever, but like,

do you actually like, like me, right?

There's, there's those people.

Um, sometimes I think I felt that way about God, right?

I felt that way where I'm like, I know God loves me, but does

God actually like love me?

Like does he like me?

You know, does I know he like, loves me in the sense of like, he sent Jesus

to die for me and he cares about me.

But like, does he actually, is he actually like happy or is he just like, yeah, I

guess I'm just putting up with you, right.

Um, today in our passage, we're gonna be seeing that you can be 100%

confident that God actually loves you.

Actually loves you.

Like, is excited about the fact that he, he loves you.

He's not just doing it because he has to, he is not just doing it 'cause

he's obligated to that, that God loves you because he, he really does,

he actually does care about you.

He actually does enjoy the fact that he loves people.

Um.

And that that doesn't fluctuate based on how your week's been.

And it doesn't fluctuate based on the circumstances that

are happening in your life.

And it doesn't go up and down.

It doesn't get bigger or smaller depending on how you're doing or, or

how much you know about the Bible.

Um, God's love for you is actually not dependent on you at all.

Um, and we're gonna see tonight why you can be confident of that.

So.

Head on over to Romans five if you're not already there.

Um, we're gonna be looking at verses three through eight, okay?

And remember all this started with verse one, where it says, since we

have been justified by faith, right?

Since we have been justified by faith because of that, because we've

been made righteous, not because of anything we did, but by receiving

Jesus righteousness by faith.

Right?

Which that might not be true about you, right?

You might not have done that.

Um, so.

Don't assume that I'm talking about you when I, when we talk about these things.

Um, but because of that, last week we talked about how we

have peace with God, right?

We that God, we're not his enemy anymore.

If you trust Jesus, but you're actually, he's actually for you.

He's not against you anymore.

You're not under his wrath.

You've gone from the, the wrath room and you've gone into the grace room, right?

Um.

And you have access to God.

You get to one day, know that you're gonna have all of the joy

of seeing God and being with God.

And so that's why he said, we rejoice.

We're excited about that.

We, we are happy about that.

So then he says, not only that, we don't only rejoice, we're not

only happy about that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings.

That's really weird, right?

Don't let the Bible get so old to you.

And so.

Familiar to you that that's not weird Stuff in the Bible should be

like, whoa, that doesn't make sense.

Let me see what is actually happening here.

'cause this is weird.

Why would you be happy when you're suffering?

Right?

Why would you be happy when your relative dies?

Why would you be happy when your parents get sick or get cancer?

Why would you be happy when you get really hurt?

Really bad?

Why would you be happy when someone breaks up with you?

Why would you be happy when your life doesn't go the way you wanted it to?

Right?

We rejoice in our sufferings.

We can be happy even in our sufferings.

Why?

Well, he's gonna give us a few reasons.

He's gonna give us a few reasons, but the main reason that we're

looking at is that our sufferings don't mean that God doesn't love.

His people.

When Christians suffer, it doesn't mean that God doesn't love them, and

it's easy to feel that way, right?

If you're a Christian, you're think, oh, I'm a Christian, God save me.

Well, then why does all this stuff keep happening to me?

Why is my life so hard?

Why do bad things keep happening to me?

We rejoice in our sufferings, and the primary reason is because our

sufferings don't take away God's love.

We still have God's love.

Christians do, even in hard time.

Even when things don't go the way you want them to.

So our first point tonight, don't let suffering cloud God's love for you.

Right?

When bad things happen to you, your first reaction should not be, I

guess God doesn't love me anymore.

When something terrible happens to your family, your first reaction

shouldn't be, oh, well, I guess God doesn't love me that much.

In fact, suffering is actually an opportunity for you to

see God's love in action.

Suffering is actually a way that God shows in the midst of it that he still does

love you and he still is for you If you are connected to Jesus by faith, right?

If you are, if you've trusted Jesus, you've gone from being

God's enemy to being God's friend, suffering is actually a time for

you to see God still does love me.

He shows that based on what he does in suffering, the first thing

that we see about suffering is that you can rejoice in suffering.

You can be happy even when you're suffering because of its effects.

Okay.

I like rearranging the verses so they visually follow a structure.

Okay, so this is the same verses that we saw earlier, three through

five, the first half of five, but I just kind of indented it so you can

kind of see the progression, right?

This is like.

One of those things that like a, it's like a chain reaction, right?

Like dominoes falling.

That's what's happening here.

So we rejoice in our sufferings.

Why?

Well, we know that suffering produces endurance.

So we know that suffering can actually help us persevere.

It makes us more resilient, and then that endurance makes us more

like Jesus, and then that makes us more excited about being with Jesus.

That's what hope is, right.

Hope doesn't put us to shame.

We're never gonna be embarrassed about any of that.

So this is almost like dominoes falling, that there's a bunch of

effects that come down from suffering.

You see that?

So we rejoice in suffering because of its effects, right?

And if you've ever done something hard, you understand this idea, right?

I may not be excited that I am suffering, but I can be happy about

the downstream effects of suffering.

Right.

I was in the closest thing I've ever been into bootcamp, which

was band camp in high school.

And uh, band camp was actually really hard.

So we had, I don't know if you've told you this story.

We had a guy from the, I think it was from the Marines, and he came and did

our conditioning for our marching band.

So he used to train people that jump outta helicopters, and he came

to spend his lunch breaks with.

So we'd condition from one to two, it'd be like a hundred degrees out

and we'd go down to the, the turf and we'd run around and do crazy stuff.

Um, we like dog bear crawled.

Um, and like I didn't know marching band was as hard anyway.

Um, band camp wasn't fun, but there were a lot of things, a lot of

results of band camp that I enjoyed.

I got really tan 'cause I was outside from eight to five.

It's funny if you see all the band kids, like school ID photos, they're

all super tan because it's in the middle of band camp when they take the photos.

Um, I got really tan.

I was in pretty good shape 'cause I was outside moving around doing stuff all day.

I got really good at my instrument 'cause I was playing all the time.

Right.

There were a lot of good effects from band camp even though it was really hard.

It was, it was really hard.

It's eight to five people are yelling at you with a megaphone for a lot of it.

Um, and.

It was right.

Painful in a lot of ways, suffering, right?

Uh, I didn't enjoy having, you know, those little like rubber turf balls

when you're in the stadium for all those hours all week, those find

their way all over your house, right?

They're in your shoes, they're in your bed.

They're everywhere, right?

Because you just can't get rid of 'em.

They get stuck in your socks.

They get, you know?

Anyway, so.

Yeah, you smell like sunscreen perpetually for like the next month because

you've been wearing so much sunscreen.

Probably if you're one of those, people probably think that I'm

gonna have skin cancer because of all the sunscreen I put on.

Um, but anyway, there's a lot of suffering, right?

That happened.

But I still was happy because of all the effects of all the suffering.

Right.

And I'm sure you've, maybe it's your sport, maybe it's whatever

you, you work really hard at, there's some suffering involved.

But it, or maybe it's your job, you're like, I hate my job, but

I get money so it's worth it.

Right?

There's effects of your suffering that can be good for you.

And so these are the kind of three effects of suffering that

hopefully, um, can show you that God is actually using it for good.

Right?

It's the point.

The point is, right.

Even though Bandcamp was hard, even though I suffered, it was actually good for me.

It helped me do the things that I really wanted to do.

It.

It helped me do the things that actually I really enjoyed.

So your suffering, God is actually gonna use it to give you what you

really want, which is him, right?

If you're a Christian, what you really want is more of God, just

like we talked about last week, if you're a Christian, what you

really want is to be closer to God.

You wanna trust God more.

You wanna be more like Jesus.

And so God's gonna use the suffering to love you and give

you what you actually want.

So you see endurance, right?

Something that God does in suffering when hard things happen to you, he shows you

whether you're a real Christian or not.

Have you ever thought about it like that?

Maybe God is giving you this really hard circumstance you're in because he wants

you to know whether your faith is real.

He wants you to know whether you trust him for real.

God already knows, right?

God already knows whether you're a Christian or not,

but maybe you're not sure.

You're like, I don't know if I'm a Christian.

Did I really repent?

I don't know if I really trust God.

Well, maybe God's gonna bring something hard into your

life and it's gonna show you.

I actually do trust God because even though all this bad stuff happened

to me, I came back to Jesus, right?

I prayed to God and I relied on him.

I put my hope in him and not in my circumstances that'll show you,

oh, maybe I am a real Christian.

Whereas if you get really anxious and really scared all the time

and you don't trust God and you stop showing up to church and you

don't reach out for help, right?

Maybe then you weren't a real Christian.

So sometimes God uses these hard situations to show you.

Whether you're a Christian or not, right?

Kinda like, you know, the four soils, there's that one that gets

choked out by the cares and the, and the anxieties of the world, right?

Um, so he shows you your faith is real and he makes you more resilient, right?

That's the second part with your character.

God sanctifies you during suffering.

There's so many things that you can only learn the hard way, right?

The, the best lessons you've learned are the lessons you've learned.

The hard way.

Right.

Today, um, at the office, sun was telling me about one of their kids, um,

used to pick up their cat by its tail.

Um, and she kept telling him, don't do that.

That's gonna be, it's gonna be really bad for you.

Don't pick up the cat by the tail.

And they kept doing it.

And then one day the cat didn't wanna get picked up by its tail anymore and

so the cat did something about it.

Um Right.

I bet they learned that lesson.

Much better than the obedient kid who just said, okay, I'm not gonna do that.

Right.

Because that other person that, that was picking up the cat by tail, they've got

the scars to remind them what happens when you pick up a cat by its tail.

Right?

So sometimes your suffering helps you learn things that you wouldn't

have learned any other way, right?

It helps you learn, you know, God really was faithful because

not just, he wasn't just faithful with me during the good times.

He was faithful with me during the bad times.

God really is compassionate 'cause.

Even when it was, life was really hard.

God met me in those times and he sustained me and he showed me how

to find joy even in hard times.

So God grows you during suffering, right?

He, he grows who you are in ways that you can be happy about because

you're like, man, I'm growing.

That's something I can rejoice in, even if my circumstances aren't good.

And that's where we go with hope here.

God uses suffering to almost untangle you from your idols.

God uses suffering to, to help you let things go that you're holding onto.

So it's almost, I heard one person describe it like this.

It's like you're a, you're a plant and you love to let you know how those,

like, there's those vines that like they wrap themselves around things.

We're all like plants and we love to wrap ourselves like around the world.

We love to hold onto the world.

We love to hold on to the things that the world can offer us, right?

Whether it's money or pleasure or power or control.

We love to grab onto those things.

And so God, he's a good gardener and he has to come and, and

chop off those branches, right?

Because they're grabbing onto things that are bad.

Um,

you can rejoice in suffering.

Because your suffering untangles you from the world.

You're, it detaches you from loving the world so much, and it makes you love God

more because you realize, you know what?

This world isn't gonna make me happy.

Right?

I could have all the worldly things I want, right?

I could, I could be accepted by all the right people.

I could be friends with all the right people.

All the right people could like me, and I still wouldn't be happy

the way God can make me happy.

Right?

I could have all the, the pleasure I want, right?

I could go after all the things that I've always wanted to do.

My parents wouldn't let me.

And that won't make you happy.

Like God can, and sometimes God uses suffering to show you that.

Or maybe, right?

It's you, you want the, the control or the status or the power, right?

And God uses the suffering to show, you know what?

Those things are temporary, but what I give you, what

God gives you lasts forever.

And so you get this confidence that one day.

I'm gonna be really happy forever, right?

God says, um, at my right hand, our pleasures for evermore.

God gives you the most amount of joy for the longest amount of time.

And so he helps you to, to put your hope, your confidence in,

in him, and not in what the world offers to make you happy, right?

And that's kind of what that means here, when hope does not put you to shame.

If you are putting all of your eggs in God's basket, right?

You're putting all of your confidence in, you know what, I'm

gonna trust God to make me happy.

I'm gonna live God's way because his way is better.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the things that God wants me to do, because what

he has for me, he's, he's really wise.

He knows what's best for me, right?

I'm gonna lay aside the things that I want and, and do what

God wants because God loves me.

You're not, you're never gonna be embarrassed about that.

Yeah.

But if you pursue yourself and you pursue what you want, you're gonna one day,

either think you've wasted your life or you're gonna be really embarrassed.

'cause you're gonna stand before God and he's gonna expose you.

It'd be kind of like if you put all your, your, let's say you were dating someone.

Um, some of you imagine really hard, some of you not as much, right?

But let's say you were dating someone and you.

Put all your hope into marrying someone.

You're like, I'm gonna marry this person.

I'm gonna marry that guy.

I'm gonna marry that girl.

Right?

And so you're, you're thinking about what it's like when you're gonna be married.

You're, you're planning your wedding, you've got girls, you got your

Pinterest board already set up, right?

You, you know, you got your ring picked out, you know, your wedding

colors, you got your baby names right?

Or guys, you, you're planning for this future together.

You're like, oh, we're gonna move here.

We're gonna do this, or I'm gonna have this job and this is what

our marriage is gonna look like.

It's gonna be great.

And you're, let's say you're engaged and you're planning the wedding.

You, you've already sent out the invites.

You've got your photographer, you've, you've spent your thousands of

dollars on, on all the people, right?

Your food and your, your videographer, and your flowers and all this stuff.

And you've written out your vows already.

You, you already know the commitments that you're gonna stand and, and

before God and say to this person.

And you've planned this whole wedding.

You, you've, all your relatives are gonna come in town.

All your friends, you've got your, you know, you've, you've got your groomsmen,

you've got your bridesmaids, you're all ready to go for this date, and that

person doesn't show up to the wedding.

That would be so embarrassing, right?

All like, think about standing up there and looking at all the people

that you invited to the wedding and they're like, where is this person?

Where are they?

They're, they didn't show up.

If they left you,

if you don't put your hope in Jesus, that's gonna be you.

When you stand before God,

you're gonna look back at all of the things that you wanted in life, all the

success, all the, the happiness, all the stuff that you put your hope in.

And it's gonna, they're gonna be like that person that left you at the altar.

You're just gonna, you're gonna be so ashamed and so embarrassed because

they, they let you down and you built your whole life on this thing.

You built your whole life on yourself, or you built your whole life on your, the way

that, the way that people perceive you, you built your whole life on whatever it

is that you're pursuing instead of God.

And you're just, you're gonna be so embarrassed 'cause it's gonna,

it's gonna leave you high and dry.

That's what it's like to put your hope in something that's, that's not God.

When you put your hope in God, it's exactly the opposite.

You'll never be embarrassed, right?

God offers a hope, a future confidence that is always worth it, right?

Heaven is never gonna be underwhelming.

It's never, it's not even gonna be a little bit underwhelming, right?

Like sometimes you go do something really cool and you're like, oh,

that was cool, but like it was like 90% of what you thought it would be.

Heaven's not gonna be 90% of what you thought it was gonna be.

It's gonna be like a million percent of what you thought it was gonna be, right?

You won't need to, to hide anything or cover anything up anymore 'cause

you're, you're gonna be free from, from all your sin, from all your shame.

Also, nothing you do for God is ever gonna be wasted, right?

No second that you spend praying is ever a waste of time.

Nothing you learn about God's word is ever a waste of time.

No way that you love someone is ever a waste of time.

No time.

You withhold something 'cause you're patient.

No money.

You spend being generous for God is ever gonna be a waste of time.

All this stuff is, you're never gonna look back and be like, I wish I didn't do that.

I really wish I didn't love that person.

You're never gonna say that, but you might say, I wish I did love that person.

I wish I did share the gospel with that person.

I wish I did get closer to God.

I wish I did do more of what God asked me to do, rather than focusing on myself.

Right?

Nothing you do for God is ever gonna be an embarrassment.

On the final day.

It might be embarrassing now, but one day guess who's gonna be embarrassed?

Not you.

Right?

So, and this, this is all related to being made right?

With God, being righteous by faith through Jesus.

That's what all of this is tied to, because that's what gets you God, right?

And because of your made righteous by Jesus.

By a real person who, who really came and really lived and, and really died.

Your experience of God's love, like we talked about, God's favor

is tied to an objective thing that really happened, right?

The fact that God loves you is tied to a, a real thing that really happened.

It's not tied to your feelings.

It's not tied to how great the worship was at your church.

It's not tied to how recently you went to camp.

Right.

It's tied to something that really happened.

God really came down as a man to die for you.

And that's kind of what this, where this goes, right?

We rejoicing our sufferings knowing that suffering produces

all those things resulting in hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured

into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So the reason that we don't have to be embarrassed.

About anything as a Christian.

The reason that that one day you're, you're never gonna be ashamed of anything

you did for God and all the stuff you did for God is always gonna be worth,

it has to do with God's love, right?

You can be happy in the hardest of times because you have a fu, you have

a confidence in the future that is never gonna, never gonna leave you

embarrassed because currently, right, actually, God's love has already.

Been poured into the hearts of Christians.

That's who our is through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So this is really confusing, right?

Because it's future hope about something that already happened.

God's love has been poured into our hearts, so we've, there's this experience

of God's love, whatever that is, and it comes through the Holy Spirit.

Now, how does that work?

Well.

The best way I could put it, and I didn't come up with this sentence.

This is, um, someone else said this to me and this is the

best way I could describe it.

So what happens here is the Holy Spirit

are actually, let's go to this next verse.

This is why the connecting words in the Bible are so important.

Four.

That means that four, like, that's because, so this thing, God's

love poured into our hearts.

Has to do with this next verse.

That's why those connecting words matter.

So it has to do with the fact that Christ died.

Jesus died for me before I deserved it, right?

I was a sinner, ungodly, right?

That's me.

Christ died for me, and that is why I can know that God loves me.

So how does that work?

Well, the idea here is there's a historical fact.

Christ died for me before I even asked him to die for me.

Christ died for me while I was his sinner.

Christ died for me while I was ungodly, when I deserved to go to hell under

God's wrath, apart from God, God's enemy.

I hated God.

I rejected him.

I worshiped myself.

I lived for, for myself rather than God.

Jesus died for me then.

So I know that God, if God loved me, then he will surely still love me now.

God loved me at my worst.

How much more will he love me now that he's adopted me?

Now that he's justified me, he's made me righteous, right?

If he loved me before I deserved it, of course he'll love me now that he's adopted

me, now that I'm his his child, right?

So what happens is the Holy Spirit takes this fact, this, this thing

that really happened in history.

You could go to the place this happened.

The people who saw this would tell you it happened, right?

Those people.

Alright, this, this event that really happened, this thing that really

happened, the Holy Spirit takes those facts and it shows you right?

The Holy Spirit.

He shows you God's love in that, right?

And you can really experience that.

God's love isn't just a fact.

To know God's love is.

Experience that Christians really have.

Christians really experience being loved by God, right?

This isn't just something you do on a test.

This isn't just two plus two is four on paper.

This is two plus two is four in real life, right?

This is, I have two things.

I have two things and I put 'em together and I have four things, right?

That's two plus two in real.

This is God's love in real life.

It's this thing that really happened.

And then if you be, if you become a Christian, you trust Jesus to

take away your sin and give you his righteousness and and be raised from

the dead, then you can really experience that the fact that God loves you,

and it really gives you real joy, a real feeling that God loves me.

We talked about a wedding earlier.

It's kind of like how the you, when you propose, or Well, if

you're a guy, you propose, right?

Don't, don't propose to anyone, ladies.

Okay.

Let your fiance to be propose to you.

Um, when someone proposes, they give their, their, their,

uh, fiance a ring, right?

That ring is a tangible expression of a subjective reality,

right, of, of their love.

Like when I proposed to Shea, she didn't have like a thermometer

to see how much I loved her.

She couldn't tell like, how much does Lewis really love me right now?

She couldn't measure it.

She didn't have like a thermometer or a radar gun to be like,

how much does Lewis love me?

But the point is that the ring gives you an expression of that love, right?

So if she's ever not sure if I really love her enough to marry her.

She can look at her hand and say, oh yeah, he does, right?

Because he spent all this money on this ring and he told me when he

gave me this ring that he wanted to marry me and that he loved me a lot.

That's an oversimplification of what I said, but there you go.

That's the Cliff Notes version, right?

The the ring is a tangible expression of how I feel about Shea.

Right.

Christ's death is a tangible expression of how God feels about Christians.

Does that make sense?

Because you don't have a thermometer in the morning or a radar gun.

You can't be like, oh, how much does God love me today?

Right.

You don't have a, a way of, of knowing that apart from what God does.

God has to show you that, right?

You can't just assume that God loves you.

'cause what if he doesn't?

Then you're gonna be put to shame, right?

If you lived your whole life thinking God loved you and you

show up to heaven, and he's like, depart from me, I never knew you.

That's gonna happen to some people and they're gonna be put to shame 'cause

they're gonna walk up to heaven and assume that God's God loves them and

they're gonna be really disappointed.

So

if you are a Christian, you can be 100% confident about how God feels.

Because how God feels about you is determined by Jesus, not by you because

Jesus died when you were unlovable.

Right?

Raise your hand if you ask Jesus to die for you.

Right?

No one asked Jesus to die for them.

Jesus died for you before you actually even.

Existed, right?

God loved you before you existed, right?

If you're a Christian, God actually made you so he could love you.

Isn't that crazy?

So the way you measure God's love for you is you look backward at what Jesus

did, and that's our second point.

Look to Christ to see God's love.

Right.

You don't determine how much God loves you by how much you prayed this week.

That's not how you measure God's love for you.

You don't measure God's love for you by how you felt at

worship night at camp, right?

You don't measure God's love for you based on what your parents say about you.

You measure God's love for you.

By what he's done to show his love for his people.

And that's why you can rejoice even in really hard times because does

the, the hard time you're going through change what Christ did?

No.

Right?

Right.

When you get sick, it doesn't change what Jesus did.

So God's love for you doesn't change either.

When if your parents got divorced, it doesn't change God's love for you.

'cause it doesn't change what Jesus did.

God's love for you has to do with what Jesus did, not with what

you do or how your life's going

because God's love comes from him, not from you.

And that's what we see in the rest of these verses.

Verses 68, while still weak at the right time.

Christ died for the ungodly.

Then we explain this more.

Right?

For no one will scar, scarcely die for a righteous person.

Oh, perhaps for a good person one would dare even die, right?

Maybe if you really thought that person was worth it, maybe

you'd die for them, right?

Maybe a parent would die for their kid, right?

Maybe a kid would die for their parent.

Maybe you die for, you know, your, your favorite, you know, your

favorite athlete or whatever, right?

Probably not.

I wouldn't recommend that, but maybe you would, but God.

Which I love sentences to start with, but God, right?

Those are like some of the best sentences in the Bible.

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us.

And remember this us is if you've been justified by faith, right?

The US is the people who've trusted God to take away their sin, right?

So if that's not you, this isn't for you.

It could be, you could change that.

If you trust Jesus tonight, you, you could be part of this us.

But if you're holding God at arm's length and not trusting him, then that's not you.

You're not included in this, right?

What I'm talking about with God's love doesn't apply to

you until you trust Jesus.

So God shows his love for for Christians, and that while we are

still sinners, Christ died for us.

Which again, when we talk about being a Christian, it starts with

admitting this part right here.

Jesus Christ died for the ungodly.

So if you're out there saying, I'm a good person, I'm not that bad.

You're disqualified from being someone.

Christ died for.

Christ died for the ungodly, the ticket to entering the US here.

Part of that is admitting, I'm one of those people.

I'm one of those ungodly people, those sinful people.

Those not good people that Christ died for, right?

There's nothing about me that

attracted God's love,

and that honestly is really, really comforting when you think about it, right?

Like you think about some people, they get married, and then when

that person isn't attracted to them anymore, they divorced them.

And they say, sorry, I'm done.

I'm no long.

I don't love you anymore because there's nothing about you

that I want to love anymore.

Right?

That's the opposite of how it works with God.

God said, there's nothing about you that makes me wanna love you, but

I love you, so I'm gonna love you, and I'm actually gonna make you more

lovable because I'm gonna sanctify you and I'm gonna grow you, and one day

I'm gonna actually make you perfect.

So God's love for you isn't because you attracted God's love.

It's actually because God decided I, I'm gonna love you.

I'm gonna choose this person and I'm gonna love them.

And so the more honest you are about your sin, the more amazing God's love is, which

actually should make you happier, right?

The more the, the bigger god's love is to you, the the more amazing that

is and the more happy you'll be.

Right?

God loves me so much, right?

If you think God only loves you a little bit, you're only

gonna be a little bit happy.

But if you realize God loves me so much, you're actually gonna

be able to rejoice even more.

So Christ's death is a right certain and unchangeable

expression of God's love, right?

If I know there's times where you'll probably feel like you,

you feel more loved by God, right?

Maybe you, you just had a, a, a great week of Bible reading, or you, you had

a really great experience singing the God, or you spent time around Christians,

or you just went to this Bible study, you feel like, man, I, I feel so,

I feel God's love more right now.

And that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with that, but

you have an objective place to look to when you aren't

sure about God's love, right?

If you're a Christian, you can always go to this verse.

This verse is always true no matter how bad you messed up, right?

This verse is always true.

No matter how your life's going, no matter what kind of bad things happen to you.

And that, and that's the best part, right?

And that's the best part of the gospel is that it's, it's

not about you, it's about God.

God sent Jesus because he loved people, right?

John three 16, for God so loved the world, this is how God loved the world.

He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him, anyone can do this.

Whoever believes in him shall not perish.

Right?

That's certain will not, shall not.

It's not gonna happen.

Not a chance.

They'll have eternal life, right?

You can be with God, the most amount of happiness for the longest amount

of time, what you were made for.

And so if you're recognizing tonight, you know what, I, I'm not part of that.

Right?

Maybe you're thinking, I, I, I'm, God can't love me.

I've done too many.

You don't know what I've said.

You don't know what I've seen.

You don't know what I've done.

You don't know what I've thought.

Join the club.

Right.

We're all, we're all sinners.

Some of us.

Sure.

Right?

You can say, oh, I'm the worst sinner than that person.

Great.

God shows his love for sinners.

Doesn't matter how big of a sinner

you Yeah, God.

God shows his love for sinner.

And so if you're a sinner, you qualify for God's love.

And so if you're out there and you're saying, man, I'm so unlovable

by God, I just, I, I really want you to see that God loves sinners.

That's the qual, the qualification of being loved by God is being a sinner.

And if you recognize your sin, you say, you know, I, I am unlovable.

There's nothing about me that deserves to go to heaven.

There's nothing about me that deserves God's love for me, but Jesus, you

said that you can take away my sin.

You can take away God's wrath against my sin.

I trust you to do that.

Jesus, you're the only reason I can go to heaven.

I need your perfect life.

I need your righteousness.

And one day you're gonna rescue me from death.

Just 'cause, 'cause you rose from the dead.

And so I, I trust that you can help me live forever too.

And you turn from your sin because you love Jesus and you trust him.

You can experience God's love and be the happiest you've ever been, even

when life gets really, really hard.

Let's pray and we'll go to small groups.

God, your love is amazing.

We don't understand your love sometimes,

but that's okay.

Um, in one of his prayers, the apostle Paul asks to.

He asked for help to understand your love.

So I pray for all of us right now in this room, that you give us the strength to

comprehend your amazing love that for even the people that in this room that

have been a Christian for a long time, who know the Bible really well, who maybe

none of this was new for them, I pray that you help them just to, to be more

confident in your love, to be more amazed by your love and more satisfied, more

excited about the fact that you love them.

And I pray for, um.

People here who feel unlovable by God or who don't want God's love.

I pray God that you show them that um, you are better than anything

else they could ever pursue.

Anything else they could ever want.

You are always gonna be worth it and always gonna be, um,

what we're made to, to love.

Pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.