Lent: What Kind of God Do You Have

So we're taking a break from our journey through the book of Acts.

That's what we had been doing for the past couple of months.

Lent started this past week on Ash Wednesday.

It began, and Lent means springtime.

It's the 40 or so days leading up to Easter.

So each Sunday leading up to Easter, we will take a passage from the lectionary, the Book of Common Prayer, a historic book that sets out passages for each Sunday in the season of Lent.

And so this 1 Peter passage is our passage for this morning.

This morning, the question I want us to ask is what kind of God do you have?

What kind of God do you have?

What's your view of God?

Now let's imagine Karen and Janet go to summer camp, and this is a really, really good summer camp.

It's a summer camp at the base of a mountain, and there's a river to fish on, and there's a lake where you can fish also, or you could canoe, and they actually even have ski boats at this camp.

This camp's incredible.

The directors of the camp are unbelievable.

They have fun dances, they have creative arts programs.

Every night there's campfires and singing and some more.

I mean, this is a fantastic camp.

And Karen has a fantastic camp counselor.

This camp counselor, you know, when Karen's feeling a little homesick, the counselor comes along and befriends her and loves her and prays for her.

If there's conflict in the cabin, the counselor works it out and everything works out.

But Janet, Janet gets the one horrible counselor.

And when she's homesick, if best, if she even has any attention paid to her, it's just sort of like, hey, toughen up, kid.

When there's conflict in the cabin, all these girls bickering and there's groups forming and going against each other, the counselor doesn't even pay attention to it.

So Janet pretty much cries every day of summer camp until the last day when she gets picked up, while Karen doesn't cry at all until the last day when she gets picked up, right?

And this is the same summer camp.

But Karen will get in the car and her parents will say, How was camp?

And Karen will say, it was unbelievable.

That is the best camp I've ever been to.

It's the best camp, period.

Janet will get in the car, same camp.

She'll get in the car and her parents will say, What, what, how was camp?

And Janet will say, that is the worst camp of all camps.

And it was the same exact camp because their view and experience of camp came through one counselor.

The counselor is the lens by which Karen and Janet view this same exact summer camp.

And that's the point.

Often our problem with God is not God.

Our problem with camp with God is a really bad camp counselor.

Meaning we can have a bad lens upon something that's really actually good.

And for most people in church and around church, it's easy to come away with this thought that God is sort of disappointed with you.

Or maybe even angry with you.

Or he's just like based on your behavior, it goes back and forth.

He's disappointed in one moment, and then you shape up, and then he's okay with you, but then you mess up, and then he's disappointed, or he's angry with you.

And all of this kind of adds up to this behavioral mindset to spirituality that I need to shape up more and more and more and more as to receive the love and acceptance that you really want.

And the times you're not doing so well, all of that is at risk.

And so a few questions begin to haunt us over time when this lens like this is implemented in our lives.

Is God disappointed with me?

Am I a mistake?

Can I or do I do something that causes God to be angry with me?

Is he for me?

Is he always with me?

And see, if these questions are sort of in limbo, an incredible amount of anxiety and fear is added to your life.

But do you see that that's not necessarily God?

That can actually be the lens by which you view God, but not necessarily the God of the Scriptures.

Which brings us to this morning's passage, 1 Peter 3.

I'll read verses 18 through 20.

For Christ also suffered once for sins.

Once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, strange little verse, we'll talk about it in just a sec.

Because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

So a few points.

Point number one, in Jesus you do not, and we've said this before, in Jesus you do not just have a teacher.

You have that, but in Jesus, you do not just have a teacher, you have a substitute.

Right?

Verse 18, Christ suffered once for sins, meaning it's over.

You don't have to do that.

You don't have to live your life trying to atone for your mistakes, past, present, or future.

There's nothing else for you to add.

Jesus was the revelation of a substitutionary, atoning God.

He, Jesus, was the substitute.

Now we love making a new commitment, a new plan.

We love saying we're promise keepers, even though we don't perfectly fulfill a lot of our promises.

We know we should go to bed early to give ourselves margin in the morning to have a prayerful, meditative, devotional time, followed by a light run in the morning sunshine.

But we grab a box of Nella wafers and watch more Olympics.

Because at 11 o'clock, curling is so important to us right now.

Right?

We just make those types of decisions.

We're never as loving or patient or kind as we want to be.

We're never as generous as we want to be.

We're never any of these things as we should be, as Jesus calls us to be.

And this is why it says in verse 18, and this is why for those of us in touch with this reality that we are more broken than we originally thought, this verse 18, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God is incredibly relieving because what brings you and permanently sets you secure with the Creator God is God, not you.

And that's the best possible news you could ever hear because it is relief to all the ways that we try to earn salvation to get into the kingdom, into the family, right with God, and all the ways we try to continue to earn our salvation even after we're Christians.

All the ways we try to earn our wholeness and our value in this world.

But to hear that God Himself died the righteous for the unrighteous to make us whole, that's incredibly relieving.

And then Peter brings up this Noah story.

In verse 19 is a strange little verse.

Did Christ preach to dead people or to people from Noah's day, or did Christ preach to angels or demons?

And where did that happen?

And what point in history did that happen?

And I should say, that's a big debate with a lot of people, and we're not going to chase that right now, but this Noah story is pretty fantastic in general.

And maybe you remember it, right?

Big arc, big flood.

The world is populated at this point, and everyone is forgetting about God.

They're living their own way.

There's an incredible amount of selfishness, an incredible amount of abuse going on at this point.

So God decides to flood the earth.

Just start over, wipe it clean.

He's just gonna wipe it clean.

But Noah found favor, Genesis 6.8, but Noah found favor, or better put, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

So Noah starts building this ark, huge boat in the middle of the desert.

People think he's crazy.

And Noah and his family and some animals get on it, and then it begins to rain, and it floods, and they are saved.

Now, other people groups had flood stories.

Flood stories were common.

It's not like the Jewish people and us through the Jewish people.

This is not special to us.

Babylonians had flood stories about rain wiping away cities and people, which makes sense because that's what floods do.

So this was actually a common story.

And the common view of the flood story was that the rains were coming to judge the people by the gods, to punish evil that people were creating in the world.

And everyone knew how this story went.

So even hearing this story, the people hearing the story would be nodding along.

They know this story.

This story's around.

Flood stories are around.

Everyone knew how this was told, how this what was going to be taught, that people would just be nodding right along, but see, this flood story is different.

And that's the point of this story in our scriptures.

Because this one true God does not say at the end of the story, and if you keep doing all this, I will flood you again, and I will flood you again, and I will flood you again.

This story ends differently.

Genesis 9, 12 through 13, and God said, This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all, all generations to come.

I've set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

And then God says, Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

And the literal word there for rainbow is warbo.

So here we have this great imagery of God laying down his warbo.

And it comes back to that question: what kind of God do you have?

Because do you see it?

Do you see it in this story?

The point is not that floods will stop.

Floods are still happening.

So it's not that floods stopped.

Floods kept happening, floods still happen.

The point was to subvert any tendency that we have to believe that God is condemning and vindictive.

That's what this story does.

Point number two is this your gods still judge you, but this God does not.

This story would have blown people's minds at the time because all the other stories ended the same way, and this story ended differently.

All the other gods are angry, and this God is gracious.

And our gods are still angry.

My gods and your gods are still angry.

Our gods of materialism and status, power, greed.

They promise love, wholeness, and actually they only deliver flood after flood after flood because we get there and it's just never quite enough.

But this one true God makes a covenant to not relate with us like that.

See, that's what the story is saying.

God is gracious, while all the other gods will wear you out with condemnation.

And this is what Peter's saying.

Christ died once for sins.

There's no condemnation here.

That's what Peter's saying.

Back into 1 Peter.

1 Peter chapter 3, verse 21 and 22.

1 Peter 3:21

Baptism, which corresponds to this.

So he carries this water imagery through.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal.

So it's not that baptism, the actual practice, the duty of it as some merit that saves you.

No, he says, no, no, that's that's not it.

It's the appeal, it's the heart of it to appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers, having been subjected to him.

So we have all this water imagery, Noah in a boat.

And then Peter carries straight into people, us being immersed in water.

And here's point number three is you exist immersed in this good, loving God.

Philosopher Pete Rollins says this the idea of a ship sunken in the depths of the ocean, while the ship contains the water, and the water contains the ship, the ship only contains a fraction of the water while the water contains the whole of the ship.

Our saturation by God does not merely fill us, but also testifies to an ocean we cannot contain.

Thus, desire for God is born in God.

This week I read a parable about a man who buried a million dollars in another person's backyard.

Not a true story, it's a parable.

But so imagine this.

Imagine I've buried a million dollars in your backyard.

And I come up to you and I say, hey, uh, I buried a million dollars in your backyard.

It's under a flat rock in the middle of your backyard, but easy to find.

It's back there.

I have no intention to come get it.

It's not my money anymore, it's on your property, it's yours.

All you have to do is go get it.

I'll never go get it.

I'll never claim it again.

It's there, and that is that, it's yours.

So now you have some incredibly good news.

Right?

This is some incredibly good news for you.

There's a million dollars in your possession in your backyard right now.

Go home and look for it.

Just go home and look for it.

But it will end there unless you trust me and go and get the million dollars.

It could sit there forever.

It would be in your possession, but you would have no enjoyment of it.

And the point of the parable is that your faith does not earn you the money or cause me to give you the money.

The money's already there.

Your faith has no relationship to the cause of the money.

Your faith only comes into play in regards to your enjoyment of the money, your enjoyment of the gift.

Because if you trust me, if you trust me, then you will go get the money and you'll enjoy it.

But the parable also goes on to say it's also very, very possible that you will hear all of that good news about that million dollars buried in your backyard under a flat rock.

It's in your possession.

It's there.

You can hear all that good news and think there's no way news like that could be that good for me.

And that's the gospel.

The gospel is the good news that's there.

And it's just there.

You didn't cause it, you don't earn it, but your faith is implementing your enjoyment of it.

Relief from this world.

Salvation.

So your God still judge you.

But do you see it?

The God of grace, known in Jesus the Christ, does not.

That's what Peter is saying.

That's why he's referring back to the story of Noah.

The gift is there.

May you not just know about it, but receive it and enjoy it.

My brothers and sisters, there is no judgment and condemnation anymore.

That store is closed.

Your salvation is by Christ alone.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for this good word that Christ died for sins once.

Once and for all.

And that you promise to us in the great covenant that we see in this picture in Noah.

That you promise to us, not to relate to us in condemnation and vindication, but you promise to relate to us out of love.

And thank you for Jesus that we see that revelation, that substitutionary atonement, that it is all over, nothing for us to atone for, but only to receive.

Your graciousness, the fullness of it, the sufficiency of it.

May we surrender our lives in a greater way.

May we implement faith.

Not to earn something or cause something, but to rest deeper.

And your grace and salvation for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.