Advent - John 3:16-17 - Coleton Segars

The first time I told Rainey I loved her, she said, thank you.

I was like, You're welcome.

I don't it's not normally what people say.

Normally it's so awkward you just say it and then you never call them again.

Some of y'all know that story.

Uh there's a better story.

The second time I told Randy I loved her, uh, she asked, why?

And I was like, Woman, you're difficult.

Like I was like, well, I mean she really she won genuinely wanted to know.

And I was like, well, it's like like me and you, and like when I think of you, Webster's dictionary defines love as, and I was like, I was like, man, I don't know.

I just just say you love me too.

Let's get married and we'll just finish this.

Let's just be done with this thing.

We just love each other.

Um she's not in here, so I can say all this stuff, but she's working with our kids.

But um, but um actually, why is a really good question when someone says that they love you.

This passage says, for God so loved the world.

It's really beautiful.

The whole passage is very beautiful.

But the reality is uh for the world up to this point in history, here's what the world has done for God.

The world has rejected God completely.

Strong start.

Uh, worshiped nearly a hundred different false gods and idols during the time of the Old Testament.

They rebelled against all of his commands, but were obedient to the commands of the other false gods, like Chemosh, who says that you should sacrifice your children to the fire.

They were obedient to that.

They couldn't keep Sabbath on Saturdays, but they could kill their children in the fire.

The world exploited the weak and built their empires on the backs of slaves.

They engaged in nearly 90 wars in the Old Testament time, not including the other 300 known wars during that time from other cultures that are not mentioned in the scriptures.

The world totally abandoned God's laws, and if there were people who were trying to follow God's laws, the priest and God's temple stole their offerings and stole their money and then used their power and their authority to actually prey on young women who came into the temple of God.

And so, when it says, for God so loved the world, the world should really ask, why?

Like, what is there in our history, what is there in our resume that's worth loving?

There's nothing that we've done that's worth loving.

It would make more sense if John 3.16 said, For God was so disgusted with the world, for God was so angry with the world, for God was so disappointed with the world, for God was just so embarrassed by how the world had acted, like that would make more sense.

But it doesn't say that.

It's this really beautiful text that says, For God so loved this rebellious world that he chose to give his only son, not to condemn the world or to embarrass the world or to be angry at it or anything like that, but to save the world through him.

And the reason that it says this and not those other things, the reason it says, For God so loved the world, is because God's love for us is not based on what we do and what we can offer him.

It's not based on how we perform, his love for us is not based on how we behave.

His love for us is based on something completely different than anything that we normally base our love on.

And it's important for us to understand this because if we really believe, if we think of God's love, that I have to earn it, that I have to stop sinning in order to make myself lovable, I have to do these things in order to earn his favor or anything like that, if we live that way, we're gonna wind up in this space where all we do is focus on, we don't live in freedom or anything like that, we live in fear of just trying not to sin, just trying not to sin, just trying not to sin.

And our whole lives, if we choose to live under that, most people just rebel against it and like, well, if I can't please them, then who needs them?

But if we choose to live under that and we go, well, I I I just I'm trying not to do this, trying not to do that, then we wind up living a life that is constantly doing the checks and balances of our own day and looking at our lives, going, well, if I do bad, something bad's gonna happen.

If I do good, maybe he'll like me a little bit.

And we wind up in this space where we're kind of in this relationship with God where it's like, I'm nervous to be around you because I'm not totally sure how you feel about me.

Brennan Manning, um, who if you've never read Brennan Manning, Brennan Manning makes me love Jesus and makes me feel loved by God.

Um, all of his books do that.

You should read one of them, if not all of them.

But he talks very humorously about a life and what it's like for him to try and live as a good Catholic, making uh God love him.

And he talked, he was set free from that idea, but he talks about this idea.

And look, I have no shade on Catholics.

I don't care.

If you're a Catholic, that's great.

But he's just he's just talking about his experience of living as a Catholic, okay?

So if you have Catholic background, if you are Catholic yourself, Lord bless you, that's wonderful.

But he just talks about the idea of what it was like for him, and he talks about it very humorously, but what it was like for him trying to earn God's favor in the tradition that he grew up in.

It's a long quote, but follow me.

Uh this is what he says.

Here's a routine situation for every Catholic of my generation and what they had to deal with.

For example, you're at a baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Friday night in June 1950.

Catholics are forbidden to eat meat under penalty of a mortal sin, but you want a hot dog.

Now, just considering eating meat on Friday is a pardonable sin.

Wanting to is another.

You've not moved from your seat and you've already sinned twice.

What if you actually ate one?

Well, if you actually ate one aside from the risk of choking on the forbidden food and getting punished by God right on the spot, have you committed a mortal sin or a pardonable sin?

Well, if you think it's a mortal sin, uh it may be mortal.

If you think it's a pardonable sin, it still may be mortal.

After much thought, you decide it's pardonable.

So you call the hot dog vendor over, you take the money out of your pocket, and you buy a hot dog.

This is clearly an act of free will.

You figure you can go to confess your sin to the priest on Saturday night.

But wait, does a pardonable sin become mortal when you commit it deliberately?

That's a chance you take.

What if you've forgotten it's Friday?

Well, in that case, eating a hot dog may not be a sin, but forgetting it's Friday is a sin.

What if you remember it's Friday halfway through the hot dog?

Is it a pardonable sin to finish the hot dog?

If you throw it away, is wasting food a sin?

Within five minutes, you've committed enough sins to land you in purgatory for a million years.

The simplest thing to do is to not take any chances and just stay away from Yankee Stadium on Fridays.

Being a Catholic in those days meant a lifelong struggle to avoid sin, and while you didn't want to go to hell, you didn't want to rot in purgatory either.

So you played it safe.

Think about every thought, word, action, desire, and omission, and assume that everything you want to do is a sin.

Now, he's telling it jokingly, and I really wanted you guys to laugh more at that, but that's okay.

Just being honest.

But to me, if you're confused and it felt like you were doing calculus while you're reading that, I think that like all the dude wanted to eat was a hot dog in a baseball game.

And it feels like then he's counting and doing the checks and balances and all those different things.

And to me, Catholic or not, Protestant or not, if we think that we have to earn God's favor, that is what life will be like for us.

If we choose to live under that.

If we think that like I have to earn his favor, and every time I sin, he doesn't love me, and then I have to do something right to make him love me again, or I have to confess it, and then he'll love me more.

If you choose to live like that, that is what life will be like.

And I think the reason most people go like, hey, never mind.

Like I can't, it's just too much.

I honestly, I don't like doing math while I'm eating the hot dog.

Um, and so I just I would just choose rather not to do some of those things.

I think this idea and believing that God only loves us when we do good, or thinking that our behavior somehow affects his love for us, what it leads to is people rejecting God.

It's the reason why 1.2 million youth leave the church every year when they graduate high school, they leave the faith that they were brought up in, and they do that because they're presented with a God that's like this, and they're like, I just don't want to live like that.

I've watched my parents be burdened by their sin and be burdened by those things, and it's fine to feel remorse and all the rest of it, but to their relationship with God was not one defined by love, but it was one defined by I have to do this and do this and check this T and dot this I and do this and this and this, and then God might be happy enough with me to do something kind to me.

And if I don't do those things, then I'm waiting for a giant hand to smack me from the sky at some point in my day.

And nobody wants to give their lives to that.

And the good news is, is like that's not what he's like.

He's not like that at all.

The God of John 3.16 is a God that says, I know what the world has done.

I know that it's been nothing but rebellion, I know it's been nothing but turning away from me when I'm calling to you, but I love you so much that I'm gonna come to rescue you because, as Rainey said earlier, rescue is his posture, it's his default, it's what he does.

And so, love for God and love, or excuse me, love for you from God is not based on your behavior, and we need to know that because it's supposed to set us free.

And so, what I want to do today, God's love is based on something else, and what I want to do is I just want to point to three things that God's love is based on that we see in the scriptures that would hopefully, the idea is that we would hear this and it would be this space that actually sets us free.

In no way do I want to say, like, yeah, he loves you so much to just go sin all you want.

We talked about that last week.

Sin steals your joy.

He's not telling you not to do it because he hates you, he's telling you not to do it.

He's like, it's gonna steal something from you.

And so in no way am I saying, he loves you so much, just live your own truth.

That's not what I'm saying.

But I do think that there's space, and there needs to be, especially this week of Advent on love.

There needs to be a space where we look at the scriptures that testify to the fact that he loves you not based on your performance, he loves you not based on your behavior, he loves you not based on how much you sinned this week, today, just now, tomorrow, and all the rest of it.

He loves you because his love for you is based on something that's outside of your control and not something that you can actually manage yourself.

And so, three things why he loves you.

The first reason God loves you is because you're his child.

You're his child.

When I was in seventh grade, I missed this huge project due date.

Um and I, you know, the assignment came due.

I didn't do it, got an F on my grade, and back then F's were bad.

I don't know if they're getting bad anymore.

Um, but I had to take it and like get it signed by my dad, and which was awful.

It sounds terrible.

And so I had this brilliant idea just to lie, um, because lying is such a good thing.

Um but when he saw it, he asked me what happened, and I was like, uh he the teacher didn't tell me when it was due.

Like I didn't know.

And I was like, and actually, there's tons of other kids in the class that didn't know it was due either.

So all of us, it's really the teacher's fault, it's not our fault.

And I thought my dad would be like, ah, fine, whatever, and sign it and move on.

He did not do that.

He called a meeting with the teacher and the principal, and I was like, oh no.

Because I'm definitely wrong.

I just made everything up.

I have no idea if I can prove this in any way whatsoever.

So sitting in this meeting with my dad, the principal, the teacher, I'm miserable.

The teacher brings the syllabus that he hands out at the beginning of the year that says, This thing is due on this day, which I received, and I should have known that.

Then he brings his gradebook just to dig a little deeper, and it's like everybody else turned it in on time.

And I was like, There's two lies done.

Um and so right there, in the middle of the meeting, it became clear to everyone, and especially my dad, that I'd been lying and that I deserved punishment.

However, the only thing I had going for me is that the teacher had called me a cheater and a liar and had spoken harshly to me and made me cry.

That's the only thing I had going for me.

And to my dad, you didn't call his son names, and you definitely didn't make his son cry.

And so, right when the teacher decided, you know, everybody found out that I was lying, um, all the eyes kind of shifted to my dad to see what his response would be.

And he stood up, looked my teacher in the face, and said, uh, literally, I bet you think you're a big man making a 12-year-old boy cry.

Why don't we step outside and I'll show you how I make a grown man cry?

And uh the principal stood up and was like, hey, look, let's uh pool Colton, you know, you just take another day, do your assignment, uh teacher, go back before you get your butt kicked, go back to the class, we gotta call somebody.

Mr.

Seegers, won't you have a great day?

You'll be fine, you'll be fine, it's good, and uh and that was that.

That was that.

Um and so the teacher, you know, scuttles off.

Um and I walk out with my dad to uh to his truck, and I had to go back to class, but uh as I'm walking with him, still kind of wondering like what's what's coming, am I gonna get in trouble for lying?

Um and all he does is like he just gives me a hug and he asks.

I'm still like whimpering and trying to sell it a little bit, like I'm still really sad.

Um he gives me a hug, he asks if I'm okay, and I'm like, yeah, I'm okay.

And he's like, Alright, don't lie anymore.

And I'm like, okay, I definitely won't.

I will never lie ever again.

And then I go back to class and and that's it.

And that was that was all that had.

And the reason I love one, I love that story, is um because it's my dad, but like I deserved punishment.

My dad did not show me love because I had done anything right.

He showed me love because nobody messes with his kids.

Nobody says mean things and makes his kid cry.

That's the only reason.

The only reason I was shown love in that moment is simply because that I just happened to be the son of this man who is my father.

And I think we need to see the Lord like that.

That's his posture towards us, that's how he sees us.

It's not that he's kind to us and acts in kindness and sending his son because, well, they deserve it.

They don't deserve it.

Nobody messes with my kids.

And my kids are hurting and they're struggling and they're stuck and they're in a space that they just cannot seem to escape.

And so I'm gonna act in love towards them because they're mine.

You actually see this happen early on, the first sin, Adam and Eve's sin, back in the garden.

They have one rule, one rule.

Like, don't eat from the tree in the middle of the garden.

It's like, okay, cool.

And then they break that.

I mean, almost immediately.

Um, they knew they shouldn't do it and they did it.

Uh, then they, in response to that, then they hide from God, and then when God confronts them on their sin, Adam and Eve choose to blame one another and then blame the serpent.

Well, it's the serpent's fault, it's the woman's fault, it's always the woman's fault.

Like all these different things.

They blame others, they don't take ownership, and none of them say that they're sorry.

They're just, they're doing tons of mistakes in this one thing.

And the first thing that God does, uh, it says it in Genesis 3, 14 and 15, this is the first thing that God does based on all of their wrong behaviors.

So the Lord said to the serpent, doesn't talk to them, says to the serpent, because you have done this.

And the serpent had to be like, Because I did this, I didn't do Jack, they did everything, they did it all.

He goes, But because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and all the wild animals, you will crawl in your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers, and he will crush your head.

And it's just like, it sounds like a father, like if a bully picks on my kid, I want to crush that kid's head like a grape.

Like I can't beat up one-year-olds and two-year-olds.

I couldn't, you know, I just can't do that.

This is recorded, so I gotta be very careful.

Um, but like, you can't do that, but when you know when somebody picks on your kid, you're like, ah, I need to go find out where they live, you know.

And I feel it feels like that.

Like you have to imagine the serpent looking at God and going, like, they did they they broke your one rule, then they hid from you, then they blamed other people, and then they lied to you, and then they never said they're sorry.

Like, why are you mad at me?

And he's like, I'm mad at you because you messed with my kids.

Like, that's it.

You lied to them, you deceived them.

Sin is something that they chose, but you led them into this space, you messed with them, and nobody messes with my kids.

And so he says, You are cursed, and one day I'm gonna crush your head.

His love for you isn't based on your behavior, he loves you because you are his child.

Your sin, your sin does not make him, your sin past, your sin present, your sin future does not make him love you less.

Julian of Norwich, who is a theologian and an early church mother, she says this, our courteous Lord does not want his children to despair because they fall often and grievously, for our falling does not hinder him in loving us.

Our falling does not hinder him in loving us.

Now, some people would say, Well, but doesn't he send people to hell?

Like, isn't that like how could this loving father, this loving God, send one of his kids to hell?

And to that, I would say, you you misunderstand.

He does not send people to hell, he sends sin to hell.

This is why he wants to save us from sin.

He doesn't want, when he sends sin to hell to burn forever, he doesn't want the sin to remain in us so that we get sucked in with it.

This is why he sent his son, this is why he did all those things.

He doesn't send people to hell.

Sin will burn in the same way that we want sin to burn.

Sin hurts his kids in the same way that everything that hurts your kids, and that loss and that death and all that stuff, all that stuff that sin does in our lives that steals from us, the way that we want that to be removed from the ones that we loved, he wants it to be removed from the ones that he loved.

And so he says, like, I'm I'm going to destroy sin, Satan, and death.

I'm going to do away with those things forever, and they will be eternally separated from me and from my kids.

But this is why he begs us, please let me take your sin away, so that when I toss it in, you don't you're not magnetized and pulled in with it.

First Timothy 2 4 says, God wants all people to be saved from their sin and come to a knowledge of the truth.

He doesn't send people to hell, he sends sin to hell.

And so if you think that, like, how could a loving God do that?

He doesn't.

The way that it happens is that people choose to go, I don't want to be saved from my sin.

I want my I like my sin.

I want to keep it.

And so those that end up having that experience and be internally as separated from God are just the people that choose to go, like, hey, I don't want you, I want I want my sin.

And it's like, well, sin will one day be destroyed, and I don't want that for you.

God's love for you and God's love for us is established and firm and unshakable because it's not based on our sin.

It's not based on those things.

He wants to forgive us of those things, he wants to save us from those things.

But it's not based on our behavior.

We are sons and daughters, we are forever his creation, and we can't change that.

He loves you because you're his.

That's the first one.

The second, God loves us because we're helpless.

They don't sound very good, but announcing that we're helpless is probably a good place to start.

But he loves us because we're helpless.

Um, the other day I was uh we have bro day with Teddy every every Friday is Bro Day.

And the other day I was making him uh it's not an original name or anything, it's just our our name for the day.

Um but I made him chicken nuggets and ketchup, it's his favorite thing.

It's his favorite thing.

Uh and so I'm making his lunch, and we're gonna watch TV, set it on the couch, and then I go back into the kitchen to make my lunch, and uh all of a sudden I hear the TV pause, and I'm like, Teddy, you you you good?

And from the other room, he's like, Yeah, I'm good.

I'm like, okay.

Uh and so I'm gone maybe two minutes.

And then I come in with my food, and it looks, there's ketchup everywhere, y'all.

There's ketchup on the couch, there's ketchup on our ottoman.

It looks like a murder took place, and ketchup was what they used.

I mean, it was it was everywhere.

And I gave him like this much, there's no way that all of that could have like compounded into all the different things.

And he's standing there, he's got it on his face, on his hands, on this, and I'm like, what happened, man?

Like, what took and he's crying and he's like, I'm so sorry, I tried to fix it, and I couldn't, and I was like, and as far as I could tell, he spilled a little and then went to clean it with his sleeve or something.

And then as he turned to do that, he wiped his sleeve on the couch, and then he tumped that over, and then the more he tried to fix it, the more it just smeared everywhere, and it was all of our whole couch looked and smelled like ketchup.

You could just dip your fries in it.

Like it was so there's so much ketchup on the thing.

And again, he's crying, he's like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

I was trying to fix it, and everything I did to try and fix it maybe made it worse.

And I was like, I was like, dude, it's fine, it's okay.

I was like, it's fine, I'll fix it.

I can clean it, I'll fix it, don't worry.

And I could have shamed him and I could have been like, what's wrong with you?

You can't clean up your own messes.

But the issue is like that's not what came up in my heart.

Like, what came up in my heart was compassion for this kid that really did his best and just made it so much worse.

It's still like we're gonna burn this and get a new one.

Um, and that's what came up out of our hearts.

We have to know that like the Lord looks at us and he sees us going, like, look, look at them trying to make themselves happy in their sin.

Look at them trying to bring themselves joy by chasing down all this stuff, and when it doesn't work and it creates more problems and it creates more conflict, we can sit there and think that like he must, I'm just compounding his anger towards us.

And he doesn't look at us like that.

He looks at us and has this compassion and this love towards us that leads him to ultimately act towards us in love.

It was because I love you so much that it led me to act towards you in love by sending my son to you so that he could save you.

You're completely helpless, and your helplessness does not repel him from you, it actually drew him to you.

It says that God so loved the world that it led him to send his son to you.

And I think you see like that the Lord is drawn to helplessness.

If you look at Jesus in the gospels, they're constantly bringing people to him, and they're always bringing the helpless people.

And so they bring the sick and the leprous and the demon-possessed and all these, they're bringing helpless people to Jesus, and then Jesus is receiving them and healing them.

And they're constantly doing that.

But there's these handful of moments where Jesus goes to certain people.

He actually has these moments where people didn't bring these folks to him, he went to them.

And the people that they are, like the Samaritan woman, the demoniac, Zacchaeus, those people, no one would have ever brought them to Jesus because they were too far gone.

Like this person is a paraplegic or a paralytic and can't walk.

Jesus might be able to do something there.

Samaritan woman, she's crazy, man.

I don't know if there's much you can do there.

Like they weren't gonna bring that woman to Jesus.

Not only is she a Samaritan, but she's also kind of a harlot and all the rest of it.

Like, I'm not gonna bring her to the demoniac, they're like, that guy's too far gone, he's crazy, he lives out near the tombs in a graveyard, like nothing Jesus could do there.

Zacchaeus, tax collector, stealing from folks.

I don't even want if even if Jesus could do something, I don't want him to ever meet Jesus.

Want Jesus to be kind to that person.

It's these helpless, helpless, helpless cases that people know, like, I don't think there's anything that he could do.

Those are the people that Jesus, it says that Jesus actually went to them.

He chose to go to the Garrisons to see the demoniac because nobody was going to bring that helpless case to him.

He chose to go into Samaria to find this woman because nobody was ever going to bring that woman to him.

He chose to find Zacchaeus up in the tree and to go to his house and to restore him because nobody was ever going to bring those people to him.

Their helplessness, their hopelessness, all of those different things did not repel him.

It's what led him to actually take steps towards them.

And consistently, that's who he is and that's what he does.

In his book, The Ragamuffin, I spent a ton of time reading Brennan Manning, again, because I read three different, or just not all the books, but like just summarizing some of the books and stuff because again, reading his books make me feel loved by God.

But this one comes from the Ragamuffin Gospel, which is a funny name, but it's a beautiful book.

But in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, he says that Jesus has come.

He says, Jesus has come for the bedraggled, the beat up, the burnout, for the sorely burdened who are still shifting their heavy suitcase from one hand to the other.

For the wobbly and weak need who know they don't have it all together and aren't too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.

Jesus comes for the inconsistent, the unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.

Jesus comes for the poor, the weak, the sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents.

He comes for the earthen vessels who shuffle along on feet of clay, for the bent and bruised who feel like their lives are a grave disappointment to God.

He comes for the people who feel like their lives are a grave disappointment to God.

He comes for the smart who know that they're stupid.

The honest disciples who admit that they're scallywacks.

For anyone who has grown weary and discouraged along the way.

Brendan Manning, man, that dude.

He knows what he's doing.

Brendan Manning wrote these beautiful books.

He would write these books, and then he would spend the next six months in a bender.

Like find they'd find him in a ditch somewhere, just drunk out of his mind.

And all these pastors and all these people would throw shame and hatred towards him.

Like, how could you possibly speak of God's love and then have this happen?

And he's like, Because I need God's love.

Like I'm not, his love didn't heal everything in my life.

It didn't take away every disease and everything that I deal with.

Like it didn't change everything.

What you're talking about is heaven where sin no longer affects me at all.

Like I write about his love because I desperately need it.

Like it's like, man, there's a space in our lives where we need to remember, like, man, for any who have grown discouraged and weary along the way, like, who does he come for?

Jesus said, I came for the sick, not the healthy.

He sums up Brendan Manny's thing in one thing.

I'm a doctor who came for the sick, not the healthy, and I freaking love my job.

I love helping those who are sick.

I love it.

I read somewhere else that one of the things that's uh Hans Kung wrote this book, but he talks about, he's like, the thing that got Jesus killed wasn't that he was doing the miracles and all the rest of it.

Like that he didn't like that because that's powerful, but like it's not because of that.

The reason he got himself killed is because he just hung out with the wrong people.

He just spent time with people that are like, why are you spending time with them?

And he's like, Because I love them.

And it's like, well, we're gonna crucify you.

And he's like, Yeah, no, I know.

Like, and it's like he just hung out with these people that are like, who would ever hang out with these people?

Who would ever go to these people in love?

And he's like, No one, that's why I came.

That's why I'm here.

Hear the good news.

Your helplessness does not repel him.

Your inability and your struggle with sin to put it to death and to stop sinning, your inability to get free of your addiction, your inability to make your life great, your inability to feel like you actually, your life pleases him, your inability to do all those things does not make him hate you.

It's what drew him to you at first, it's what him what draws him to you now.

The good news is this is why he loves you.

It's because you're helpless, not because you have your junk together.

It's because you're helpless.

This is why he came.

That's the second.

Third, he loves you because he knows that love is the only action that will actually transform you.

Love is the only thing that transforms you.

Brennan Manning, in his book, The Furious Longing of God, tells this wonderful story about the power of love to transform.

This is he says that uh there's a story of this kid who attended the college that he taught at.

He says, this kid, by all society standards, would have been called ugly.

He was short, fat, extremely unclean, he smelled bad, he had a terrible case of acne and a bad lisp.

And this is what he says.

He says, In all my days, I've never met anybody with such low self-esteem.

He told me, Larry, this is the guy's name, Larry told me that when he looked at the mirror each morning, he spit at it.

No girl wanted him, no fraternity would take him in.

He walked into my office one day and said, My name is Larry, and with a bad lisp, he said, I'm an aphnoctic.

But when Larry went home for Christmas that year, everything changed.

His father was a straight-laced Irishman who, even on the hottest day in summer, was always wearing a suit.

He never really showed emotions and really talked about anything substantial.

But one morning, Larry was headed back to school.

His father took him to the bus stop, and as they got out of the car, there were six men standing across the street.

And when they saw Larry, they began making loud, degrading remarks, like oink, oink, look at that fat pig.

If that fat pig was my kid, I'd be so embarrassed.

I'd hide him in the basement.

Another said, I wouldn't.

If that slob was my kid, I'd disown him.

Hey, pig, give us your best oink.

Larry told me that in that moment, for the first time in his life, his father reached out, embraced him, kissed him on the mouth, and said, Larry, if your mother and I lived to be 200 years old, that wouldn't be long enough to thank God for the gift he gave us in you.

I am so proud that you're my son.

And he says, it would be hard to describe in words the transformation that took place in Larry.

He came back to school, got clean, and cleaned himself up.

Miracle of miracles, Larry began dating a girl, and to top it off, he became the president of one of the fraternities.

He became the first student in the history of the university to graduate with a 4.2 GPA.

Larry also became a Christian and was ordained as a priest in the ministry, serving in South America as a missionary.

Do you know why?

It wasn't because of sitting in my office while I talked about Jesus.

No, it was because on a day long ago, during a Christmas vacation, standing at a bus stop, when his lace curtain Irish father looked deeply into his son's eyes and affirmed him with a furious love that changed the whole direction of his son's life.

Love is the thing that transforms us.

It has this power to do something that everything else can't do.

Shame can change us, but love transforms us.

Embarrassment can make us change some of the things that we do, but love actually transforms.

And the Lord will never try guilt to change you.

He will never try shame.

He will never try embarrassment to shame you.

If you ever feel that way, that is the enemy, that is not the voice of your father.

It's not what he does.

And this is why Paul would say, Man, I want you to know the love of Christ, the height, the width, the depth, the length.

You need to know it because it will set you free.

It will give you confidence that you didn't even know existed.

It will bring joy.

That's something that you've been longing for and looking for.

You need to know this love that surpasses knowledge.

It's why the Lord says, I rejoice over you with singing.

I comfort you with my love.

I'm not going to quiet you and comfort you with my anger, my wrath, my rage, my, I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to comfort you with my love.

That's why Paul would say it's his loving kindness that leads to repentance.

What leads people to turn to God?

It's not turn or burn.

He says it in the scriptures, like, it's my loving kindness that will lead people to go, you know what?

I've been spending my time doing these other things that claim that they love me, then they just don't.

He seems to have pursued me in love and pursued me with compassion and pursued me with all those things.

I'm just going to turn to him and give him a shot because it's his loving kindness that leads us to repentance.

And so if anything else has ever led you to feel like, I just need to go back to God because he's angry at me, you're going back for the wrong reason, and I doubt you're actually going back to the one and true God because he doesn't do that.

He chooses loving kindness to be the space that leads you to the space of repentance with him.

He wants you to know that you're loved so that when you don't get the things that you want, that you pray for, you don't despair, but you know that the God who loves me has something better for me.

He wants you to know that you're loved so that when you're afraid, you can be reminded that there's a God who loves me that will protect me.

So that when you've screwed up so bad and you feel like God must be mad at you, you can be like, no, there's a God who loves me.

He's not mad at me, he is madly in love with me.

When you weep, you know that there's a God who loves you that weeps with you.

When you're struggling to wait, you know that there's a God who loves you that will be patient with you.

When you're wondering why life is this way and will life forever be this way, you know there's a God who loves you that is going to carry you and lead you into better spaces and times, and he's going to do that because he cares for you and he loves you.

And there's nothing you can do that can break that.

And so, Advent, this week, this space where we look at God's love, it's supposed to be this space where we're reminder, where it's like, no one loves like this.

No one, no one chooses to come at us like this.

Everyone else has demands and stipulations and all those different things, and we can say it's unconditional, but there is one who has unconditional love, and he pursues us with it constantly over and over.

And we live in a culture that just doesn't understand that.

We have churches that don't understand that.

And so we have these spaces where it's like you have to come into church and you gotta dress like this and do like this and all these different things.

It's like, what God do you serve?

Where do you find those things?

And why do we place demands on people that they can't you can't hold on to yourself, you can't carry that weight.

And he's like, you don't have to carry that weight.

I carried the weight.

I did the I chose to bear the burden of your sins so that your sin no longer separated me from you, and so now I can enter into this space with you where you're receiving my love, and it's this space where it's constantly this flow, this thing that we lost back in the garden, we can restore it.

This is what he has for you.

We need to live like we're sons and daughters.

We need to live like Larry Mullaney from that book, where it's like, man, he loves us with a furious love.

Alright, so a couple of practices to fill ourselves with the love of God, just things that you can do.

I hope these work for you.

These things have been spaces for me where I feel like it's helped me experience God's love.

One, read every Brenian Manning book you can get your hands on.

If you don't read, listen to the audible and do that.

But the first is we need to pray that you would understand his love for you.

Paul says this like the only way to understand God's love is to pray for it.

He says, he writes this to the Ephesians.

He says, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power.

You need power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.

You need power to understand those things.

And so pray and just like like I told you to pray for joy.

I I prayer changes things, y'all.

Uh Carl Bart says to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

Let's go.

Let's do that.

Like I can wake up a little early to pray if that's what I can do.

Like, pray that you would understand his love for you.

The other, I mean, two days ago, I was praying, and uh I'm not bragging, so I pray.

I'm a pastor, I'm paid to pray.

Um But um I was praying and I was asking, so I'm like, I'm gonna ask them to do this, I should do this myself, and I was like, Lord, would you just remind me of how much you love me?

Because I'm great.

You know, just tell me how great I am.

Um and uh he made me, I started thinking about Teddy and how a father loves his son, and I started thinking about Teddy, and uh and I just struggled with sin that day, and I was like, Lord, I need to be reminded again that you love me, even though I struggle with sin.

Um and I so I started thinking about things that he was like, just think about things that Teddy has done wrong and what you feel towards him when he does things wrong.

And so I started thinking about things, and I was trying to think about something, and I sat there for a second, I was having a hard time thinking about something that Teddy had done wrong.

Not because he doesn't, I was just having a hard time doing that.

And uh, and so I sat there for a couple minutes and I finally just said that.

I was like, Lord, I'm having a hard time remembering something he's done wrong, and I just heard him say, like, yeah, me too.

Me too.

I'm having a hard thing, hard time remembering what he's done, what mistakes he has made.

He's like, Yeah, me too.

And the verse that came to my mind was like, Man, he has separated our sins as far as the east is from the west, and I remember them no more.

His response towards us, his posture towards us, it's not one of like holding our sin in front of us and going, How dare you?

It's not that.

He's like, man, that way and that way.

You can't ever go east and find your way west.

You can't ever go west and find your way east.

They're polar opposites, and you can't ever go one way without going the other.

The point is that he has separated those things from us.

But we need to pray for those things.

He will do it, he will answer.

He wants people to know who he actually is.

Second thing that you can do is hide his love for you in your heart.

Um, when I wrote that, that sounded really cheesy, but I think it's real, okay?

Hide his love for you in his heart.

The scriptures say to hide God's word in our heart.

I would just find a ton of verses and then just manipulate them a little bit to where they're actually speaking to you.

So, a couple of verses.

John 15, 13.

There is no greater way to love someone than to lay down your life for them.

Like, hold on to that.

Like, there's no greater way to show somebody you love them than to die for them.

And Jesus is like, that's the love that I've I have shown you the most important and greatest way to love somebody.

That's what I've done for you.

Romans 5.8, this verse changed my life.

God shows his love for me that while I was a sinner, Christ died for me.

While I was a sinner.

And so if you find yourself in sin, you're like, how does he feel about me?

It's like, well, when you were a sinner before you even knew God, he loved you.

He showed his love for you while you were a sinner, Christ died for you.

He died for you in the midst of your sin.

And so how does he respond to you in the midst of your sin now?

He loves you.

Psalm 139, 17 and 18.

God, how precious are your thoughts of me?

How vast are some.

If I counted them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

Have you ever thought about that?

You go to the beach and you like scoop some sand up.

I don't know how many grains of sand you're holding, like thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.

And he's like, I have, I think of you more than all the grains of sand.

Like I have more thoughts of you and think of you all the time than all the grains of sand in the entire world.

And we can't count the ones we put our hands on.

We could walk through the beach and we hate the sand because it sticks to us, and we're like, there's just sand everywhere.

You can't ever get rid of it.

His thoughts, you can't get rid of his thoughts of you.

He loves you.

See what great love, John 1, uh, John 3, 1 John 3, 1.

See what great love the Father has lavished on me that we should be called a child of God.

And that is what I am.

I am a child of God.

And then he rejoices over me with singing, he comforts me with his love.

He rejoices over me with singing, he comforts me.

And I would just hold those things and use those things.

And when you find yourself going, like, I just, I'm struggling to feel God's love for me, use them as an arsenal to your heart and to your soul to speak into you.

And then third, do things and go to places, spend time with people who remind you that he loves you.

If people make you feel unloved by God, spend less time with those people.

I mean, I know we're at Christmas and you gotta go see some folks.

I know you gotta do that.

I would just just keep it, keep it, keep it short.

Um bring some bring some hidden love in your heart.

You're like, when they make you feel like garbage, and be like, the Lord loves me, he died for me, the Lord loves me.

And the Lord loves them too, they died for them too, because I and they're about to go meet him because I'm gonna kill them.

Um Christmas time family stuff, man.

That's great.

Um do the things, go to the places, spend time with people who remind you that he loves you.

Jesus does this.

When Jesus is baptized, he goes and he's baptized by John early on in Matthew, and it says, The Lord, the heavens open, and the Lord says, This is my son, whom I love, with him I'm well pleased.

Beautiful.

The father, the first thing he says to his son is like, he has actually done no miracles, he's done no healings, no feeding 5,000, nothing.

He is, and the father says, This is my son, whom I love, with him I'm well pleased.

And so it's this amazing thing that happens.

Okay.

Jesus goes off and starts doing ministry and all these different things, and then he's rejected by a bunch of people, and people are mean to him and try and stone him and call him demon-possessed and all those different things.

And then in John 10, after that, after he receives this rejection from all these people, it says that Jesus withdrew and went back to the place where John had been baptizing.

He goes back to the place that his father spoke love into his life because he needed to be reminded, I am loved by my father.

Everyone hates me.

Everyone has rejected me, God.

And he's like, I just I gotta go back to that space.

I gotta go back to that water.

I gotta go back to that space where he spoke this beautiful thing into my life.

And so if you have places, or if you have stories, or if you have songs or people or something that remind you that God loves you, go to those spaces and visit them often so that you're reminded of the love that he has for you.

Sing songs, spend time with people that make you feel loved.

A couple of things that I do for me, again, it's reading Brennan Manning, Brennan Manning, um, it's whenever Teddy sings and speaks because one day he couldn't, and uh, for three years, man, we were just praying for that and praying for that, like, and the Lord just showed us this incredible, we just experience God's love every time he sings, and my mom will send us like these wonderful videos of him when he was first talking and first singing about pine cones and all the rest of it.

And it was just it just reminds me like, does he love me?

Absolutely.

He loves me deeply.

It's remembering that I prayed for Rainey and me to be married.

I prayed for, I mean, I first met her, I was dating a girl for two years that I thought I was gonna marry.

I met Rainey and I broke up with that girl that night.

I was like, lady, I don't know anything about you, but I gotta marry her or somebody like her.

Um, and just prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed, and now we've been together for almost 13 years, and it's like, man, never take it for granted.

You prayed for this, you bled for this, man.

You did this thing.

Like, so um, remembering that, uh, remembering and celebrating certain days where God has broken into our lives, we just need to find spaces and people and times and songs and things that just remind us and just pour those things into our souls.

We forget it so easily because the world that we live in does not love us this way.

And so, if you live in a world six days and you spend one hour here listening to some guy ramble on about God's love, it's easy for that to just jettison from us and not be our experience.

And so we have to pour it in the way that he wants to do that.

And obviously, spend time in the scriptures, spend time in prayer, but do those things.

He loves you, just hear it again.

He loves you not because uh of your good behavior.

He doesn't love you, his love for you is not based on your behavior, it's based on the fact that you are a son, you are a daughter.

He loves you because you are helpless and cannot save yourself, and so he moves towards you in love because of your helplessness, and he loves you because he knows it is his love that is the only thing that will actually transform you.

He will never respond to you differently, he will always move towards you in love.

Julian of Norwich last time says, the greatest honor that we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.

And that's my prayer for you this season and for our church long term, that we would just have this space where it's like, man, it just happened in this random elementary school where I was just wrecked by the furious love of God that just poured into my life and poured into my heart and set me free from things and did things in my life and gave me confidence and all this stuff where I just, man, I just believe more than anything that there's a God who runs the universe that also loves me so much and so deeply.

And so I want that for you.

Live gladly because of the knowledge that He loves us.

Let me pray.

Father, thank you for the furious love of God.

Um, for the scandalous love that you showed to people who did not deserve it, that the world could not understand so much that they put you to death.

And I pray that we that would be our experience, that you would pour into us this truth that our behavior, our rule following, our tithing, and we want the tithe.

We want that.

Um, but none of those things make you love us more, and none of our sin make you love us less.

We are your sons and your daughters.

I pray that we would operate like that, living gladly, because we have knowledge of your love.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh we're gonna take communion.

If you help set up communion, I'd love for you to come up here and help me.

And then, Mom, would you help me on this side because Rainey's doing the kids?

The wonderful thing about communion, and the wonderful thing about Jesus is uh God will never look at you in the face or at all.

He'll never look at you and after you sin and go, you'll pay for that.

You'll pay for that.

He'll never do that.

Because when Jesus hung on the cross, he said to Telestai, I paid for that.

Like I paid for all those.

Really beautiful thing.

A lot of people, when we make bad decisions and all those different things in our jobs, or in the world, or in our families, you'll pay for that.

You'll pay for what you did to me.

The God who loves you will never say that.

He paid for that.

And so as we take the bread, as we take the wine or the juice, allow that to be the space that you remember.

It's like, how do I know that he loves me?

How can I be reminded?

What is something I can do to be reminded?

You can take his body that was broken for your sin so that your body wouldn't have to be broken for your sin.

You can take this juice that represents his blood and take it and drink enjoy because you know that it was his blood that spilled for you, so that you wouldn't have to have your blood spilled for your own sin.

And so the payment has been paid, the freedom has been given, and he was ultimately condemned so that you could be set free.

And so allow this space to be just a reminder.

Like, do you love me, God?

Can I be reminded?

This is the thing that we do every week so that we can be reminded.

He takes sinners and he turns them into sons and daughters.

He does this really beautiful thing.

He looks at your life and he does something he's like, he doesn't see what you think that you are.

He sees a son and a daughter, he's like, I created you in beauty, and you are fearfully and wonderfully made, and you are mine.

Satan's never gonna change that.

Deception, the sin, it's never gonna change that.

I will always come for you, and I'll always come towards you in love.

And this is just evidence.

Evidence of that.

His body, his blood broken for you.

So take a moment in your seat, and if you got sins that are coming up in your life and all this different stuff, like confess those things.

And you get to do so with joy because it's like, I'm not afraid to bring these things that I've done wrong to a loving father because he's never gonna look at me with condemnation and say, You'll pay for that.

He says, like, yeah, I took that one too.

I prayed for that.

So we're all set.

Let's move forward, son and daughter.

Let's do that.

So come as you feel led and take communion.