Impossible To Ignore • Part 2 with Joey Weller

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Well, hey, hey, hey, good morning.

Good morning.

Excited to be able to be here.

You guys can hear me good.

That'll be great.

Um, hey, so uh last week we started a brand new series called Impossible to Ignore.

And who is that one that is so impossible in culture to ignore?

Because he's in every little bit of it, right?

He's in music, he's in uh art, he's in politics, he's in everything that you would think of, even everyday conversations.

That's Jesus.

But today, how I wanted to start off week two of this series is uh based on a verse that's kind of impossible to ignore.

Uh, this verse, you've seen it on t-shirts, you've seen it on billboards.

You go to a college football game and you might see this verse uh plastered on a poster board, right?

Uh and it's an amazing verse, and it's one that is so popular it is impossible to ignore.

And I bring this up because uh, man, 2009 seems like yesterday, but also a while ago, uh, there was probably the most famous person in sports that used this verse in a very powerful way.

Uh, he had been going through the entire year uh to and putting different verses on his I Black, right?

And uh what he did is that when they got to the national championship in January of 2009, uh this guy, Tim Tebow, who we all probably remember playing football, but our kids would know him as somebody who talks a lot about playing football, he put this verse on his IBLAC.

And it's John 3.16.

John 3.16.

And so for us, when we think of this, we go back to that game.

You go back to Tim Tebow, and they're gonna be able to put it on the slide back here, too, for me.

There he goes.

But we look back here, and you look at this verse, and it says in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Have eternal life.

Now I bring up his eye black, I bring up Tim Tebow, I bring up John 3.16, because if you go back and you look at that game in 2009, Tim Tebow has an amazing game.

He has an amazing game.

And he and he passes and he wins.

And and as a person that's not a Florida Gator fan, it kind of hurts me to say that I think he was the best to ever play college football at the quarterback position.

Is that okay to say?

All right, I know.

We're in Georgia, it hurts, okay?

Not a Georgia fan either, so that's okay.

But there were 94, go Google it, 94 million people that researched this verse.

That they're looking at this guy in Tim Tebow who is at the top of the mountain in college athletics, at the top of the mountain in his craft.

And he has the willingness to put this verse there.

And while some of us we go, man, we we might know that verse, there there's 94 million people that researched it, and we're going, what is it about this verse that is impossible to ignore?

See, we learned last week John was one of Jesus' closest disciples, and many years had passed when John wrote the biography of Jesus.

See, he was towards the end of his life, and he was processing all that he had witnessed and experienced with Christ, with the one that he was following.

And after the resurrection, it was clear.

It was clear that beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus was more than just a good teacher.

We learned last week, he was God sent to earth.

He is the Lord of our life.

And this verse, it comes after a story where John tells us about a man who came to Jesus in secret to ask about eternal life.

You see, he was trying to better understand God, as many of us we probably are trying to do today, trying to better understand God.

And in verse 16, this was John's summary of this conversation and of God's heart put on display through Jesus.

One of the more challenging pieces of this verse, though, if you really dive into this familiar verse, one of the more challenging is the one that's highlighted.

This word for God so loved.

The word love, even when I say it, your brain instantly goes to something or someone in the world.

It could be love that you have, love that you lost, love that you hope to find.

But how do you know when you really love something?

Or how do you know when you really love somebody?

Because the word love is thrown around all throughout the world.

I mean, think about it.

You probably were hanging out with some friends this weekend, or maybe family, and you know, there's a restaurant in town.

And you're like, man, what do you think about that?

Oh, we love that restaurant, right?

You're like, oh my goodness, I go to Texas Roadhouse.

I can't get enough of those roles.

I love Texas Roadhouse, it's great.

Or maybe talking about Netflix comes up at work and you're like, we we love that show.

Or some of you are wearing your polos from yesterday from your college football game because y'all won.

You love your sports team.

Now I know that's a deep love, but you love your sports team.

We say that we love our family, or we even, if we were to do a polio, we may even say that we love God.

This word, it's so easy to say because saying it costs us almost nothing.

But eventually, however, when you talk about love, love has to become more than something that you say.

Love must become something you show.

Anyone, you know this, can say, I love you.

We all know if you have a teenager in here, it's like, oh, so and so, he finally said it.

He loves you.

As you know, I've got two daughters.

I'm gonna roll my eyes the first time that a boy says I love you, because you don't even know what it means.

First time I said I didn't even know what it meant.

That's not the thing.

The real question is this What is your love willing to do?

What is your love willing to do?

What will it sacrifice?

What will it endure?

How far will your love travel?

What cost will it absorb?

Will it keep moving towards someone when they have nothing to offer in return?

What is your love willing to do?

Because, and you know this, the depth of love is not ultimately measured by its words.

No, no, no.

Love.

It is measured by what it is willing to give.

Your love is measured by what it's willing to give.

You know this based on movies.

Think about the great movies, they all base their their line, their movie headline on love.

What is love willing to sacrifice?

And so this it raises an enormous question about God.

Because we read that God loves us, but how do we really know that it's true?

See, John, he believed that Jesus proved God's love for us.

But did Jesus come to die for our sin?

Which I believe that he did, or did he also come to show us something a little bit more?

Because many of us, we we grew up hearing this line, and if you grew up in a church like I did, you grew up hearing, well, Jesus came to die for your sins.

There's probably a leader or a pastor that that said that.

And while that's true, and 100% true, that is the basis of Christianity.

That is the basis of why we worship, is that Jesus, he died on a cross, he rose back to life, and he died for our sins.

It is only through him that we get to the Father.

It is completely true because our sins separated us from God.

Something, a relationship that we could not repair, that we had broken on our own.

See, Jesus, he took our place, he carried our sin, and he died the death that we deserved.

But here is what we may have missed.

And this is as I've been studying for this, this is what I came up with.

We learned what Jesus saved us from without fully understanding what motivated God to save us.

I'm gonna say that again because it can be wordy, but in the context of what we're talking about, we learned what Jesus saved us from.

Many of us, we grew up, and that's what we learned without fully understanding what motivated God the Father to save us.

See, we all heard, we heard that the cross demonstrates how serious our sin is, and it does.

But we did not always hear that the cross also demonstrates how deep God's love is.

And if you're watching online and you've been searching for a love because you didn't get that from anybody in the world from your growing up or right now, I want you to know you are loved.

You see, and it's this idea that consequently some of us believe that Jesus loves us, but the father is disappointed in us.

See, Jesus is merciful, God the Son.

But the Father is angry with us, or that Jesus had to persuade the Father to forgive us.

That's what we learned, and that's how we've been living our life.

Jesus, many of us think that he stood between us and God and God didn't really want us, but Jesus is like, God, I'll go down there, I'll take care of it.

That's not that's not what happened.

You see, in fact, I think for the reason we do that is because it's easier to believe, it's easier to believe that Jesus died for me than to believe that God genuinely loves me.

Because you know how messed up you are.

I know how messed up I am.

Even if nobody else in the world does, God knows the secrets that we try to keep from everybody else.

And so it's much easier for us to think that, man, you know, I mean, Jesus died for me, and that's great, but do I really have a God that genuinely loves me?

It's almost like Jesus came and died because he had to, not because he wanted to.

And I can't tell you, if you've been thinking about how uh if your your idea, the gospel, is that Jesus did this because, oh man, he had to, and he's kind of laying up there on the cross and he's like, I just gotta take care of this for them, you know, almost like we're cleaning up after our kids when they make a mess in the living room, that's not the gospel.

Jesus did not come to change God's mind about you.

What did Jesus do?

He came to reveal God's heart for you.

And if you walked in here and you're struggling with this idea of, am I loved?

I want you to know you have a heavenly Father who loves you more than anything.

He loved you so much that he did send his one and only Son to die for you.

And so, to understand why Jesus came, what do we have to do?

We have to begin where the Bible begins, and not with humanity's sin, but with God's love.

Because Jesus came to put God's love on display, and the cross is the ultimate example.

And so, if we go back to that famous verse that John wrote in John 3.16, for God so loved the world.

What does that mean?

Jesus was not sent because God hated the world.

No, no, no, Jesus was not sent because God had finally lost patience with us, like they're just never gonna get it right.

Oh, Jesus was not sent to persuade God to care about the world.

That's not what happened.

You see, God loved, and so God gave.

And that's important because God loved you, knowing, like I said, everything about you.

Literally everything.

God loves you, He created you, He molded you, He designed you, He gave you the giftings that you have, the works that you have, that when you walk into the office, the things that just seem to come easy to you, that is the grace of God that He has over you and you He created you to be able to do the work that you're doing.

God loved you, and so He gave.

He gave His one and only Son, Jesus.

Here's the beauty is that He knows you by name, and He loves you all the same.

Many of us.

No one else knows that your marriage, you're fighting for each other, no one else knows your mental struggles, and you're just taking every single day to wake up.

It takes a lot of effort to get out of bed and go into the office.

No one knows the conversations that you're having with your kids that are now adults.

You're trying to help mold them and guide them and grow them into being great followers of Jesus, but also just great people.

God does.

He knows you by name and he loves you all the same.

The cross, what did it do?

It began with the heart of God.

And while I love John 3.16, and while I love Tim Tebow, he's a phenomenal guy, he looks incredible and uh he just does amazing things for the community, he does amazing things for the world.

How can you not like Tim Tebow, right?

Even with where he went to college.

If you're watching from Florida, I'm sorry.

And while I like John 3.16, I think I like verse 17 just a little bit better.

It's a less familiar verse, it's not up on a billboard, but it really does reinforce verse 16.

Check this out in 3.17.

It says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world.

No, no, no.

But to save the world through him.

The mission of Jesus was born from the love of God.

Jesus was not God's reluctant response to human failure.

No, no, no.

Jesus was God's loving rescue of humanity.

And we see it a little while later in John's document.

What do we do?

We read about a moment that when Jesus tells his disciples not to worry or to be troubled, because he is going to prepare a room in heaven for them.

And if you think about that, put yourself in the disciples' shoes.

I love doing this, by the way, if you ever read the gospels.

Put yourself in the disciples' shoes, because for us, sometimes we like read it, we're like, How are they not getting it?

Jesus said he was gonna die and come back to life.

How are they not getting that?

How is it such a surprise to them?

Well, imagine someone telling you that, right?

Like imagine they didn't have the Bible in front of them of how it was gonna work out.

All they had been taught for year after year after year is that a Messiah is coming.

They believe that this is the Messiah.

But this can be somewhat confusing for them.

Because what does what does Jesus say?

He says, You know the way to the place where I'm going.

And while they do, they don't.

And Thomas responds in verse 5, he says, Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going.

So how can we know the way?

Now pause, time out.

The way is really important because after Jesus rose back to life and he ascended into heaven, what was it known when you were going to be a Christian?

You know, today's modern world, it's like, oh, I'm a Christian.

I go to this church, I follow Jesus.

What they would say is, I do, I follow the way.

I follow the way.

What is that?

It's just the way of Jesus.

It's the way that he loved people, it's the way that he spoke to people.

It's the fact that he was willing to sit down with somebody who was in the wrong, be able to have lunch with them, have a conversation with them, be able to say, Hey, well, I know that you're a sinner, but you know what?

Go and sin no more.

That's what Jesus would do.

And so for them, they're going, they're just following the way.

It goes on to say that Jesus answered him, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to what?

To the Father, except through me.

Jesus is talking about God.

God the Father.

Jesus is talking about his Father.

And this statement is either massively heretical, or if it's true, it is a complete game changer.

It goes on to say, if you really know me, you will know my Father as well.

From now on, you do know him, and you have seen him.

What is Jesus trying to do?

He's trying to make it as clear as possible for these people.

He says, You have seen God because you have seen me.

And what's interesting is that he still has to explain it.

And we don't give these disciples a lot of credit, but he still has to explain it.

Philip goes on to say this.

He says, Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.

And if you have your Bibles in here, you have your Bible app, I want you to underline that.

I want you to uh highlight it.

Uh, if you have a pencil pen, whatever you got to do uh on your app, I want you to do that because I want you to go back to that later this week because we could put ourselves in Philip's shoes.

Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.

Have you ever been at a time in your life where you were so desperate for God that you're in church, you're like, I just still need more.

I've got this going on in my life.

I mean, I'm I'm speaking with all these different people.

I'm in a small group, they're trying to encourage you, they're trying to help me.

But but God, if I could just see God, there's something really beautiful about it that Philip's saying.

And says that Jesus answers him.

He says, Don't you know me?

He says, Don't you know me, Philip?

Even after I've been among you such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

Is God maybe saying today to you, Don't you know me?

Don't you see me?

Haven't you experienced me already?

I mean, remember the last time that there was a big win in your life?

Let's go back to that.

You know me.

I've got you.

But it was probably easy to miss for them, just like it is for us, because you got to remember, these disciples, they were Jewish, so they knew the Jewish scriptures.

They had been brought up in it.

They felt that God was loving, but they felt like his justice was so overpowering anything else about him.

That's where these group of people were, these group of men.

And so their sacrificial system, what did it do?

It created this feeling.

Because you got to know how they atone for their sin.

It taught them that they had to go and get a sacrifice and bring it to an altar and kill it and raise it, and then their sins would be forgiven.

Put yourself in their shoes.

Because now you've got Jesus, who's this guy who is more loving, who's more gracious than anyone could ever imagine.

And not only is he that, because we all know people who are loving and gracious, but now we have this Jesus who is claiming that he is God, he's the Messiah, and by default, his actions they represent God's love for you and for me and for them.

There's another area in scripture, if you go to in your Bible to Romans, we see that Paul, who, if you know a little bit about Paul's background, he was not always a follower of the way.

He was not even remotely close to that.

In fact, he would kill those that said they were Jesus followers, that they were Christians.

He would go after them.

He was the ultimate Christian hater who ended up becoming Jesus' biggest fan.

I just think that, you know, Jesus and God, they're in heaven, and like, man, this thing, we're trying to get this thing going.

And we need somebody to step up.

And they start naming names.

And it's like, well, you know, there's this guy who's like really opposing the movement that we started.

I mean, he's out there killing people and and really trying to stop this in this area.

What if we what if we got him to come on our side?

And there's a Jesus on the road to Damascus.

And he goes from, like I said, being the biggest hater to being the biggest fan and the biggest missionary, and he writes almost half the New Testament, and he writes this to the believers in Rome.

He says in Romans 5, verse 6 through 8.

Romans 5:6–8

He says, You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, if you have your Bibles, underline that, powerless.

Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person.

Though, for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die.

Now, before we go to the ending of this in verse 8, what is he saying?

He's going, man, you gotta think.

There's not many of us, many of you readers and the people that are reading today, there's not Many of us that would die even for a great person.

Like I love you, but I don't want to die for you.

But what does he say?

And this is Jesus, this is God the Father's heart.

He says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, and this is so powerful.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

What does this mean?

This means that even for those that never know Christ, will never know him, that never knew him, Jesus had them on his mind when he was laying on a cross, dead.

Christ died for us, that while we were still sinners, while we were still opposing, following the way, Christ died for us.

There's not a better person to talk about this than Paul.

Because what does he do?

He removes every possible reason that we could claim that we deserved this love because he knew that for himself.

He says we were powerless.

We were ungodly.

We were sinners.

We were not improving.

We were not searching for God.

We were not finally becoming worthy of rescue.

And yet, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Died for you, and he died for me.

The word that's important here is demonstrates.

See, God did not merely announce his love.

No, no, no.

God acted.

It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to take action and do it.

What did the cross do?

The cross is love made visible.

The cross is love made visible.

The cross chains that we see athletes wear.

The jewelry that has the cross on it, the cross that's on billboards, on the side of buildings, on the side of churches.

The cross is love made visible.

The nails, they are not evidence of God's reluctance to forgive.

They are evidence of what God was willing to endure to rescue us.

The cross.

It did not make God loving.

No, the cross showed us that he had love for us all along.

Jesus is not just the compassionate side of God standing against the judgmental side of God.

What does Jesus do?

He reveals the Father.

He reveals his heart.

See, when Jesus welcomes sinners, we see the Father's heart.

When Jesus touches the unclean, we see the Father's heart for people.

When Jesus restores the ashamed, we see the Father's heart.

When Jesus confronts hypocrisy, we see the Father's heart.

And when Jesus searches for the lost, we see the Father's heart.

We see it all throughout Scripture, and we see it today.

See, Jesus, he did not merely explain God's love.

Jesus was God's love.

Last week, in week one, if you missed it, I want to encourage you to go into the app, Southside app and watch it because it really this series.

But last week we showed that Jesus was God.

And that Jesus was and is love.

And he showed God's love.

But Jesus is not just merely sent by God.

Jesus is God.

And so the truth about this, it challenges and it changes how we follow Jesus with our lives.

And we have to put him on the throne of our life and step out of leading our own and putting God there.

It'll change your meetings at work.

It'll change the way you parent.

It'll change your marriage.

Is that when God is somebody that is following and he is worth following, it'll change everything in your life.

But today's question is this is why did God send himself as Jesus?

See, to die for our sin is an accurate, but it maybe just a slightly incomplete assessment.

So I believe that the full reason is this, and I've experienced this in my own life, is that Jesus, he came to put God's love on display.

Jesus, when he came down, he put God's love on full display.

Jesus came to reveal God's love.

He came to demonstrate God's love and to rescue us through the Father's love.

See the cross, it matters, and it matters a lot.

Because what did it do?

You've seen the paintings, you've seen the pictures of what it looked like with a sinner on one side and a sinner here, and then they put Jesus right there in the middle.

It's just a perfect picture on full display of who Jesus is and putting God's love for you and I there.

See, the cross matters a lot because the cross solved our great problems separation from God.

That is separation from God.

But the cross also shows us how far God's love will go to bring us home.

And as the band gets ready to come out, we're gonna end today a little bit different.

We've got a song that I believe will change us if we truly take it from words on a screen to words that impact our heart.

Because if Jesus really did come and he lived and he died and he raised back to life, what do we need to do?

We need to live our life knowing that God loves you.

God's love displayed at the cross is not merely something to believe, it is something to build your life on.

And if the cross is true, then you do not have to earn God's love.

That's not what we have to do.

See, if the cross is true, that means that God already loved us.

There's nothing that you and I have to earn.

You don't have to perform your way into his approval.

You don't have to clean yourself up before coming near.

You don't have to hide until you feel less ashamed.

It's kind of interesting.

Uh, you know, with what I've done over the last 12 years of my life helping out with student ministry is that, you know, we'll have high schoolers.

They'll they'll come in and they'll be there and they're very similar to us, right?

They'll have something going on in their life or they'll get into some stuff that, man, isn't church-like.

And and and what they decide to do, and what we decide to do is we we walk away from the church for a season, and then we almost feel like, okay, when I get this stuff right on my own, then I'm gonna come back in to church.

That's not what we should be about.

We should be about is life's messy.

Life's messy, and that's why Jesus came down to earth.

It's because we need to be able to love one another, encourage one another, and uplift one another.

Get out of the mess.

You don't have to do it yourself.

God loves you, He cares about you, He knows you.

See, the cross happened while we were still sinners.

God did not wait for you to become more worthy of love.

The church should not wait for you to have all of your perfect stuff together until you can sit in.

No, no, no, no.

That's not what we desire.

If people have stuff going on in their life, they should want to flock to our front doors to be a part of the impact that this church can have.

See, God, He moved towards you.

Because that's what love does.

Because for us, we have to stop approaching God like an employee asking for a paycheck.

We had to stop approaching him like a defendant, waiting for another guilty verdict.

We got to stop approaching him in that way.

We need to approach God as a loving, heavenly Father who has our best interest at heart.

Come to him as someone who is already loved, because the cross also shows us how far God's love is willing to go to bring us home.

Romans 3, verse 23 says this.

Romans 3:23

This word grace.

Grace is just another term for love.

If you have your Bibles, write love next to it, because that's all it is.

It's that we are made right with God through our faith and his love for us.

Now know this.

You may have not, you know, you may have not wandered further than God's love is willing to travel for you.

You have not gone and done too much for God not to love you.

When life becomes painful, when prayers seem like they're unanswered, or your emotions tell you that God has forgotten you, do not measure his love by your circumstances.

Measure his love by the cross that he died on.

That's what we have to do.

You have to measure his love by what he was willing to do and to send his son Jesus down.

Stop allowing temporary circumstances to make you question when the cross has permanently demonstrated.

See, what the cross has done is that the cross has made a permanent demonstration of God's love for you, for you and I.

We don't need to spend another moment of our life trying to prove we deserve God's love.

We've all been there.

You're in the car, you're in the shower, you're you're there and you're processing.

God, how could you love me?

How could you love me?

We need to spend every moment living as though the cross proves God's love in our own life.

And so, why did Jesus come to earth?

Jesus came because God's love is great for us.

We love it when our kids hear it.

We get excited, like God's love is great for you, but sometimes we don't think that it's great for us.

I'm here to tell you, God's love is great for you.

I grew up hearing that Jesus came to die for our sins.

Jesus took my place, that Jesus carried my sin, he paid a debt that I could never pay, and that Jesus opened the way for me to return to God, and that is all true.

That is all 100% true, and the basis, like I said, of Christianity.

But now I understand something more, and it impacted my life in a great way is that Jesus came because God's love for me.

You're never too far gone.

See, the cross is God's love moving toward sinners, moving towards people who are doing wrong.

The cross shows us that our sin is serious, but also shows us that God's love is stronger.

And so when you see the cross, do not only see the price of your sin, see the depth of his love, see how far God is willing to go, see a God who would rather absorb the cross himself than to leave you lost.

I have a question.

What would change in your life if you finally believe that God's loved that God loves you like the cross says he does?

Jesus came to put God's love on display.

Are we willing to live our life like we believe that?

Maybe today is heavy for you because you've been dealing with a lot of stuff.

Maybe you're coming into church, you're giving it one last time.

You're feeling unlovable.

I want I want you to tell you, I didn't know what you have going on.

I don't know what's going on with you personally in your marriage or with your kids, but what I do know is that the cross is big enough.

God's love is big enough to overcome anything that you and I have done.

God is the creator, we are creation.

We need to follow the way, but know that God loves us through it.

So, like I said, we're gonna sing a song.

And many times we we we do this in a way of sit down and reflect or or pause, take a moment.

And I'm just gonna ask you today, because these words, it's kind of a song that's kind of an anthem.

It's called reckless love.

And it's a song that talks about an overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.

It chases me down.

These words can remain words on a screen, but I don't want them to.

I want them to impact our heart and impact the way that we live our life.

So, what I'm gonna ask us to do, I'm gonna ask you to stand up and go ahead and stand.

I'm gonna pray for us.

That no matter your age, no matter your gender, no matter what you've got going on in life, I want you to have a moment where you can speak these words.

And I've been in your I've been to where you're just you're saying the words, and you're singing them, and you're like, God, kind of like Philip, I I I need to see more, but I'm gonna keep singing this out.

I'm gonna keep saying these words.

God, I'm gonna trust that you have this love for me.

Would you join me in prayer?

Dear Jesus, God, I'm so grateful for your love.

I'm grateful for this morning.

God, I'm grateful for the cross, the cross that was put right there for the entire world to see the Father's love.

Jesus, there's nothing special about the cross other than the fact that you were the one that was nailed to it, and that three days later you rose back to life, you died for us all because of the love that you have for us.

God, we are sinners, we are broken people.

But when we put our faith and our trust and we follow the way, God, you love us so much.

You didn't want us to stay broken.

You wanted to tell us just like you told us, go and sin no more, follow the way.

And so I pray that this song that we would understand, we would realize the impact that it can have on our life.

That these words, they are powerful when we truly believe them.

God, I pray that this morning, as a church, we would sing out.

We would be bold, we'd be encouraged that these words aren't just words on a screen, but they're words that impact our heart.

Jesus, we love you.

We're grateful for you.

We ask it all in your name.

Amen.