No Loopholes

Today, we are wrapping up a message series that we started several months ago called But Now God.

And I recognize if you're here for the first time or if you're tuning in for the very first time at home, it can be a little odd to come in at the very tail end of something.

But don't worry, you're smart, you'll figure it out, and I'll do my best to catch you up here in just a second.

The title of today's message is No Loopholes.

No loopholes.

And my hope and my prayer, my goal is that when we walk out of here today, whenever you turn the TV off, whenever you're done watching at home, that you have more confidence and certainty when it comes to your understanding of how God sees you, how he views you, how much he loves you, that you have a true assurance in terms of where you stand with God.

That you would never ever have to be double-minded, ever have to worry about whether or not you're okay with God today or if you're going to be okay with God tomorrow.

So that's why we're talking about this idea of no loopholes.

One of the beauties of me having four children, I don't know if you guys know this about me or not, I don't ever talk about it, but I have four kids, dominates every aspect of my life.

One of the beautiful things about having four children is I get to study human nature up close and personal on a daily basis.

Because children are just more authentic human beings than adults, right?

Like as adults, we've all learned how to not be ourselves.

In fact, a lot of our success in life comes from us learning how to not be ourselves sometimes.

You know what I mean?

Like we have to smooth out the rough edges, but children, they don't smooth out the rough edges.

It's all rough edges, and it's just human nature in a concentrated form.

And so as a parent, I get to study human nature on a daily basis.

And one of the things I've noticed is that we as people somehow naturally desire to find loopholes.

We try to find exceptions, ways out of things that otherwise would be certain, especially if we don't like those things.

For example, uh, bedtime is a massive battle in my house most days.

It's a massive battle.

I've said this before, but it holds true to children.

Bedtime is not the end of the day, it's the death of the day.

And so children fight, like they treat it like that.

My son Judah, and Judah, I think you're watching from home right now.

Judah, I love you.

You're amazing, you're awesome.

I'm really proud of you.

Yesterday, Judah jumped off a dock into water for the very first time ever, and that was like a big thing for him.

So let's all make some noise for Judah, conquering a fear.

You're awesome, dude.

Um but Judah, if you're watching this right now, every time Judah hears that it's bedtime, it's like it's the first time he's ever encountered this concept before.

Like he's like, what?

The day is over?

No, no, and he literally what he usually does is he yells no at me and he runs away.

He runs away.

And uh he's pretty fast, so I have to chase him.

It's a good end-of-my-day workout.

Um, but but we have these kids that fight bedtime, and occasionally they'll go through a season.

Those of you who have been parents of young children, you know what this is like.

Where like in one night they'll get out of bed like 65 times.

It's just in like you put them in bed, and then by the time you're back in your room, you turn around and they're right there.

You're like, what, why, why is this happening?

And so when when our kids are going through one of those seasons, we have to get very clear, very stern, and we have to create ironclad boundaries to ensure that they stay in bed.

And so I'll never forget this.

Years ago, uh, one of our kids was going through one of those phases, and he was getting out of bed like at least, at least 10 times a night.

And over the course of several nights, it just wears on you as a parent.

And so this one night, he got out of bed like three times, and Megan and I looked at each other and we said, okay, it's time.

It's time to like lay down the law.

And so we looked at him, we said, son, there's only two, two reasons that you can get out of bed until it's morning time, until the sun is up.

Reason number one, you're sick.

Reason number two, you're hurt.

We didn't even include you're scared because that was too loose.

We knew if we said, Oh, you can get out of bed if you're scared, he's like, All right, I'm scared.

Like, that's what he would do.

So we're like, no, no, no.

You either have to be sick or hurt.

And if you're not sick or you're not hurt, you stay in bed.

And we asked him, Do you understand?

And he said, Yes.

He clearly understood.

We put him in bed.

Ten minutes later, there he is in our room.

And we're like, all right, we're doing this.

Because now there's there's consequences.

And so I sat up and I said, son, what are you doing in here?

And he did what almost all kids do in that scenario.

They just kind of look at the ground and go, like that.

You know?

And I said, son, are you sick?

And he said, No.

I said, Are you hurt?

He said, Yes.

So I looked at my wife and we're kind of like, okay, this is this is taking a turn.

Like, I don't know what's about to come next.

And I said, What is hurt?

He said, My feelings.

Right?

And I remember Megan and I looked at each other like, we tried not to laugh.

Because we were honestly impressed.

We're like, all right, that's that's creative.

I didn't think of that.

And in his mind, he's like, aha, loophole.

I found the loophole.

And so that's when I had to explain to him that as your father, I care about your emotional needs.

That you, if you're emotionally hurt, I care, but I don't care between 10 p.m.

and 6 a.m.

You deal with your emotional needs, just you and the Lord in those hours.

And when you wake up in the morning, we'll talk about your feelings, right?

But I was like, no, no, no, you have to be physically hurt, leg broken, bleeding, something along those lines.

One of our other kids, and this is just a quick side note, one of our other kids, when we gave them that boundary, they began to pick any scabs that they had on their body so that they could come in our room and say, I'm bleeding.

Like kids, kids will find loopholes.

They're masters at finding loopholes because there's something about human nature that we just we want to find loopholes.

If there's some type of truth or certainty that we don't like, we search for the loophole.

But here's the thing with God, there are no loopholes.

There's no loopholes with God.

And the scripture that we're gonna study today, it's gonna make that very, very clear.

And what I want us to understand is at first, at first, this idea of God not having loopholes is gonna seem like a bad thing.

But it's not.

It's a really, really good thing.

If you have a Bible, we're gonna be in Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

We're gonna go through most of that chapter.

If you have our His Hands Mobile app, that's what I'm gonna read it off of.

Obviously, we'll put it on the screens, we'll put it on screen for those of you watching from home.

But let me give you a little bit of context.

We're in a series right now called But Now God.

We're covering Romans chapter 1, verse 18, all the way toward the end of Romans chapter 3.

Romans 1:18 Romans 3 · chapter mention

We're going through the book of Romans.

We've taken some breaks here and there.

We'll take a few breaks along the way.

But if you're new, if you're new to following Jesus, if you're just interested in this whole Jesus thing, let me just tell you Romans is a letter in the New Testament written by a man named Paul.

He's probably the most read author in the history of humanity.

Romans happens to be the most comprehensive letter that he wrote that really details who Jesus is, why Jesus came, why we actually need Jesus, what life would be like without Jesus, and how we're supposed to respond to who Jesus is and what he's done for us.

It is comprehensive, it is difficult.

In fact, a lot of people believe you should never go through Romans with like a new believer.

The problem with that idea is that when Paul wrote Romans, everyone was a new believer, like everybody.

And so the reality is you're smart, and the Holy Spirit, God's actual spirit, he will open your mind to his truth.

When you open up scripture, when you open up his word and you have a heart to learn, when you say, Hey, Spirit, guide my thoughts.

Teach me whatever you want to teach me, he'll be faithful with that.

And so going through Romans, it's it's awesome, it's intense, there's difficult parts, but it's gonna help us grow.

And I've never met one person who says, you know, I want to be a Jesus follower, but not one of those mature Jesus followers who like experiences all the power and all the good aspects of following God.

I want to be like one of those really immature Jesus followers.

I've never heard someone say that.

If you want to have a mature, developed faith, going through scripture and not skipping the hard stuff, that's key.

And it just so happens that this series is taking us through one of the hardest parts of the book of Romans, which in some ways is one of the most challenging books that we have in the New Testament.

Because this section is it's dealing with a concept called the wrath of God.

The wrath of God.

We start in Romans chapter 1, verse 18.

Romans 1:18

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Some translations say the wrath of God is revealed.

Wrath would actually be a more accurate translation than anger, but anger is a word that we use.

Wrath is not a word that we typically use very often.

No one likes this idea of the wrath of God.

It's something that we would rather just avoid.

But if you read scripture, and guys, if you just read the things that Jesus says, just Jesus, like I'm a Jesus follower, so at the end of the day, it's Jesus' words that matter way more to me than anybody else's.

And there is no way to read the teachings of Jesus and avoid this idea of God having wrath.

And this is difficult because it creates an undeniable tension for us as we try to reconcile the idea of a God who we're told is love.

1 John 4, 8 says, Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

We have to try to reconcile this idea of a God who is love and at the same time wrath.

For some people, that creates a genuine crisis of faith.

Some people even say, I just can't believe that because I can't understand how a loving God would have wrath.

A few things really quickly on that.

Number one, don't believe for a moment that wrath is the opposite of love.

It's not.

Apathy is the opposite of love.

Sometimes we have this idea, we see this culturally, we see this in the church, to be honest, that God is so loving that he should just look at the world and be like, ah, whatever.

I don't care.

You just do whatever you want to do as long as it makes you feel good right now.

He's so loving, that's the way he is.

Please understand that that's not love, that's apathy.

As a father, if I ever say to my kids, hey, I don't care what you do.

I don't care.

I just love you, and you just do you, and you just do whatever makes you feel good, but I don't care.

That's not me being a loving father.

That is me abdicating my responsibility as a father.

That's not love, that's apathy.

That's me checking out.

Because when you love someone, you care, right?

You genuinely care.

The more you love something, the more you love someone, the more you care.

And so we can ask the question: does God care?

And the answer is yes, he cares.

He cares about every aspect of our lives.

Which means if there's any aspect of our lives that goes off track, God cares enough to steer us back.

And sometimes that means discipline.

So the fact that God has has wrath does not does not disprove his love.

It's it's actually the opposite.

If he had apathy, that would disprove his love.

Because you can't be passionate for something you don't care about.

But number two, I would tell you this: don't avoid the tension.

As you seek to grow in your relationship with God.

We live in a world that tries to eliminate the tension in every aspect of life.

As a culture, we very much value things being convenient and easy.

I think in some ways, the whole COVID situation we're in, it's gonna ruin us because we're gonna get so used to like, I don't even have to go into the restaurant.

They just bring it to me.

You know, I just hit a button, groceries.

Pretty soon, it's like everything should just be done for me.

We like that.

We like convenience, we like things to be made easy.

We like to do that in our faith sometimes too.

We want to try to eliminate all the tension, to just have this idea of God and a relationship with God where there's never any challenge, there's no friction, but that's impossible.

Scripture says iron sharpens iron.

And when that happens, there's friction.

The last year, something that God has just been telling me over and over again is that I named my people Israel for a reason.

In the Old Testament, Israel is the name that God gave to his people.

And the word Israel means to wrestle with God.

It doesn't mean to follow God, it doesn't mean to love God, it doesn't mean to obey God.

You would think he would have given them a different name, a better name than to wrestle with God.

But we as followers of God are supposed to wrestle with him.

The tension is a good thing, the tension is what makes us grow.

There's no aspect of life that you can expect to have real growth in without some tension.

So when it comes to your relationship with Jesus, be okay with tension.

When we grapple with concepts like the wrath of God and the love of God, and we try to reconcile these things, be okay with the fact that there's tension.

That's going to lead to growth.

This is really important.

The wrath of God.

It's a challenging idea.

But we've called this series but now God and not the wrath of God for a reason.

Because it's because of where we're headed.

This is where Paul gets with this idea.

This is his destination.

Romans 3, 21 and 22.

This is so powerful.

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

So Paul in just a few chapters has gone from God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people, to, but now God has made a way for us to be made right with him.

And it doesn't matter who we are, what we've done, where we've been, it's all through faith in Jesus.

It's powerful.

This but now God statement, it's powerful, it's life-changing, but in order to really grab a hold of it, in order to let it hit you the way it's meant to hit you, you have to understand what comes first.

And so for the last several months, we've been going through Paul's arguments, his statements about the wrath of God.

And ultimately you could sum it all up by Paul just saying, look, the wrath of God, it's a reality.

God is just, he is good, and one day he will judge the world, and when he judges the world, he's going to put an end to evil forever.

The problem, though, is that we we very often fall into the evil category.

We don't like to think in those terms.

We like to categorize good and evil in very convenient ways so that we're always good compared to someone else and not as evil as someone else.

But there's a theologian named J.I.

Packer, and he once said that no person is ever as bad as they could be, but at the same time, no person is ever as good as they should be.

We find these convenient ways to find ourselves on the right side of good and the wrong side of evil, but sometimes, sometimes we're just lying to ourselves.

Because we've all done things.

We've all done things where we've not only betrayed what we know God cares about, we've all done things that have betrayed our own consciences.

I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands, but like if I did, I would hope all of you would say, Yeah, I have I've disappointed myself.

I've done things that I knew were wrong.

And I've had that whole mental game going on where I'm like, I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

So God's gonna judge the world and every single person.

Jesus makes that very clear over and over again in his teachings.

And what Paul's saying is that the only foreseeable result of God's judgment is wrath.

And he lays this out and he looks at humanity and he kind of says, Hey, look, no one can claim ignorance because if you just look up at the sky, surely you can discern that there's a God.

And he goes through a few different arguments where he says, Hey, what about the person who says, But I'm a good person?

We went through that a few weeks ago.

You feel free to listen to that.

What about if I'm a religious person, like I go to church, I'm one of the good ones, right?

I'm here, I'm watching.

Like, what about that?

Paul's like, no, religion, that's not really what it is either.

Religion is no replacement for a right relationship with God.

And Paul's laid this out, and he's basically said, like, the wrath thing, guys, all of us have to deal with this.

All of us have to come to terms with this.

This is an everybody thing.

It's not a them thing, it's a me thing.

But remember, we're people, human nature is what it is, and all of us, all of us, somewhere deep inside, are like, yeah, but there's gotta be a loophole.

Right?

There's gotta be a loophole, there's gotta be a way, there's gotta be a way out of bedtime.

And Paul's gonna say, yeah, no.

Romans 3, verse 1.

Romans 3:1

And what's the advantage of being a Jew?

We might say, what's the advantage of going to church then?

If that's the way that it is.

Is there any value in the ceremony of circumcision?

We might say, is there any value in baptism?

He's talking to Jewish people at the time.

That's that's what they did.

He says, yes, there are great benefits.

First of all, the Jews were entrusted with the whole revelation of God.

True, some of them were unfaithful, but just because they were unfaithful, does that mean that God will be unfaithful?

Of course not.

Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.

As the scriptures say about him, you will be proved right in what you say, and you'll win your case in court.

But some might say our sinfulness serves a good purpose, for it helps others to see how righteous God is.

Isn't it unfair then for him to punish us?

This is merely a human point of view.

Of course not.

If God were not entirely fair, how would he be qualified to judge the world?

But someone still might argue, how can God condemn me as a sinner if my dishonesty highlights his truthfulness and brings him glory?

And some people even slander us by claiming that we say the more we sin, the better it is.

Those who say such things deserve to be condemned.

Now, let me just explain really quickly, we'll pause there, what Paul is saying.

He's attacking these hypothetical scenarios where people are doing mental gymnastics to justify the things that they do and say, I'm I'm the loophole.

Like, like, and it gets ridiculous.

He's saying, like, he's saying, like, what if someone says, hey, I know I do bad things, but like, when I do bad things, it kind of shows how good God is when he forgives me of the bad things.

So in that line of thinking, the more bad things I do, really all I'm doing is I'm highlighting the goodness of God.

Don't you see it?

If I do the bad things and it gives God a chance to do some good, I'm just bringing him glory.

So I should keep doing the bad stuff, right?

Like, that makes sense.

And before we judge that person for having that thought, we have all done some mental gymnastics to justify stupid decisions in our lives.

It's amazing the things you can convince yourself.

Like, I remember when we were first married, we we couldn't afford cable television.

Back when that was a thing that, like, you know, before there was Netflix and all the other streaming things, like cable TV.

And I love watching college basketball.

And so I wanted to watch college basketball.

And at the time, what I was doing was occasionally going to a restaurant with some friends, watching a game, ordering some food.

And I came to my wife one day and I said, you know, babe, I've been thinking.

I think we could actually save money by getting cable.

Because if you think about it, you know, if if I have cable, I'm just gonna sit here at the house and I'm gonna watch the game with you.

I'm not gonna go out to the restaurant.

And you know, when I go out to the restaurant, I always order, you know, some food or something like that, even just an appetizer.

And if you really think about the season and how that adds up, I think we could actually save money by just getting cable TV, don't you think?

And it didn't convince her, but she relented anyway, because she could tell I'm just gonna keep convincing myself.

That's how we are as people.

We could do some interesting mental gymnastics, and Paul's addressing that.

He's saying, hey, like, stop the whole mental gymnastics thing of saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that God is just and he's good and he's gonna judge the world, and I'm not perfect, but there's gotta be a loophole.

Like, surely there's a loophole.

And there is no loophole with God.

And what Paul's about to say next, he's just gonna like throw the knockout punch.

And remember, this is tension, but we're heading to a really good place.

So stay with us, okay?

Don't check out.

He goes on in verse nine.

Basically, is there a loophole?

Like, surely there's a loophole.

And he says, Well, then, should we conclude that we Jews or or we might say religious people are better than others?

No, not at all.

We've already shown that all people, whether Jews or Gentiles, are under the power of sin.

And to be under sin is to be under wrath, according to the word of God.

As the scriptures say, no one is righteous, not even one.

No one is truly wise, no one is seeking God.

All have turned away, all have become useless.

No one does good, not a single one.

Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave, their tongues are filled with lies, snake venom drips from their lips, their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.

They rush to commit murder, destruction and misery always follow them.

They don't know where to find peace.

They have no fear of God at all.

Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses and to show that the entire world is guilty before God, for no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands.

The law simply shows us how sinful we are.

Paul just says, look, guys, nobody, nobody can claim to be worthy of anything other than the wrath of God.

Not by our own merit.

And he goes to this list and he says things, and we might have some arguments like, you know what, yeah, I'm I'm not someone who talks like that.

Like he talks about speech, you know, and it's interesting.

He's not just talking about saying some choice words like when you stub your toe or whatever, um, or when your kid gets out of bed for the tenth time at night.

He's saying, he actually says, we speak in curses.

And that language has to do with the idea of blame.

We live in a culture right now that's just obsessed with blame.

Obsessed with it.

Like politics is just finger pointing most of the time.

It's their fault, it's their fault.

They're the ones who have done this, they did it wrong.

If we were in charge, we would have done it differently, and the other side says the same thing.

And look, I live in a house with four kids, I hear that talk all the time, I'm sick of it.

I just want to say, shut up and come up with a solution and stop blaming, because that's that's what we do as people.

It's tiresome, it's childish.

And Paul is saying that's human nature.

This is what we do.

We we just look, we curse, we blame.

He says, No one is seeking God, and we might say, Well, hold on, I'm I'm seeking God.

That word seeking it means like to search as if your life depends on it.

It doesn't mean looking for God.

A lot of people are looking for God.

Like, yeah, we'll find God, that'd be cool.

But it's actually God who seeks us.

He's the one who left heaven, he's the one who came to this earth, he's the one who abandoned everything just for the chance of knowing us.

He was searching for us.

We might have been looking for him, but we weren't, we weren't seeking.

We weren't searching, not like he is.

It says, no one understands, no one gets it.

We have this amazing ability as people to just miss it when it comes to what God values.

You see that by the way in the disciples.

I was talking with a friend of mine this week, and he was talking about how when you read the gospels.

There's this constant thing that goes on when the disciples are like, they think they know what Jesus would want them to do.

And so they're like, Jesus, do you want us to do this?

And he's like, No.

No, like, clearly not.

Like, we just have this amazing ability to misunderstand God.

And that's why in the history of humanity, horrible things have been done in the name of God.

People believed they were doing something that was going to make God happy, and it didn't.

But they thought it was because we just we miss it.

He's just going on and on and saying, guys, no, there's no loopholes.

There's no loopholes.

Stop trying to find the loophole.

It does not exist.

And with that in mind, with that understanding, with that truth, let's read Romans 3, 21 and 22 again.

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with Him.

Without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.

And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who you are.

Paul is saying, guys, there's no loopholes.

There's no way around it.

If you're a human being and you're breathing, you're under sin, you're under wrath, accept it.

Stop trying to find the loophole and realize that there's nothing you can do, but there's something God has done.

Jesus Christ came to this earth, lived the perfect life that we cannot live.

He lived a life that you can't condemn.

And by the way, that's that's the reason why in our world today, like no one really condemns Jesus, even still.

Can you imagine how convenient it would be for someone who wanted to deny our faith?

To just say, Yeah, Jesus is a joke.

Jesus, he come on.

Look at him.

Like, there's no way that we should follow that guy, but no one can do that.

In fact, what we usually have in the world is like, yeah, Jesus is Jesus.

I mean, he's amazing.

But I just don't believe that he's God, or I don't like the whole church thing and all that, but like Jesus, he's hard to deny.

It's one of the reasons, by the way, almost every faith in the world has felt this need to include Jesus, to rope him in somehow.

He's a prophet, he's an enlightened one, he's a deity, like in all the other faiths in the world.

It's like we gotta, we can't, we gotta deal with Jesus.

Jesus has changed everything.

And he's changed it for us.

Now we have this button out God statement.

And if we put our faith in him, if we believe in him, we stop trusting in our own strength and our own ability to be good enough, and we just say, Jesus, look, I get it, I admit it, I need your help.

I can't do this, but I believe in you, I put my faith in you.

It says that no matter who we are, no matter what we've done, no matter how short we fall when it comes to the standard of God's goodness, we're good.

Because Jesus forgives us completely, totally, 100%.

Romans chapter 8, verse 1.

Romans 8:1

Now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Jesus Christ.

There is no condemnation.

Is there any condemnation?

Zero.

What about like a little bit of condemnation?

None.

Because here's the beautiful thing, guys, with God, there are no loopholes.

There's no loopholes with him.

So here's what that means.

If you're under wrath, there's no loophole.

There's nothing you can do to wiggle out of that.

It's just it's the way it is.

And he he goes to painstaking lengths to plead with us to say, please, please give your life to me.

I love you, I came for you, I died for you.

Don't live this way.

Don't live under sin.

Don't live under wrath.

Come to me, put your faith in me.

And there's no loophole around it, there's no way to do it other than Jesus.

But what it means too is that when you're under grace, when you're under his mercy, when you give your life to Jesus, and he gives his love to you, and he says there's no condemnation to anyone who's given their life to me, guess what?

There's no loopholes.

They don't exist because God doesn't do loopholes.

So if you're under grace, if you've given your life to Jesus, there's nothing you can do.

There's nothing you can do to be an exception to that.

There's nothing you can do to like wiggle out of that.

It means if you're here today and you're like, yeah, I know he loves me, but man, last week I just I failed so tremendously.

No, no, no, doesn't matter, no loopholes.

It's like, yeah, I know he loves me and I believe in him, but I have I have these struggles, I have this addiction, I have this problem, and I just no, no, no, hey, yeah, deal with that.

The Holy Spirit will give you the power to deal with that, absolutely, but there's no loopholes.

He loves you.

Period.

End of story.

There's no loopholes, there's no way out of it, there's no way that you can mess it up.

I read this scripture last week.

I should have saved it for this week because Romans 8 38, you gotta use it in the right spots.

He says, I'm convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love.

Neither death nor life, angels nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.

No power in the sky above or in the earth below.

Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That means no loopholes.

No loopholes, you can't get out of it.

You can't.

And it means when you feel ashamed, that's not from God.

That's the enemy, that's the accuser.

If you ever hear that voice in the back of your mind that's like, yeah, I know you believe, but look at what you struggle with.

Look at all your issues, look at all your baggage.

I don't know if it's really gonna stick for you.

No, that's a lie.

No loopholes.

God doesn't do loopholes.

Jesus makes it so clear.

John chapter 10, verse 28.

John 10:28

He says, I give them eternal life.

Anyone who belongs to him, anyone who loves him, they will never perish.

No one can snatch them away from me.

I love this idea because it it creates the mindset, the mental picture that Jesus has you in his hands and someone is trying to take you away.

And it's as if Jesus holds you tight and looks whoever that would be directly in the eye and says, No, no, you cannot take them from me.

He says, No one can take them from me, no one can snatch them away.

For my father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else.

No one can snatch them from the Father's hand, and the Father and I are one.

If you've given your life to Jesus, you are loved, you are forgiven, you are free, you are completely covered, and there's nothing that can change that because there are no loopholes with God.

They don't exist.

And so here's here's all I want to ask this morning is that you stop trying to find loopholes.

That all of us collectively would just stop, just stop trying to find loopholes.

Stop trying to be like my kids getting out of bedtime.

It doesn't work.

And that means that if you you don't belong to Jesus, just like give your life to him.

He loves you, he's awesome, he's Jesus.

They name time after him, he's amazing.

Give your life to him because you will receive a mercy and a freedom if you let that sink in.

What that really means: mercy, freedom, grace.

Mercy means that you don't get what you deserve, grace means you get what you don't deserve.

You get all that with Jesus.

And all he requires is faith.

It's just belief.

He says that over and over again in the book of John that if you just believe in me, just believe in me.

That's all it takes, and you have 100% forgiveness, grace, mercy, the Spirit of God living your life.

It's amazing, it's powerful, and you can be sure of that, certain of that.

That's one of the things that that sets our faith apart from every other faith in this world, is certainty.

Most of the faiths of this world, the people who are the most devoted to those faiths, if you would walk up to them and say, Hey, are you confident that when your life is over, you're gonna be okay, they would say to you, I really don't know.

Because in those in those faiths, God, whoever God is, whatever the deity is, is almost always vindictive, cruel, and incredibly, incredibly difficult to please.

And so even the most devoted follower has to say, Yeah, I hope so.

I just don't know.

But Jesus makes it so clear if you put your faith in him, you can be 100% certain that you're good with God.

You're good.

And so stop finding loopholes, stop trying to figure out a way to avoid Jesus and just give it give it all to Jesus because he's ready to take it.

And for those of you who've already given your life to Jesus, stop, stop trying to find loopholes.

Stop trying to find reasons to convince yourself that Jesus is somehow less pleased with you than other people, that God is somehow less in love with you than he is with other people.

That's a lie, that's not true.

He loves you, he's crazy about you.

I mean, what else does he have to do to prove it?

He gave his son.

There's nothing left that he could do, and so you just have to stop trying to find the loophole, stop trying to find a reason why somehow you're the exception.

That he doesn't love you as much as me or anyone else.

His love for you, it's complete, it is total.

He gave it all.

He didn't hold back a thing, he holds back nothing from you.

It's the first lie, by the way, that we believed in the story of Scripture.

Genesis chapter 3, that God was holding out on us.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

God does not hold out on his children.

And if you put your faith in him, he's given you his total, complete love and forgiveness.

There is no condemnation for anyone who believes.

None, zero, zip.

So stop trying to find the loophole.

You're good.

You're good.

Have confidence in terms of where you stand with God.

You stand with him, and he stands with you, and he's for you, and he's with you.

Like we said last week, he goes before you, he's got your back.

Nothing will ever change that.

There's no loophole.

Praise God.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you so much for today.

Lord, thank you so much for this ability just to be together with a group of Jesus followers or a group of people, Father, that are seeking after you, curious about who you are and what you can do for us.

Lord, you love us.

At the end of the day, Lord, that's why we worship you.

Not just because you give us blessings, and not just because you you help us do a little bit better in our day-to-day lives, but because, Lord, you love us.

Inexplicably, you love us.

You've chosen us to be the focus of your love, and you don't hold anything back from us.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would give every person in this room, every person watching online, every person listening to the podcast after the fact, certainty and assurance that by placing our faith in you, we're good.

And we don't have to worry, we don't have to worry at all, God, that we're gonna step one step to the left or one step to the right and somehow be out of the focus of your love.

That's not how this works.

There is no condemnation for those of us who have given our lives to you, none, zero zilch.

And so when our accuser, when our enemy tries to tell us that somehow we're less in your eyes than you say we are, we can look back at that accuser.

We can confront those thoughts and say, no, that's not true.

There is nothing that separates me from the love of my God.

There is nothing that separates me from his love.

Nothing above, nothing below, nothing on this earth, nothing, period, there is no condemnation for those of us who believe, because you are not a God of loopholes.

You're a God who does what you say you're going to do every time, 100%.

Lord, I pray that if there's any person in this room, any person watching that hasn't given their life to you, that they would today, that they would recognize that there's no way out of your wrath.

But if we put our trust in you, there's no way out of your love.

And that's incredible, that's powerful, that's amazing, Lord.

Help us grab a hold of that, respond to it.

Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity.

Thank you, God, for the fact that we get to be together in your presence, because I know you're here, and I pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.