Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 22, 2019 | Love Came Down - To Rescue Us

Transcript

December 22, 2019 | Love Came Down - To Rescue Us · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Christmas Sunday.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: This is your first time in church since Easter Sunday.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Great having you.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: I was popped out.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't have said that, but that was funny.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: It's really fun to be here.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: And um we're in a series called Love Came Down this month, and you know, no mystery.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: By the way, let me do a little uh let me give one more little push.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: It's less than eight, less than ten days.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Till uh 2019's over, and I would urge you to at least consider, maybe pray about giving to that Christmas thing we're doing.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: I maybe picked too many things this year, but there are four things that add crying needs.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, one uh Topeka Rescue Mission, which is just you know part of our landscape, so important in Topeka, as you know, has had uh general fund troubles this year, so that's part of it.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And we're doing uh sex trafficking help thing that's really kind of secret.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: It's not associated with TRM this year.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: It's something that uh we have a personal stake in.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: A couple years ago, we raised enough money to pretty much build a home to keep sex trafficked women just outside of town.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: We found out since then that, you know, very soon the traffickers find out where that place is, they stake it out.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: So secrecy is really important.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Can't tell you a lot about this project, but I am telling you that the two women uh uh that we that you know and love, that we know and love, who are involved in this every week, uh uh that that secrecy is important and we're helping them get a car to transport women, we're doing a lot.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: So that those are two great causes.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, the two overseas causes, Trash Mountain, Haiti Lifeline specific projects there.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: So I would ask you to consider.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: We haven't gotten much money in comparatively uh so far this month, so please consider that.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: And I get to talk to you today.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: I have a sort of a Christmas Sunday message, it fits into the series, and it's about giving, it's about gifts, and I just wanted you to know did you know that the number one gift this year, the number one Christmas toy, is called the Bloom doll, maybe?
2:24
SPEAKER_00: So I bloom, this is sort of a homonym, B-L-U-M-E, but it's really like B-L-O-O-M, what it is, you it says, add water and watch me grow.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: Lately, collectibles, collectible dolls have gotten big.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: They make a lot of money, because I think there's like 22 of these, and I would urge you to collect all 22, very important.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: So you just put water in in the little uh plant there, and all of a sudden her hair comes out, and you know which of the two dozen that you've got there.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: So that's the big toy this year.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: I do like the fact that they're cheaper than some of the biggest toys of previous years, which makes me think I got a little nostalgic.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: The toys of past years.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: This is the number one toy of 70 years ago this year.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Cootie.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody here remember the Cootie?
3:13
SPEAKER_00: The education look at that.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody look around and go, you're really old.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: So we played with the cootie.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: An exciting, exciting educational game for all ages, and you know, you know it's educational because when you open it up and you have the insect parts in here, one of them actually is labeled proboscis.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: And then a parentheses, mouth.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: So this is more educational than any toy I've ever seen.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so this was 70 years ago in 1949.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: 1959, the number one toy was the latest version of the Barbie doll.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And how many of you guys had one?
3:51
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, number 1969, this is the one we had, right?
3:55
SPEAKER_00: How many of you got hot wheels?
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Weren't those the best?
3:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're still good.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: They're still good.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you kept them, you can sell them for about 10 cents more per car than they cost back then.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So then we move up to 1969, and this is just so hot.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Cutting edge, the Atari game computer thing that uh that we all had until it broke down after two weeks.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And then 19, that was 79.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: This 1989 we moved up to the Nintendo Game Boy.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Any of you?
4:31
SPEAKER_00: So I I still saw a person in their 20s just shaking her head, going, like, who would ever, you know, what is this about?
4:38
SPEAKER_00: 1999.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: This is how bad the toys have gotten.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: We're regressing educationally from the Cootie back to Pokemon, which by the way, if you remember, you could go to Burger King and if you bought the right size burger, you could, they would give you a whole bunch of these cards or whatever.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: 2009, this is just 10 years ago.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: If you're 20 years old right now, when you were 10 years old, do you remember getting the Juju Pet or Dora the Explorer?
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh, come on.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: What?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, somebody's got to remember these.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: But so uh my talk this morning is this is just sorry, I just indulged myself uh with these toys and with these gifts because I want to talk to you uh about my title this morning's Love Came Down because, well, actually, this is three weeks ago.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Love came down because that's what love does.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Love, as you know, goes down.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: It's very humble and it goes down and it does things for the people you love.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Number two, two weeks ago, Connor, terrific message.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Go online, watch it, listen to it.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Our student ministry pastor, love came down to deliver us from our illusions, you know, such as like you talked about David Copperfield, and when you understand, you know, that he didn't actually make, you know, the uh the Statue of Liberty disappear, then you lose your illusion.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, he also talked about Hallmark movies, which made a lot of us really mad because he wasn't really nice about that.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: So then last week was Love Came Down to invade a world without love where we actually talked about hate, hate, haters and so forth, and the fact that, you know, um that that the world does, in a sense, hate God, and God in his love couldn't just shake, shake, shake, shake it off, shake it off.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: Sorry about the Taylor Swift comment there.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: But now, so this morning is love came down to give us a gift and a promise, and I'm gonna tackle a verse that you all know.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: It's the most famous verse in the Bible, it's the golden text of the Bible, it's the gospel in a nutshell, 25 words that tell you uh the key information about God's gift and God's promise.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: It's the theme verse of this month.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: It's John 3.16, and it goes like this Say it with me, read it with me.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: 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.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Great verse.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: This is the verse on the bottom of the In N Out Burger Cups.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: This is the verse, you know, that Tim Tebow put on his eyelids and caused it to be the number one Google verse for a month.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: This is the verse that uh missionaries.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: This is the first verse that missionary translators translate into another language out of the Bible.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And for me, this verse is like a six-pointed star hanging over the manger at Bethlehem.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you the six bright points of this star about the love of God that came down to shine in a dark world.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And the first point I want to make is that the source of the love that we're talking about is none other than God, which seems really boring because we've gotten really used to using God as the subject in sentences.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: I shudder sometimes hearing how often people just casually use God as a subject, despite the fact that one of the Ten Commandments is thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, which literally doesn't mean primarily saying God blank, you know, some swear word, but it means attaching the name of God to something that's empty or not true.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And yet you constantly hear people saying things like, and I'm talking religious people now, saying things like, God led me, or God called me, or God told me, or God, you know, so forth.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Counting on the fact that sometimes I think that God doesn't spend his time leaning out of heaven and saying, Balderdash, I never called you, told you, or led you in that way at all.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: You're just doing what you want to do, but you know people can't check it out, so you just slot my name associated with it.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: And frankly, that's attaching my name to an empty thing.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: It's a command.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: The Bible, it's precious and few are the times that the Bible uses God as the subject of a sentence telling us what he does.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: So it ought to be precious and few in our lives, but the main way it does it here in the New Testament is by telling us that God loved the world so much that he did something really amazing.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And that the source of the love that we love to think about on earth, the source of all the love on earth is, well, there's no higher source.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: It's God himself.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: The greatest source of the greatest river of the greatest love in the entire world is God Himself.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's really special.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: John also wrote the first epistle of John, and he said pretty much the same thing in pretty much the same way there when he said, God, subject to the sentence, showed how much he loves us by sending his one and only Son into the world so we might have eternal life through him.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: The source of God, of our love, of the love we're talking about, is God.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: The next verse, by the way, says that, you know, we like to think of ourselves as the initiators, as the lovers of the people, you know, who are so nice that we love God and we initiate, but this is real love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to die for our sins.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: One of the songs that we like singing around here, it's it's uh it's not in most hymnals, but it's in some.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: It's glad to see it in our hymnal because it's a song that was the most popular song that I used to, uh, another guy and I used to sing when we were down in Tobago.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: When I was in my young twenties, in between two years of seminary, a couple of us went down to two islands called Trinidad and Tobago.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: They're off the coast of Venezuela, they're at the very bottom of the Caribbean islands or the Caribbean islands.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And I was in, I took Tobago, an island that's only 21 miles long, seven miles wide, really beautiful little island, and dedicated myself and the two guys that I had under me to knock on every door and talk about God or Jesus Christ to every single person on that island in the span of 10 weeks.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And we did that, and then during the evenings we would always go to the uh town square, whatever, whichever little town it was, and I would play my ukulele, and we would sing especially this song because we found it was easily the most popular of all of the songs we sang.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a song about the love of God and the fact that God's the source of this love.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: It goes, the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And there's a stanza in there, the third stanza, that the author of this song, whose name is Layman, about 80 years ago, that he said he did not make up.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: He said it actually came from the wall of an insane asylum, that a man had scratched it before his death.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: On the wall of the insane asylum, a man who had come to grips with the immeasurable love of God, and he stuck it in as his third stanza, and it's a very picturesque stanza.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: It goes like this Could we with ink the oceans fill?
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And were the skies of parchment made, where were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: O love of God, how measureless and strong it shall forevermore endure.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: The angels, the saints and angels song.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: It's a story about, it's a song about the love of God.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: God is the source of the highest and greatest of all loves.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: And then he moves on in the second point of the star that God so loved the world.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: This I think shows the breadth of his love.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Sermons have been preached on this verse for hundreds of years, and I think Spurgeon called this the range of his love.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: But when I think of it, I think of how broad God's love is, that it's for the world.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: I confess that when I was young, I loved rock and roll music.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: And uh my brother Steve and I uh walking around in the farm, each had our transistor radios, tuned to the same station outside Portland, Oregon, called Kissin Radio, K-I-S-N.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: And we listened nonstop to this kind of music.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And when there was one of our favorite songs, we would sing it really loud.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And one of the songs that we used to bellow out in our terrible voices and shock the cows was a song by Jackie DeShannon, not her real name, but Jackie DeShannon, 1965, sang a song that many of you have heard called What the World Needs Now is Love.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Sweet, come on, you guys.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: You don't know the song.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: This song is like a hymn in the hymnal, or should be, not really.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: So we would sing this song, What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing, nothing in the whole world that we need more than this.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that it's the only thing that there's just too little of.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And without thinking, we that's exactly what she said.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And then she went on, and we went on with her to actually tell God something.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little ashamed I did.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: But then we next sang, Lord, we don't need any more mountains.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: We got enough mountains to climb.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: I now imagine God leaning out of heaven going, Mount Mountain, who's making mountains?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I finished making the mountains, relax.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: You know, but Lord, we don't need no more mountains.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: We don't need no more oceans.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm not making any more oceans, relax, you know.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Don't need more sunbeams, don't need what we really need is love.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing that there's just too little of.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: We need sweet love.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: What?
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Are we forgetting the Christmas story?
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Were we forgetting the Easter story?
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Forgetting Good Friday?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, how could we, how could we, of course it was even worse than that, really.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, worse than just being silly or shallow, because when we said what we need is love, sweet love, it wasn't really the love of the Bible.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that rich, deep, thick, meaty, deep, deep love of Jesus that includes the rest of his character, his justice, his holiness, his righteousness, right?
15:23
SPEAKER_00: His moral standards.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't this kind of love.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: It was some scrubbed, dry, sanitized, sentimentalized love that was about an inch deep, that didn't have any moral standards and didn't include any justice.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: It was just sort of this syrup that we wanted poured over everything, right?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love really that we and have been singing this kind of love.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: And of course, this is the kind of love I deserve, Lord, because I'm a nice person and I'm really kind of cute a little bit if I stand sideways and I'm, you know, I'm okay, and everyone else is okay, and uh and God loves us all.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, in a survey some years ago, Americans were asked, would you rather, do you prefer to think of God as a king or as a friend?
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Three out of four people said.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: You can guess.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: They like prefer to think of him as a friend, not a king who might have commands and might ask you to obey and might have standards, you know, and might have discipline or anything like that.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: I I suspect that that percentage would be a lot higher nowadays.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: It's rather have God think of God as a friend, or do you think of him as a judge or as a king or as even a parent who might ask you to obey or anything?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Our idea of love is something really thin, really sweet, really syrupy, that doesn't hold us accountable.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's important because it says here, God so loved the world.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And we learned last week, if you weren't here, that this is not the world of the Grand Canyon and beautiful waterfalls in the Mediterranean and cruises.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: This word world in the Bible is not the word earth, which is nature, but this is the word used of a system controlled by Satan who works in and through unbelieving people who are enemies of God.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: The world in the Bible is a system controlled by Satan who works in and through unbelievers who are enemies of God, who are actually opposed to him, who don't like moral standards at all, who are a little bit angry at the fact that there is a God who says, I am just, I am righteous, I am holy.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: And we don't, you know.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: And he says, and he says, you know what?
17:41
SPEAKER_00: A number of you are haters.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: A number of you don't like me, but I'm telling you, I can't just, because I love you, I can't just shake, shake, shake it off.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to love you so much that even for those of you who shake a fist in my face, the Apostle Paul says, God demonstrates his love in this, while we are still sinners, two verses later, enemies, Christ died for us.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: He came, he lived, he died for us.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: So that leaves a real question.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Does God really love his enemies?
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Big argument in theological circles since the days of the Reformation.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Does God really love anyone other than the people he's chosen?
18:24
SPEAKER_00: The group of people called the Phelps's stand out there in the corner between second and third services on Sunday morning, are what we'd call five.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: They're actually seven point Calvinists, and they firmly believe that God only loves and only came for and only died for the elect.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: That is, those whom he chose before the foundation of the world who will eventually live with him forever.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: He did not love, he did not come for, and he did not die for anyone else, for why would he waste his time?
18:49
SPEAKER_00: He's God, he's not that stupid.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Why would he shed his blood for people who will never respond to him?
18:56
SPEAKER_00: So the extent of the atonement is a huge argument.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Is the redemption particular or is it broad?
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Is there a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea?
19:07
SPEAKER_00: I say yes, because I think John 3.16 clearly does when John 3.16 says God so loved the world.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: And John says in another place in 1 John 2, 1 and 2, he says, and Christ died for our sins and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So it's not just that God loved the world of the elect or the chosen.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Amazingly, he loves the whole world.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's where it's so important how you see yourself and where you are in this process.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Do you see yourself as an enemy of God, as unlovable naturally, as undeserving, or are you like, you know, typical prisoner who, you know, in the prison who goes, I should, I don't deserve to be here, I deserve far better, didn't do anything wrong.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the reasons I think somebody's somebody's been sending me Rodney Dangerfield things.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, they're trying to get me to.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that one of the reasons I like, I think we all like Rodney Dangerfield jokes so much is that, you know, to some extent we feel like he does that we're not getting what we deserve.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Rodney Dangerfield, when I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: My father said he wanted more proof.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Went to see my doctor.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror, I feel like throwing up.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with me?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't know, but your eyesight is perfect.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: So Rodney Dangerfield feels like just unloved, that he's deserving of more.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I met the Surgeon General.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: He offered me a cigarette, you know, things like that.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Sense that you're not loved.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the key.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting here this morning, you're not sure you're a believer, but you believe that you deserve God's love because you're actually a rather nice person, because you're okay, and others are okay, and God should love you, then can I just be really blunt and say that you're not even at first base yet when it comes to rounding the bases?
21:19
SPEAKER_00: That you're still 95 yards away from the end zone.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: But if you're here, if you're like the publican in that story Jesus told, the tax collector at the street corner who was crying out, God be merciful to me, a sinner, or the Pharisee, the really righteous, the actual righteous person who was keeping the rules, is on the other corner saying, Glad I'm not like him.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: God, you're lucky to have me.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: You see, if you're not that person, but you're more like the tax collector, you're not sure if God loves you, and you do know that you don't deserve it, that you deserve to be covered up by the cat, shall we say, then you know what?
21:56
SPEAKER_00: You're rounding third base.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
21:58
SPEAKER_00: You're on the goal line, you're in.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The five-yard line, you're that close.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the turning, that's the key point right there.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: How do you see yourself?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Do you see yourself the way God sees you?
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Do you see yourself as an enemy of his?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Do you see yourself as part of the world, this system controlled by Satan that has its fist in God's face?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: And you don't deserve anything, but God, in his grace, came to you, a hater, because he wouldn't just shake it off and dropkick the world into a hell forever.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: He said, I've got to come, I've got to do something.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: I love them too much.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Tim Culera is the, I think, the one who says, I was so pitiful and so warped and so weird and so sinful that God did not have to come and come for me.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: But he loved me so much, he was glad to come for me.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: So that's number two, the the uh breadth of his love is the world.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh number three is the proof of his love.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, I was thinking this is this is quite an advance because just even telling us, it's even hard for us to say I love you to each other, isn't it?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, now when you're little.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was when I was in third grade, I was in Glindevere Community School, I was incredibly head over heels, all you're long in love with this little girl.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: I never spoke to her.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: I was incredibly shy.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: I was two years younger than everybody in class.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: I had to kind of clamber up onto my seat and with my little legs, you know, up high and so forth.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: But Mary Lou Wilkins was a couple seats ahead in the next row, and she had auburn hair and long hair, and she played violin wonderfully in the orchestra, and always at the back.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely adored her, but I couldn't ever talk to her, I couldn't ever be suave with her.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: But on the last day when I got my report card, I walked by and I had to tell her.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: So I stopped at her desk, splurted out, Mary Lou, I love you, and ran back to my desk.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: But you know what happens when, isn't it amazing?
23:56
SPEAKER_00: You can remember the names of your girlfriend from you knew you never saw again.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway, but then you get suave, you grow up, and and and and now you really still have a problem saying, I love you, right?
24:08
SPEAKER_00: So, and plus you put out feelers because you don't want to be stupid like like you were in third grade.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: So you go, I like you.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: You wait, and then if you're lucky, she says, I like you too.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the next day you go, I like you a lot.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: You're still using the word like, though.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: That's real key there, like, L-I-K-E.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: So she says, you know, I think I like you a lot too.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: And then you make the big move from the word like, and so the next time you go, I love spending time with you.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: And you hold her breath, you hold her breath, and maybe she says that, you know, I really love spending time with you too.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: And then you know, you know it's coming, you know you're gonna take the big leap, you know, maybe the next date or whatever, and you're gonna go, I love you.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: And you just pray to God that that doesn't ruin your relationship forever.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: But God, God never hesitates in the Bible to tell us how much he loves us.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he does it in so many ways.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: To the scientists, you know, he says, as far as the heavens are above the earth, so great is my love for you.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: To the animal lovers, he says, he says in Isaiah, like a mother bear robbed of her cubs, I love you as much as that mama bear.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, Jesus says, like a hen hovering over her chicks, that's how much I love you.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: And to nursing mothers, he says, as much as a nursing mother loves her baby, that's how much I love you.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to know how much he loves us.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, talk is cheap, and so now he proves it.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm gonna prove it.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna prove it by giving.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, love is rarely, almost never, a verb, never when associated with God, never a noun.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: It's always a verb, it's always an action thing about something he did.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it says that he gave his one and only son.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: That's the proof of his love, is that he acted on it and he gave what was the most precious thing to him.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: What a gift, right?
26:08
SPEAKER_00: What a gift.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you could say the greatest Christmas gift ever given wasn't placed under the tree, he was placed on the tree, and his name is Jesus.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: And not only the proof of his love was Jesus, but associated with that, um, by the way, we have in 1 John, he showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only son.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: So that was the proof.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, can I just talk to you about the cost of this?
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Who he gave his one and only son?
26:36
SPEAKER_00: It's very rare that you can find a photograph of the Trinity.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: But I found one finally.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: It's really tough.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: But this comes from an old Episcopal church, and somehow they got a picture of the Holy, of two members of the Holy Trinity.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh spirit, he they made him, you know, dub.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: But so this is actually the best I could do, but I want to talk to you about something.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, we like to somehow iron out God's love with a hot iron, say he loves everybody exactly the same way, and he loves everything and everybody.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Just, you know, we simplify it.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: And yet you and I know we don't love everything exactly the same way, right?
27:15
SPEAKER_00: You love mashed potatoes and gravy?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Not as much as I do, but you know what?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't love mashed potatoes and gravy as much as I love the Kansas City Chiefs.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And I don't love the Kansas City Chiefs as much as I love my wife.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And I love my wife in a really different way than I love my kids.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: And I love my grandkids better than all of them.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, and you know, so, but you know how it is, how you love different things in different ways, and you also hate, you dislike things in different ways, too.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you K-staters, you just hate KU.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, fortunately, fortunately, you hate.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: No, there isn't anything you hate more than that.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, but you know how you dislike things in different ways and you love some things in different ways?
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Can I tell you for just a second that there is one love that is the greatest love that's ever existed or will ever exist in the universe?
28:05
SPEAKER_00: It's described that way in the New Testament.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: It is the love of the Father, the Heavenly Father, for the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And the love of the Son for the Father reciprocates.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: That's far greater than any other love.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: And we're told, of course, that that love has existed into eternity past.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: So I picked something, you know, sort of like BFFs.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, that person, that guy or that girl that she's you just absolutely is your best friend ever, and you get together with them, you can hardly wait to see them, and you can talk for hours, even if it is always uh just about football and disgusts, you know, your wife.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's just you're so close to them.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
28:44
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of love that God the Father and God the Son, two different persons, one God, two different persons that they've had for each other for eternity.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: So much so that when Jesus came down to earth, remember, my father, he said, wakes me morning after morning.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: His father would wake him up early before anyone else.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: So he would walk up into the hills and they would just have a conversation.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus, when he was talking to his disciples or to the Pharisees, when they would give him a hard time, he'd say things like, I and my father, I mean, we're one.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: I never do anything without consulting my father.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: He'd say, I'm my father's son, I'm my father's heir, I am, I everything I do is tied in with my father, which makes it so shocking that on the cross, for that one split second, there was some kind of a severing there when he hit our sins were stamped into the Lord Jesus Christ, that his father briefly turned his head away.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't know what that means, but it's horrifying.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: But all I'm saying is that there's a single great love.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: Every other love that's ever existed in the universe must be measured up from the standard of the love of the Father for the Son.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: All other loves flow down from that.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: But then God says, you know what?
29:53
SPEAKER_00: I love my people Israel with a special love, a different love than I love the whole world with.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in the New Testament, I love the elect, I love my chosen people, I love the people who've responded to me by faith with a special love.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: He says in John 15, you disciples, if you will keep my commands, then I will love you, and my father and I will love you in a special way, and we will come to you.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: If you want to have this special intimacy with the Father and the Son, where you experience physically almost their love, tangibly their love, then simply obey his commands.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: But he also says, you know what?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: I actually also love the entire world.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: I love the whole world.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: 7.8 billion people, one-third of whom are Christians.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I love every one of them, he says.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: And I send that son whom I love more than anything else in the whole universe.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Out of my love for the world, I've chosen to send the one thing, the one person I love more than anything in the universe down because his death is essential to take their deaths away so they can live with me forever.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: That's the cost.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: That's the awful cost of the Father's love for us.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Never, never underrate the cost.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Never think for a moment, well, that was no big deal because I'm really worth it, because I'm kind of cute.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, never, ever talk like that.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 4.10, he puts it the same way with other words.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: This is real love.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: The greatest of all costs, the cost of sending his beloved son to die for our sins.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: And watching him go to the cross.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: So then that's what leads him to the invitation.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't have sent him if he didn't want us to come.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And so he holds out his hands.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: God so loved the world he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him, this is the invitation of his love.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's both a whoever and it's a believe.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say whatever, whichever Jew wants to believe, though the early church pretty much believed it was limited to Israelis or to Jews.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: No, it's a whoever.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: It's a whoever, even though you and I don't want it to include whoever, right?
32:17
SPEAKER_00: You and I struggle when an evil person gets put in jail or whatever.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, and we go, I don't want to see that person in heaven.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm better than them, right?
32:27
SPEAKER_00: We don't want the pornographer to be in the whoever.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: We don't want the sex trafficker in here.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: We don't want that evil boss.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: We don't want that tyrant of a politician to be in this.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: We don't want that lazy employee who's ruined us and lied about us.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: We don't even want that uh that partner who betrayed us to be in this whomever.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And some of us don't want disobedient children who refuse to talk to us anymore in this, and yet everybody's in the whoever, fortunately, or else I wouldn't be in there and you wouldn't be in there.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: The whoever really means whoever.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: It means the weird people and the wacko people and the awful people and the evil people and the broken people.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Everybody.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And the one requirement is that they believe in him.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: Really?
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Really.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: That's all you're requiring.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: That's the biggest problem.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: When you talk to people about Christ, those of you who have talked to people about Christ, they struggle with it.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: For natural reasons, we're raised to believe that we get what we deserve, that we're paid with a paycheck because we worked.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, and in you know, in the movie, you know, I know I must have done something good to get this handsome boy, you know, behind, you know, you know, it's anyway.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's everything can be traced to a cause.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, all of a sudden there's no cause.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: This is just believing.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: This is just looking in faith to God and saying, you know what?
33:59
SPEAKER_00: I believe what you say about that.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: I believe he died for my sins.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: I believe I'm completely unworthy.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: I believe I I I accept the idea that that you're handing me a free gift here.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: And yet it's it's shocking, isn't it?
34:17
SPEAKER_00: You say to me, uh, if God really does love the world so much, how come there's a hell?
34:23
SPEAKER_00: How can he send people to hell if he loves God so much?
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because there's two ways of responding to this invitation, right?
34:32
SPEAKER_00: One is that you treasure this gift of love, that you take it in, that you accept it, that you receive it, that you luxuriate in it, that you weep over it, that you rejoice over it.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: You can't believe he loves you this much when you don't deserve it.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: That's one way of responding to it, right?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: But there's another way of responding to the gift, the offer of the unconditional love of God, and that is to trample on it.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: That's to spurn it, that's to say, someday, someday, someday I'll consider it.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: And of course, there is a someday that's coming, right?
35:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a day that's called a day of judgment in the Bible.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: It's a day when God says, You've lived your own way, you've spurned my gift.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: I loved you from the moment you were born with an everlasting love.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I loved you with a perfect love.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I offered you the gift of love, and you turned away from it, you trod on it, you spurned it, you tossed it away, you put it off.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: This is the someday.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And because you've lived the way you have chosen your entire life, I leave you to live the way you choose forever.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible thing, but that's what love does.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Love offers an invitation and says, whoever.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: None of you deserve it, but whoever believes, look and live, Moses said.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: That snake has bitten you.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: You're ready to die.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is look and you can live.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: There's no lordship there, there's no changing of your life.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: The life change comes later.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: You simply look and you believe and you live.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's the invitation.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: And the invitation, thank God, comes with a promise.
36:05
unknown: C.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: S.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, you know what, this isn't the sort of love we want.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: We want to be loved for our cleverness, our beauty, our generosity, our fairness, our usefulness.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: The first tint that anyone's offering is the highest love of all.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: A free gift of love is a terrible shock.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: This is the love that God offers, and he says, simply accept it, will you please?
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And if you do, he says, I got this amazing promise for you.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: A lot of things God gives those who believe in him.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: He gives us the forgiveness of sins.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: He gives us a family of brothers and sisters in Christ.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: He gives us the Holy Spirit, gives us all sorts of things, but I think what we love the most about what God gives us when we believe in him is the gift of eternal life.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: That is, that death will not win over.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: We've lost some of our loved ones, right?
36:54
SPEAKER_00: We've lost some of our loved ones.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: We want to see them again.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And there is a life after this life.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: There is an eternal life.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: I had to look hard on Google to find a decent picture.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: You may not be able to see this one because most of the pictures of heaven are eternal life.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you Google that, there are pictures kind of scary of stairways leading off into the clouds, and the stairway stops, and you go, wow, they're gonna fall right off.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, maybe they'll float away.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: And it's all this ethereal stuff.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: But as I taught a couple of years ago on heaven, I think you you now, many of you now understand.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: And if you there's a lot of books.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Randy Alcorn's nine billion page book on heaven may help you if you you want that.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, the fact that heaven's going to be on earth, the new Jerusalem is coming down to earth, that the earth is going to be completely renovated the same way you are.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: And you'll be recognizable, the Bible indicates.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: People will know you when you're in heaven, but you'll be a completely different person.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: You'll be sinless.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: You'll actually be wonderful.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: I'll be able to get along with Ron really well in heaven, you know.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: It's tough now, but then it's gonna be like it's gonna be so easy.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, because we're renovated, and God's gonna do the same thing to the world.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: I hope he leaves the Grand Canyon.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: I especially hope he leaves Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River Gorge.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: But but I don't know what he's gonna leave, but it's gonna be a beautiful home, and we're going to be here, and it's gonna be, I think, semi-recognizable, and we're gonna live on earth.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: Somebody asked me last week, Jim, are we gonna eat in heaven?
38:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm headed into Christmas too.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: I want that kind of food to continue.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, yeah, I mean, look at this verse, that verse, and so forth about the feast.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And when you get as old as I am and other joys sort of go away, at least you've still got food.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to the whole food thing in heaven and the mountaintop and the lake and so forth.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: And I hope there's fishing and maybe golf, only if God makes me a better golfer.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, this is just gonna be an amazing promise where you get to be with your loved ones who have, like you, seen the wonder of the love of God, have accepted, open-heartedly accepted the love of God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: As he says in another verse, God showed how much he loved us by sending his son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a ticker-tate parade on that day.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be fantastic because of God's incredible love.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: The love that we sing about, even as little children, when we sing, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: That song that won Amy Carmichael to Christ as a little girl, and then she went off and wrote all these books, was a missionary in China.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: That song that's transformed so many lives.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: That song that people remembered in 1972, after 25 years, China was closed with Chairman Mao in 1949.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Nobody heard what had happened to the church, and then suddenly a letter came to America when I was in college, and and and it announced, and this woman said, You won't believe what has happened among the this I know people in China in the last 25 years.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: And of course, it was her secret way of communicating, and people in America understood the this I know people, this I know people, what's that mean?
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Someone said, Obviously, Jesus loves me, this I know.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: These are the people who know Jesus loves them, these are the Christians.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And then when China broke open again, they found there were 50 instead of 500,000, 50 million Christian believers in China because they're the this I know people.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: And what do they know?
40:27
SPEAKER_00: They know the love of God embraces them.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: And you, if you know that love, can sing with me.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that Jesus loves me.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that Jesus loves me, I'm so glad that Jesus loves me.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves even you, you know, even me.
40:44
SPEAKER_00: He loves even me.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: You know the guy who wrote uh these verses?
40:49
SPEAKER_00: His name was John.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: He was famous for a lot of reasons.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: He wrote the book of Revelation, he wrote the fourth gospel, he wrote the epistles, he was a leader in the church in Jerusalem and so forth.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: But you know how he chose to identify himself for the rest of his life?
41:06
SPEAKER_00: He called himself the disciple Jesus loved.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: I would hope, I would pray, that you and I would so inculcate the message of John 3.16 into our hearts that we would think of ourselves first and foremost as people whom Jesus loves.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's the verse.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: Love came down to give us a gift and a promise.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in prayer.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we are so, so grateful for your love to us, completely undeserved on our part, flowing down from the great God of heaven.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: We're astounded that because of your love for your son, it would spill over onto us and that we would have the benefit of your son coming down, proving your love to us, dying on the cross for our sins, then inviting us to simply believe in him so that we might have eternal life with our loved ones forever.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: This Christmas, Heavenly Father.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Help us to focus on the things you focus on.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: That's not stuff, but it's yourself.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Help us to give people the love that really matters.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: The love of ourselves rather than the love of things, and to direct people to the greatest love of all.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Merry Christmas.