04/16/2024
Understanding God's Unconditional Love
Sunday, I talked about how Jacob was someone who couldn’t take "Yes" for an answer. The question that came out of that observation, which we didn’t have time to talk about it in the sermon, is this: Why do we insist on earning and deserving what is freely given us?
The best I can figure, is that I want to earn and deserve and create my own opportunities because when I do that, it allows me to beg, borrow, and steal as I try to manipulate the world around me to work toward my greater good. I become the arbiter of what I should and should not be doing, rather than God.
God offers this incredible promise to Jacob. It is unconditional, it lays out some real personal benefits, and it even has a decidedly altruistic purpose—Jacob and his descendants will bless all the other people of the world.
But rather than taking what God is offering, Jacob wants to renegotiate those blessings. Jacob wants a guarantee that if he isn’t happy with what God is giving him, and when God is giving it to him, then he should be able to opt out.
Deep down I think we just don’t believe, truly believe, that anyone could, or would, give us so much grace without us first having to jump through hoops. I heard a wise man say that the only question which will ultimately matter in the end, is whether or not we can get our minds and hearts around the truth that we are loved completely by God through Jesus. And there is real wisdom in that. I think we try to earn and deserve what God wants to freely give us because we don’t believe that the world works that way. We don’t believe that love works that way. We’ve been so conditioned to IF you do this, THEN I’ll do that - that we don’t have a frame of reference to understand unconditional love.
If you want something to chew on this week, then let it be this: Can you get used to the idea that you are loved because you are God’s child? There is no other reason than that. Can you accept the acceptance God offers in Jesus? Can you receive forgiveness that you did nothing to deserve? Are you open to being loved for who you are rather than what you’ve done lately?
If we can’t begin to say "Yes" to these things, then it will be awfully hard to go on to become the women and men God created us to be. It will be close to impossible to become more like Jesus without them.
Archived Posts
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If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.
What just missed the cut for Sunday’s Sermon
Naaman’s servants may actually become one of the hidden gems of the sermon. They say, essentially: “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it.”
One of the Longest Benedictions I Ran Out of Time to Share
Maybe you know the story of how Joseph and Mary accidentally left Jesus at the gas station on their way home from Jerusalem. Well, not the gas station bathroom in Jesus’ case. Joe and Mary are far down the road before they realize Jesus isn’t with them...
So many quips and quotes...
So little time to preach
I wonder what Mary and Martha’s phones might look like:
* Martha = the open browser with 27 tabs
* Mary = the single window that matters
* Psalm 46 = God saying, “Close the tabs.”