Sermon, January 23, 2000

Last week I was asked if I believe in punishment? The question was prompted by my sermon on forgiveness in which I said no sinner is greater than the forgiving grace of God. I absolutely believe that to be true. I also believe that God’s forgiveness, initiated by the sacrifice of Christ from the cross, does not automatically wipe clean the sins of every person automatically.

While God does stand with His arms of forgiveness wide open, the sinner, you and I must, like the prodigal son did, acknowledge his sin, confess and repent.

As it reads in the first letter of John,

"IF we confess ours, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

It should be noted that John is talking TRUE confession the kind that involves a commitment not to continue in sin. Truthfully, we wouldn’t be genuinely confessing our sins to God if we planned to commit them again and again.

It goes on to read,

"If we say that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar,
and His word is not in us."

In other words as a result of our unwillingness to confess our sins, the outcome of our actions, will be the punishment God.

I realize that there are many people who struggle with this idea of punishment. I remember two years ago when we were reading through the Bible, some people talked to me about how the Old Testament portrayed God as a cruel punishing God. One person said, "When you read the Old Testament and then the New Testament, it like you are reading about two different God’s.

God does not have a split personality. God is a God of love. The most important spiritual words you and I need to know is, ‘God loves you.’ The scripture reminds us of this fact over and over and over again.

Psalm 26:3 "For your steadfast love is before my eyes."

Psalm 40: 1-10 "I waited patiently for the Lord; for He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my heart."

Psalm 57:2,3 "I cry to God Most High, to God who fulfills His purpose for me, He will send from heaven and save me, He will put to shame those who trample me. God will send forth His steadfast love and faithfulness

Psalm 63:3 "Your steadfast love is better than life."

Psalm 86:5-13 "For you O Lord are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you."

Zephaniah 3:17 "The Lord, your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in His love, He will exult over you with loud singing."

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

Romans 8:35-39 "Who will separate us from the love of God? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? NO we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us form the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

1 John 3:1,2 "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God and that is what we are."

Do you truly comprehend the thought that God loves you this much?

A mother was trying to console her teenage daughter, who unlike all her friends had not been asked to the eighth grade dance. The daughter, feeling sorry for herself gave a litany of reasons why no boy would ever ask her out, concluding with the words, ‘Nobody will ever love me.’

Mom responded, ‘I love you.’

Her daughter answered, ‘You have to, your my mother.’

I suppose all too often that is the way we see God’s love for us. God has to love me because that’s what God does? Since we live in a world were love is all too often conditional. It is difficult to understand that God actually loves you and me for no reason at all.

When was the last time you allowed yourself ample time to let yourself be loved by God?

"I pray that...Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love......you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

How can we experience more of God’s love?

Silence and solitude are key. I know what you are thinking, there goes experiencing more of God’s love. Without adding one more thing to do on your To Do list let me say it again. Silence and solitude.

Find a quiet place. Don’t take more than your Bible, go there and let yourself be with God. A word of caution. At first you will not hear God, what you will hear is your mind reminding you of the million and one things you could be doing. Your task is to persevere in your solitude until all your seductive visitors get tired of pounding on your door and they leave you alone.

I am not saying you can only experience God’s love in solitude. In my life I have encountered the love of God through and in the lives of others. There is a profound interpersonal aspect in knowing God’s love. However if the truth be told, we don’t experience the love of God as we should because we don’t purposely plan out quiet time with God.

Paul is saying that if we want to know something of the fullness of God, then we will camp out in the territory of His love. Odds are that God is much more willing to love you than you have been able to let Him.

God’s love is total. It reaches every corner of our experience. It is long - it continues the length of our lives.

God’s love is deep. It reaches to the depth of discouragement, despair, and even death.

God’s love is wide. It covers the breadth of our experience and it reaches out to the whole world.

God’s love is high. It rises to the heights of our celebration and elation.

We can be lost in God’s love, but never lost to God’s love.

"I pray that you know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

Mrs. Isadore Strauss was one of the few women who went down on the Titanic in 1912, and she went down because she could not bear to leave her husband. Both and she were calm throughout the excitement of loading the lifeboats. Both aided frightened women and children to find places aboard them.

Finally, Mr. Strauss, who had been urging his wife again and again to seek safety in a life boat, forced her to enter one. She was no more seated, however, than she sprang up and got to the deck before her husband could stop her. There, she caught his arm, snuggling it against her side, exclaiming, "We have been long together a great many years. We are old. Where you go, I will go. A story of everlasting love.

God love for you is like that everlasting love. The 2nd chapter of Hosea presents God’s love to us in similar terms as Mr. and Mrs. Strauss. God talks of wooing Israel, His adulterous bride, into the wilderness. There He will speak tenderly to her and there He will give her vineyards and a door of hope. There she will come to know Him not as her owner but - much more intimately-as her husband

What areas of your life needs quieting with God’s love?

What can you do so you can respond as in the days of your youth, when with all of your heart you sang, "Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus love me, Yes Jesus loves me for the Bible tells me so."

What can you, do as the Psalms tells us,

"Be still and know that
I am God."

amen