Just Accept It!
Notes
Transcript
I am so glad to live in America. We are blessed in this country. We have the ability to vote for the people we want to vote for. We have the ability to run for office ourselves. We can go to work, earn money, keep a lot of it, and make a life for ourselves. We are truly blessed.
We stand on the shoulders of immigrants and pioneers who battled the elements, declaring that they could tame the land that we live on. They could create a home, a civilization from nothingness. They created an environment and culture that anyone could become anything, if they worked hard enough. What a legacy! We are blessed.
However, we are cursed as well.
Because, those same people who tamed the wilderness, exulted the individual. They said that we can only trust in ourselves. We create our destiny, we create our legacy. We have to be strong, because if we are not strong, who will be? We trust in ourselves, because if we don’t, nothing will get done.
And, now, generations have carried chains, doomed to think that they alone are in charge of their destiny. They must be strong, they must be independent. Which leaves them in chains. Because no amount of strength or independence can truly change our situation.
This is now sermon three in our series. We have covered the truth that we are powerless over our addictions, brokenness, and sinful patterns—that in our own power our lives are unmanageable. Then we discussed that we must believe that God is the one whose power can fully restore us.
But, we are missing a piece. You see, there are many people who believe that God is the one whose power can fully restore us, but they are lost in their sins and have never experienced God’s restorative power.
Belief in God is not enough. You might have watched online last week, or maybe you were there for our Family Christmas, and you remember we referencing this verse:
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
The demons believe in God. They believe that God exists. They believe the correct things about who he is and what he does. And that belief causes them to shudder because they know that they are doomed for all of eternity. That belief does nothing for their eternal state. Something is missing.
There must be a decision to trust God with our lives and wills by accepting his grace through Jesus Christ.
Pray
A. The Truth about Us
A. The Truth about Us
Let’s take some steps back and discuss the truth about us.
We must lay a foundation again about who we are.
Paul writes:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Paul writes simply that we are dead in our transgressions. What does that mean?
Well, what is transgression. It is another name for sin, but slightly nuanced. Sin means to miss the mark. It is the general term to anything that falls short of the glory of God, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Transgression is a presumptuously sin, it is a choice to intentionally disobey.
I appreciate John Piper’s discussion of sin:
“What is sin?
It is the glory of God not honored.
The holiness of God not reverenced.
The greatness of God not admired.
The power of God not praised.
The truth of God not sought.
The wisdom of God not esteemed.
The beauty of God not treasured.
The goodness of God not savored.
The faithfulness of God not trusted.
The commandments of God not obeyed.
The justice of God not respected.
The wrath of God not feared.
The grace of God not cherished.
The presence of God not prized.
The person of God not loved.
That is sin.”
Paul says that we are dead in our transgressions
What does that mean? Well, tipping my hat in respect to the medical community and their definition of death, I am going the spiritual and metaphysical route. Death is separation. When the spirit leaves the body, death happens, physically.
Well our sin, our transgressions, separate us from God. He cannot have anything unholy around him.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
He is the giver and creator of life. So, being separate from God, the giver of life, means that we are dead spiritually. Separation.
Now, can someone who is dead do anything to change their situation.
I don’t want to be crass. But, when someone lies here in a coffin, never is anyone going to sit up and say: I’m tired of being dead.
No, no one has come back to life of their own accord. If we are spiritually dead, that means that we are spiritually incapable of changing our position.
We are lying in a spiritual morgue, waiting to be shipped off to a mass grave in hell. And there is nothing we can do about it. Why?
Because we are powerless over our addictions, brokenness, and sinful patterns—that in our own power our lives are unmanageable. We are stuck in our state. And we are that way since birth.
Depressing? Yes. So, let’s talk about something else.
B. The Truth about God
B. The Truth about God
Let’s turn our eyes from the sinfulness of this earth to the perfection of God.
We must lay a foundation again of who God is.
Let’s step with Isaiah into the courtroom of God.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
The creator of the universe, the one who is, who was, and who is to come. The one who is complete holiness. Complete perfection. Nothing out of place. Nothing wrong.
We cannot fathom this state of being. We live in a world surrounded by brokenness and sin, so we cannot understand a being that so completely unbroken, so perfect, so holy.
But, that is our God. He is so holy, that everything that is physical shakes when he shakes at his holiness. Isaiah feared for his life, when he saw the holiness of God, not even God himself, just a manifestation of his presence. He said, “I’m dead because I am sinner.”
This is our God. In the words of C.S. Louis: He is not a tame lion.
No, in fact,
For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
As the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, he has a standard that he wants kept. A standard that we are aware of.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
That standard is sometimes known as our conscience. We know what is right. We know what is true. We know that God is the creator and stands holding the key to love, joy, and peace. We know everything that we have every wanted is in him.
He has the power to creator and he has the power to restore, to bring order out of chaos as he has done since the beginning of time.
C. Our Doom
C. Our Doom
Well, after staring at God, we cannot help but remember ourselves, and our doom.
You see, being separate from God, we are dead in our transgressions. He provides life. He provides goodness. He provides hope, peace. All these things that our heart yearns for.
In this world, we get tastes moments of shalom, peace from God that he graciously bestows upon creation as he interacts with us, being about his great plan.
We get those tastes, and oh, they are so good, but they merely remind us that we are not with him. And we cannot be.
Paul writes:
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
There is a chasm between us and God. A chasm that we cannot cross. A chasm that is impossible for us to cross. Literally, impossible.
God, in his perfection, his holiness, his goodness, his beauty, is over there. And we are over here, in our brokenness, in our addictions, in our sinful patterns, doomed to repeat them over and over again, without hope of stopping, until finally we die.
And, then we will have peace, yes?
No.
For after death comes judgment.
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
And what is that judgment going to be like?
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
The result of that judgment is an eternity in the Lake of Fire because of our actions. At that time, we will all say that this judgment is just, that we deserve it because of our lives spent against the holy God.
The only way to escape that judgment is by having our name written in this book of life that it mentions.
However, remember, we are separate from life, because we are separate from God. There is no way that we can have our names written in the book of life, because we are dead in our transgressions and sins.
So, yes, in a word, we are doomed.
D. God’s Love
D. God’s Love
But, God.
Let’s pick up Ephesians again:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
God created us to have a relationship with him. We broke that relationship because of our sin. Every day, we intentionally, and unintentionally, choose to break that relationship because of our sin.
We reap the result of that broken relationship as we live in the chaos of this life.
But, God created us to have a relationship with him. So, he decided to create a way for us to have that relationship again.
We were dead, but God made us alive with Christ.
This was the plan that he set into motion at the beginning of time, as Adam and Eve ate the fruit, he planned that everything that is wrong with this world, because sin, would be made right again. This is the natural result of God entering back into relationship with his creation.
2000 years ago, Jesus, the eternally begotten son of God, very God of very God, became man, being born of the virgin Mary, like as us but without sin.
He lived his perfect life, proving who he was time and time again through his actions, his words, and his miracles. He fulfilled myriads of prophecies and pointed people to the way of relationship with God the Father.
Then, in the fulness of time, he died on the cross. However, he didn’t just die. Scripture says that he took our sins on himself.
“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
His death paid the penalty for our sins. And what is the result?
Well, if our sins are paid for? They are gone. That means we are not separated from God anymore.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are brought back into life. As our verse says:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
The grace of God. He loved us and knew that we could do nothing to change our state, to come back into a relationship with him, so he provided the way, through Jesus. And Jesus did everything. His act is complete.
For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
Oh, God’s amazing love.
E. Our Response
E. Our Response
So, what are we going to do about it.
As we said, the demons believe there is a God, and they shudder. They will spend eternity in hell, believing there is a God.
There is something required of us.
Now, I have to speak carefully. We cannot earn the gift that Christ gave by dying on the cross. That amazing sacrifice cannot be earned. We cannot work our way into it, which is why he died.
And anyone who says that we must earn forgiveness is piling up judgment from God.
No, we do not have to work our way into God’s favor. Jesus did it all.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
But, we must make the choice ourselves to trust Jesus.
We must belief that he is who he said he is, that he is the Son of God, come to die on the cross for our sins, that his death is enough.
We must believe that, and we must make the choice to place our trust in him.
There are plenty of people who believe there is a God, and they believe that Jesus came and was a great man, possibly even God himself. They believe that Jesus died, but they have never trusted him for their salvation. They have never made that choice. They have pushed it off, they have said that they don’t want it, and they are dead, separated from God right now.
There must be a decision to trust God with our lives and wills by accepting his grace through Jesus Christ.
We turn to Jesus and say: I believe and I trust you alone for my salvation, and if that is the case, I trust you with my life and my will. I accept your grace through Jesus Christ.
We must have a line drawn moment of our own choice. Not one made for us, where we say words that we are forced to say because it is expected of us. We must come to a point where we say: I need you, Jesus, save me.
Have you done that? Have you received the gift of God through Jesus Christ, have you decided to trust Jesus with your lives and wills by accepting his grace?
Until you do, you will never experience the freedom that he offers, the freedom that comes from life, a release of the shackles of slavery. Turn to him today.
If you have made that decision, you have life. You have freedom. Celebrate it! Even as we celebrate it today.