An Astonishing Sacrifice

Yesterday, I reminded you that the Bible prophetically refers to Jesus in the Song of Solomon as The Rose of Sharon. Whenever we receive a rose or a bouquet of roses, you not only receive a flower with a beautiful bloom and fragrant aroma, there is also something on the stem that that can bring you pain...the thorns up and down the stem.

Those thorns represent the pain and suffering that Jesus endured as the sacrifice for our sins. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” Jesus lived a life filled with love and compassion for men, women, and children. However, even after He had performed miracles and clearly demonstrated His love for mankind, He was rejected, falsely accused, beaten and put to death.You see, Jesus came to earth to die for you and me. Like a rose, His sacrifice is painful and beautiful all at the same time.

The whips that scored His back, the crown of thorns that pierced His brow, the nails that pinned Him painfully to the cross, reminds us of the ugliness of sin and the terrible price that hatred, pride, murder, theft, greed, and so on exacts on each of us. And that ugliness touches every human soul. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23,  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So God, in His overwhelming, astonishing, love for us, gave His only Son to take our punishment upon Himself. Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured, mocked, and then executed in the most horrific way possible...a slow, painful death on a Roman cross. This was a sacrifice so painful that a new word came into human language to describe it: excruciating, which literally means the pain of the cross.

And that death was accompanied by loneliness, despair, anguish, heartache, betrayal, and a multitude of other emotions that we all experience at some point in our lives. But Jesus’ astonishing sacrifice on the cross reveals how great is His love for us, how completely He understands us, and how fully He feels your sin and shame, your pain and hurt, your disappointment, discouragement, and distress.

He understands it all … and longs to forgive you, to free you, and to restore your joy! You can live free because He died for you. “For God so loved you that He gave His one and only Son.”

The Thorn Part 1

Easter Sunday Sermon, Part 1

He's Alive

What a fabulous celebration service we had at Hickory Valley yesterday. We doubled our attendance, the worship was dynamic, the special music was uplifting, the dramas were challenging, and the presence of God was evident. Renae Miller and Galen Bell provided monologues during the message, with Galen giving the invitation to say "yes" to Jesus at the conclusion of the message. Ten people responded to the invitation and opened their heart to the life-changing love of God.

In John 3:16, Jesus gave us three amazing truths concerning God's great love. “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.”  Jesus came to this earth because of love. He lived a life of love. He came with a clear mission. The Bible says in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” 

What was lost? Well, that would be you and me, all of us. From the moment sin entered the world, it entered every human life as well. Every one of us, almost from the moment we could speak, learned to say “NO!” and “MINE!” Our sinful and rebellious ways started early and continued long after we were old enough to know what we were doing. The Bible calls this sin, and it not only creates problems IN us, it creates problems FOR us. Sin damages relationships, divides families, and destroys all hope of a loving and eternal relationship with God, the kind of relationship HIS heart longs for, and ours do too. So God unveiled a mind-boggling, almost unbelievable plan.

Jesus literally brought the immeasurable love of God down to earth. He dressed it in plain clothes. And He showed us that it’s a love for everyone, man or woman, young or old, light or dark, then or now. On these days after Easter, I hope you can feel and OWN the love of Jesus for you. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how you feel, regardless of whatever dirt or darkness is in your life, you can know the measureless, matchless love of Jesus. The resurrection means that what Jesus did for the people He met in His lifetime He wants to do, AND CAN DO, for all of us. Wherever you are today, whatever mountain you’re on or whatever valley you’re in, He’s reaching down in love for you. All you have to do is take His hand.

The Truth About Transformation

Imagine that you've been asked to write a book on marriage. Your publisher says, "We want to target young engaged couples who are considering getting married." What do you want to say to young couples considering marriage?


You begin writing your manuscript, but several weeks later your publisher calls and says, "Change of plans. We now want a book for married couples considering divorce. We've discovered that most people who consider get bad advice from their friends and family – most of the time they encourage them to go through with it. So we want a book for married people in this situation."

The audience and the situation changes everything, doesn't it? Different people in different situations need to hear different advice. The book you write for a struggling married couple is different than the one you write for a young engaged couple. For instance, if an engaged couple says that all of their friends are concerning about their upcoming marriage...you would tell them they might need to listen. If a married couple tells you that all of their friends tell them they should get a divorce, you might encourage them to not listen.

In the same way, 1 John was written for a specific group of people in a specific situation. In order to understand 1 John, you need to understand who these people were. The people John was writing to were not unsaved or unbelieving people. They were not hypocrites. They were born-again, Spirit-filled followers of Jesus Christ. Even though John addresses the heresy of Gnosticism, he isn't writing to the teachers of the heresy. He writes about them, but not to them. John is writing to a group of dedicated and devout Christians who are, most certainly...saved.

This is important because we often try to use the teachings of John in 1 John to answer questions that John was not addressing. 1 John was not written to address the question of "Am I really saved?". It was not written to provide a measuring rod to test the authenticity of our own or other's salvation. John is answering the questions, "How can I change? How can I be more like Jesus? How can I go deeper in relationship with God?", not, "How do I tell if I or anyone else is really saved". 


Again, this is important to understand because this week we are going to explore Scriptures that say things like, "No one born of God will continues to sin because God's seed remains in him; he can't go on sinning because he has been born of God." If applied as a test of our salvational authenticity, this verse can be used in a judgmental manner. If applied as a promise that salvation provides us the empowering victory over sin, it becomes a message of hope.

I hope you will join me this week as we explore The Truth About Transformation!

Obey - Walk - Love

John writes in 1 John 2:7, 9-10: “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning....Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. He's condemning empty religious talk again. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” It is important to note that these verses come on the heals of the command in verses 5-6: “This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”

Walking as Jesus walked begins with loving others. We have tried to make Christianity more difficult than it really is. We've made it about church membership, or having a particular theological persuasion, or being baptized a certain way with exactly the right words being spoken during the ceremony, or using the correct vocabulary. John makes the progression unmistakably clear: We know that we know him if we obey him; obeying him means that we walk as Jesus walked; walking as Jesus walked means that we love others.

This progress has three very practical applications. Three things happen when you begin to love others like Jesus loved others:

1. You Find Yourself Living A Life That Makes Sense.  John says in verses 10-11: "Whoever loves his brother lives in the light...whoever hates his brother walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him." When you love others, it's easy to find the purpose for your life. Loving others gives you direction. Love brings light into your life, as opposed to hatred, which brings darkness. Have you ever known someone so full of hate, so set on revenge than he or she couldn't see straight?
2. You Begin To Experience Stability In Your Christian Walk. Read verse 10 again: “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” Think about this: How much of our sin is the result of not loving others? Greed. Rage. Deception. Sexual immorality. These are the result of not loving others. If you love others, you won't short-change them in business, you won't lash out in anger, you won't lie to them, you won't treat them like a sexual object. When you begin to love others the way you should love others, sin loses its power in your life. Also, when you love others, sin loses its appeal. Here's why. When you sin, you're thinking only of you. Sin is the ultimate act of selfishness. Not only does it drive a wedge between you and God, it drives a wedge between you and others.
3. You Help Others To Experience A Connection With God. When you love others, you create stability in their lives as well, because your actions aren't knocking them down spiritually. There's a sense in which the world, better than the church, understands that the church's top priority is to love people. When we battle it out over insignificant issues, when we define ourselves exclusively by what we're against, rather than the One we are for, they see through our façade. And they're less than impressed. The world doesn't want to hear about our faith unless they can see it, too.

God wants you to know where you stand with him. He wants you to be secure in knowing him. In order to know this, you have to know something else: People matter to God more than anything else in the world. If you want to know God in a life-changing way, then you need to learn to love people the way he loves people. 

(Special note: The outline above was from Stephen May's The Love Connection).