Jesus, Our Savior Series

INTRODUCTION

Maybe one of the most well-known sermons that is not in the Bible was written by Jonathan Edwards and preached in 1741. This sermon is believed to have started the great awakening in America, but at the very heart of this sermon is fear and anger.

Tell me if this is familiar to you that grew up in the church: you would hear a message on salvation and you would question whether or not you were truly saved and so you would repent your 6, 7, 8 year old self of whatever sin that you may have committed such as stealing a juice box or lying to your parents and you would time and time again get down and repent because you may have just forgotten a particular sin and you didn't want to end up in hell.

I know that was me growing up and it didn't even have to be in church. One of my favorite depictions of the Easter story when I was growing up was done with puppets and songs. And I would watch this VHS tape, and I don't know how many times at the end of it I repented all over again and gave my heart to Jesus all over again. Mostly because I was coming from a place of fear. And I feel for so long that the Christian Church has taken the gospel message and mixed it with fear in order to get conversions, but I don't think that is the heart of the gospel message.

In fact, it was fear that drove the religious leaders to arresting Jesus. It was anger at his teachings that led them to demand his death. It was fear on behalf of pilot that led pilot to sign off on the crucifixion of Jesus. It was fear of their commanders and what would happen to them that led the soldiers to nail him to the cross. It was fear that led the disciples to flee when he was arrested. It was fear that kept them huddled with the doors locked after he was resurrected. Fear lead to his death.

But he did not come to bring fear. The well-known passage in John chapter 3 tells quite the opposite Because it was in fear that Nicodemus sought out Jesus at night:

John 3:1-21

Jesus came as a response to the father's love of the world. He did not come as a response to the father's anger. We're not sinners caught in the hands of an angry God waiting to punish us, but we are loved by the father.

1 John 4:9-18

? When we come to God for salvation it should not be coming from a place of fear of punishment but from a place of wanting to live in his love.

Last week, we looked at the fall of man and how God made a perfect place a paradise in Eden for Adam and Eve to live, but it was through man's fear of inadequacy and listening to the lies of Satan that all of that was given up through disobedience.

We also talked last week how all of us are guilty of sin and all of us are born with a sin nature and so that by ourselves we can do nothing, we are utterly helpless to save ourselves. Like we read earlier in John 3 we were lost in darkness, and we didn't know how to turn on the light because we didn't know the light of the world.

Illustration

Yesterday I took the kids on the Cooper lake trail in the Wrangel St. Elias National Park. The trail was quite muddy as it's a subsistence trail in the wintertime and is often ridden through with ATVs. And as we walked there were parts of the mud that was just so sticky and if you weren't careful and stopped and stood in that mud it would just slowly start to sink into it, and it soon would envelope your shoe and if you stayed there it would continue to just kind of eat you. In fact while I was walking in the middle of the path out of the path of the tires from previous vehicles that had gone through there the five year olds decided to walk straight down the tire paths as you know have more water because they're lower stickier and swampier and before I knew it at one point both 5 year olds have gotten their shoes stuck in the mud and I think they needed rescued. It didn't take them but a moment to recognize that their situation had gotten out of control and they couldn't rescue them or their shoes without falling and becoming completely covered in mud.

Now they weren't in any danger of dying but I think back to the pictures of the dinosaurs or other extinct creatures stuck in tar pits that would have needed somebody's help to rescue them because otherwise they were going to die.