July 14, 2024 Message for Outdoor Service - The Lavish Grace of God
There are a lot of really stunning passages of scripture in the Bible. There are so many, that I probably could not choose if I had to which is my favorite. But today’s passage does come very close.
There are many ways to read the Bible, and no matter how you read a passage like this, whether it’s as a work of art, a work of prose or poetry,
or if you read it as a text to analyze, or if you read it as the lyrics of a song that you allow to penetrate your heart, it is remarkable and powerful and, I find, deeply moving.
In fact I was first drawn to read this passage by a person who was not a believer as i understood at the time, but was someone who appreciated beautiful writing.
Someone who appreciated writing as an art form, someone who was familiar with what we might call the classics - like Shapespeare and Dante and C.S. Lewis or JR Tolkien who wrote the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
So no matter where you are in your journey, I believe that there is something for you in this passage that was just read so well by __________.
I want to point out that the entire passage that ________ just read, while mercifully punctuated in English is actually all one long sentence in Greek, if you can imagine.
This section is sometimes called a “doxology” because it recites what God has done and is an expression of worship to honor him.
Paul speaks first of the blessings we have through the Father (vv. 3–6), then of those that come through the Son (vv. 7–12) and finally of those through the Holy Spirit (vv. 13–14).
The first part of this passage that I want to highlight is something that touches on a profound, but challenging to grasp, spiritual truth.
We are blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the heavenly realms (the realm beyond what we can see and touch and feel).
You like me can probably most easily relate to things that you can see and touch and feel. These are all of the very tangible things in life.
They include material things, like this microphone, like that guitar, like that picnic table. It also includes things that we can see like the sky, the clouds, the rain, lightning.
That would also include our own emotions, our own feelings about ourselves, about things that matter to us.
But this passage is saying that there is something beyond all these things. There is something above all these things.
There is a spiritual realm, there is an aspect to life that is less obvious, less concrete, less touchable.
And although it can stretch our thinking, there is something outside of what is obvious to reach for, something to seek, that we will find if we are open and sincerely looking.
So the Apostle Paul says in verse 3: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Paul writes this beautiful statement of the blessing knowing full well the difficulties that we face in life. He wrote this and other very similar things while in a dark, dank prison.
So he wasn’t speaking of his external life. He was speaking of his internal life.
And what he’s about to do is gush. He’s going to talk about what God sees and feels and knows about Jesus, and also about what God sees and feels and knows about us, each of us who are followers of Jesus.
A few things to point out: he talks about “every spiritual blessing in Christ“. The truth is, there are no true spiritual blessings outside of Jesus.
There are emotional highs, there are better days than others, there are joyful moments perhaps that can exist outside of Jesus.
But the spiritual blessings he speaks of have to do with knowing Jesus. With loving Jesus, and growing in our understanding of how profoundly we are loved by God.
It is deeply personal, between you as a person and God as a person. Someone I know who chose to walk away from Jesus said that they had come to believe that the universe is God.
The cold, impersonal, vacuous, seemingly endless space of the universe - that is God?!?
Are there any science fiction fans here? Star Wars. Star Trek. William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series went into space for real a few years back on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021.
Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience.
Here’s part of what he wrote when he returned to earth: “I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses.
“Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years…
“but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death...
“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of (the) connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe...
Shatner continues: “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing...
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness...
“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral”.
That’s the universe, as Shatner experienced its cold, bleak reality, and more to the point it is not God. We would do ourselves a great service if we stopped imagining that the universe speaks to us on any level, or gives any direction to our lives. It doesn’t.
Rather, the being, the person who is your Creator and the lover of your soul...that is Who matters, that is Who gives meaning and purpose and value to life in this world that is full of hardship and struggle, disappointment and suffering,
And then, when Paul speaks of “the heavenly realms“, he speaks of our true home.
As believers in Jesus Christ, we have a heavenly citizenship. Most of us in this room are citizens of Canada, or are aspiring to become citizens, which by itself contains many blessings, because for all its imperfecrtions Canada is just an awesome place to live.
But much more important is the fact that our citizenship and our allegiance must be to Christ who dwells in heaven at the right hand of the Father.
Philippians 3:20 says: “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body”.
Don’t ever forget, church, that your citizenship, your place of belonging is with Jesus. If you don’t know Jesus Christ, this could be true for you and of you.
Then he says 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
First Paul speaks of something that is absolutely remarkable and that we should take precisely as stated.
My brothers and sisters, before God created the world, he had you in mind. He knew of your coming life, because He is God and He chose you to belong to Him before the world created.
He not only chose you to belong to Him. He chose you to be like Jesus, to be holy and blameless in His sight. Why?
It’s His pleasure to love you. It’s His pleasure to call you. It’s His pleasure to bestow upon you His glorious grace - His amazing and unmerited kindness and favour.
And He’s given that gift to you in the One He loves. God gave the gift of life to you in Jesus, through His life and death and resurrection.
It’s the gift of spiritual life, it’s the gift of His presence in your life. In His presence we find peace.
Maybe there are things in our pasts that seem to keep us locked down, buttoned up and unable to move forward.
God has given to you in Jesus Christ the ability to really move forward in your life.
To all here who have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, who have believed that the death Jesus died He died for you, in your place; because of no other reason than that He loves you.
Because you have Jesus Christ living in you by His Holy Spirit, you have the ability to live an abundant life.
A life full of spiritual, deep down blessing. A life of liberty and unmitigated kindness toward others. A life that will change the world around you by the reality of Christ in you, the hope of glory.
A life of purpose and joy that comes in the receiving and the giving. Receiving…from God as He renews you and strengthens you and fills your cup to overflowing.
And giving…as you bless others out of the abundance of the overflow of Christ that is in you.
So we were chosen before the creation of the world for a purpose, we were called into existence for relationship (adopted in Christ)
The ultimate purpose that you were called into existence, that you were created, was to be loved, and to be holy and blameless and the sight of God Almighty.
The ultimate purpose that you were called into existence, that you were created for, was to be loved, and to be holy and blameless in the sight of your Creator.
So if you’re like most people on this planet and you struggle with the very basic question of: “Why am I here? Why am I taking up space on this earth?
“Why, when there is so much pain and suffering in life, was I even brought into this life?”, You are not alone. It’s brutally difficult to find a purpose in life that really matters and that can you sustain you over the long haul.
Sometimes when we pursue those kind of questions, with an open heart, we can find ourselves in a place where we are able to respond to a great gift that God wants to give us.
If you were here today, and you were listening to me speak, that is not an accident.
I was once committed to the idea that life had no purpose at all. I was raised an atheist, I was raised to look down on people of faith, I was raised to have a little more than contempt in particular for Christians. But mercifully, we are not Victims of what we were born into. We are not, or we do not have to choose to be, subject to the traditions that we grow up in.
When I came to embrace the possibility that there is a God, and in particular that God Expressed himself in human form in Jesus,
and that he came to this planet for the main reason of reconciling people to God, people that included me-- that completely altered my thinking.
It completely shifted my thinking from being convinced that life was purposeless, to believing that life is full of purpose and meaning,
because everything matters to God, who is love. Everything matters, including my life. Including your life.
So you were created to be loved, and you were created to be holy and blameless in the sight of your creator.
That means that you were created to come into relationship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus.
That’s because by ourselves, none of us are holy. None of us are blameless. Just ask yourself, have I ever lied? Have I ever lusted?
Have I ever taken God‘s name in vain? Have I ever stolen? Ask yourself those questions.
My answer to those questions is yes. If you’re a normal human being, your answer to those questions is yes. So, if I’m being honest...that means that I have been a thief, a liar, a lustful blasphemer.
Could be that you’re just way better than me, and that none of these areas has been a problem for you. But if you like me, that means that you’re not holy or blameless in and of yourself, by your own strength.
So by our own strength, we can’t really say that we are morally blameless, that we are holy. And that means that we cannot please God. We’re out in the cold on our own.
But by faith in Jesus, who fulfilled all the requirements of the law, who himself was and is completely perfect and holy and righteous; by faith in the son of God, Jesus, you can be made holy and righteous. Blameless.
To emphasize this, it says in 1 John that when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins. That by itself is completely amazing.
But in addition to that, God‘s love is so great that he not only forgives us our sins and does not hold them against us, he completely cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
That means that he sees us as he sees Jesus. God sees us through the cross, through the sacrifice of Jesus. Can I get an amen?
Our relationship with our Creator has been healed by the act of His suffering, his lavish love expressed as he entered into our suffering and took our sins, our mistakes, our hurts, upon Himself on the cross.
So that’s why Paul says: 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.
All of this was brand new to me when, at 17 years old, God moved in my life in some very unique ways, to get my attention, to draw me to himself and to replace my deep depression, my despair and sense of deep meaninglessness, with purpose and joy and meaning.
That was over 44 years ago. It has not diminished at all in that time, and in fact it continues to grow and grow. It’s amazing. Boggles my mind, how good God is. How much he loves.
The Message paraphrase of this passage of Scripture offers a good commentary on this passage. It paraphrases Paul as saying:
3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.
Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!
He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making.
He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It’s in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit.
This down payment from God is the first installment on what’s coming, a reminder that we’ll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.
So may we consider the lavish love, the lavish grace of God that is extended to us, offered to us, in the person of Jesus Christ. You might be ready today, right now to say yes to God, to say yes to the offer of his love.
If that is you, I would encourage you to speak with myself for Pastor Jonathan or Pastor Jan or Breda, our elder.
We will be happy to speak with you further about this, and when you are ready, to help you to make that Incredibly important first step of faith, where you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the son of God, that he is lord, And where are you receive him as your Lord and Savior. Amen.
