He doubted God. He was a rebellious teenager. He didn’t do drugs or anything like that. This guy was mostly attitude with a foul mouth. He grew up in the church, but it never seemed real. He would endure church on Sundays. He wasn’t sure God could exist. There was too much fun to be had. He had sat and listened to countless sermons about God and Jesus and salvation, and everything else. He had been to camps, retreats and everything else. Nothing seemed to get through to this self-centered, self-absorbed guy.
He had dreams of being on the Olympic track team. He was too worried about other things to really care about what Jesus had done for him. He heard sermons on love and graces, as well as sermons on judgment and punishment. Nothing seemed to help.
He knew what was right. He knew it, in his mind, but he didn’t really care about it. He didn’t embrace it. Then one day, it hit him. He wasn’t going to make the Olympic track team, especially when he could barely break 5 minutes in the mile. High school would soon be a memory, and real life would begin. Despite the fact that he had heard about the Good News, he didn’t listen. It is possible to hear without listening. He realized one day that God really did love him. He stopped and embraced it.
This is my story. I was “Joe Average Church kid.” I knew what to do, but it wasn’t in my heart. It wasn’t real. But, God loved me anyway. God loves those who do not love him. He loves everyone, and is drawing people to him. Theologians call this “prevenient grace.” It’s a preventing grace. It what God uses to call those who don’t him. I knew about God, but I didn’t know God. It was this preventing grace that kept me within earshot. God’s desire to have a relationship with everyone.
Turn with me to Ephesians 2.
Read Ephesians 2:4-10.
GOD’S LOVE
God’s love is so much more than we can imagine. The difference between Christianity and every other religion is the love of God. Christianity tells us that God loved us “even when we were dead in our trespasses.” Before we loved God, he loved us. Before we even knew about God he loved us. Christianity is the story of God reaching down to man. All other religions talk about people trying to reach God.
There was a man in another part of the world that was trying as hard as he could to stamp out Christianity. He had been given a license to kill Christians. He observed the gruesome murder of a Christian man. He was convinced that he was doing the right thing. He was a terrorist of sorts. He heard about a Christian uprising in a near by city, so he hopped into his jeep with his loaded AK-47. He was headed to exterminate Christians. Then suddenly a bright light stopped his jeep. God spoke to him. He told him that he loved him and had a special plan for his life. Here is a man who had been gunning down God’s people, but God loved him. This man was the Apostle Paul.
God’s love is not based on our actions. It is based on the fact that we are his creation. God creates us, and therefore, he loves us.
Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand that. It’s easy to understand that God loves the people we know. Most of the people we know are decent, honest people. They may or may not be Christian, but most people are decent, law-abiding people. It’s not at all difficult to realize that, even though they don’t love God, God loves them.
Flip the coin. As this crisis in Iraq was heating up, I heard an interesting statement. A new reporter said that Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, was a Christian. We understand that the term Christian has been somewhat politicized. But, that got me to thinking. God loves Tariq Aziz. God loves Saddam Hussein. God loved Mohammed Atta. God loved Adolf Hitler. God loved Joseph Stalin. God loved __________. Fill in the blank with the worst person you can think of. This passage is often applied only to us. God’s desire is to have a personal relationship with every member of the human race, regardless of how “bad” they have been. He took a murderous zealot in the apostle Paul and turned him into the greatest missionary of all time. Think about that, a murderer wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books, and the Book of Acts is largely devoted to his exploits.
No one is beyond the love of God. If Adolf Hitler repented and accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, then he is in heaven.
No one is beyond the love of God.
GOD’S GIFT
The reason for this is that it is a gift from God. It is not earned. It cannot be worked for. There is absolutely nothing we can do to earn the love of God. In our limited capacity as humans we can give nothing to God. God is absolute perfection, and whatever we could offer him would not be good enough.
How many of you received Christmas presents from your parents when you were kids? Did you do anything to earn those presents? We sometimes use the “Santa Claus” thing to get kids to do things, but the reality is that we didn’t do anything to earn those gifts. I know when I was a kid, my parents were not wealthy, but I was always satisfied on Christmas morning. The thing is that my parents didn’t have to get me anything. I can say that now, because I’m not a kid. What could I do to earn their love? I am their son, and they love me because I am their son. They don’t love me because I was a compliant child. Out of that love they gave me gifts.
We are God’s creation, and he loves us because we are his creation. Out of that love he has given us the gift of salvation.
We can’t be obedient enough. It doesn’t matter if go sit on a rock and meditate. It doesn’t matter if we help those in need. It doesn’t matter how much we give to the church. It doesn’t matter how often we read the Bible or pray. God loves us, and the gift is ours for the taking.
Have you ever turned down a gift? “No thank you, I don’t think I can accept that gift.” While gifts aren’t earned, they must be accepted. Acceptance is not doing something to earn it. If I walked up to you with a gift, you would have to reach out to accept is. I couldn’t make you take it. I couldn’t force it on you.
God doesn’t force the gift on us. We can choose to accept or reject it. For the longest time, I rejected the gift of God. He didn’t turn away from me. He stayed right there, and continued to offer it to me, until I accepted it.
Just because we have accepted the gift doesn’t make us anymore special than anyone else. My kids love ice cream. I have offered both of them a bowl of ice cream. Sometimes, for whatever reason, one of them chooses not to have any ice cream. I don’t love one less then the other just because one of them refused the gift.
Just because someone hasn’t accepted God’s gift doesn’t mean God loves him or her less. We have to room to brag about accepting the gift of salvation. If we had earned it, then we could run around and make a big deal out of it. We could say, “Because I gave $1 million to the church, God has given me the gift of salvation.”
Gifts are just that, gifts. They aren’t earned. We cannot work for them. If we work for them, then they are not gifts they are wages.
GOD’S WORK
Let’s say that Wal-Mart is giving the next 1 million customers at each store $1000. Just imagine it. You didn’t have to spend it at the store. There were no strings attached. What would you do? Would you say, “Agh, that’s not for me. I don’t need the money”? Would you go and get the money? You better believe it. Would you tell someone else about it? Would you sit back and say, “Oh, Fred and Mary don’t need any money. I’m just going to enjoy my $1000. The wife and I could go and have a nice dinner”? Would you just enjoy your own money? Or, would you tell everyone you knew about the opportunity to get some free cash? You would be burning up the phone lines to tell everyone you knew. You would probably even stop strangers on the street and say, “Hey, Wal-Mart is giving everyone $1000!”
How much more important is the salvation of the lost? One thousand dollars is nothing compared to the gift of salvation. Twelve bazillion gazillion dollars couldn’t buy salvation. How much more important is the eternal soul of someone whom God created and loves?
Verse 10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
There are two things to this verse: we are God’s workmanship, and we were created to do good works.
When I think of workmanship I think of my uncle Leroy. He was a great craftsman with a hammer, saw and nail. When I was a kid, he came and remodeled our kitchen. He had incredible skill with tools and lumber. He refashioned our kitchen into a modern, up-to-date room that was a pleasure to be in. He was also woodworker. He would make little things out of wood and stuff. He could turn a piece of useless scrap wood into something beautiful. He was a master of using his hands and skill to craft things.
God crafts us into something new. He takes what appear to be useless scraps of humanity and turns them into something special. He took a murderous villain and made him into the greatest instrument of Good News ever. It is the apostle Paul that penned the words that we read today. He is speaking from personal experience.
God hasn’t done all this work on us to let us sit around and look pretty. Churches are not, and should not be, museums.
My uncle remodeled our kitchen. He also made knick-knacks. The kitchen was far more useful than a knick-knack. The kitchen served a purpose. Knick-knacks just sort of sit there and do nothing. I am more grateful and appreciative of the kitchen than if he had made a ton of basically useless knick-knacks.
God did not create us to be knick-knacks that sit on a shelf and look pretty. God created us to be useful instruments. God is more pleased with one useful person than he is with a bunch of knick-knacks.
God has called us to do good works. While good works don’t earn salvation, they should be the natural result of salvation. It’s the cause-and-effect thing. Good deeds don’t cause our salvation. Our salvation causes good works.
Our challenge is to do those works. If Wal-Mart was handing $1000 to everyone, we would surely tell everyone. We would become useful advertisers for Wal-Mart.
My challenge to you today is to take these invitations and go about the job of inviting someone to our Easter service. Are we excited about the gift God has given us? There is more where it came from. God loves those who are close to us. He loves our families, neighbors, friends, co-workers, and anyone else that we have regular contact with. I challenge you to take at least 5 invitations. If you need more, we can make more. Take them home. Pray about them. Pray about the names you wrote on your bookmark on February 23. Sign your name to the invitation and personally deliver it to that person or family. You don’t have to give a big speech. Just say, “Hey, Bill, I just wanted to invite you and the family to Church on Easter. We have a real handsome pastor.” Whatever. You don’t have to run them through the Romans road or explain the plan of salvation or anything like that. You know, research show that most people would come to church, if someone just asked them. It’s as easy as inviting someone out to dinner, but you don’t have to worry who’s going to pay.
