Intro/Outro: Welcome to Garden Church podcast. We are a community in Southern California dedicated to raising resilient disciples of Jesus Christ.
Bill Dogterom: It's, good to be, with you this morning and to continue, actually, the last of these, four Advent messages. Remember that Advent is this season of preparing, season of slowing, an attempt to, take back, to redeem time. Paul tells us that if if we're not careful, Ephesians chapter five, if we're not careful, we will be overwhelmed by the evil of our day and age. The days he says you're living in are are evil days. You need to learn to tell time differently than everybody else does.
So the the big rock that goes in at the beginning of every week is a Sabbath that says we're not gonna be defined by our product. We're not gonna be defined by our some contribution. We're gonna be defined by God's grace and mercy and love for us. And so challenging has that been for us that God made it one of the top 10 rules. You will take one day in seven and you will do nothing to earn anything.
You will let me love you for no good reason. And so hard is that for us that we think he changed his mind when the New Testament dawned and we don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to let God love us for no good reason. And we're paying the price for that. Remember, we're not punished for our sin.
We're punished by it. When when we set aside arbitrarily this this word that is intended to breathe life into us, the consequences of that ripple out in pretty catastrophic forms. And in in this Advent season, which we take one month, really four Sundays, and just prepare him room. And I don't know if your experience of this year has been the same as mine, probably not, but in some measure, the advent is hitting heavy this year. It feels in some ways like, we're just trying to to it's one it has become if I'm not careful, it has become one more box to tick on an otherwise crowded Christmas calendar.
And oh, yeah. We've got Advent. Okay. How do you Advent? I'm not sure.
But we'll we'll do that and light some candles and whatever. And the problem, of course, is that Advent, invites us to let the rest of the season flow around it rather than be kind of shoehorned into another wise busy schedule. Because the pace is pretty relentless, the pressure is pretty relentless, it just keeps giving. No. It keeps taking.
And we feel by by the time we collapse at the end of Christmas eve or Christmas morning, we're just really grateful for the British Empire in Boxing Day. The receiving of that one day, the twenty sixth, where we can just stay in our jammies all day and eat leftovers and nobody has to do anything. And and and the thing, of course, is this is the kind of world into which Jesus came in the first place. So we discover in these Advent Sundays that hope has a first name, that peace has a first name, that joy has a first name, and today that love has a first name, and his name is Jesus. That's why I love the the Jesus forward worship Yes.
This this morning that brings us into that awareness. And, and and and and I think it's worthwhile underlining what we already know, but sometimes it gets fragmented away. I I don't know. I mean, in forty eight years, I probably told Judy that I love her three or four times a day and heard from her the echo of that or the genesis of that, but I still need to hear it. Because it is easy, is it not, in a world that tends to fragment, fray, to forget what's true, to get forget what's true, to try and grasp it, and to hear that love is the greatest of in fact, love forms the foundation for the hope, for the peace, for the joy.
It is it is this this awareness that God is for us, that at the very center of the universe is, and and in in a sense, holding the universe in himself, that love enchants the universe, that we live and move and have our existence in God who is love. We are built for an environment of love. And and even that using that language, it sounds kinda, yeah, hallmark y and, you know, lifetime movie things. And and you know that that kind of love, that feeling, that emotion, lovely, lovely, lovely, is not sustainable and and and actually won't be enough to change the world. What we need is love that can put some work gloves on.
What we need is love that persists beyond and past and through feeling that that that shapes the universe by its by its dogged persistence. And, and here's the challenge with it. Love is a kind of technically a weak force. That is to say, it won't overwhelm. It won't flood.
It won't it won't make. It always stands, arms open, inviting. And that's the challenge with it because we think we need to grab things. In fact, this was the challenge in Genesis, chapter three where the serpent came and said, god's not as good as you think he is. You you you need to secure your own identity as his image and disconnect from the obedience to the law and and in so doing, we forgot who we were.
And in forgetting who we were, we ceased to be who we were. We've become less and less and less human. I think it's fair to say that this month, particularly in this last season, has revealed the depths of our inhumanity in multiple ways. And here we are in this in this season, that that has a has a a this kind of false, almost, electric lit light of love, and we're just hoping the power doesn't fail. But love that is transformative doesn't come from the outside in.
It comes from the inside out, And it is able to sit with us in the dark and transform the darkness by its very presence. Sit with us in the disappointments, sit with us in the the battering of the storms, the despair that threatens us, because love is greater than all of those assaults. Love is greater than those things. And and it is the kind of love that we speak of and celebrate in this incarnational moment. Because again, as I've kept on saying, incarnation isn't about rescue.
It's about presence. It's about God's being with us. And and, we sang the songs of crucifixion. We ate the elements that were intended to remind us the extent to which love will allow us to take advantage of it. Love requires us to take advantage of it.
We become dependent on it and then we face the same challenge we faced in Genesis three because you're already starting to do the calculus. That if I'm as dependent on love as the scripture indicates I ought to be, then that will mean at some point in time, I will be taken advantage of. The cross was not just for Jesus. He didn't die, remember? So that we wouldn't have to, but so that we would know how to.
So so this is By the way, do you already figure out why some of us have a hard time being loved? We've already done the road trip. We know where it goes. And we're not convinced that love can get us out out the other end just yet. And, that's the challenge.
That's the challenge. So, the this is the focus for us this morning to to to sit with this, and, of course, the first place we turn, is the one that you have memorized, the key passage. It's in John chapter three, where where, John's poetic form, he has Nicodemus, this brilliant man who is flummoxed. He can't figure out where Jesus fits. He he says, we know you come from God because nobody can do what you're doing except they come from God, but we can't figure out how you can possibly come from God and do some of the other stuff you're doing.
So so what what's up with you? Where where where and then in this long conversation, Jesus unpacks the nature, of of of the invitation that he is making to Nicodemus and others. And John, wanting to help us understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, gives us this explanation. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.
And we know this passage, you could have recited it with me, and and I think it's worth doing that. You ready? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. This is astonishing.
Just in those two verses, we get a snapshot of the heart of of the father. And and we're invited into this, and and world for John in this case is not is not just this generic planet. It's persons. It's people. It's you.
God loved you so much that he sent his one and only son, his only begotten son. So that if you would believe into him, the Greek participle there, preposition, what is it? I don't know. Does anybody care? No?
Good. So so is to is is to believe into, that is to step into the reality created by God's love for you. That's what faith is, to stand in that that deep reality. And and please notice this is not gonna be reinforced always by feeling. One of the challenges of this Christmas season is that we are are jollied into happiness.
And and and we think there's something wrong with us if there's a hint of melancholy. That and and the truth of the matter is if you know the end of the story and if you sit deeply with the manger, you realize there's a lot of pain there. You've got people whose reputations have been trashed by an angel who will never again be able to walk the streets of Nazareth without a a a side eye. Who who will never again be able to draw well, water from the well in Nazareth without the rest of the demean girls having their conversation. Right?
In fact, thirty years later when Jesus shows up in that synagogue, the gossip is still driving the conversation. Isn't this, Mary and Joseph's son? Her yes cost her a whole lot. So did Joseph's yes. So when we think about love, it is not this this this feeling of false, bond harmony.
Oh, I love that word. Where did that come from? Anyway, does anybody know what that word means? Are we this false frivolity, this this this this effervescence, which sometimes we associate. In fact, sometimes you're shamed because you're not happy enough at key moments.
Right? And and and this is not that kind of love. The froth can't stand the depth and weight of God's love for the world. He sent him into the world so that whoever believes into him will not die, will not perish. But enter in and the problem with this language of eternal or everlasting in King James version is that we think of it as a life that just keep kinda keeps on going, and in a way it is.
But what it really John is really saying is the life that he himself experienced. The life that comes from above. That we enter into by believing into the reality that he is created by love, that we then begin to enter into the life that he himself lived, which means death will never have the final word over you. Death will never have the last word concerning you. This is really important.
This is a season of the year, November, December, and January, where more people die, more people suffer catastrophic illnesses in these three months than the rest of the months put together. I don't think it's not I mean, part of it is the the weather change. Part of it is here today. We are the 20, the longest night of the year. And into that darkness, love was born.
Right? So love doesn't doesn't shy away. Love is not intimidated by the dark. Love leans in in in in in those those key moments, and and and please notice the radical implications of this. He didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world.
We don't often include that in our memorization, but we ought to because it says to us, not only are you part of the world that God loves, but everybody that you don't love is also part of the world that God loves. Everybody that we would condemn in order to be changed. We don't get to do that anymore. God is not doing that and if we are gonna join him in his crusade of love, we have to join him in the methodology of love. It won't force.
It won't bully people into its acceptance. It won't do that. Which is really annoying because some people need to be bullied. Anybody have a short list of people that you just like to yeah. And and and here here's here's the that we don't we he didn't send and and that that that that condemning peace suggests that if we join in on this conspiracy of love, I e, by letting God love us, we will also then also be taken advantage of.
We don't get to condemn the world. We do not get to condemn anybody. Not on Instagram, not on x, not on, for old people, Facebook. If if if the words coming out of my fingers or out of my mouth are about condemnation, we know that the source of those words is not God but someone or something else. Now you're beginning to understand perhaps how hard it is to be loved like this.
You're starting to make, perhaps, with me the connection that if I'm going to be loved like this, I need to love like this. And this is in fact what John, goes on to suggest in first John chapter four. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. So this is love.
Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. And this is how we know that we live in him and he in us. He has given us of his spirit.
And now we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. And here now, John is is turning the corner and inviting us to realize that God's love for us is not just about something we receive and and say thank you for, but something as it becomes part of, as we stand in the reality shaped by it, are transformed by it. We're changed from the inside out by it. We, now become carriers. We become a a part of the viralization of love by which God intends to save the world.
This transformation that are is because God's and this is this is really important because, he didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world, which means what? That you're not condemned. And in the places where you condemn yourself or in the places where you are condemned by other people, including people long dead, the voices in your head that shame and shun you for something you have done, right, you know for sure that those are not the voices of God because God does not traffic in condemnation. He doesn't play that game. In fact, it's a fairly straightforward equation.
When you are hearing the voice of shame, when you are hearing the voice of condemnation, you know, get the take an off ramp because that's not the voice of God. He will convict, and the difference between conviction and condemnation is conviction always has hope built in. Condemnation always has despair and futility built in. Does that make sense? So so here we are.
I don't even get to condemn me. Anybody have a hard time loving yourself the way God loves you? One, two, three. Oh, that's not bad. We have a hard time.
We've got a long list of disqualifiers. So when John tells us, this is how we know. He sent his son. And now, we can join in the conspiracy of kindness. We can join in the conspiracy of loving one another as he has loved us.
It it it isn't it's not just that that that in the moments of our catastrophic self destruction, he loves us less, and when we are in high praise on a Sunday morning, he loves us more because his love for us does not depend on us. This is really important. His love for us does not depend on us. So when we are blowing ourselves up or are in highest praise, his love for us has not changed one bit. Right?
So that allows us to soak in his love, to stand in the reality of it, and be transformed from the inside out by it, and then become part of the community of those who are are transforming the world with Jesus through his love for us. One person, one condemned soul at a time. To be able to come into the darknesses like Nicodemus came into the light, we now go with Jesus into the darknesses and we say, God's love for you does not depend on your performance. You can reject it if you want and in fact it might, at some point, feel easier to reject it than to accept the radical reality of it. Because to be loved by God includes an invitation to join him in loving.
So incarnation then is not just Jesus come to be with us, it is about Jesus being formed in us, Transforming us from the inside out. Moving away from the negative self talk that has has jollied us into acting properly even though we don't live from the center. We know how to be No. No. No.
No. No. It's not just about moral character formation. That that comes, but that's not what this is about. It's transformation.
You become Sooner or later, if you get good at this, you will be thinking with the mind of Christ. Can you imagine sitting down to that sales call? Sitting down to program a line of code, standing in front of your classroom and having the mind of Christ in that space? That's where this is going. But it begins by soaking in love such that it works its way up into the center of our being and partners with God in the transformation of the world.
It begins to realign our souls to the truth about us and is embodied and expressed in our love for one another. In fact, this is how God thinks that the world is going to be saved. John remember Matthew 28, on on his way out the door, he says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go into all the world. I want you to connect with every single person you can and connect with, and here's what I want you to do.
I want you to soak them, immerse them, saturate them in the character, the name, the personality, the temperament of the father, the son, and the spirit. And in the event that you're not sure what that means, God is love. So I want you to go into your classrooms. I want you to go in with your roommate. I want you to go in with your friends.
I want you to go in to all of the spaces you and I want you to just be a font and fountain of love. Not hallmark y, not everything is be fine, not patting everybody on the head, but genuinely, persistently looking people in the eye and come and recognizing in them a terrified little boy, little girl that is afraid to be loved for no good reason. And you make it safe for them to be loved. Then when you've done that, he says, you can teach people how to live the way I've taught you how to live. Don't do that first.
That's pearls before swine. So don't be doing that. Right? But if you love them well, sooner or later, they might ask, why are you doing this? And then you can teach them.
Right? This is his strategy. Now you can't do that unless you've been that. You've become that unless it has worked its way into the center of your soul. And here's how confident we are in the outcome of this.
Here's what Paul says in in in Romans chapter eight. What are we gonna say to all of this stuff? If God is for us, who can be against us? He didn't spare his own son, he gave him up for us all. How will he not also graciously give us along with him all things?
Who will then bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. So who is it that condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died, more than that, was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
So then, who can separate us from the love of Christ? Trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword? As it is written, for your sake, we face death all day long, we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. So in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Because I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor demons, nor present, nor future, nor powers, nor a depth height, or depth, or anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is demonstrated in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
That's worth just sitting with for a moment. Don't you think? That suggests among the all things, right, the challenges and the difficulties and the darkness and the despair that you're currently facing, love has the capacity because it is so weak, it works its way into the cracks and the crevices of our disappointments. It works its way in past the boundaries, past the the barriers that we have naturally set up to it. And it is the most, as a result, powerful force of the universe that God is trusting and so much so that he is counting on nothing else to accomplish it.
And here's where this challenge is because sometimes sometimes the all things are the disappointments that we have with him. Sometimes the so person a is healed and person b is not healed. And that says what about the love of God? Nothing. The person healed is not loved more by God than the person not healed.
This is really hard for us because we live in a hallmark world. We live in a quid pro quo world. We we live in love as a transaction. God doesn't play that game. He loves us.
And is it possible? Is it possible that rather than being proof of God's not loving you because you weren't healed or didn't have the provision you wanted or whatever else it is in your in a season of is it possible that's not the proof but the platform of God's loving through you? Is that possible? Has God ever done that kind of thing before? All the time.
All the time. All the time. In fact, sometimes this is this is hard for me to say, but I need you to hear it. I think sometimes God has to train us in, if I can say this, the hard side of love because we become consumers of the product of love without being transformed by the presence of love. We we misread the answers to prayer and don't let it work its way into in fact, I think if we took a poll, more of you have been transformed by love present in pain than by love that has delivered you from problems.
Yeah. That's the invitation. That's the invitation. And so here we are. This this expression of the DNA of the universe cannot help but triumph over all of the ways of brokenness that they are expressed.
And so we are invited now, even though our experience of this is challenging. Please notice, Paul is not saying these things go away. He's just saying these things are not the final word. We are going to go through all of the things that he's listed and he wants us to be clear. They are not proof that God doesn't love us.
They are not proof that the darkness will win. They are not proof of anything other than we get to work out the muscle of faith, a faith that stands in the reality of God's love for us regardless of our feeling in the moment. This is important. In fact, if you ever any relationship you are in, you cannot count on your feelings as validation of reality. You can't be married for more than ten minutes unless you've made a decision that overrides your feelings at any given point.
Right? And that decision acts. So this is the invitation to walk by faith. It's the invitation to be in this hard present moment and let it become a crucible of transformation. A place of pushing into the reality of the treasures that are in the dark.
But again, it's hard to be loved like this. I don't know about you. I have a have a have a fairly long list of disqualifiers that I trot out regularly. I have been such a disappointment to myself over the years. People I've hurt, things I've said that I ought not to have said, communities that have have been been, in some ways, damaged, And, I've got I've got a Rolodex.
I've got a rolling reel. Is that better? I've got a reel that goes through my mind. Any anybody else? And and God says, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Bring it with you. Bring it with you. It's not a disqualifier unless you let it be.
Your sin does not separate God from you, but it might separate you from God. So bring Bring it with you into the love of God. Bring your disappointment. Bring your failure. Bring the lost opportunities.
Bring all of the things you shouldn't said. Bring all of the things you wish you hadn't done. Bring them all. Bring them all. Don't let them be the trash you have to take out before you come.
You can't do that. You won't do that. Bring it all because being loved by God is difficult. Part of it is the implication of what I'm gonna have to do having been loved by God. But my guess is that there are some here who think I've gotta earn it.
I've gotta find a way to deserve it. I've I I I'll list your own list of disqualifiers, and so here's what we're gonna do as we conclude this morning. Because I am finding myself in this place. I suspect that there are others at this in this time of the year that you have you have yes. Yes.
Yes. This is lovely, but it's not for me. Not right now. I've got stuff to do. I've got too much to bring.
I've got too it's too fill in the blank. And it's too hard to be loved by God for this for no good reason. I I wanna earn it, and I know I can't, and I'm stuck. So here's what in a moment, we're gonna pray over you because you're not the first one in the history of humankind who has felt disqualified from the love of God. We're gonna pray for you if you will be, courageous in a moment to stand, And we're gonna pray a prayer that Paul taught his people to pray.
Here's what it says. It's in Ephesians. We've worked on it before. I pray that out of God's glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ can dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.
Would you just bow your heads with me for a moment? If you are sitting here today and in some way, shape, or form, you have have have found it really hard to be loved by God. Maybe your the way you were raised is in an economy of quid pro quo. Maybe, the way your faith was taught at the beginning, it was the belief that God loves you more when you're good than when you're not, and you know that you're not all that good, and so you know that you're not all that loved. Whatever it is that has has has kind of put up a maybe even a self protective barrier to being loved by God.
In a moment, I'm gonna ask you if you would allow us the privilege of praying and soaking you in the love of God through expressed through this prayer, trusting the gentle persistence of God's love to begin to melt the barriers of self protection, Begin to eliminate the disqualifications. Begin to push back against the lies that you still struggle even though you are not know they are not true, you still struggle not to believe them. And we'd like to cover you. If you're here like that, whether in the sanctuary here or in the sanctuary, overflow or at home, would you mind just standing? Just where you are.
In a moment, I'm gonna ask people to stand around you and just pray gently this prayer over you. You found it really, really hard, especially lately, to be loved by God, to let it move from head, which you know, to heart, which you believe. Now if you are around someone who is standing, maybe the rest of our community, you can just stand and surround those who are beside you, and let's just begin to pray immediately for them. Would you do that? Oh, Lord Jesus.
Lord Jesus. We've got a long list of disqualifiers, Lord. We nail them to the cross now. We pray, oh, Lord, for our brothers and sisters that out of your glorious riches, you may strengthen them with power in their inner being so that Christ can dwell in their hearts through faith. And we pray, Lord, whether they feel it or not, that being rooted and grounded in love, they have power now.
And can, over the course of these next few days, begin to experience with all of your holy people how wide and long and high and deep is your love for them, the love of Christ. And to begin to experience this love that surpasses even our ability to know it so that they can be filled to the measure of all of the fullness that is God. We ask this in your holy and precious name. Amen. Amen.
Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening. For more information, please visit us online at garden.church.