Thanks Dennis. Good morning, everyone. It’s so good that you’re here today. My name’s Miles. I’m one of the ministers here at church, and it’s preaching time. So what we’re going to do is spend some time thinking through that passage that Dennis just read for us.
It’s really good if you’re here today, really good if you’re tuning in online as well. Here’s why it’s good that you’re here today: as we celebrate Mother’s Day, we know that for some it is a day of celebration and joy and thankfulness, and we also know that for some of us it isn’t that at all. It is a day of mourning or frustration or emptiness, and we all sit somewhere on that spectrum. For myself, I am incredibly blessed that my mum is still around and in my life. Having said that, I did invite her to come to church today, and her answer was getting on a plane to go overseas. So next time you invite someone to something and they leave the country, that’s how they feel about you. She’s going to visit my brother in Spain because she’s a good mom, and she is a good mom, and she loves me. I’m so blessed that she loves me.
I mean, sure, growing up, she made some mistakes. One time she took my Game Boy away. She caught me playing it at 2:00 AM on a school night, but how dare she? She used to force me to clean my teeth, unbelievable. Once she tried to poison me. It’s true. She made some dinner, put some coriander in it, unbelievable. For me, today is a day of celebration and thankfulness for my mom, and maybe that’s your experience too, thankfulness for your mum or your mum figure. But for others here, maybe your mum just isn’t around anymore or isn’t in your life anymore or never was in your life. Or maybe you really want to be a mum, and that’s not happened or not happening. Or maybe you’re a single mom, and today isn’t really a day of celebration; it’s just another day of figuring everything out because you’re amazing and doing a great job. Or whatever it is for you, maybe it’s another kind of challenge. Maybe that’s not a challenge for you at all, but you know someone who struggles on Mother’s Day. Can you see there’s just this wide spectrum of people, of feelings about today, and that’s right. That’s appropriate because church isn’t a place just for happy people who seem to have their lives together, who seem to have good relationships, all that stuff. Church isn’t a place just for people who are struggling, people who need to come to God in a time of trouble. No, church is a place where those people come together. That’s what we’re doing here. Church is a place where anyone is welcome going through any season of life. Church is a place you can come to joyfully filled with thanksgiving, and church is a place you can drag yourself to carrying heavy burdens, searching for comfort from God. It’s the same place.
So however you’re feeling about Mother’s Day this morning, whether you’re here with thanksgiving or you’re here searching for comfort, whether you’re here because your mum dragged you along or you are the mum that’s come along, it’s really good that you’re here because church really is for all kinds of people. With that in mind, I’m going to pray. Father, thank you so much that all these people are able to join us here today, and we thank you so much for this church. We pray that all kinds of people would feel welcome here and that the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ would always be proclaimed here, and we are so that would certainly happen today, that I would speak about your gospel clearly. Amen.
Introduction
Well, bananas are radioactive. Do you know that? Sounds like a made-up fact, doesn’t it? Bananas are radioactive. Do you believe me? There you go. Flies, like flies, did you know that they hum in the musical key of F? So if Steve Cat came up here and played an F chord on his guitar and there were some flies buzzing around, they would sound good. Do you believe that? That’s true. Both of those are pretty outlandish claims.
All right, bananas are radioactive, flies singing key. I can imagine what you’re thinking. All right, Miles, prove it. Certainly, I can sense your skepticism. Okay, let me give you some more information. Bananas, it’s true, they’re radioactive because they contain potassium, and some of the potassium they contain is a radioactive isotope called potassium 40. So if you’ve got a banana and a Geiger meter, which measures radioactivity, it would work. Bananas are radioactive. Can we eat them? Now, you need a lot of bananas to do any harm, but still, they’re radioactive. Flies, this is true. Flies beat their wings at like 190 times a second, very fast, and the frequencies that they make, the human brain interprets those frequencies in the key of F.
Here’s another outlandish claim: God loves you. A big claim, right? That the God of the universe, almighty, powerful, holy, glorious, would love you, would love me. I mean, in comparison to God, I’m tiny, right? Aren’t I, like, inconsequential? So here’s the question that we’re going to answer today, and it’s a question that’s worth answering whether this is your first time at church or whether this is your thousandth time here at church. Here’s the question: Does God really love you? Does God really love you? Is that true? Can that be proven? Can you know that for sure? That’s the question, and we’re going to find out from 1 John chapter 4.
The book of 1 John, it’s written kind of like a sermon, and so the author, John, he’s trying to persuade, trying to convince his readers to stick with Jesus. Throughout the book, we find some clues that tell us that some people have come along, and they’re trying to distort the original message of the gospel, and they’re teaching something different instead. So John’s like, no, no, don’t be fooled by them. Stick with Jesus, stick with the truth. With that in mind, we get to chapter 4, verse 7, and John starts talking a lot about love. So if you have your Bibles open, you better see this for yourself. Verse 7, he says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” That’s John’s big point for this section: you should love one another because love comes from God. Then he starts building that argument along, and today we’re just going to focus on one half of that big idea, that verse. We’re going to focus on the bit that says that love comes from God, and to do that, we’ll just mainly focus in verses 9 and 10.
Does God really love you?
God Showed His Love Among Us
He Sent His One and Only Son
Verse 9, this is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son, that’s Jesus, into the world that we might live through him. Imagine that this is your first time ever hearing any about this Jesus stuff. Maybe for you, this is your first time hearing about Jesus, so it’s really easy, but imagine it’s your first time ever hearing about Jesus. You don’t know who he is, you don’t know what’s going on with church, anything like that, and imagine you read verse 9. Let me read it again: “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.” That’s not very convincing, is it? That’s how God loves us. What does he do? He sent Jesus into the world that I might live through him. Well, what does that even mean? He sent Jesus, we might live. I’m already alive. What’s going on here in verse 9? On its own, verse 9, it’s not that impressive. It’s not enough, but it’s not on its own, is it? Because it’s next to verse 10, and verse 10, John bolsters his argument.
Not That We Loved God, But That He Loved Us
This is love, John continues in verse 10, “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” These two verses, verse 9 and 10, when they come together, they bring out a really clear and concise description of the gospel of Christianity, of our church, of us, what we’re doing here. God sent his Son, Jesus, into the world as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So let’s break that down. Here’s what’s happening. We’re taught throughout the whole Bible that humanity is guilty of rejecting God. Most of the Old Testament, the first half of the Bible, is just story after story of God’s people rejecting him, doing the opposite of what he commands, just ignoring him, sinning against him. Sinning, that’s that word from 1 John chapter 4, verse 10, sin. Today it’s no different. That’s the same people, you, me, us, we all do that as well. We’re all guilty of rejecting God, in the book of Romans, another book in the New Testament, Paul says that there is no one good, not even one, all have turned away from God, and that’s right. We’re all guilty of rejecting God, falling short of his standards, missing the mark. That’s sin.
Like we said earlier, who are we dealing with here? We’re dealing with God, the God of the universe, almighty, powerful, glorious, holy. That last word, holy, that’s a key word. God is so holy, so set apart that sinful people like me can’t be in his presence. There’s a chasm between us that I’ve dug out with my sin. There’s a barricade between us that I’ve built up with my sin. There’s this relational distance between me and God. Sin has driven us away from God, and without any kind of intervention, it’s game over. That’s the state of things, relational distance between us and God, both now and forever. But 1 John chapter 4, verse 10, something happens about sin. I’ll read it again. Listen to this: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Something happens for our sins, to deal with sins, to fill in the chasm, to break down the barricade, and that thing is Jesus’s atoning sacrifice.
God sent his Son, Jesus, into the world as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus’s Atoning Sacrifice
Atonement Means At-One-Ment
I wonder if you’ve heard that word before, atoning, atonement. There’s a really easy way to remember what it means. You take the word atonement, you just throw some hyphens in the middle. Atonement means at-one-ment. It means reconciliation, bringing things back together, making things one again. Atonement, at-one-ment. The purpose of Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, his at-one-ment sacrifice, is to bring humanity back to God, to fill in the chasm, to break down the barricade, to be brought back together again. That’s what’s happening here.
The Cost of Atonement
Whenever there’s a sacrifice, that means there’s a cost. There’s always a cost with the sacrifice, and the cost for this atoning sacrifice is monumental. It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who never did anything wrong, being crucified on a Roman cross. The historic details about crucifixion, they are gruesome, and they are violent, and Jesus endured it, and ultimately it led to his death. That’s the cost. That’s the sacrifice that brings about at-one-ment, atonement, the death of Jesus, because on the cross, Jesus, what he does, he offers to take our sin and our shame, and he puts it on himself. He wears it, he bears it, and he takes God’s righteous anger for it. A few weeks ago, we met here on Good Friday, and it was so good being here together over Easter, and we went through Luke’s account of the crucifixion, and one of the things that happens is the sky went dark, and that was symbolizing God’s anger. At the cross, God’s anger is being poured out onto Jesus, the anger for us is redirected onto Jesus.
Now that God’s anger is dealt with, the atonement has occurred. We are back together. We can be restored in relationship with God. Can you see now how God shows his love for us in Jesus? John writes that you can know for certain that God loves you, and it’s true. God demonstrates his love so clearly at the cross. He provides that certain proof when Jesus gives up his life for his people. This love that we’re talking about here, it’s not the wishy-washy lame stuff. This is the real deal, the genuine article. It’s the kind of love that is generously self-sacrificial and other-person focused. Jesus, God’s precious one and only Son, dies for us. It’s the kind of love that is so deep and so profound that the infinite cost of Jesus’s death is acceptable, and then it’s given to us. It’s crazy. God’s love, this deep, unending love, is given to us even though we don’t deserve it. We continue to fall short of God’s standards. It’s for us.
You can know for certain that God loves you.
An Offer to You
This is the right time to pause and say really clearly that all of this, Jesus’s atoning sacrifice, the forgiveness of sins, this is an offer to you, to anyone. It’s an offer for anyone to follow Jesus in their whole lives. In our passage later on in 1 John chapter 4, in verse 15, he writes that if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them, and they in God. The relationship is restored, and in verse 17, for those who do that, who follow Jesus, who acknowledge him as Lord, they can stand before God with confidence on the day of judgment. That’s what it says. So if today you have perhaps been struck by God’s love for the first time or re-struck by God’s love after a long time, maybe today is the day where you might turn and put your trust in Jesus, to acknowledge that Jesus really is the Son of God, to say sorry for your sin and ask for forgiveness.
We said at the start that as we celebrate Mother’s Day together, we all sit somewhere on that spectrum, some of us have come to church today with hearts full of thanksgiving, some carrying heavy burdens, and some somewhere in the middle. Wherever we are on that spectrum today, you can know for sure that God loves you deeply, profoundly, not the wishy-washy love, the real self-sacrificial love. You can know that for sure today. If you have come here filled with thanksgiving, then you can thank God for his love. You can praise him for his love. Today, if you have come worn carrying burdens, you also can know God’s love. You can know it and trust it and lean into it, and there you will be able to find comfort and purpose and promise. It’s such a refreshing thought. It’s a thought that I need to hear time and time again. I know God loves me, but I need to hear it again and be reminded of it again and again. God loves me. The creator and the sustainer of the universe loves me, and I can know that for certain.
Bananas are radioactive. It’s true. Even if you don’t believe me, go look it up. It’s true, and flies really do hum in the key of F. They are extraordinary claims. Does God really love you? That is the question that we asked at the start. The answer is a resounding yes. You can be certain of it because of the cross, because God really has demonstrated his love for you at the cross. The brutal, the violent symbol of Roman oppression is transformed into a symbol of God’s unending and sacrificial love for you. You can know for certain that God loves you. Let’s pray together. Father, thank you so much for loving us, and thank you for showing us that you love us through the atoning sacrifice of our precious Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we want to pray for all of us here or who are tuning in, help us to know for certain that you love us, and might that impact our lives in so many different ways. Father, we pray for those here today who are considering putting their trust in you, would you help them, fill them with your Holy Spirit, that they may understand your gospel clearly, and that they might turn and put their trust in you. We pray these things with hearts filled with thanksgiving towards you. Amen.