SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to the Southside Church Podcast, weekly content that inspires all of us to follow Jesus. Join us each week for a message from one of our fantastic communicators that provide practical ways to grow our faith, challenge ourselves, and to love others more. And now, this week's message.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So I want to welcome all of our partner churches around the country. Um, more and more of you watching from all around the world, different time zones. Thanks for joining us today. Of course, all of our Atlanta area churches, excuse me, and especially those of you at East Cobb. I don't know if you've driven by your building lately, but it's amazing. We're so excited about um the getting you finally in that incredible, incredible location. And for those of you who have given to allow us to do that for East Cobb Church, thank you, thank you, thank you, and especially those of you at East Cobb, and of course our friends down on the South Side. So today um I want to talk specifically to um a group of you, and um this may not be for everybody, but you, if it's not for you, you know somebody that maybe needs to hear this. And maybe you need to hear it and don't know you need to hear it. I want to talk to those of you who aren't absolutely convinced that God loves you as an individual. Um you maybe agree intellectually with God's universal love, you know, because most Americans do, you know, God loves everybody, everybody generally speaking, and you perhaps believe or you've said God is love. But from time to time you have your doubts about whether or not he loves you as an individual. And and and in your thinking, you have reason to doubt because after all, right? And then the memories kick in and the guilt kicks in, um, your current habits loom large. If you're a religious person or raised in a religious environment, um, and you think you you would consider some of the things you do sinful, suddenly that takes center stage in your mind. And there's an abiding sense of just sort of an abiding sense of guilt and uh sort of a shadow of shame. And here's the interesting thing, this may be your situation. Again, I've talked to so many people who've dealt with this. Sometimes there's an abiding sense of guilt and a sense of shame when you think about God, and it's not about anything in particular, it's just this sense in which you just think, well, if God even knows I exist, God is certainly displeased with me. Now, if you were raised in a religious environment, either a Christian environment or maybe a different faith tradition that dealt primarily in guilt, um, this may be your experience that to feel guilty is a religious experience. I mean, that's the most religious experience you've ever had was wow, I just the preacher really came down hard. I feel so guilty. I've never felt so close to God and so distant from God all at the same time. If you grew up in that kind of environment, then this may be your experience that shame was to be expected. And perhaps this abiding sense of guilt, distance from God, wondering if God loves you, is kind of a holdover from that. Maybe, just to kind of delve deeper, not trying to get into your personal life, it may be you grew up with a very intolerant father or a very intolerant mother, that you just there were the the bar was so high, the standards were so high, you always felt like you were falling short. And maybe, not consciously, but subconsciously, you've kind of transferred that thing to God. So here's the thing: whatever the case, whatever the explanation, I don't know because I don't know you, whatever it might be, it's been with you for so long, you've just learned to live with it. And you kind of consider it normal. And you sort of suspect that everybody who's religious kind of has this as well. And then you meet people who don't have any of it and you think, well, you're just in denial. Okay, you just you just haven't faced up to the reality of what you're really like. And what it translates to for you from time to time is a sense of wondering. You wonder, and again, it's not every single day, but you wonder from time to time where you actually stand with God. If God really knows you, if God is even aware of you, where what kind of thoughts, if God has thoughts the way we think of thoughts, what comes to mind when God thinks of you? And the problem with this is that, and you know this because it's you, it undermines your sense of assurance, it undermines your confidence when you pray. Um, when you pray, if you pray, there's a sense where you feel like you have to apologize, and and uh, and again, you just there's just a sense of distance, and again, all your mind is flooded, your heart was flooded with stuff that you that was a long time ago, or again, is just so general, you're not what sure where it's coming from or what to do with it. And most days you don't think about it at all. In fact, maybe the only time you think about it's on Sunday when you come to church or when you watch church. But on other days, like maybe today, now that I brought it up, it looms large. Now, here's why I'm talking about it. This is a bigger deal than maybe you think it is, because it's not just a theological thing. It's a bigger deal, and don't leave early, um, because because this sounds, this is gonna be a little offensive. You can't fully, and this is why I want to talk about it, you can't fully follow Jesus until you settle this. You can't be a committed follower of Jesus until you settle this. And here's why. Because God's love for you that you wrestle with is supposed to inform and define how you love other people. How, in other words, how, and we talk about this all the time, how we love and treat others is central to following Jesus. And you can't give to others what you haven't received, or as we're gonna see, what you haven't accepted. With that in mind, here's a verse I you know I've quoted so many times, you're probably tired of hearing about it. This is Jesus with his apostles during their final Passover. He says something to them that they were to teach us. He says, I want you to love one another as I have loved you, and this is God in a body, this is God's son on earth, explaining what God is like. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. And here's the thing if you haven't come to grips with, and if you haven't accepted, and most importantly, if you haven't surrendered to God's love for you, here's the problem. You can't as I have. You can't as I have, because you've not accepted as he has loved you. And until you accept the degree to which he loves you, you don't have the capacity to extend that to other people. This explains something you may have experienced or maybe not. You're quick to say like I am. Well, nobody's perfect, nobody's perfect. We're all quick to say, I'm not perfect, I'm not perfect. And here's what's so strange about that. You would admit quickly that you're not perfect, and yet sometimes you're so judgmental of other people, which is crazy. I mean, you would think somebody who says, I'm not perfect, and I shouldn't expect other people to be perfect, but here's the reality. People who are quick oftentimes to say, I'm not perfect, are sometimes the quickest to expect other people to be perfect. And all of this stems from not yet reconciling yourself to God's love for you. So here's what I want to do today, and this is a tall task. I want you to, I want to help you settle this today. Okay? Um, now, to begin with, and here's the here's where you got to pay attention to what's going on in your mind while I'm talking. If at some point in the next few minutes, regardless of where you're sitting or where you are or where you are in the country or the world, if in the next few minutes you find yourself thinking these thoughts, yeah, yeah, yeah, AD, you don't know me, you don't know me. You you don't know me, you don't know what I've done, you don't know what I'm up to, you don't know what I'm thinking about doing, you know what I'm saying, you don't know what I'm planning to do, you don't know what I've done in the past, you don't know how many promises I've broken, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, this is so important. Listen, if in the next few minutes, in fact, some of you have already started this in your mind. As soon as I announced what I was gonna talk about, the moment you go here, this is so important, you have just put your finger directly on the issue that needs to be addressed. And here's why I say that. For reasons that are completely understandable, it is not your fault. In fact, it's probably people who do what I do's fault. For reasons that are completely understandable, you've been led to believe that God's love and acceptance of you is contingent upon something to do with you. You've been led to believe, or you came to the conclusion on your own, that God's love for you is somehow contingent on you. That you have the power, you may not have thought of it in these terms, that you have the power or the ability to thwart God's love for you. Here's the good news. You don't. That's some other religion. Remember the message of the angels at Christmas? Good news, they said we're bringing good news of great joy for all people. What made it good, what makes it hard to believe good, what makes it easy to dismiss good, is that God's love for you and God's acceptance of you is not contingent upon, does not depend upon, is not diminished by, is not thwarted by, is not even thwartable by you. Here's the bottom line. God's love for you is beyond your control. You don't have a say in the matter. He decided, look up here, take your best shot, crucify his son, and he will just forgive you from the cross. Now, don't take my word for it. What do I know, right? And you shouldn't take my word for it. I want you to take it from a man that we talk about all the time. And if you grew up in church, you're aware of who the apostle Paul was, wrote about half the New Testament, was the first missionary, was a Pharisee who became a Jesus follower in the first century. And he calls himself, you may know this if you've read the New Testament, he could he refers to himself as the chief of sinners, the chief of sinners, like the king of sinners, like the most sinning anyone, like the worst sinner in the world, who then turned around and wrote half the New Testament. There's God's grace for you. He calls himself the chief of sinners. And this, because of when he lived and because of where he lived and because of his encounter with Jesus, I'm convinced that the Apostle Paul had greater clarity on this issue than anyone who has ever lived. That his doubts about God's love for him, that his guilt, that his shame clouds, his shame clouds were like massive, like thunderheads, because he actually arrested, tortured, and oversaw the execution of Christians for being Christian. He was like Nero before Nero. So he is, Paul, the Apostle Paul, is an expert on this topic. Before and what makes him an expert is this: not only did he sin in ways you can't even sin, and not only did he do the most horrendous things to the people that were following Jesus, on the other side of the ledger, this is what makes him the expert. On the other side of the ledger, before he met Jesus, he had worked his entire life to earn and deserve a right standing with God. He'd spent his whole life and career earning God's love. In other words, here's what he says about himself. This is this is extreme, but this is the Apostle Paul wanting us to listen and understand that he's the authority on this. He says, he writes in the book of Philippians, he says, if someone else, that'd be us, if someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, and this is what he means by that, if there's anybody out there who thinks you are so good that you've been able to perform your way into God's good graces, if there's anybody out there who thinks they have been so obedient that God stands up and applauds it because of your obedience. If there's somebody out there who has kept all the rules and think, I've kept the rules so well, I've I'm so pure, I'm so holy, he said, if you think you've you're that good, he says, I've got news for you, even though we've never met, I have more. I mean, you're good, he says, I'm gooder. You've been a law keeper, I'm a better law keeper than you. He says, Let me just tell you, okay? He's bragging. He says, now these next words don't mean much to us, but this is like, whoa, you know, in in especially in the Judean first century culture. He says, look, let me tell you about me. I was circumcised on the eighth day, just like Torah said I was supposed to be. I'm of the people of Israel, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. That is, I'm the Jew of all Jews. I've out Jewed all the Jews I know. I'm the Hebrew of Hebrews. In regard to the law, the Torah, he said, I'm not just a law keeper, I'm a Pharisee. The Pharisees were the ones that were so meticulous about keeping the law that basically everybody else felt like they could never keep up. He's like, I'm not just a lawkeeper, I keep the law like the Pharisees. Then he says, I have a perfect pedigree. I'm a strict law of God keeper, a rule keeper. His words, he says this. As for righteousness, and this simply means a right standing with God, he says, as for righteousness based on the law, Torah, faultless, perfect. Fact check me. I was the best of the best. And then he says, and then I met the resurrected Jesus. And then I was confronted literally by my king. And I realized I had it all wrong. That my faultless rule keeping did not earn me anything from God. And this is amazing. He goes on to say that his flawless rule keeping didn't, don't miss this, that his flawless rule keeping didn't earn him anything that did not earn God's love. And he would say, my merciless persecution and execution of Christians didn't erase God's love. I've been the best and I've been the worst. And I realize neither of them undermined God's love for me. Listen to how he says it. He says, but whatever, whatever on either side of the ledger, whatever thing were whatever were gains to me, all the things that I thought gave me credit with God, all the things that I thought God would stand up and applaud, all the things that God would go, wow, you're one of my favorite. All whatever I consider gains to me, I now consider as lost, consider loss for the sake or for the for the mission of, for what I've been exposed to, for the sake of Christ. And then this statement. He says, actually, all those things I thought that earned me, you know, a good grace of God, that earned me God's love, honestly, he says, I consider them garbage. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. All the law keeping? Yeah, because I kept all the law and I kept all the rules, thinking I was gonna win God's favor and win God's love, I realized that's just that's garbage. Every good deed, every act of obedience to win God's approval, garbage. It doesn't work that way. It wasn't earning me anything. I wasn't winning or earning favor with God because I didn't understand the love of God. Because he's gonna say, because God's approval and God's acceptance isn't gained, these are his words, by a righteousness of my own that comes from rule keeping and law-keeping. In other words, that's not what God's love and approval is contingent upon. A right, he's gonna, I'm gonna give you my words and his words. He goes on to say that a right standing with God, to stand as one who is loved by God, he says, it doesn't come from the law. It doesn't come from posturing and promising and rule keeping, to which his audience, and then we would say, well, Paul, if it doesn't come from posturing and rule keeping and being obedient to God and doing all the right things and saying all the right things and trying to live our lives in a way that's pleasing to God, if it if God's love and acceptance and if God's if it doesn't come from that, then what does it come from? He says, I'm glad you asked. He says, It comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness that comes from, and I gotta stop and say this. This is kind of offensive, but don't leave. Okay. If you think, this is what he's about to, he's about to land it, he says, if you think you have a say in the matter, that somehow you determine God's love for you, Paul would say, you overestimate yourself. If you think you determine or influence God's love and acceptance of you, if you think you have the power, if you think you have the influence and the leverage point, you overestimate yourself and you underestimate the love and the grace and the mercy of God. He says, I have been there, done that. A right standing with God, it comes from God. On the basis of, in other words, in response to. Now, this is this is the reorientation. This is the new mindset. This is this is the mindset that removes you and removes me and removes us from the equation. That God's love isn't earned, that God's love isn't earnable, that God's love is a gift, a gift that Paul recognized and spent the rest of his life spreading this news to the Gentiles all around the Mediterranean basin, a gift that has already been given, but is not experienced until it's recognized and received. Here's the key, by faith. And what I'm about to say is so important. So if you're fiddling with your phone at home, just give me four minutes of undivided attention about this, okay? Why faith? This is so misunderstood. Why faith? Because it's true. See, sometimes people mix magic up with Christianity and magic up with religion, and they think, well, if you believe it, it will become a reality. That's that's magic, that's positive thinking. I'm all for positive thinking. And every great thing in the world began as somebody's idea. They believed it could happen. What Jesus was clear about, what Paul capitalizes on and leverages and teases out for the audience is this the reason that you come to God through Christ by faith isn't to make something real. It's because it's real. What do you believe in? When do you change your mind about something? When do you but you believe when do you begin to believe something is true? You don't believe it to make it true. You believe it once you're convinced it's true. And that's what Paul is saying, and that's what Jesus is saying. That's why the angels say it's good news of great joy for all people. Believe it, not to make it true, and not to make it true for you. To believe it because it's true, and it's not until you believe it, it's not until you embrace it that you begin to experience it. It's already a reality. Your role, and my role, is to believe it. And then receive it, and then here's the life change, and then learn to rest in it. And if you refuse. Because it's not conditional, it's not contingent on you. Those are my words. Let me read you Paul's words. His are amazing. Ready for this? Now, let me tell you a little background. This is in the document he wrote to Christians, Gentiles, and Jews in Rome. He'd never been to Rome. He doesn't know the people he's writing to. So he doesn't have somebody in their behavior in mind. And listen to what he says. And he begins with these words before I put it up. I love this. He says, based on what I've seen, based on what I've experienced, I am absolutely, and based on my I've been on both sides of the ledger sheet. I've been the best of the best and the worst of the worst. And I am absolutely convinced. Here it is. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, two ends of a spectrum. Neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future. Lots packed, right? And lots packed into that word. Nor any powers, including your power, including your performance, including your sin. Neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us. And who's us? He's including himself. He's writing to a group of people he's never met. Which means he's writing to us. He's writing to you. We'll be able to separate us from the love of God that is in King Jesus, our Lord, that was demonstrated by King Jesus, our Lord, that was lived out among sinners by King Jesus, our Lord, that was demonstrated and illustrated in such a way that we can't possibly miss it by King Jesus, our Lord. So here's the point of today. You may have accepted Jesus as your Savior because you were a child. Because your parents wanted you to go to heaven when you died. So it's like, if you would pray this prayer, then we're going to get you baptized, and you know, you're on your own. Hope you make it through high school, but at least I'll see you in heaven, right? Some of you parents laugh, but that's the fear you were brought up with because of the model you were brought up with. If I can just get them to pray that prayer. So, like your children or your grandchildren, you may have accepted Jesus as your Savior, but have you ever said yes to God's permanent, fixed, determined, immutable, unrelenting, unchangeable? It doesn't matter what you do or don't do, love for you. Look up here. This is what changes a life. And let me tell you why. It's life-changing because ultimately it is God's undeserved love, not his demands. It is God's unreserved, unconditional love, not his demands, that melts our resistance. And you know that's true because you have resisted God knowing all that you know about God, simply knowing that God is God, simply knowing that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, simply knowing all that, and yet you've resisted God. The only thing that will ultimately melt your resistance to God's will for you and bend your will to his will is to receive and accept his unconditional, no way out, take your best shot, love for you. This is what empowers you, and this is what empowers you to love as he loved, which is the essence of following Jesus. Again, you can't fully follow Jesus, who has commanded us to love as he has loved until we accept and receive as he has loved us, until you receive as he has loved you, until you come to terms with the fact that his love for you does not depend on you. There's going to be something missing. Until you come to grips with the fact, and this may be so strange to hear, that you have no choice in the matter. That's amazing. That is almost irresistible. And if it sounds too good to be true, then you're on the verge of understanding just how true it is. And it is already true. The question is, have you believed it? So to drive this home, and to wrap up, I want to read and comment on the lyrics to a song that I think taps the energy and the grit of this, of God's unrelenting love, more than any song I've ever heard. You've probably heard it before if you grew up in church. I don't know that we've done it in a long time at any of our campuses. Um the song is titled How He Loves by John Mark McMillan. Um John wrote this song after his best friend was killed in a multi-car accident, and he was overwhelmed by grief and anger and all the emotions that happen when you lose someone you love suddenly. And struggling to make sense of this, um, he sat down and began to just journal and to write. And this started off as a conversation, an honest, very raw conversation with God, and eventually the lyrics of this song began to pour out of him. Which, when you look at the lyrics of the song, you wonder how in the world could something so tragic create something so beautiful. And I hope as those lyrics poured out of him, they will pour into you. Here's what he wrote. Speaking of God, he is jealous for me in these next, this next line. He loves like a hurricane, and I am simply a tree. That you are a victim in every positive sense of the word of God's love. He loves you without your permission, and he loves you without your cooperation. Bending, he says, bending beneath the weight of his wind and his mercy. Bending, that is yielding to, surrendering to his love. Have you done that? Have you yielded? He goes on, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, when all of a sudden I am unaware, now I was so aware before, I was so focused on it before, but all of a sudden, when confronted with God's love, all of a sudden I become unaware of these afflictions. I love this word, eclipsed by glory that our sin, that our shame, that our failure, that our broken promises suddenly, suddenly become irrelevant because they are eclipsed by God's glory and his mercy and his love for us. They become not a factor. He said, and then I realize, he writes, and I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me. So we are his portion, and he is our prize. Here it is. Drawn, not goaded, not threatened, not if you don't, I will, drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes. Drawn, this is why I say changed by recognizing and receiving what we don't deserve. And then this. In ancient times, the assumption was that the temples, the pagan temples, and even the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, that the temple was where heaven met earth. That if you wanted to be as close to the gods or to God as you could possibly be, you went to the temple. That this was the space on earth where heaven actually met earth. But not until King Jesus arrived at heaven actually meet earth. So he writes, so, in light of his extraordinary love, so heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss, unexpected, unprepared for. And my heart turns violently inside of my chest. And I don't have time to maintain these regrets. When I think about the way he loves us. He laughed even when I said that. That's good. He's making a living doing this. You need to laugh at everything he says. He was a baby, and I was in our, we lived in a townhouse, and I was in our little baby's room rocking Andrew. And I had these thoughts. I wrote them in my journal, that's why I remember them. But I don't know that I'd forget them anyway. I'm rocking him. And I thought, I had two big thoughts. One was, could my dad have ever felt this way about me? And I was sure he did. But it was hard for me to believe that my earthly father could feel what I felt about this six-pound, eight-ounce bundle who had never done anything for me, couldn't do anything for me, didn't even know who I was. And then I thought this is it possible that God loves me like this? No way. Then I thought, do I have a greater capacity for love than God? No. My capacity for love, your capacity for love is from God. And I knew then, 30-something years ago, that if that reality ever went from here, because I believed it intellectually, if it ever went from here to here, it would change me. And it did. And I want that for you. But more importantly, your heavenly father wants that for you. And men, I particularly want that for you. So at all of our churches today, we're gonna sing this song. And this is an invitation. This is an invitation to embrace what has been true all along. It doesn't make it true, it's just accepting what is true. And for all of us, but for men in particular, I want to encourage, and I know I'm kind of meddling, I don't want you to try to hold back your tears. And here's why. Because your tears today around this issue, if this has pierced your heart, is evidence that maybe God is moving this from intellectual to something deeper. And as it does, your resistance to your heavenly Father will begin to melt in sequence. For it is the grace of God and the mercy of God, not the law of God, that draws us to Him, to become like His Son. God in a body who loved like no other. So in a minute we're gonna stand and sing. I would ask at all of our churches, please don't leave early. And let God maybe do something in you that goes way beyond anything I've said today. Let's pray together. Father, thank you. It is remarkable. And all of us could write pages of reasons why you have excuses not to love us. And you just smile and say, not relevant. Thank you for not giving us that much influence with you. Thank you for not giving us control. Thank you that you took it out of our hands. And just like every father in here who held a son or a daughter and thought, my goodness, something Jews just birthed in me as we gave birth to a child that a different category, a different level, a different world of love opened up. That we would accept the fact that that is the image of God in us and that's how you love. So I pray you would break through our resistance, break through our shame, break through the stories we tell ourselves. And Father, for people listening or in one of our churches today from a different faith background, a different faith system, I pray that the God that Jesus came to represent would become their God. And that Jesus would become their king. Because he loved like no other. And I pray that in Jesus' name.

unknown 34:41

Amen.