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Second Sunday of Lent - Preached at by Pastor Dennis R. King) "Showers of Love!" (John 3:1-17) The Grace and Mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, be with you always.
Amen! Showers of Love are what we receive from this passage of Scripture.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone
who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life." God pours
out His love to us through His Son, Jesus.
Jesus also teaches us another example of God's love. He reminds us of
the account of the brass serpent that Moses lifted up on a pole. The brass
serpent was lifted up so that those who were bitten during the plague of
poisonous snakes might look upon it and be healed. God showered those
destined for death with His love. They just looked up, saw the brass serpent,
and lived. In that same way God showers His love today on whoever believes in
Him. There are no limits. There are no exclusions. The promise is to all.
Whoever believes in the Son of Man, lifted up like the serpent shall be
delivered from death to life. Whoever! Come one, come all! God's love, like showers, falls on us all.
His love is boundless. His mercy is persistent even to His enemies! The depth
of His compassion is mind-boggling. In a few short words John 3:16 lays out
the truth of our salvation by grace through faith. We see it so clearly:
Salvation, our salvation, is God's work showered upon us. He gave His Son out of His love for His
world. Eternal life is a free gift gained simply by looking to Jesus, lifted
up on the cross, and trusting in him. That is the Gospel in a nutshell. For Nicodemus and maybe for some of us that nut is a little hard to
swallow. We cannot believe that God would love us in such a way. Yet we know
from the very beginning when sin first entered the world He was concerned
about us and put into motion a plan to save us from that sin and even from
ourselves. His plan showers us with His love. His plan gives us new life from
above. His plan provides us with mercy and love beyond our imagination. How can it be? How could God love the world so much? How could He love
His people so much? How could He love you and me so much that He would send
His own Son into the world and provide a plan that would shower us with His
love? We have difficulty understanding this kind of love. It is as if God is
showering His love upon us and we choose to get out the umbrellas. We try to
figure out ways in which we can make our faith more complicated. We make our
faith more complicated by bringing out those umbrellas and blocking God's
love from showering upon us. I am not sure why we respond to God in this way.
It may be part of our human nature. Or it may be because God's love is so
amazing that we cannot believe He would shower it upon us or upon me. We
cannot believe that He would do that for us. But we do need to put down those
umbrellas and believe and let His love soak us good and wet that we might be
saturated in His love and be also ready to shake it off on some others that
they too might feel the touch of His love and care for them. Sometimes we
refuse to put those umbrellas away. We continue to get them out to even
challenge God into allowing His love to fall on us. We sometimes ask
questions to complicate things. We even question the church and others as to
"why?" this has to happen or that has to happen. We question God
and each other if we have to do this or that? When Jesus uses the word
"must," it sounds as if something is required of me. However, God
chooses to shower His love upon us simply if we believe. We say there
"must be something else." Our natural man wants to believe that
there is something else. We wonder if maybe God's love comes in a variety of
packages. If we believe in a certain way, then we receive something different
from God. Or if we believe and do, then we receive something more. Or if we
would do this and do that, maybe, God would throw in a few extra gifts. That
is how some things happen in our world, is it not? Whenever there is a free gift
we always want to know what is required of us to get the gift and how much is
it going to cost me to have that gift. And you and I know when some
advertisement says there is a free gift there is a cost. God, however, does
things differently. God is not one who is just handing out free gifts to
attract your attention or get your business. God is not like a vending
machine that you can walk up to and if you put so much into it you get a
particular item and a little bit more free. No! God is real! He sends His own
Son, Jesus, into the world. He too is real that we might be showered with
deep personal love. Jesus pours out His all for you, that He might snatch you
from death to life. Jesus intends for us to hear what He has to say and to just simply
believe. He wants us to put our umbrellas away, to let God shower us with His
love, and to trust that what God is saying is true. That perfect faith is
perfect simplicity, just trusting, just believing what God has said.
Sometimes we put up umbrellas because we are discouraged by the one who calls
himself, Satan. He is the one who does not want us to trust in such simple
faith. Instead he would like us to think that the Gospel is so complex that
only those who are perfect can ever have a chance. He is one who would discourage
even those who are perfect because they do not meet the qualifications that
God demands of them. However, that is not true. That is an illusion that
Satan puts up before us. It is like a blanket that he throws over us so that
God's love might not reach us. But we learn in this lesson that God showers
His love upon us and that it is not complex at all. It is very simple. We
should not let anything interfere with this message that God is trying to
reach out to us. It is a message of love, a message of love for the sinner
who is sick and needs to be healed. The sinner needs to look up and see Jesus
and receive life. Remember the serpent. Remember those who became sick
because of the poisonous snakes. Moses pleads for those people and God
provided them with a serpent on a pole. Moses held it up and all that was
required of those people to receive new life was to look at it. In the same
way God sends His Son into the world. The way to have new life is simply to
believe. Look to the one who has been lifted up on the cross and have faith.
You will be healed. You will have life. It is not a message that says you have to do this or you have to do
that. It is a message of simply beholding and believing. Remember it was the
sick that were healed. So it is as the sinner looks to this one, Christ
Jesus, in faith, one is made whole. One is given new life. We do not understand it. Great theologians have pondered it. They have
preached upon it. Yet often they come back to that simple nursery song
"Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so." Great
leaders have come to faith even after they have committed horrible crimes.
They do not know why God showered His love upon them except He did. And they
believed and had faith. We like to make the Gospel complicated. Sometimes tremendously so! But
let us never forget that God's love is showered upon us freely. When we try to make things complex, we really are putting up an umbrella that the
full effects of His love might not reach us. We need to take our umbrellas down
and let God shower us with His love. We need to trust in what He says to us. All I need to do is simply believe and He even helps me with my
unbelief. Amen! |
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