A lot of you probably know John,
Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen, right? “For God so loved the world that he
gave his only his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
shall have eternal life.” That’s a great verse, obviously. Some
would say it’s the greatest verse in the Bible. God sent the divine Son,
Jesus Christ, into this earthly world specifically and purposefully to die so
that our sins could be forgiven.
But that’s not what we’re going to
talk about tonight. Well, it kind of is, but we’re going to approach it a
different way. I was reading the Bible one time, and I noticed that a lot
of the books of the New Testament have a Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen, and an
awful lot of them are really meaningful.
Now, I don’t know what that means. In fact, I don’t know
that it means anything at all. It could just be a coincidence.
After all, every book of the Bible does not have a great verse in Chapter
Three, Verse Sixteen. In fact, some books don’t even have a Chapter
Three, Verse Sixteen. But when I was noticing this, I thought, “Hey,
there’s an idea for a sermon series!”
So, what we’re going to do on these Wednesday nights is look at
Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen in a lot of different books of the New Testament.
And we’re going to start with Second Corinthians Chapter Three, Verse
Sixteen. “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”
Now, maybe you’re thinking “Well, that’s not much of a deal.”
And taken out of context like that, it’s not much of a deal. So
let’s put it into some context so we can see what the deal is about it.
“Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”
A little earlier in this passage, and we read it a little while ago, the
Apostle Paul, who wrote this, tells what that veil is that he’s referring to.
It’s a reference to Moses.
Moses, of course, was the greatest prophet of all time. He’s
the one who led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. And he
talked to God directly. Moses would go into the presence of God.
And when he left God’s presence, there’d be this unearthly glow about
him. Especially in his face, we’re told that Moses’ face was radiant with
this divine glow. And frankly, it scared the heck out of everybody.
So the people made Moses put something over his face, this veil, so they
could not see this unreal, unearthly glow that he had.
And this veil came to symbolize the relationship God had with
people. At that time, God did not have a relationship with the average,
ordinary person. God’s word was not available to everybody. God
only spoke to certain people, prophets and priests. And only those
certain people could speak to God, too.
You know, we take prayer for granted sometimes. We just
assume that we can pray to God any time we want to, and that God will be
available to us and will hear our prayer. And that’s true, but it was not
always that way. In Moses’ time, if someone wanted to talk to God, they
went to Moses, and Moses would relay the message.
And of course, if you were going to bother either Moses or God
with something, it had to be something pretty important. You would not
ask for just ordinary day-to-day help. It had to be something really
urgent, almost a matter of life and death, before you would think of making a
request to God.
In other words, the common, ordinary person did not have a personal
relationship with God at that time. There was no thought that God loves
me as an individual. I mean, God loved the Nation of Israel and would
protect it. And God might love a specific great prophet like Moses.
But there was no thought that God loved ordinary people, that God would
love Harley Smidlap or Joe Shlabotnik.
After all, God was God. God was way up there, somewhere,
great and powerful and almighty. The people of Israel were just happy
that God cared about them as a whole. That God might care about the
average person was beyond their comprehension.
The reason there was no relationship between God and the average
person was because of sin. God is perfect. God is sinless.
The prophets were, well, not perfect or sinless, but they were considered
pretty close. And besides, they’d been touched by God. I mean,
again, Moses had this unearthly glow around him every time he’d touch with God.
People figured, well, that had to purify Moses somehow, right? So
yeah, Moses could have a relationship with God. But the average, sinful
person could not. Our sin simply made for too big of a difference, too
big of a gap, too big of a separation between us and God.
And then Jesus came. And Jesus clearly had this one-on-one
relationship with God. That’s why people who did not know who Jesus was
figured he must be a prophet. He had to be a prophet. Who else
could have that kind of a relationship with God?
But Jesus said no. God is not just the God of the Prophets.
God is not just the God of the Nation as a whole. God is your God.
You, and you, and you. And me. God is available to each and
every one of us.
Jesus said each and every one of us can have a personal
relationship with God. And people said, well, how can that be? How
can we sinful people have a relationship with the perfect sinless God?
And Jesus said, I’ll show you. And then he died. But
of course that’s not really accurate. Jesus did not just die. Jesus
allowed himself to be killed. He allowed himself to be killed as
punishment for a crime that he was not guilty of, for sins he did not commit.
He took the punishment that should have gone to you and to me, for our
sins.
And when Jesus did that, he took away that gap that existed
between us and God. It went away. Jesus, by dying and by rising
into heaven, made it possible for you and me to have that one-on-one
relationship with God. That’s what Paul is talking about when he says,
“Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”
When we have faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, when we believe
in him, we don’t have to be afraid of God any more. We don’t have to feel
like God could not possibly care about an ordinary person like you or me.
We can know that God does care. God does love Harley Smidlap and
Joe Shlabotnik. And God loves you. And God loves me.
And that’s how this relates back to John Chapter Three, Verse
Sixteen. God loved the world so much that God sent the divine Son, Jesus
Christ, into this earthly world specifically and purposefully to die so that
our sins could be forgiven. And when that happened, our relationship with
God was restored. The veil, the separation between us and God, is gone.
You and I can pray to God any time we want to. God will be
available to us and will hear our prayer. But we should never take that
for granted. Our relationship with God is not something that God owes to
us. It’s not something we deserve. It’s not something we could ever
earn. It’s something that God gives us as a gift.
But even though that relationship is a gift to us, it was not
free. We were able to get that gift only because Jesus paid the price for
it. We say all the time that Jesus died to save us and give us eternal
life, and that’s true, but there’s more to it than that. Jesus did not
die just to save us. Jesus did not even die just to give us eternal life.
Jesus died so we could come to know God personally. Jesus died so
we could have a personal, one-to-one relationship with God.
Jesus died so we could pray to God about everything. Big
things. Small things. Things that affect the world. Things
that affect our lives. We can pray for peace, or justice, or courage, or
strength, or healing, or any of a hundred other things. We can do that
because Jesus made it possible. That’s something we should never, ever
take for granted. We should always treasure it for the incredible gift it
is.
When you and I turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. The
gap is closed. There is no longer anything on earth or in heaven that
separates us from the love of God. God loves us so much that God sent the
Son into the world, not to just to save the world, not just to give us eternal
life, but to give us a life in which you and I can have a personal, one-on-one
relationship with the almighty, sinless, perfect God. There could be no
greater gift on earth or in heaven than that.
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