Our
sermon series has been about the most popular verse in the Bible, at least
according to searches at biblegateway.com. It’s found in the gospel of
John, Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen. “For God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but
shall have eternal life.”
We read that verse, and that’s
usually where we stop. Or, perhaps, we’ll go on to the next verse, verse
seventeen. Jesus says, “For God did not send his son into the world to
condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
And we stop there. Because
that’s really all we want to know. That God sent the Son into the world
to give us eternal life. That God did not send the Son into the world to
condemn the world but to save the world. That’s where many of us would
like Jesus’ message to end.
Quite honestly, I’d like Jesus’
message to end there, too. But it does not. Jesus had more to say,
and here it is:
“Whoever believes in him is
not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because
they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the
verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead
of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the
light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deed will be
exposed. But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it
may be see plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”
We don’t like to hear that part of Jesus’ message. I don’t like to hear it, either. I don’t
We don’t like to hear that part of Jesus’ message. I don’t like to hear it, either. I don’t
like to
hear about people being condemned, because when Jesus talked about people being
condemned, he was talking about people being condemned to hell. And he
was talking about them being in hell for eternity. And if you take the
concept of hell seriously, if you don’t think of Satan as a cartoon character
in a red suit and really take Satan and hell seriously, you would never want
anyone to go there ever.
We don’t want to think of God
sending anyone to hell. We say to ourselves, “God would never send
someone to hell. God is love. God is merciful. God is
forgiving. A loving, forgiving, merciful God would never send someone to
hell, right?”
Well, yes and no. In a sense,
that’s right. God does not send people to hell. People send
themselves to hell, because they refuse to believe in Jesus Christ as their
Savior. That’s what Jesus meant we he said that the son had not come to
condemn the world, but those who do not believe are condemned already.
It’s a continuation of what we
talked about last week, really. We are all sinners. We have all
done things we know we should not have done and we have all failed to do things
we know we should have done. We have all failed to love each other the
way Jesus told us to. We have all failed to trust God the way we should.
We have all fallen short of who we should be, who God created us to be.
We deserve punishment for that. But God offers us a way out.
If we simply believe in God and accept Jesus as our Savior, we will be
saved. We will not be given the punishment we deserve. Instead, we
will be given eternal life with the Lord in heaven.
But there are people who refuse to
believe in God. There are people who refuse to accept Jesus as their
Savior. What happens to them? Well, again, what did Jesus say?
Jesus said, “whoever does not believe stands condemned already because
they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son”.
Now, let me make clear that this is
not Jeff Adel saying I think I have the right to say who goes to heaven and who
goes to hell. God decides that, not me. And I’m quite sure that God
does a lot better job of it than I do.
And let me also make clear that
those things we said about God a little bit ago are all true. God is
love. God is merciful. God is forgiving. God is compassionate
and caring and gracious and all sorts of other things.
Because of that, I’m quite certain
that God takes no delight in it when someone condemns themselves to hell.
In fact, I’m quite certain that it’s the last thing God ever wants to
see. God does not want anyone to ever condemn themselves to hell.
God would love it if everyone believed. That’s why God gave us a
way out of hell through belief in Jesus. That’s why Jesus told us to go
and make disciples of all nations. That’s why, as sinful as we are, God
welcomes us into God’s presence. God is eager for us to go to God,
confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, and proclaim our acceptance of Jesus as
our Savior.
But, as much as God would like us
everyone to love God and accept Jesus, God is not going to force us to do that.
God allows us freedom of choice. Because God knows that love that
is forced is not real love. Love can only be love if it’s a choice.
And that means we have to have the choice to not love God. And as
long as that choice exists, it’s inevitable that some people will make that
choice. It’s a very sad thing when that happens.
So how does this all play out in
reality? Well, again, that’s for God to decide, not me. But I will
say this. God knows everything there is to know about each one of us.
God knows things about us that we, ourselves, don’t know. God knows
the number of hairs on our heads. In fact, not only does God know things
about us that we don’t know, God also knows all the things about us that we’ve
tried to hide from ourselves. God knows all those thoughts and feelings
that we’ve buried deep inside ourselves. God knows all those thoughts and
feelings we have that we try to ignore and try to forget that we even have.
God knows who we are and God knows all the things that happened to us to
make us who we are.
God knows all of that and more. And God takes all of that
into account. How does that all work out? I don’t know. But
again, God is love. God is merciful. God is forgiving. God is
compassionate and caring and gracious and all sorts of other things. And
because of who God is, I am convinced that God is going to do everything in
God’s power, short of taking our freedom of choice away from us, to avoid
allowing us to condemn ourselves to hell.
But God is not going to take away that freedom of choice.
God is going to allow people to choose not to believe. And God is
going to allow them to accept the consequences of that choice. God is
going to allow us to condemn ourselves if that’s what we choose to do.
So what does that mean for us? It means that we need to take
seriously what Jesus said to us. Not just about eternal life and
condemnation, but everything Jesus said. Including what, according to
Matthew, was the last thing Jesus told us before he left the earth. “Go
and make disciples of all nations.”
This is what we mean when we talk about reaching out to unchurched
people. We’re not doing this so we can have a bigger church. Yes,
having a bigger church would be cool, but not for ourselves. Not so we
can brag about what a growing church we have. I don’t want this to be a
bigger church just so I can be the pastor of a bigger church. If that’s
what I wanted I’d ask the District Superintendent to move me to Sioux Falls or
Rapid City or Pierre or someplace. That’s not what I want. I like
it here.
But would I like to see this church grow? Yes! Because
that would mean we’re reaching more people for the gospel. It would mean
we’re getting more and more people to make the right choice. It would
mean more and more people are not condemning themselves to hell, but are
accepting eternal life with Jesus. That’s why we need to reach out to unchurched
people. We don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for them. We
do it because reaching an unchurched person with the gospel is the most loving,
caring thing we could ever do for someone.
You know people who are not going to church anywhere. So do
I. Some of you have them in your own family. So do I. Let’s
do what we can to reach them. Not in an obnoxious way. Not in a way
that makes it sound like we think we’re better than they are. Not in an
arrogant way or an offensive way. In a loving way. In a caring way.
In a way that says we have something we want to share with them, not for
our benefit, but for theirs.
We can do that. You can do that. I can do that.
It’s not always easy. But we can. If we pray to God to show
us how, God will show us how. If we pray for God to give us the courage
and the love to actually do it, God will give us the courage and the love to
actually do it. Will we always succeed? No. Even Jesus did
not always succeed. But we’ll succeed sometimes. And even if we
just reach one, that still more than zero. Remember what Jesus said about
the rejoicing in heaven over just one person who believes. With God’s
help, each of us can help make some of that rejoicing happen.
God did, indeed, so love the world that he gave his one and only
son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal
life. Let’s do everything we can to encourage everyone to make the choice
to accept eternal life through Jesus. It’s the most loving thing we can
do for them.
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