Does God love you? - Part 1
Notes
Transcript
I did that thing again. Where I set out to do a sermon and then it turns into more than one sermon. I was like “keep it simple, Clarke, keep it simple!” And before I knew it, I had like 10 pages of stuff, and I didn’t want to throw any of it away.
Worse than that, I was gonna do part 3 of last year’s series and then I actually ended up doing something completely different. I had most of it put together, but then this week, on Thursday night, we had that big storm, and about 3am I woke up to see a cloud rave outside my window! It was just lightning lightning lightning!
And then as I was trying to go back to sleep, I started trying to think about the sermon again, but something else came to me, instead. So I was like, oh, cool, I'll write that down for a future sermon. And it was like I'd write something down, then close my eyes and think "Oh, yay, time to sleep"—and then something else would pop into my head and I’d sit back up, write it down, and close my eyes again. Then something else would pop into my head, so I’d get back up, write it down—you get the idea.
Well, this happened to me over and over, until I realized that I had a new sermon, and that I felt God was pushing me towards that one rather than my original part 3 plan. I don’t know how far we’ll make it into this one; I’m still kind of figuring out the pacing and stuff on preaching, so we might have to continue this next week.
So, well, here we go. This sermon is about...
Love!
Love!
Do you know how powerful love is? I mean, I know you know how popular it is. We write books about it, we watch movies about it, we sing songs about it (“🎶the power of love 🎵”—they really got a few things right with their lyrics, just wait and see!), we dream about it, we long for it—it’s love! What else is there to say? Well, lemme give you a couple facts about love:
Do you know what the two greatest commandments in the Bible are? Well, they’re all about love:
And one of them, a legal expert, put a question to him to test him:
“Teacher, which commandment is greatest in the law?”
And he said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
This is the greatest and first commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
And you know what? God might have been onto something when he commanded us to love. You know why? Because you know what the biggest factor in your level of happiness and satisfaction is?Is it money? Fame?? Genetics??? Surprise! It’s love!
A Harvard study spanning over 75 years followed 724 men from their teen years to their deaths—some from Harvard, and some from the poorest Boston neighborhood they could find. Who do you think ended up the happiest in life? Was it those with more money? More power? More fame? None of those, actually. The greatest factor in their happiness was healthy relationships. It wasn’t fame or fortune that brought them satisfaction. No. The happiest, most satisfied people were the ones who had the healthiest relationships with friends, family members, coworkers, etc.
It didn’t even matter if couples or friends bickered about things. What mattered was, after the dust settled, did you still love each other? Could you still count on one another? Then you had more happiness and satisfaction in your life in every other area.
And it’s not just happiness you get. A study was recently done where researchers analyzed around 150 other studies on longevity and relationships, and found that healthier relationships predicted longer lives. This study has since been replicated multiple times, showing that love leads to longevity. The Harvard study found this as well.
In fact, your relationships are even stronger than your genetics.
When compared to a massive study done by Calico and Ancestry, it was found that having good genetics could increase your lifespan by only about 7%—meanwhile, having a friend or family member to laugh with, cry with, or spend quality time with could increase your lifespan by about 10%!
You might think “well, of course, people who are sick all the time aren’t going to be able to make a lot of friends.” But these studies actually take this into account, and they prove a real link between healthy relationships and healthy people.
Love is powerful! It’s no mistake that God commands us to love one another. And if human love is powerful, then, surely, God’s love is the most powerful of all!
But… although God commands us to love him, does He love us back? Does God love you? How do you know? How do you know that God loves you?
Maybe you might say “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And it does!
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
But do you know that God loves you? Or do you only know that the Bible says that He loves you? Did you catch the difference? Do you know that God loves you? Or only that He says He loves you?
In other words: Do you believe that God loves you? It’s not enough to be loved. You have to believe it.
Have you ever seen a little kid ask for something or demand something, and when they don’t get it, they’re like “Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I bet if I died nobody would miss me.” Most of us have been that kid at some point. I’ve even seen a few adults act like that. If you don’t believe you’re loved, you don’t feel it.
Problem #1: Unbelief
Problem #1: Unbelief
Problem: We don’t feel loved by someone we don’t acknowledge.
Solution: Iron out what you believe.
I did roughly 3 sermons on how important it is to believe, and how we often don’t realize what it means to truly believe. So I won’t dive into that much here. But know that if you don’t believe someone doesn’t exist, you can’t feel loved by them.
(Please find those sermons here: https://sermons.logos.com/series/209376-what-if-it's-true)
Raise your hand if you’d like to spend a day talking with Margaret Hamilton. Not many people, right? If she told you that you were a good software engineer, would you feel loved? Probably not. Even if you were a software engineer, though, you probably don’t know who she is, so why would you care? You don’t learn about Margaret Hamilton in school, so you probably don’t know her, even though she’s awesome.
She was responsible for the team writing on board flight software for the Apollo spacecraft's Lunar Module and Skylab space station, and for her efforts was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
(The picture of her next to the stack of papers is code written by her and her team—which, by the way, you can read through for free online! This picture is often mis-captioned as being of code she wrote herself by hand. That’s ridiculous. If the stack is 5 feet tall, and a piece of paper is 0.005 inches thick on average, then that’s roughly 12,000 pages. Even if you wrote gibberish for 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, at a well-above average writing speed of 20 words/minute, it would take you a year to write that much. And that’s without testing your code a single time. And back then, according to Jerry Bostick, “We would give instructions to the programs by punching cards,” Bostick said. “You had to wait at least 12 hours to see if it would work right.” Even today, an industry-veteran software engineer produces on average about 10 lines of code per day. Software engineering is much more similar to fixing machines than writing in general.)
The Apollo Guidance Computer had about 78 kilobytes of total memory. If you don’t know what a kilobyte is, that’s probably because it’s such a “small” amount of memory by today’s standards that you don’t hear the word “kilobyte” anymore. My phone has about 3 million times more memory—if I did my math right. (The Apollo Guidance computer had rope-core memory which could hold 38,912 16-bit “words,” some cores read-write, most cores read-only. Therefore, it would hold roughly 78 kilobytes of data. My phone has 262 gigabytes of total memory; 8gb of RAM and 256 for general storage.).
The things they had to do on such limited hardware (by today’s standards) to solve such complex problems for such a risky endeavor is unbelievable, and still iconic to this day.
So as a programmer, who wouldn’t want to talk about that! She also coined the term “software engineering,” and is partly responsible for the fact that software engineering is considered a serious discipline today. And thank God, because otherwise I might not be able to stand up here and control the slides back there at the same time, haha!
Ok, SO… Now that you know a little more about her, would you feel loved if she decided to teach you how to program—if you were interested in programming? I hope so!
Similarly, the first thing we need to do to feel loved by God, is to know Who He IS.
On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf.
For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
Because we believe in Jesus, we are loved—and not just in a general way. The Greek word for general, universal love is “agape."But here the word used for love is “philei.” The word used for brotherly, sisterly love, or for the love between parents and their children! Because we believe in Jesus, God loves us as His children.
So you must believe in God to feel loved by God. I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to the 3 sermons I did, called “What if it’s true?” I’ll add a link to this sermon in the stream I’m uploading, so you can click to this sermon and then from there you can find the other ones.
Problem #2: Pride
Problem #2: Pride
Problem: Pride
We look at God and say “You owe me.”
Solution: Reality Check
Pride towards God is when we think we deserve God’s love, or when we think we know better than God. When we measure ourselves next to God, we think we’re better than we are so we think we deserve more than we have. And because of that, we’re angry at God. Anger says “You should have ____, but you ____.” Anger says “You owe me.”
But debt destroys love.
You can’t feel loved if you think someone owes you.
If you give money to a friend, and you 100% expect to get it back later, do you feel loved when they repay you? No, you feel nothing.
When you get your paycheck, do you say “I’m so lucky my boss loves me.” No, you don’t, because you earned that money. You provided something of value to the company, they provided something of value to you. If you owe it, it isn’t love.
The solution? Humble yourself. However you would lift yourself up, do that for someone else instead.
Do nothing according to selfish ambition or according to empty conceit, but in humility considering one another better than yourselves,
1 Peter 5:2–8 (LEB)
...clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the right time,
casting all your cares on him, because he cares for you.
Be sober; be on the alert. Your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
Did you catch that?
Pride gets you devoured.
I am setting before you this instruction, Timothy my child, in accordance with the prophecies spoken long ago about you, in order that by them you may fight the good fight,
having faith and a good conscience, which some, because they have rejected these, have suffered shipwreck concerning their faith,
among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, in order that they may be taught not to blaspheme.
Ouch! That’s harsh! Why does it work like that? Why punish someone so severely? Well, if someone is struggling with pride, they probably aren’t going to hear “humble yourself” and think “oh, yeah, I’m wrong, I should do that.” Pride pushes them to maintain that they’re right, and pride elevates you higher than you really are. Often, the only solution is to be squashed back down to the appropriate level. Often, the only way to turn a heart of stone to a heart of flesh is to dissolve it away, chip it away, or downright smash it to pieces. And God isn’t afraid to do so.
Yahweh tests the righteous, but the wicked and the lover of violence his soul hates.
Did you know that? That God actually does hate some people? When someone told me that in college, I was pretty upset about it. But it came from someone I knew was an outstanding Christian and friend—in fact, he’s the one who gave me my nickname, that I still use today—so I eventually mustered up the courage to look through the Scriptures to try and understand this.
The key is that God doesn’t hate you for the things you struggle with or ways you live that don’t hurt anyone. He hates those who do evil to one another. That word for wicked is the same one used for injustice. It’s what God punished Sodom and Gomorrah for:
Look! This was the iniquity of Sodom, your sister: Pride, abundance of food, and prosperous ease was to her and to her daughters, and she did not sustain the needy and the poor.
And they were proud, and they did a detestable thing before me, and I removed them because I saw it.
Someone who abuses the innocent and enjoys it? God hates them. But keep in mind:
That doesn’t give us permission to hate.
Pay back no one evil for evil. Take thought for what is good in the sight of all people.
If it is possible on your part, be at peace with all people.
Do not take revenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
God knows exactly what someone needs to be saved from pride. Our job as Christians is to challenge pride when we see it, let go and hand people over to God if necessary, let God do His work, and be ready to receive them like the prodigal son if they truly change.
Problem #3: Guilt
Problem #3: Guilt
Problem: Guilt
We think God looks at us and says “You owe Me.”
Solution: Confess, repent, and accept God’s forgiveness.
If pride is considering yourself above your true value, guilt is considering yourself below your true value. Like pride, guilt is a debt issue. But God has paid your debt!
For while we were still helpless, yet at the proper time Christ died for the ungodly.
For only rarely will someone die on behalf of a righteous person (for on behalf of a good person possibly someone might even dare to die),
but God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Many Christians—and many people in general—are guilt-driven. They’re driven to do good out of fear, not out of love. But:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear includes punishment, and the one who is afraid has not been perfected in love.
What if you were perfect, would you feel more confident? Would you feel better if you had never sinned, just like Jesus? Well, I have news for you:
You still wouldn’t get into Heaven. I hear this question a lot when I hear about sharing the Gospel with people: “When you get to the pearly gates, and God asks ‘Why should I let you in?’ What will you say?”
My answer? Well, follow me on a thought experiment for a few minutes.
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Rough draft, please ignore the mess:
So let's say that instead of Heaven, imagine some place you would just really love to go. It could be anywhere: Disney World, Europe, the Moon, whatever. For myself, although I’m not a fan of Disney World, I’m going to use that for my thought experiment. Not saying Disney world is heaven on earth, although some people do.
So let's say you want to get into Disney world. Well, what gets you into Disney world?
Might say money gets you into Disney world. But even if you have money,
Yeah, just walk into Disney world. You're going to get tackled by the security guards. Probably.
You need to do some other stuff. Okay. Um, you need to, to go up to the ticket booth and buy a ticket, right. Then you can get into Disney world. So is it really the money that gets you in or is it the ticket? And well, now you might say it's the ticket, right? Uh, but then even if you have a ticket in your pocket, you can't just walk in and Disney world. Again, you get tackled by the security guards.
You need to go up to, um, the entrance, give them your ticket. And then the person working there at the gate will let you into Disney rope. So now you might think, okay, well the person working at the gate. Get you into Disney world. So. That's pretty, pretty good so far in our analogy, but. How did you get there?
In the first place. Right. You. Needed to get to Disney world somehow. Okay, so, so you, you don't just need money. You don't just need to take it. You don't just need the person at the gate to let you in. You also need to find the entrance. I need to get there. So you're going to need to know the directions. You need to know where you are.
You need to know where you want to be. And you also need to know how to get there.
Okay. So. Uh, summarize the analogy so far, you're going to need to have some money. You're going to need to know where you are. You're going to need to know where Disney world is. You're going to need to know how to get there. You're going to need to buy a ticket. And they need to let you buy a ticket.
You need to take your ticket to the entrance. And they need to accept your ticket. Let you into the entrance. And now you're there. Okay. And then there's one more thing. That we need to add to this.
You do not own. Disney world. So if you get in. And you start causing trouble. You're gonna get kicked out. Right. So we need to take this into account as well. You might show up to Disney world. Um, nice and clean and closed. And then as soon as you get in, you just go crazy. They're gonna still kick you out, even though you knew how to get there, you have the money, you have the ticket, they let you in.
They can still kick you out.
Now let's make this analogy even more complicated, more difficult. Let's make it even harder to get into Disney world. Okay. So, so if Disney world is an analogy for heaven,
And it's not fair. For us in the analogy. To let you be a full grown adult. With a job. You know, to God. We are all children. So in our analogy, let's say you're, you're not just you trying to get into Disney world. You're a kid. This gets even more complicated. You don't just need money, a ticket people letting you in all that stuff. You need somebody.
Give you money. Because you can't earn any on your own. You need somebody to take you there? 'cause you can't take yourself there. You're just a kid. You can't get a driver's license.
So. You might have. Some light bulbs going off at this point.
'cause this is, this is the truth. The reality. Of salvation.
It's not just about being righteous. You could live a perfect life and never sin, just like Jesus. Does that get you into heaven?
You don't know where heaven is. You can't even find the gate. So, no. Your righteousness still is not enough to get you into heaven. You still need God's grace. To show you. How to get there. And not only that. Even if you knew where it was.
How are you going to get there? You still need this need. God's grace to take you there. And then even if you do get there, To the gate.
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And where is the gate to Heaven? Or rather, Who? That’s right, Who?
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How are we able to know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you know him and have seen him.”
And Jesus loves you.
For while we were still helpless, yet at the proper time Christ died for the ungodly.
For only rarely will someone die on behalf of a righteous person (for on behalf of a good person possibly someone might even dare to die),
but God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The truth is, God loves you, and you can’t do anything about it. God loves us and gave us the right to exist whether or not we have any greatness at all. Whether or not we have anything to offer.
People are offended when they say everyone is beautiful and I ask: “What if they're not, does God still love them?” Some people get mad, they’re like “How could you say that??” But it's true, what if they're not? Does God still love them? We have the most difficult time trying to separate our extra qualities from our intrinsic value.
Just so you know, I do believe that every living thing has some form of beauty in it. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder—it’s not whatever you think it is. Did you know that before Western culture reached a lot of places, beauty standards varied wildly, and I mean wildly from culture to culture? And some of these things persist today:
You don’t like your teeth? In Japan, women have teeth surgically altered to look more crowded and less straight.
You don’t like your hair? In some places, such as Kenya, baldness or buzz-cuts are more attractive than long, flowing hair.
You don’t like your body? In some places, like Mauritania, the larger the woman, the more beautiful she is.
You have some scars you don’t like? In some places, such as various tribes in Africa, people put scars all over their body on purpose as a sign of beauty.
And don’t worry, men, there are just as many unique things men do to their bodies in other cultures around the world, too, I just left them out for the sake of time.
And because of many of these standards, just like our standards here in the US today, people are willing to do unhealthy things to themselves and even their children, to follow these standards.
The truth is, there are plenty of people out there who would look at you and think you’re perfect. But the point I want to make is: it doesn’t matter anyways, when it comes to your value as a person. When it comes to God’s love for you: Your accomplishments and qualities do not matter.
We think we understand that God loves us but I don't think we do. And therefore we need these other affirmations to feel loved when the truth is that we're still trapped in the cage of needing to be something to be loved. We have a hard time coming to grips with the fact that even if we end up lost in a sea of billions of humans who have lived unremarkable lives and died unremarkable deaths, God loves us the same way He loves Jesus.
Did you hear that? Yes! God loves you the same way He loves Jesus!
I in them, and you in me, in order that they may be completed in one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.
Did you know that God’s love lives within you?
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God.
And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him.
Jesus paid the price for you. You don’t have a debt anymore. You’re free.
The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because Yahweh has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and liberation to those who are bound,
This was the Scripture from Isaiah which Jesus read in Luke 4.
Isaiah also said:
He will destroy death forever, and the Lord Yahweh will wipe off the tears from all faces, and he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth, for Yahweh has spoken.
Confess
Repent
Be Free!
If you have some things in you that weigh you down—things you’ve done—then you need to confess that to God, repent, and move on.
Confession means accepting that what you did is actually wrong.
Repentance means you’re sincere about not wanting to do that anymore.
And if you’ve confessed and repented, you’re free!
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, so that he will forgive us our sins and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Remember, though:
If our sin involves someone else, the Bible commands us to ask that person for forgiveness, and to make things right. The Bible commands us to forgive without hesitation, but also to confront and resolve sin:
“Now if your brother sins against you, go correct him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
But if he does not listen, take with you in addition one or two others, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established.
And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses to listen to the church also, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
God may not allow you to feel free if someone you’ve wronged is still alive and you still have the opportunity to ask for forgiveness. If that ship has sailed, it’s between you and God. But as long as you still have the opportunity, you will have to choose between carrying that burden of guilt, and having the courage to face your wrongdoing.
Therefore if you present your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you,
leave your gift there before the altar and first go be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your gift.
He who conceals his transgression will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes will obtain mercy.
Sources
Sources
“Research shows it’s relationships, not genetics that lengthen your life”
https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/7/23060482/harvard-longevity-study-happiness-relationships-physical-mental-health-byu-waldinger-super-ager
“Secrets of aging revealed in largest study on longevity, aging in reptiles and amphibians”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220623140536.htm
“What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness”
https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness
Margaret Hamilton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)
https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/
The Apollo Guidance Computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
Standards of Beauty
Kenya
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/why-shaved-heads-are-an-iconic-african-hair-tradition
Japan
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/yaeba/
https://bautystandardsaroundtheworld.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/beauty-standards-around-the-world/
Mauritania
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mauritania-struggles-love-fat-women-flna1C9474512
https://aljaml.com/node/63484
Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarification_in_Africa
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/of-scarifications-and-body-paintings-how-the-karo-people-of-ethiopia-do-it
“The Power of Love”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBl2QGAIx1s