God is Self-Sacrificing

In search of a plan...

Evening can always be an interesting time in a house with young children. The first task is to go through the bed-time routine, and somehow, that often seems to get far more complicated then you might first think.

But it is often after the bed-time routine that it can become frustrating. You see, unless you strike it lucky where they tired but not too tired and therefore fall asleep straight away, you get this period of time when they are laying in bed, but not asleep.

Now in my experience, admittedly with exceptions, this time is actually not all that long - maybe 15 or 20 minutes, but for the child, it can feel like forever.

And so we get the long heard complaint - I can’t get to sleep!

But for some of my kids however, this has then turned into the question - how can I get to sleep?

Now I remember when they first asked, and I was thought: well, I don’t know, you just do.

But we finally figured out a few steps:

First: don’t touch any toys.

Second: stay really still.

Third: Close your eyes.

And fourth: try not to think about anything interesting.

Of course, that final steps a bit tricky as it’s hard to stop thinking about something.

Now, those steps are hardly ground-breaking thoughts, you might even say it’s just basic common sense, but it at least met my daughters desire for a clear path forward.

… in Self-help literature

And here’s the thing. particularly when we are in a problem, we just want some clear steps to help us out.

In fact, this desire has fueled a whole genre of literature. That is, the self-help books.

Next time you go to any book shop, check out how large the self-help section is.

You’ll find countless books on how to find happiness, or finding your inner child. Actually a popular thing today is being a minimalist.

But at the heart of all of this is this idea that we just want some steps to take in order for our lives to be somehow better.

…in religion

Now interestingly, most of the major world religions can offer these clear paths.

Take Buddhism for starters. If we go back to the teaching of the man known as Buddha, we find what they call the four noble truths, which mostly have to do with suffering, and how we should avoid suffering. Which culminates in their fourth truth which is the way to avoid suffering and reach enlightenment, and so this fourth truth relates to what they call the eight-fold path to enlightenment.

And so here we find some clear steps: if you follow them perfectly, you’ll reach what you are looking for.

Or take Islam. Now central to Islamic teaching is what is generally referred to as the five pillars of Islam. This includes a statement of faith, requirements for praying, fasting, giving and also pilgrimage.

It essentially becomes a road-map for Muslims. Follow this, and you will get close to God.

Now this sort of teaching is very attractive. It is attractive because you can know that if you do certain things, good things will happen.

…even in Christianity

Now it is easy to think that Christianity works in a very similar sort of way.

After all, we’ve got our 10 Commandments. These commandments, given directly by the finger of God, speak about how we should relate both to God and other people. We just have to follow this and then we will get close to God.

Certainly, for many people outside the church, they are quite happy with what they perceive as the teaching of the church, particularly if you discount our teaching on sexuality. But what they like is that Christianity will teach you good morals. Many parents I speak to in the community hold this view. They’re very happy, for example, for their child to attend Scripture, or to hear Christian messages at youth group, because at least it will give them good morals.

But even in the the church, it is easy for our teaching to be reduced to a set of things we need to do.

The problem

But there are deep problems with this way of thinking.

My intention this morning is to explore what the problem is with this way of thinking, and that will lead us to the last attribute that we will explore in this series, namely that God is Self-sacrificing.

Because this way of thinking is so ingrained in our way of thinking, even as Christians we hardly see a problem with this.

Int

What Jesus says

Well, as we’ve done throughout this series we hold up the worldly narrative in light of the narrative that Jesus taught.

The worldly narrative is that there is a path we can follow that will lead us to God.

Now the passage where Jesus most clearly speaks against such an idea is actually a passage we looked at earlier in the year, namely in when Jesus speaks with a rich man.

In this account, the man asks Jesus directly “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

To which the conversation turns to the 10 Commandments. At this point, the conversation seems to be going very much in line with this worldly narrative I spoke about before. Our 10 Commandments in this way, becomes our path to God.

And so this rich man can justify himself, because he’s obviously been a good Jewish person, who, knowing the 10 Commandments well, would have been very diligent at following them.

But that doesn’t last long because Jesus is about to drop a bomb shell.

In the face of the man’s confidence, he tells him to sell everything he has and follow him. That was too much for the man, and he left.

Eventually, even the disciples decided they needed to confront Jesus about this and so asked him “who then can be saved?”

Jesus then gave a profound answer which is going to point us in the direction of our final attribute of God.

Jesus’ response is: “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things all possible with God”.

We’ll get to our attribute of God as we look at how God makes this possible, but before I do that, I think it’s worth exploring why this is impossible.

Why it’s impossible

You see, it is this statement that it is impossible, that strikes at the heart of our plan.

The reality is, despite all our best intentions, we can never perfectly follow these great plans we have for self-improvement.

If I go back to those self-help books, most of which are trying to find happiness in the wrong places, but even if we were to accept that they were helpful, the vast majority of them are actually just plain unattainable.

Of course, this can work in the favour of the adherents of such plans, because if you don’t achieve what you’re trying to achieve, well, perhaps you just didn’t try hard enough.

But that’s just the thing. We can’t, because at the end of the day we are finite beings who have limits to our ability.

If I go to the religions I mentioned before of Buddhism and Islam, they too are ultimately not achievable. In fact most Buddhist even recognise that enlightenment isn’t something that a mortal can achieve.

Keeping the 10 Commandments

So too, with the 10 Commandments.

Now I find it interest that when you speak to many people they will claim that they keep the 10 Commandments. But in my experience if you push them on the issue, they actually don’t really no much about them.

If you’re lucky, they might recall, don’t murder, don’t steal and don’t commit adultery. Well, murder and adultery they’re fine with. Stealing… well, they’ve never stolen anything too valuable.

The reality however, is that if they knew exactly what all 10 Commandments were, they would realise that they are a long way from keeping them all. And this is even before we turn to the way Jesus re-interpreted the commandments like murder and adultery to include anger and lust.

Law not intended to save

The truth is, the law was never intended to save us. It was given to point us to the ideal way to live. The way in which we can become Christ-like.

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Don’t get me wrong, the law is very important, but the purpose is not to save.

Deep corruption

But can I suggest that the problem even goes deeper than this. That is to say, the problem goes beyond just the slip-ups, where we get angry over here, and struggle with lust over there.

You see, if it is a mere slip-up, then the solution would be repentance. That is, we say we’re sorry, agree never to do it again, and we’re back on track.

The reason that is not possible is because at the heart of it all, we are deeply corrupted people.

In fact, we can trace this back to Adam and Eve. When they sinned, this corruption of humanity took place. We became sinful beings. And it is because of this reason that we are no longer capable of turning things around on our own.

We can try, and by God’s grace, we can even make some progress, but we can never fully be right by God while this corruption exists.

God’s self-sacrifice

Now, I’ve spent quite a bit of time establishing this problem with the worldly narrative - that is, that we can somehow get to God by our own means, because it is only once we start to appreciate this that we realise the importance of what God did for us.

You see, as I mentioned before, today’s theme is that God is self-sacrificing. Now I think the real danger for us is that this becomes such an abstract idea that we lose the power of it all.

I’m going to look shortly at the passage we looked at earlier, that is, of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but if don’t recognise the enormity of the sacrifice, then this metaphor loses it’s effectiveness.

Now, central to this idea that God is self-sacrificing is of course the cross, but even this can become somewhat of an abstract notion.

Part of the reason it becomes so abstract, is that we struggle to answer the question: why did God have to be self-sacrificing?

Surely God could have said: “you’re all forgiven!” and then that is that. Surely we could have avoided the whole complicated affair in the process.

But this is where I want to bring in this problem that I’ve spent the first part of this message establishing. That is, we have deep corruption within us that is incapable of change.

We don’t just need forgiven. We need to be able to change. To be able to come into God’s presence we need to become like him. And so it was this deep corruption that God needs to counter.

Now again, we might argue, but couldn’t God just declare the problem fixed, after all, he is all-powerful. But what we need to recognise is that while God is all-powerful, he cannot go against his nature. He created us as beings, capable of relationship with him, and capable of making choices that have consequences.

Now you could argue, well, can’t God do anything, surely he can make us change. But that’s just the thing. That would change the essence of who we are. You could say, becoming robots, incapable of real relationship.

And so, God did do something. A problem of a worldly kind, needs a solution with worldly consequences. God powerfully did this for us by sending his Son, Jesus, to earth.

Now again, we can lose the significance of this, but Paul, when writing to the Philippians, included some powerful words. Let me read them to you now...

Phil 2:6-8

Philippians 2:6–8 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

What these words begin to capture for us is the enormity of God reducing himself to the level of a human. And the purpose of this is because there is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

A problem that means we can not be right with God by our own means.

I just want to reflect on this a little longer. You see, we have God, who as we explored last week is Holy. He is perfectly morally pure. And then we have us. He are corrupted to our very being.

By rights, God should just wipe us out. Get rid of us. If he wants he could start again. That would be his choice - he is God after all.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t because not only is God Holy, he is also Love.

His love drives him to do something about our problem, but he is also driven by his holiness.

And so God draws on another characteristic: his self-sacrificing nature, to fix the problem.

The Good Shepherd

Let me now bring in the reading we had earlier, because I believe it is with this background that we start to see the power in these words.

In this reading, Jesus is using the analogy of a shepherd. This is actually an analogy that was used on numerous other occasions in the Old Testament.

What I love about this analogy is the helplessness of the sheep. Sheep have very little ability to protect themselves.

With this analogy, it shows the ridiculous idea that we can somehow save ourselves. We really are like sheep in many ways.

The gate

I started the reading at verse 11, but really, Jesus starts the analogy at verse 1 of chapter 10. Fiona helpfully included the video about the shepherd being the gate, and this came in the verses just prior to what I read.

But even this idea of being a gate begins to show the idea of self-sacrifice. When you are the gate, you are putting yourself between the danger and the one you are trying to protect.

Laying down life

But it is from verse 11 that the real power of the analogy comes into focus.

Now, it is worth pointing out that by calling himself the good shepherd, he is drawing on some Old Testament prophecies of the promised Messiah.

But it is what Jesus adds to this which gives it the power.

You see, Jesus takes this image of a shepherd to a rather extreme level. The good shepherd loves his sheep that much, that he is willing to do whatever it takes to allow these sheep to live.

For Jesus, this is not just an empty analogy, but rather it refers directly to his death. A death that enables us to have life.

This kind of sacrifice isn’t something natural. In fact, Jesus makes this point by comparing the good shepherd with the hired hand. The hired hand might be able to do some things for the sheep, but ultimately his love for the sheep is not that deep. He would not risk his life. But the good shepherd does.

Resurrection

Now, I’ve actually been looking at this section of the bible in school scripture where this year I’m teaching year 6. And one bright kid made a very interesting observation.

Now, I’ve actually been looking at this section of the bible in school scripture where this year I’m teaching year 6. And one bright kid made a very interesting observation.

He said: “well, if the shepherd dies, wouldn’t that ultimately be worse for the sheep because then no-one would be protecting them?”

It’s actually a very good question.

Now probably without realising it, this child was actually getting to the point of why the resurrection is so important.

You see, it is great that Jesus paid the price for our sin. But just like this deeper corruption lies beneath our sins, for God, there is a deeper life to his forgiveness.

Because Jesus was perfectly sinless, the very opposite of our corrupt state, death was not able to keep him down.

Jesus alludes to this in the passage I read before. He says in verse 18: “I have authority [of his life that is] to lay it down and authority to take it up again”.

You see, though Jesus surrenders his life for us, he takes it back up, giving him the power to truly free us.

The path forward

It is in this way that we finally have a path forward.

You see, I’ve started by saying how we are incapable of making ourselves right by ourselves. But this is where Christianity completely differs from Buddhism and Islam, and all other religions for that matter.

You see, Christianity recognises that these paths to enlightenment or five pillars are not achievable.

It is not about us trying to do it on our own steam because we are too corrupted for that.

Rather Christianity is about a God who reaches down to us. Who becomes one of us and breaks the bonds that are crushing us and allows us to be renewed.

God’s self-sacrificing nature is one of the most beautiful things. On the surface it seems so counter to the nature of who he is, but it is the result of a God that is both Love and Holiness.

Conclusion

This message concludes the series we’ve been doing on “Who is the God I Know”. But it is the perfect one to lead us into Easter.

You see, Easter is the time that we remember this sacrifice that Jesus made.

But my hope is that throughout the series you’ve started to see how each of these attributes about God fit together.

The important thing to note though, is that with each of these attributes, while they are easy things to say, it is so important that we take the time to really reflect on what they mean. We need to go beyond just the quick, glossed over ideas, and instead spend the time meditating and digging deeper.

As I’ve attempted to do, so often we alter the true meaning by the false narratives that are so prevalent in our way of thinking.

The only real antidote to that, is spending time with God and in his word.

As we do, we’ll find that not only will our understanding of God change, but so will our attitude to others.

Let’s pray...

The idea of an eco-system in nature is the idea that all living things work together. Take one part out of the system and they all suffer.

Well, if you think about all these attributes of God, they all fit together.

If you take away his love, or his holiness, then we lose the essence of who God is.

Over the weeks we’ve looked at his goodness, his trustworthiness, his generosity, his love, his holiness, and today his self-sacrificing nature.

All of these work together. And it is knowing that God is all of these things that we can