Sorry for the delay on the "God's Morality" post... it's still coming! I've been very busy recently. One of the things I've been doing is a youth talk for a weekend away, which I did recently. Here it is (my apologies to anyone called Herbert, I really do think it's a good name actually):
Let
me introduce you to a guy called Herbert. Now, as you may have guessed by his name, Herbert is one of the unluckiest people you will ever meet. Herbert’s also afraid of
heights, which is unfortunate for him as he’s currently standing on
a balcony, on the top floor of a 10 story sky-scraper, on the edge of
a cliff, next to the sea. He’d get down if he could… but his best
friend, who’s brother he’s just killed, is standing behind him
with a gun telling him to jump. Which isn’t great for Herbert, as,
even if he could survive the fall, he can’t swim. Oh, and there’s
sharks in the water. He’s pretty stuck. In fact, he’s in a
hopeless situation, with absolutely nothing he can do to fix it. And
it’s all his fault that he’s there. Surely he’s going to die?
But
it turns out that we've pretty much been in that very situation
ourselves.
The
passage we've read starts by explaining that we are all naturally in
a similarly hopeless and deserved situation, that we can do nothing
about, when it comes to God.
It
starts off in the first 3 verses saying, “As for you, you were dead
in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you
followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of
the air (which means, Satan), the spirit who is now at work in those
who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its
desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of
wrath.”
We
get an image of someone who is totally addicted to sin, take a look
with me at verse 3, as it says we were, “gratifying the cravings of
our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” You know
when you know
something's wrong, but you do it anyway? Or at least you would if you
could? And how we spend so much of our time thinking about ourselves,
obsessed with how to make ourselves happy and cool and content,
instead of thinking about how we can serve and praise God? That's
addiction to sin. And it's no small matter. Have you ever seen a
picture of a smoker's lungs? Or an alcoholic's liver? They're ugly
and creepy, aren't they? Definitely not anything like what they were
meant to be. We might not see the effects of being addicted to sin in
the same way as that, but that's a bit like what we end up looking
like to God.
We
don’t deserve anything from God, and there’s nothing we can do to
fix things.
And
we know that sin is rebellion against God, so this isn't just a
picture of a helpless addict who life's just gone horribly wrong for,
but rather of someone who loves and does the sinful ways of the
world, even of Satan, who is an addict and slave to sin in much the
same way. We get a picture of a disgusting corpse of a person,
festering in their sins, have a look back in verse one, “as for
you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins”. And the worse
bit about it all, is that it's about us.
Do
you see how we just don’t deserve anything from God? And like this
there’s nothing that we can do to fix things.
Have
you ever pictured yourself as being, or having once being, just like
that?
The
passage says that that's what all people are like by default. It's
what we naturally choose. And it's awful. The end of verse 3 says
that being that way makes you in your very nature, “deserving of
wrath”. Like what we are, if we're that way, just needs to be
punished. And God's wrath, we know, leads to Hell. It's a scary and
desperate picture that these first verses paint, way worse even than
the situation Herbert
was in.
We
really don’t deserve anything from God except his anger, and there
is absolutely nothing we can do to fix things or rescue ourselves.
I
know this has been heavy, and if the passage were to finish there
then we would be left in a pretty desperate and hopeless situation.
But the passage doesn't end here! It's about to get a whole load
better. We’re about to see how amazingly beautiful God and being
with Him is, but we can't realise just how amazingly beautiful being
with God is, unless we can see how totally ugly and desperate it is
to be without Him.
So
I'm going to say it once more, as clear as I can. If you're here
today, and you've not been saved by God, then you are in danger of
God's wrath. And if, like me, you're here today and you have been
saved by God, then remember that we once were in danger of that very
same wrath, for all the same reasons.
But
now for the good news. Take a look at verse 4, “But because of his
great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with
Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions.”
God
loves us and He’s saved us, despite our being hopeless addicts to
sin, despite our following the ways of Satan. If you’re a Christian
here today then you are no longer dead in your sins, you are no
longer in danger of God’s wrath.
And
it goes on, read verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ and
seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order
that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his
grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
It's
saying that we've been seated with Christ in the heavenly realms.
Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, he's the author of
life, he's the Alpha and the Omega, he's the lord of all creation.
Everything
that exists is his! He sits on the throne
of heaven!
And this is saying that we get to sit with Christ on his
throne, despite all we've done wrong!
And
why? It says, verse 7, “in order that in the coming ages” God,
“might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his
kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” God does all this so that He can
spend eternity showing us just how vast and deep and wonderful his
love and for us is. What a contrast to being a festering corpse
destined for Hell.
This
is the amazing offer that the Bible makes, to get to sit with the
king of the universe for all eternity and be lavished with love and
kindness like nothing you've ever felt or seen before.
But
how do we get it? Just a moment ago I was saying that we were like
corpses, slaves to sin and to Satan. What's made a change like this
possible? How do we get in on this deal? What do we have to do?
If
the answer is that we have to earn it, that we have to be really good
or do certain things, then all this has been for nothing. We’ve
already seen how totally undeserving and helpless we are without God.
Thankfully
the plan was never for us to earn eternal life by what we do.
“For
it is by grace you have been saved”, verse 8.
We're
saved by grace! It’s an undeserved gift, not something that you
earn. Grace is Jesus dying on the cross to take away our sins, and
grace is Jesus rising again to give us life with him. We don't have
to earn it. Being a Christian isn't about what you do, it's about
receiving the gift of what Jesus has done for us for free.
And
how do we receive it? Verse 8 goes on, “For it is by grace you have
been saved, through
faith,
and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by
works”.
We accept the gift, we accept grace, by trusting in what Jesus has
done for us. That's it. There's no catch, no strings attached,
nothing.
Let’s
go back to Herbert, for a second. From inside the skyscraper someone
else steps out onto the balcony and takes his place on the edge,
before making the jump that Herbert should have made and dying the
death that Herbert deserved. And before he jumped he didn’t ask for
anything in return. Herbert gets to go free, justice is done, he
doesn’t have to jump and gets to be reunited with his friend. Jesus
did the same thing for us when he died on the cross, he took the
punishment we deserved, enabling us to be reunited with God.
The
passage finishes by saying that, verse 10, “we are God's
handiwork,”, which is a massive change from rotting corpses,
“created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.” What Jesus has done for us, doesn’t just
stop with giving us eternal life, it also frees us from our addiction
to sin, enabling us to do good things that God’s planned out for
us. And the good works are from God, they are part of his gift. So we
can’t even boast about them. It’s all part of the gift from God
in Jesus.
If
you're not a Christian here today, then this offer, this free gift,
is for you. All you have to do is accept it. You get to go from being
dead, waiting for God's wrath, to having the amazing honour of being
able to sit with Jesus forever and ever, being given kindness and joy
from God. And if you are a Christian then this is what you've been
given! Don't be the way I used to be, trying to earn the right to
keep the gift, it's yours forever, just keep trusting in Jesus and
his death and resurrection.
If
you've not accepted God's grace, if you've not become a Christian,
then do not go away from this talk without accepting it. You can
never get a better offer than this, and there's never going to be a
better time than now to accept it. And if you decide to trust in
Jesus this weekend, why not talk to one of the leaders? We'd love
to celebrate with you, answer any questions you still have, and help
you work out what next.
[Pray]
