Tag: God’s love

Good News

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Happy Easter Monday! Everything has been leading to this. Jesus’ last week before His death on a Roman cross was action-packed to say the least. Just the things He said and did then have changed the world many times over. But as He always knew, the cross was coming, and come it did. What seemed like a total defeat for Jesus’ fledgling movement turned out to be the catalyst for its total success. On the third day, much to everyone’s surprise, Jesus was alive again. As we finish up our series, A Journey to the Cross with Mark, let’s talk about why this surprising news was just so good.

P.S. This will be the only post for this week. We are taking a few days off as a family. I’ll look forward to being back with you next week!

Good News

Have you ever had something good happen that you didn’t expect? That’s always fun. You’re just humming along, minding your own business, and then, BAM! Something happens to totally make your day. Everybody needs a day like that at least once in a while. What’s even more fun, though, is watching somebody else react to some unexpected good news. If you can catch it right, you can see the dawn of realization come on their face. You can watch as the clouds of confusion gradually lift and they experience the sheer joy of the moment. Videos of little kids reacting to a military parent surprising them with an unexpected homecoming come to mind here. Those things make me tear up every single time I see one. What may be the most fun of all, though, is seeing someone react to something good that they don’t even have a category for until they experience it. In those moments, you can almost watch their brains short-circuit. If they were a computer, their screen would just be flashing a “does not compute” message over and over again as their synapses were trying to figure out how to process the news in ways that will make any kind of sense out of what they are experiencing. And then the joy on the other side of the wall is often the purest, most intense joy you will find. Well, this morning, I want to talk with you for a few minutes about some people who had just this kind of an experience. 

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Morning Musing: Romans 5:8

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“But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As we prepare for the great celebration of Easter, there are a lot of different things to which we give our attention. We’ve already covered a couple of them in the last couple of days. Jesus’ death really was necessary because sin really is that big of a problem. We talk through various apologetic defenses of the crucifixion and the resurrection. We talk about the implications of the resurrection. That one alone provides enough material to keep us going for quite a long time. Just when you think you’ve run out of material, more shows up. The ramifications of Jesus’ walking out of His tomb on Sunday morning are vast beyond reckoning. But in the midst of all of these important conversations, there’s one that often gets missed. I want to see if we can thread a needle this morning and talk for just a second about something we don’t often consider: None of this had to happen.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 21:28-32, 35-36

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“When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox must be stoned, and its meat may not be eaten, but the ox’s owner is innocent. However, if the ox was in the habit of goring, and its owner has been warned yet does not restrain it, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox must be stoned, and its owner must also be put to death. If instead a ransom is demanded of him, he can pay a redemption price for his life in the full amount demanded from him. If it gores a son or a daughter, he is to be dealt with according to this same law. If the ox gores a male or female slaves, he must give thirty shekels of silver to the slave’s master, and the ox must be stoned. . .When a man’s ox injures his neighbor’s ox and it dies, they just sell the live ox and divide its proceeds; they must also divide the dead animal. If, however, it is known that the ox was in the habit of goring, yet its owner has not restrained it, he must compensate fully, ox for ox; the dead animal will become his.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When I lived in Denver several years ago, the city experienced a wave of high profile dog biting incidents. They were high profile not because of the identity of the victims, but because of the viciousness of the attacks. And in each instance, a pit bull was the guilty breed. Now, some of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met were pit bulls. But as a breed, they can be very aggressive if not raised properly. The city responded then by banning the breed entirely from being owned as pets within city limits. I thought the move was rather a bit of an overreaction myself, but the city leaders understood they had to be seen as doing something to maintain its generally very dog-friendly image. The driving idea was that animal owners are responsible for the behavior of their beasts. This is not a new idea. The next couple of passages, and the last we’ll look at in Exodus 21, deal with something similar. Let’s talk about goring oxen and unexpected barbecues.

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Lost and Found

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This week as we continue in our series, Leverage, we are talking about the why behind Jesus’ call for us to use our resources for the sake of those around us. Through a story about a shepherd with a lost sheep, Jesus helps us see that the why here is intimately connected to the character of our God. Let’s dig into this vital truth together.

Lost and Found

I lost a sock in the wash the other day. I finally found it Wednesday night. The first thing I exclaimed when I did, though, was, “Oh great, now this will mess up my illustration for Sunday.” For a full two weeks there, though, if you were to go and open my sock drawer, you would have found one sock neatly folded and lying on top of the rest of the rolled pairs underneath it. I’ve lost socks before, but they usually turned up faster than this one. As it turns out, it got stuck in the arm of my light jacket. Since the last time I wore and washed it, though, it got cold and it just sat in our coat closet with the sock sitting in its sleeve until I put it on Wednesday and made my happy discovery. I’ll confess, though, as much as that one, lone sock lying on the top of the pile bothered me every single time I opened my sock drawer, I didn’t invest much time searching for its sole mate. It was just a sock after all. If I didn’t ever find the match, I would have eventually thrown it away (at which point, of course, I would have immediately discovered the other one). I have other pairs. And, when those wear out, I’ll just buy a new pack. I actually look forward to doing that every few years. There aren’t very many things that feel better than a brand-new pair of socks. 

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The Gifts of Advent: John 3:16

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“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)‬‬

When the apostle Paul was trying to capture the overwhelming significance of the spiritual gift of love and its foundational importance for the other gifts Jesus gives His church for its proper health and functioning, He penned these famous words: ”Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love.“ Love is indeed the greatest, and as we celebrate one last gift of Advent together today, love is appropriately where we land.

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