THE DIFFERENCE GOD MAKES PART 5

THE DIFFERENCE GOD MAKES PART 5

 

Today is the fifth and final installment our series "The Difference God makes in your life." I believe that it is important to have a series like this because the most important thing you believe in life is what you believe about God.  It affects every other area of your life.  It affects how you deal with your past.  It affects how you face the future.  It affects how you live today.  What you believe about God affects every other area of your life. 
 

Over the past several weeks we have spoken about the difference that God and religion makes in the way that we live our lives. When we first started speaking about this we looked at in weeks past I spoke about the moral laws and guidance that God gives. When we ground our conduct in God we can stand tall and confident, to do the right thing when the right thing may hard, inconvenient, unpopular or expensive.

 

 

I also spoke of a sense of community that God gives us. God doesn't just call people to Him but calls people to reach out to each other - to consider our neighbours feelings and to love our neighbour.

 

 

Further I told how God takes our lives seriously. It is only to God; it is only to the church that we can come with our entire lives, our joys, our sorrows, our celebrations and our shames. God takes our private pains and joys and allows us to share them with God and with our Christian brothers and sisters.

 

 

Last week we spoke about how God gives us the power to be human in a world that tries to strip the humanity from us. In a world that sets us against each other, God compels us towards kindness. In a world where we are surrounded by strangers, God tells us that they are our neighbours. In a world full of fear, God compels us to love. In a world where our worth is measured in dollars and cents, God's measuring sick measures our compassion and mercy. When the world calls on us to be the best and to look out for number 1, God calls to something greater than just individual achievements and satisfying our pleasures. In a world where we can get cancer, alstymers, or MS regardless of how nice we are or the way we live our lives, God gives us understanding, perspective, and comfort.

 

All these things affect how you live your life in there here and now, but God’s love for you and God’s interest in you is not just confined to the here-and-now. God’s love for you and God’s interest in you transcends the grave and so God sent His Son to give us purpose, peace, and power to live on on Earth and also to open the doorway to Heaven so that when our time on this world is ended, our time with God will begin again in a brand new way. As our Bible passage for today says:  ¹⁶"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,^[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

I remember one time I was reading my reading this exact passage on a plane. The nosy guy sitting next to me looked over and said "That's the craziest claim I've ever heard, I don't need God to give anyone for me," he claimed. "I've led a good life. Held a good job. People respect me. My wife loves me. I don't need God to give me his son."

Perhaps you agree. You appreciate the teachings of Jesus. Admire his example. But no matter how you turn it around, you can't see the significance of his death. How can the death of Christ mean life for us? The answer begins with a heart exam.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9 NKJV). The Spiritual Cardiologist scans our hearts and finds deep disease: "For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly" (Mark 7:21-22).

If you want some examples of this, just turn on the television news … another swarming in Halifax, another shooting in Moncton, another home invasion on the Miramichi.  

This generation is oddly silent about sin. Late-night talk shows don't discuss humanity's shortcomings. Some mental health professionals mock our need for divine forgiveness. At the same time, we rape the earth, squander nonrenewable resources, and let 24,000 people die daily from hunger or hunger-related causes.' In these "modern" decades we have invented global threats of nuclear holocaust and terrorism, and have reinvented genocide and torture. The twentieth century saw more slaughters than any other century in history—from the Ottoman massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I to the 1990s slaughter of 3 million people in Rwanda and Sudan. Lurking between them: the Ukraine terror famine, Auschwitz,  Soviet Gulags, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the Cambodian killing fields. Wars and genocides took more than 200 million souls in one hundred years!

Barbarism apparently is alive and well on the planet Earth. Deny our sin? Our heart problem? It's universal.

And it is personal.

Do a simple exercise with me. Measure your life against these four standards from the Ten Commandments. Heaven's applicants should score well on God's basic laws, wouldn't you agree?

 

 

"You must not steal" (Exod. 20:15 TLB). Have you ever stolen anything? Not even from work?

 

 

"You must not lie" (v. 16 TLB) Those who say they haven't just did.

 

 

"You must not commit adultery" (v. 14 TLB). Jesus said if you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart (Matt. 5:28).

 

 

"You must not have and gods before me" Not money, not work, not sports, not yourself, not even family.

 

 

The choices we make, the reactions we have, and the temptations we fall into have real and substantial ramifications on our character, our lives, and the lives of our friends, family, and the people who enter our lives. It also tells us that no matter how hard we try we are going to make mistakes.

 

 

What are the wages of sin? What is the inevitable result of our heart problem? According to Romans 6:23 ²³For the wages of sin is death, that is the eternal ramifications for our lifestyle. Left untreated they are terminal. But if you read on it says but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. How do we receive this gift of eternal life? Again take a look at our Bible passage for today: ¹⁶"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life … ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. We receive this gift simply by believing in God and believing in His Son. When we accept Jesus into our hearts and seek a relationship with Him our sins are forgiven and our debts are paid in full.

A lot of people refuse to accept that the way we live our lives have eternal consequences. Despite what Jesus says in the Bible, it is commonly believed that if God is a loving God then He would save everyone. In His days in the flesh 2000 years ago and as the Risen Lord today Jesus calls on us to follow Him, yet many people have no desire to do so. They don’t want anything to do with God. He speaks and they cover their ears. He commands and they scoff. They don’t want Him telling them how to live. They mock what He says about marriage, money, sex, or the value of human life. They regard God’s son as a joke and His death on the cross as utter folly. They spend their entire lives telling God to leave them alone and at the moment of their final breath, Jesus honours their lifetime request.   

Is this unfair? He has wrapped caution tape on hell's porch and posted a million and one red flags outside the entrance. To descend its stairs, you'd have to cover your ears, blindfold your eyes and, most of all, ignore the epic sacrifice of history: Christ, in God's hell on humanity's cross, crying out to the blackened sky, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46).

But a description might read like this: God, who hates sin, unleashed his wrath on his sinfilled son. Christ, who never sinned, endured the awful forsakenness of hell. The supreme surprise of hell is this: Christ went there so you won't have to. Yet hell could not contain him. He arose, not just from the dead, but from the depths. "Through death He [destroyed] him who had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. 2:14 NKJV).

Christ emerged from Satan's domain with this declaration: "I have the keys of Hades and of Death" (Rev. 1:18 NKTv). He is the warden of eternity. The door he shut, no one opens. The door he opens, no one shuts (Rev. 3:7).

THANKS TO CHRIST, THIS EARTH CAN BE THE NEAREST YOU COME TO HELL. BUT APART FROM CHRIST, THIS EARTH IS THE NEAREST YOU'LL COME TO HEAVEN.

A friend told me about the final hours of her aunt. The woman lived her life with no fear of God or respect for his Word. She was an atheist. Even in her final days, she refused to permit anyone to speak of God or eternity. Only her Maker knows her last thoughts and eternal destiny, but her family heard her final words. Hours from death, scarcely conscious of her surroundings, she opened her eyes. Addressing a face visible only to her, she wept, "You don't know me? You don't know me?"

I often wondered if she was hearing the pronouncement of Christ from Matthew 7:22-23: ²²Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' ²³Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' (Matthew 7:22-23)

Contrast her words with those of a Christ-follower. The dying man made no secret of his faith or longing for heaven. Two days before he succumbed to cancer, he awoke from a deep sleep and told his wife, "I'm living in two realities. I'm not allowed to tell you. There are others in this room." And on the day he died, he opened his eyes and asked, "Am I special? Why, that I should be allowed to see all this?"

Facing death with fear or faith, dread or joy. "Whoever believes in him shall not perish . . ." God makes the offer. We make the choice.”

¹⁶"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,^[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

 If you are wondering wonder what the difference is that God makes in your life, I leave you with the last phrase from our creed. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us, we are not alone, thanks be to God.