The Human Condition Meets Love | 2 Chronicles 36:15-21 & John 3:16-21
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on December 3, 2023. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Introduction
Today marks the first of four weeks of Advent, a time of waiting and preparation that will culminate in the celebration of Jesus’ birth. What we know as Christmas. Sugar plum fairies, gingerbread houses and Black Friday sales all vie for our attention this time of year. They pull us away from the slow process of waiting and the deep work of preparation.
Indeed, this is the very crux of our walk with Christ. We are caught in the in-between of entering this world to the time we leave it. A season of both waiting and preparation.
Today, in our first day of Advent we will be talking of love.
The Human Condition
But before we talk about the feel-good parts of God’s love, we must get our baseline, our foundation of why God’s love is so radical and transformative. We first start with the human condition.
The Israelites were no strangers to the human condition. They were nobody - literally a non-existent nation - until God called Abraham back in Genesis 12 to follow him as his only God. In exchange, God would make him a great nation to then be a blessing to all nations. This is a covenant.
Eventually, while Abraham’s family was in Egypt during a famine, they settled there. Within a few hundred years, they were oppressed, enslaved, and in bondage - a burden put on them by the free choice and will of the Egyptians. When they were finally freed, it was not by their own hand that they were freed, but by the hand of God.
“For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord had his heart set on you and chose you, not because you were more numerous than all peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your fathers, he brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 7:6-8, CSB
Yet, the Israelites did not choose to live in the Lord’s salvation. In fact, it only took three days before they started to grumble against the Lord, and only three months before they built a golden calf to worship, a pagan symbol of strength and fertility.
God literally parted the Red Sea so they could escape the Egyptian armies on dry ground. Yet how quickly they forgot his providence.
God was angered with the Israelites. We don’t like to talk about the righteous, holy anger of God. We dismiss or skim over the parts that make us uncomfortable. We like to think of God as Loving Father, our Shepherd, our Pardoner, and our Mediator. And he is absolutely all of those things.
But we forget that our God is the Almighty - speaking us into existence. We know that God is the deliverer but we dare not think that others might need to be delivered from us. We don’t want to talk about things like judgment for our poor choices because we would rather keep ourselves in grace, love and mercy
David the psalmist understood this about God.
“Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger; do not discipline me in your wrath.” Psalm 6:1, CSB
Our Israelites were spared at the foot of Mt. Sinai because Moses interceded on their behalf to God, asking him to withhold punishment from them. The people repented and rededicated themselves to the Lord again.
But this cycle did not stop. Throughout the remainder of the Old Testament, we see this back-and-forth cycle of people choosing their own way, God capitulating to the whims of his people, the people experiencing hardship, war, and oppression, and only for the people to repent and turn to God once again. Eventually, this cycle led to the Babylonian Exile in 597 B.C., one of the most significant points in history for the Israelites.
“But the Lord, the God of their ancestors sent word against them by the hand of his messengers, sending them time and time again, for he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept ridiculing God’s messengers, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the Lord’s wrath was so stirred up against his people that there was no remedy. So he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their fit young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary. He had no pity on young men or young women, elderly or aged; he handed them all over to him. He took everything to Babylon-all the articles of God’s temple, large and small, the treasures of the Lord’s temple, and the treasures of the king and his officials. Then the Chaldeans burned God’s temple. They tore down Jerusalem’s wall, burned all its palaces, and destroyed all its valuable articles. He deported those who escaped from the sword to Babylon, and they became servants to him and his sons until the rise of the Persian kingdom. This fulfilled the word of the Lord through Jeremiah, and the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation until seventy years were fulfilled.” 2 Chronicles 36:15-21, CSB
As tragic as the Exile was, it is not the only Exile we are familiar with. Let’s watch this video.
Rejection of the Gift
Some people say, “If God was so loving, why did he allow the Israelites to go into Exile? Why would God be angry with his people that He loved and not extend that forgiveness over and over?” Hosea gives us more of this answer:
“Woe to them, for they fled from me; destruction to them, for they rebelled against me! Though I want to redeem them, they speak lies against me. They do not cry to me from their hearts; rather, they wail on their beds. They slash themselves for grain and new wine; they turn away from me. They turn, but not to what is above; they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent tongue. They will be ridiculed for this in the land of Egypt.” Hosea 7:13-16, CSB
Over and over and over and over and over again, God extended his love to the Israelites. And over and over and over and over and over again, they rejected God’s love.
Oh they wanted to enjoy the fruits of God’s love. Provision. Protection. Forgiveness. Mercy. Grace.
“But don’t put any of your expections on me God. We’ll ridicule your messengers and put them to death. We’ll acknowledge you but we are going to ask these other gods for their help too.”
The Israelites had all of what God had to offer. But just like in the Garden, they chose their own way. They decided to build their own towers and idols, striving for the fruit of their own hands.
How do you think I would feel if {gift person} would have said to me, “I still want you to like me and be my pastor, but why would you think I want a gift from you? You don’t even preach that good. How do you know what I need or want? I’m fine on my own. What could you possibly give to me that I couldn’t get myself?” What if I gave them this gift and they rejected it by handing it back to me?
Not only would this be a rejection of the gift, but it would be a rejection of me. While {so and so} and I may still be cordial and friendly, with hope for reconciliation, when we are around each other, our relationship has a scar now.
The Gift That Was Given
This is the magnitude of our relationship with God. Scar after scar after scar. And yet, God knowing our predisposition to form our own exile, still chooses to extend love to us as a gift. This is why he sent Jesus to us, who also knew rejection.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him. Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the LORD has punished him for the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:3-6, CSB
Jesus took our sicknesses, our pains, our rebellion, our punishment, our wrongdoings for us so that we could have the freedom to enter into God’s presence, who is the very definition of love.
It was God and his unfailing, faithful love that ultimately led to him sending his son Jesus from his own right hand in the throne room down to his creation that had rejected him over and over and over again.
To be born in a barn surrounded by animals.
To grow up as a tradesman.
To welcome in the stranger and the outcast.
To heal the sick, the lame, the possessed.
To raise the dead.
To demonstrate what it looks like to love God and love othersd in action.
To challenge the hypocrisy of those with power.
To reverse the cycle of self-exiling and building our isolated towers of status that we are so good at building.
To defeat eternal death, which is the ultimate separation from God the Father.
This was the ultimate act of love. And God sent Jesus despite our collective rebellion against him.
God gives the gift freely to everyone. From Sherwood to Portland to Washington D.C. to Ireland to Uganda to Antartica. There is not one person who has walked this earth from whom the gift of God’s love was withheld.
“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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17, CSB
And what does this love of God look like? Jesus told the people in the synagogue that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, a prophecy of the coming Messiah, and what Jesus came to live out.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of our God’s vengeance; to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion; to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, festive oil instead of mourning, and splendid clothes instead of despair. And they will be called righteous trees, planted by the Lord to glorify him.” Isaiah 61:1-3
Just as God provided the Garden and the Promised Land, he’s extended his love to us once again with Jesus. But, just as Adam and Eve had a choice, and the Israelites had many choices, we have a choice.
Living in the Gift
When we started today, I gave a gift, which they have a choice about whether or not to receive. I’d like to invite them back up front. Do you receive this gift from me? Go ahead and open this gift.
Just as I extended this gift, God extended his gift of love to us. But just as they had a choice to receive it, we also have a choice.
Are we like the Israelites? We want the fruits of God’s love. Provision. Protection. Forgiveness. Mercy. Grace. But we tell him, “Don’t put any of your expections on me God.” We live in a cancel culture where we will disregard anyone who speaks against our truth while we stand on our towers of self-gratification and productivity, of which I am the worst at of any of you in this room.
Fortunately…Jesus does not come to condemn.
John continues Jesus’ words in John 3:18:
“Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” John 3:18-21, CSB
If we choose to receive the gift of love from God, just as in the Garden and the Promised Land, God does ask from us in return to love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
He asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
He asks that we act justly, love faithfulness, and walk humbly with him.
He asks us to trust him just as the sparrows trust him.
He asks us to tell others about who he is so they can experience this same love he has to offer.
He asks us to live in righteousness and justice and to love him above all else.
Conclusion
In a few moments, this service will be concluded, and we will go out from here into the rush of the holiday season. And, it’s a good thing to enjoy this season, because we have so much to celebrate in preparation!
Be present with your loved ones. Use this time as an opportunity to both live in God’s love for yourself and to be an extension of God’s love to others through displays of righteousness, generosity, justice, and evangelism. What better time to tell others about this love than in this season, when the world allows in a bit of light in songs like “O Holy Night” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful”?
We have the Way to love. As Tim Mackie said in the video, “His life and self-giving love proved more powerful than humanity’s failure. He opened up a pathway to our real home.”
Isaiah 53 concludes with this:
“After his anguish, he will see light and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities. Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.” Isaiah 53:11-12, CSB
This is the very message of love that we enter into Advent with. That “he willingly submitted to death and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.”
You and me… we are those rebels that he intercedes for, even today as he sits at the right hand of God. The human condition that we are all subjected to can be healed by only one way. That is the Jesus way.
As we are in our time of Open Worship, reflect on both our human condition and the love and light Jesus extends to us. The mic is available if you have something to share for the edification of the body.
