Good morning. I love Vacation Bible School. Are you enjoying VBS this weekend? I became a Christian at Vacation Bible School when I was in first grade, so it has been one of my passions for years. It always excites me as the summer approaches and it is a little sad as it passes because I love VBS so much.
What is the motto of VBS this week? (Know the Truth, Speak the Truth, Live the Truth.) We are studying this week about living God's unshakeable truth and as I was studying for this sermon, God showed me a truth that I can stand on. It completely changed my idea of what this sermon was going to be, but after all, my words are meaningless without the power of God behind them.
I want to share with you something powerful, something life-changing, something that is such great news that you won't want to walk out of here the same way. That news, that truth, is that God loves you.
Like I mentioned before, I became a Christian at VBS some 26 years ago, and although my decision was real and life-changing, I have often struggled to get out of the way with my ego and intelligence and let God have His way with me. I have lived a defeated life for many years. I struggle with guilt about sin even after asking forgiveness. I beat myself up a lot. I look sometimes and wonder how God can use someone like me who just doesn't get it.
I'm sure that Israel felt the same way. Let's turn in our Bibles to Isaiah, chapter 42, verses 18-25. You'll see here that God calls Israel blind, deaf, disobedient, unreceptive to His messenger, and God was pouring out his furious anger on them. Look at verse 24,
"Who gave Jacob to the robber and Israel to the plunderers?
Was it not the LORD? Have we not sinned against Him?'
They were not willing to walk in His ways,
And they would not listen to instruction."
Look at what God's response is,
"So [God] poured out on Jacob His furious anger and the power of war.
It surrounded [Jacob] with fire, but he did not know it.
It burned him, but he paid no attention."
God is judging them for their disobedience. And then, the logic of grace steps in. Let's read Isaiah 43:1-4
1 Now this is what the LORD says—
the One who created you, Jacob,
and the One who formed you, Israel —
"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name; you are Mine.
2 I will be with you
when you pass through the waters,
and [when you pass] through the rivers,
they will not overwhelm you.
You will not be scorched
when you walk through the fire,
and the flame will not burn you.
3 For I the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, and your Savior,
give Egypt as a ransom for you,
Cush and Seba in your place.
4 Because you are precious in My sight
and honored, and I love you,
I will give human beings in your place,
and peoples in place of your life.
There are three things I want us to see in this passage about how much God loves us.
First, no matter what we have done in the past, God still wants to have a relationship with us. What we deserve is the full fury of God's anger. What He offers instead is forgiveness. He says that He already called us by His name. There is a scene in Toy Story where the Buzz Lightyear makes a comment about being accepted into the culture because their ruler, Andy, had written his name on Buzz's foot. In the same way, God has written His name on our lives. He made us. He loves us. He wants to be our best friend, our personal God. It doesn't matter if we fall or deserve punishment. Those may come, but God is offering a relationship with us that He will mend up.
And this relationship is stronger than any of our problems.
This leads to our second point. Not only does God want to have a relationship with us no matter of our past, but no matter what we go through in our present, God will be with us. Look at verse 2 again. In the waters, the river or the fire, God will be with us. I like how the Message paraphrase puts this,
"When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you.
When you're in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you're in between a rock and a hard place, it won't be a dead end."
Last week, I talked to the children of my church about some of the most depressing times of my life. I told them about how I saw my pet dog get ran over by a car when I was six, how I had to deal with a grandmother dying, how I grieved the closure of an after-school program I was in charge of at our church, how I mourned when my son was diagnosed with autism – times of real mourning and grief. We were talking about the second beatitude, 'blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.' In times of real mourning in my life, God has comforted me in ways that I didn't see coming. He has been there when I lived in between a rock and a hard place. He helped me to not go under the depression. I know, because He has proven Himself faithful in the past, that He keeps His promise. My favorite verse in the Bible, Romans 8:38-39 says,
"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life,
nor angels nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing
will have the power to separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!"
This brings us to our third point. Not only does God want a relationship with us despite our past and not only will God be with us through our present, but that no matter what it will cost, God paid to have us back and secure our future. Again, I like how the Message paraphrase says verses 3 and 4:
"Because I am God, your personal God, the Holy of Israel, your Savior.
I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!
That's how much you mean to Me! That's how much I love you!
I'd sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you."
God says that we have redemption. What is redemption?
There is a story about a young boy who made a model sailboat. He worked carefully on it for days and finally finished it. It was beautiful and he couldn't wait to take it out and try it on the creek.
He took the boat out and let it sail. It floated beautifully, but soon got caught in the current and began to rush downstream. He tried to pull it back in but the string broke and the boat raced. He ran and ran and tried to catch up to it but it was no use. He looked all day until the sun went down and couldn't find it.
Two days later, the young boy was walking home from school when he saw a model boat hanging in the window of a pawn shop. The boy got closer and realized that this was his boat. He ran into the shop and said, "That's my boat! I lost it two days ago; can I have it back?"
The shop owner said, "I'm sorry, son, but someone brought it in this morning and I paid for it. If you want it back, you're going to have to buy it."
"How much is it?"
"One dollar."
The little boy ran out of the store and raided his piggy bank. He had exactly one dollar. He returned to the store and bought his boat. On the way out, the boy said, "Now you're my boat twice. I made you and then I bought you."
God made us. We were the apple of His eye, His personal treasure, but we left him and became slaves to sin. At the moment we told God that our way was better than His way, where we disobeyed Him, we became slaves to sin. But God, in his infinite mercy and grace, made a way to buy us back. Romans 5:8 says,
"But God demonstrated His love for us,
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
I have sinned. Romans 3:23 says that all of us have and according to Romans 6:23, the payment of sin is death. Jesus is saying, "I paid a huge price for you! It wasn't all of creation. It was my own life." My sin says someone must die and that someone is either me or someone who has no sin. Jesus has no sin and He says that He will die for me!
But this doe requires an action on our part. I don't know if you sang the Wiki Wiki song, but it is based off of Romans 10:9, the basis of the ABC's of becoming a Christian. First, you have to admit to God that you have sinned. You have to repent, or make a u-turn and turn from living a life of sin and start walking towards God. Then you have to believe that Jesus is God's son and that He died but came back to life so that we do not have to die. And finally, you have to confess that Jesus is now you boss – what He says goes in your life and that you are allowing Him to make changes in your life.
------And then, there was the closing and they went to the offering contest. The girls won (big surprise in my book.... not! and some guy named Alex got the pie. I told him I sympathized since I have gotten the pie 6 out of the last 8 years.
Well, we went back today to pick up VBS decorations to give to Trina's Aunt and her church and talked to the pastor of the church I preached at. He said that 2 kids talked to the teachers afterwards and told them that they prayed to become Christians. He's getting me the names and addresses so I can send them letters or do whatever. Well, those are the first 2 decisions I've had from the pulpit, so it's cool.
For the past year or so I really have been in a glaze. A funk. Depressed. There have been so many different things which have totally torn me down. I think God showed me Isaiah 42-43 to show me that He still loves me and to get over it because to God, I'm worth more than being in a funk. I'm praying that this is a watershed moment - a turning from living a defeated Christian life to a real one, with my excitement and enthusiasm back to reach kids for Christ. It's been hard to get excited, but I was excited on Sunday. The message was from God because I never would have gone there without His guidance.
BTW, here's a video where they mention the verse shortly before but do an excellent job illustrating the fact that God paid a great price for me.
Pray for my friend and his wife, kid and one on the way. It's not good right now.
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