Father, you know how much we want to be free. We want to be free beings and Lord, sometimes in our attempts to be free, we make ourselves captive to our dreams and our hopes and all that, Lord.
Would you open your word this morning to our hearts and our minds? Would you pour out your Holy Spirit upon us so that when we hear your word, Lord, we would hear your word and do it, that we would be free in doing your will.
Lord, would you pour out your Holy Spirit now, in Jesus' name. Amen.
So you may be seated.
So if you're a guest today, I'm just going to introduce what we're doing in the summers.
We're going through a series of short verses that are memorable and they're succinct.
They have a big point. It's something that we want to meditate on.
And just earlier, as George read the scripture, he said something that was very helpful.
In the book of John, which we're going to look at right now, there are short sayings.
And the verse that I'm going to open today, that we're all going to look together, is a verse that has a world of meaning.
So we're going to look at that.
Andrew, could you put up, not the first point, but the scripture text.
So just a few points down.
Great. So let's read that together.
In this is love.
Now we all heard the big P word.
Propitiation. What is that?
That's a really, really old word that Christians share with other world religions.
And it might make you wonder, like, what does that mean?
We're going to look at that.
It basically implies that God has wrath.
God has wrath.
That's not a very popular idea in our day and age, that God has wrath.
So, in reading this in our culture, in our time, we might come up with an objection that sounds something like this.
I would not want to believe in a God who is wrathful, needing to be satisfied by blood and sacrifice.
I want to believe in a God of love and acceptance.
The God of the Bible is wrathful and therefore not loving and accepting of me.
There's the objection.
So what does the Bible say to this?
Now, first things first, let's not sit here for the next half hour,
going through this text, talking about propitiation, and not really coming up with a good definition.
So let's look at a definition.
Andrew, if we can have the first slide.
So to propitiate a God is to offer a sacrifice that turns aside the God's wrath.
So it's also, it basically means satisfying the wrath, making the wrath no more.
You do something to appease the God, and the God is no longer angry at you.
And so a God might be angry at you or your tribe and ask for a sacrifice like money or cattle or children
to be offered as a sacrifice to just to avert the God's wrath and so that there's no worse consequences.
And so this is what the text might be implying here when it's talking about propitiation.
So here's the question.
Is God like that?
Is God like those ancient gods who want to have their wrath propitiated and need to have sacrifices to appease his wrath?
Well, the text here says that God gave his son as a propitiation for our sins.
So wouldn't loving a God who is wrathful or grumpy or capricious be like loving someone who is like, say, Jafar from the movie Aladdin?
Andrew, can we have the movie?
Can I not?
Give me your hand.
First, give me the love.
What?
He is the last!
What are you doing?
Giving you your reward.
Your eternal reward.
Okay.
So many of us in our culture would actually think that God is like that.
You have no idea.
Not Seinfeld.
That was two weeks ago.
That's okay.
So many of us would think that God is like that.
That he is wrathful and that we, like Aladdin, are trying to do everything we can to please God, to do his will.
Like Aladdin gets the lamp.
He does everything that he's commanded to do.
And he's there and he's bringing it to God.
Or to Jafar in this case.
But that we're like this.
We're doing everything we can for God.
And then at the end, God might have mercy on us.
He might not.
He might say, you're a good servant.
He might smite us.
This is basically how we kind of understand God when we think of God as a wrathful judge.
Now, if this is what the word propitiation is supposed to represent, then this poses a problem for Christians.
So is God like Jafar?
Jafar does he put demands on our lives and might or might not reward us in the end?
Andrew, can we have the next point, please?
So God's wrath is not an unsatisfiable blind rage, but a reasonable and willed response to our human rebellion against him.
His wrath flows from his infinite justice and holiness.
Okay.
I kind of invented a word there when it says unsatisfiable.
Maybe a better word is insatiable, but it's a bit of a complicated word.
So unsatisfiable.
God's wrath is not an unsatisfiable blind rage, but a reasonable and willed response to our human rebellion against him.
His wrath flows from his infinite justice and holiness.
Okay.
So God has wrath.
Sure.
Why does he need to have blood and sacrifice?
Like propitiation entails.
I don't see how there's any difference between God and Jafar.
Like, why wouldn't he just forgive and forget?
Isn't that a better way to think about God?
When I was at the University of Ottawa, not too long, maybe a year ago or two years ago, at the Islam Awareness Week, I talked with one of the students, one of the representatives of the Islamic faith.
And I asked him, or basically, I didn't really ask him.
I told him, I don't really think that Allah is a just God.
And he kind of backed off and said, what do you mean?
Like, Allah is just.
Like, that's one of the characteristics of Allah.
And I asked him, how is he just?
And so he explained to me, well, there's a story in the Quran about Muhammad who, when people come to him to confess their faults, he turns his face away.
And their sins are dealt with.
Now, is that really just?
Is that really just?
So that when we confess our sins to, well, to Muhammad and ultimately to Allah, that Allah would just turn his face and not deal with the sin and just say, let's just pretend it didn't exist.
Let's just pretend I didn't hear that.
Is that really justice?
Now, not only is that unjust, but it is a very low standard of what constitutes as sin.
See, the Bible portrays sin as a separation from God.
A separation from the very source of all life.
Bringing about our death.
See, when we're detaching ourselves from anything that gives us life, like food or water, well, eventually we'll die.
And ultimately, that points to the ultimate source of life, who is God.
And that's the currency of sin.
That's its value.
That's its sting.
Sin kills.
So to make payment for our sins, we die.
Every single one of us.
We will all die.
I know as a young man, I don't often think that I will die.
I will die one day.
Now, maybe you're not familiar with what sin is.
You might be wondering, what exactly counts as sin?
Because I don't really feel guilty, you know, from a day to day.
I think I'm a good person.
I see I'm tolerant.
I'm caring.
I don't waste.
And all these things, I think I'm a pretty good person.
At the root of sin is stealing from God.
So this is a bit of a big picture of what sin is in the Bible.
Sin is stealing from God.
It's stealing the glory that belongs to God.
I see when God created all things in the world, he made all things good.
And he created humanity in his image with the ability to live in this world.
And what do we do with that ability to live in this world?
Well, we take advantage of others.
We don't give glory to God.
We make everything so that we have the utmost advantage in life.
We steal, we cheat, we lie for our own gain.
With everything that God has given us to return to him, we keep it for ourselves.
J.C. Ross summarizes the biblical teaching of sin as such.
We have it here.
See, maybe I'm the only sinful person here.
Maybe I'm the only one who has, you know, when I plan a day, when I plan an outing, I plan a month, I plan a year, and things don't go the way I planned them.
All of a sudden, wrath and anger erupts in my heart and I wonder, what's going on?
This is not how I wanted things to go.
And here we are in our sinfulness, and probably in the epitome of our sinfulness, we say to God, God, you can't have wrath against me.
Not against me.
God, you can't have wrath.
That's not just.
Yeah, we say that to the creator of all things and the judge of all people, that he is not allowed to have wrath.
So here's the verdict.
If this is all true, that God is just and he's holy, that we have taken all the abilities that he's given us to give thanks to him, to praise him, and to bless our neighbors,
and we've taken these and we've made gods of ourselves, and that we are sinful,
then the verdict is that we are doomed before God if we're left to our own devices.
If we are left alone by ourselves in front of God, we're doomed.
If our entire life were to play on this screen here, in front of everyone here that we love so much, we would just become undone.
Can you imagine in front of a holy God, a just God, who sees all things, if he saw our entire lives,
how much that would break us and undo us.
So, propitiation is needed to avert the wrath of God.
God is angry at our sins.
We've stolen from God, and we're in desperate need of a savior to save us from God's wrath.
Now, my estimate is that people show up to church to hear good news, right?
That's why we go to church.
We want to hear good news in a world where things don't go so well.
So, to give an illustration, we go to the doctor, and we go because something is wrong.
And if the doctor would tell us that, you know, everything's fine, and you know that everything's not fine, that would not be good news, right?
Or if we went to the doctor, and the doctor said, well, there's a problem with you, but we don't know what it is.
Come back and see us another time.
That's not really good news either, is it?
Now, if we were to go to the doctor, and the doctor would tell us that something's wrong, and here's the medication, but it's the wrong medication.
That's not good news either.
But when the doctor diagnoses the problem and provides the right remedy, we are hopeful.
And finally, if we go to the doctors and he gives us the right diagnosis and the right prescription, then it was successful.
We go to church because we want to hear good news.
We live our lives.
We listen to the radio.
We watch TV.
We want to feel good about ourselves.
But here's the reality.
We need a right diagnosis.
And the Bible tells us that we're all sinful before a righteous God.
And so we need to have someone who can provide satisfaction for that wrath that God has against us.
But the Bible has good news for us.
It tells us that though God has responded to sinful humanity throughout the ages, throughout the centuries,
and that he has poured out his wrath upon the unrighteous people who have lived in history,
here in this text, we see that God pours out his wrath on the person of Jesus.
See, it says here in verse 10 that we've been looking at,
it says that God loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
He sent Jesus to satisfy his wrath against us.
And this is why the Christian cliche that the God of the Old Testament is a wrathful judge
and the God of the New Testament is very kind, is very tolerant, and accepting does not work.
And we see here this is the New Testament,
and that we see that God pours out his wrath on Jesus.
And just to be sure, we're going to look at this verse in John chapter 3, verse 36,
if we can have that on the next slide.
Here's the tender Jesus of the New Testament telling us,
whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God remains on him.
So even Jesus of the New Testament, the God of the New Testament,
gives us that verdict that we are doomed and that we need a Savior.
Let's read the text again.
Andrew, if we can have that slide.
Let's read that together.
In this is love.
Now, okay, maybe you're wondering,
I can see that God expressed love and wrath,
and in this text it talks about love and love and love,
and then propitiation, God's satisfaction for wrath.
But doesn't that talk about a contradiction?
Like, doesn't love drive out wrath and wrath drive out love?
Like, isn't this just one of those times when, you know,
Christians are told to read the Bible and accept the teachings of the Bible
and then skip over something contradictory like this?
Hmm.
So in Becky Pippert, in her book,
Hope Has Its Reasons,
she explains this as a paradox.
And I'll read this quote to you.
Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships.
Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers?
Far from it.
Anger isn't the opposite of love.
Hate is.
And the final form of hate is indifference.
God's wrath is not a cranky explosion,
but his settled opposition to the cancer
which is eating out the insides of the human race.
He loves with his whole being.
See, these,
this quality of God that he is love,
this part of his character,
love,
and that the outworking of his justice,
which is wrath,
are not contradictory,
but they work together.
In fact,
if God was not wrathful against evil,
then God would not be just.
And if God is not just,
then he's not good.
And if he's not good,
then he's loving,
he's not loving.
And that poses a problem for how we understand love in our culture.
See,
we don't really have a point of reference anymore
because we so wanted to eliminate the God of wrath
in our understanding of God in the culture.
And we wanted to do away with that idea
that we will have to give account for our lives in the end.
And that's what we're left with.
We're left with,
instead of love,
we're left with tolerance.
Simply bearing,
painfully enduring,
someone who disagrees with us
or someone who annoys us.
And that's not love.
Here the Bible gives us a pattern for what love is.
When we read that God loved us
by sending his son to be the propitiation for our sins,
this opens up a world of hope
that is based on an event.
See,
the idea that God loves us
is not a pie-in-the-sky idea
that has no substance or any implications on our lives,
but is found in God leaving
the eternal splendor of his glory in heaven,
where he is worshipped by the angels.
God leaves that place of glory
to be incarnate into a human being,
to take on the human form
in an embryo,
living nine months in the womb of Mary,
and then being born,
just experiencing every possibility,
every vulnerability there is
to be experienced as a human being.
And then growing up in wisdom,
living a sinless life,
healing the sick,
and teaching the kingdom of God.
And yet,
this person,
Jesus,
who is God and man,
gave himself into the hands of sinners
to die a wicked
and vile death
on a cross
that was not for his sins,
but for all of humanity
and its opposition to God.
So, Andrew,
can we have the next point, please?
In his love,
Jesus handed himself over to his enemies
in order to save his enemies.
We are those enemies
and become right with God
when we humbly receive
and cling to Jesus
as the propitiation for our sins.
See, this is really what
the core of the Christian faith is,
is not that we are so lovely
that God falls in love with us
or admires us
for our efforts.
It's not like with Aladdin.
We're not the Aladdins
who do everything that we can
to give glory to God,
to accomplish the mission perfectly,
to hand over the glory to God.
When we're,
with one hand,
we're handing the glory
and the other hand,
we're hanging on the brink of hell
and hoping that God
would give us our due reward.
We're not like that.
What this is saying is that
because of our sins
and the depth of our sins
and the ugliness of our sins,
rather despite our sins,
God has shown his love to us
despite that.
There's no ground for boasting,
no ground for exalting ourselves
over others
because we're so great
in the eyes of God.
But God loves us
because of who he is.
God loves us
in sending his son for us.
Now this might be a bit difficult
for us to understand.
This concept of love
that is self-giving
or very inconvenient
because we live in an age of,
let's say, hyper-convenience.
We have technology
that we have access to everything
and for us,
everything in life
is just more convenient.
We have microwaves
and we have TVs
and we have cars
and everything is just much easier
and we can become complacent.
And that can come into
or infiltrate into the way
that we love.
Love has to be convenient,
has to be, you know,
not too sacrificial.
The text here is telling us
that love is inconvenient,
that when we routinely choose
the path of least resistance in life,
God chose death on a cross.
In my lifetime,
before becoming a Christian
and after becoming a Christian,
I've really struggled
with the fact that,
you know,
does God love me
or the question like,
does God love me
or does God hate me?
And I've often found myself,
you know,
when life is going well,
when I'm performing well,
I'm pleasing others,
that, you know,
God is probably very happy
with me right now.
And then when things
go really bad,
if I'm unsuccessful
in my work
or in my school
or whatnot,
that God is probably
quite unhappy with me,
that he is probably
conjuring up some wrath
so that he could
pour it out on me one day.
And what this text is doing
is that despite the fact
that we balance ourselves
in between pessimism
or optimism in life,
God shows us
not a balance in the middle,
not something that brings
both together,
that equalizes both.
But he brings us
into a tension,
a tension of the gospel
where we are so sinful
that God came down
to save us
and yet we're so loved
that he came down
to save us.
It puts us into that,
the tension of the gospel
where God so loved us
despite ourselves
and despite our sinfulness.
So some of you
might be here
believing in Jesus
and maybe have believed
in Jesus for a long time
but you're not really sure
what it's like
to be a Christian
or you know,
you have that idea
that you know,
give your life to Jesus
but how do we walk
the Christian faith?
How do we walk
the Christian life?
How do I know God?
Well this text
is really the center of that,
that it shows us
the pattern
that we are there
with hands open
to receive God's love.
We're not trying
to win God's love
but we receive God's love
that God has shown
his love to us
and we are the receiving end
of that love
and we acknowledge
that God indeed
has died for our sins
in the person of Jesus.
So knowing God
is not just a matter
of changing our intellect
or our perspective in life
but it's a matter of living.
Andrew, can we have
the next slide please?
So this is the next verse
that follows the text
and it kind of,
it just follows
in a train of thought.
It says basically
that there's an implication
to this love
that God has for us.
It says,
Beloved,
if God so loved us,
if God so loved us
in giving his Son
as a propitiation
for our sins,
we also ought to love
one another.
Beloved,
if God so loved us,
we also ought
to love one another.
Now,
we all know someone
who is incredibly talented,
incredibly skilled
and who doesn't,
you know,
you can't really tell
that they're this
world-famous pianist
but all of a sudden
you go to a party
and this person
starts playing the piano
and you're like,
wow,
like what are you doing?
Like you should be playing
in Vegas
or you should be
at Carnegie Hall
or something like that.
We all know someone
who's incredibly skilled
in that way
that their skill
could literally
change the world
and yet they don't use it
and we're kind of
disappointed with that,
aren't we?
Here this text
is telling us
that God so loved us
that we can receive
the love of God
and not just receive
this concept
is that we receive
the actual love of God,
the Spirit of God
comes into our hearts
when we give our lives
to Jesus,
when we decide
to follow Jesus,
he comes into our hearts
and changes
and transforms us
in the very depths
of our being
and that is what
propels us
into the world
that we have this light,
this love to offer
the world
and this text
in verse 11
tells us
if God so loved us
we also ought
to love one another.
God has given us
this amazing thing
of the gospel,
this amazing thing
of love
like we will not
experience anywhere else
and his power
to transform our lives
into something
so glorious
and that we should
reach a hurting
and broken world
that is ready
to ignite
in the love of God.
So here's the question,
are we allowing
God's Spirit
to do the work
in us
and are we living out
or are we living out
secret Christian lives?
Have we allowed
the sacrificial love
of God
to move us
beyond intellectual
conviction
or conception
into a reality
that sets
our hearts ablaze
for God
and for those
who are around us?
Andrew,
can I have
the last slide,
please?
So this is a prayer
that I wrote
in light of everything
that we kind of
looked at today.
It's a prayer
that is,
it can be used
as a conversion prayer,
it can be used
as a perseverance prayer,
if you will,
that we need
God's grace,
that God
sent his son.
So let's please stand
and we're going
to pray that.
If you've never
given your life
to Jesus,
you can pray this
and you can really
mean it from your heart,
but you have to mean
it from your heart
and it doesn't have
to be these words,
you can use other words,
but this is essentially
what the scripture
is moving us to pray
and if you've been
a follower of Jesus
for years and years
and you want to
really dedicate
your life to Jesus.
This is just an example,
a template.
Make it your own though.
So let's pray that together.
Dear God,
thank you for sending
your only son,
Jesus Christ,
to propitiate
your righteous wrath
against my sins.
Thank you that you
paid the price
that was not ours
to pay for our sins.
Press into the depths
of my heart
how great your love
is to me
and to all people.
Give me grace
by your Holy Spirit
to love you
and to love
my neighbors
as you call me to.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.
Father,
would you set
our hearts ablaze
with the love
that you so displayed
in the giving
of your sons
to propitiate
our sins.
Lord,
would you make us alive
to the gospel
this day.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.