Message: God Made Gospel, Cuz Believing is Living!
Today, our Call to Worship and our Message readings are written to document God reaching out to people like you and me who were struggling with the challenges of this life. Unlike you and I though, the people in the first century of our church were really in danger. Unlike us in this room, there are people in the world today that struggle just to worship our God, and fear for their very lives because of who they are, and who their faith is anchored in. Today we will talk about how God reaches out to all of us in this greater family in God, and that is Good News.
For the people in this room, there has never been a time like now for the ease in which we may follow our Lord in safety. Today the hardest part about our worship service is just getting here. Getting out of bed in time to make it for Worship Service, and then surviving a long-winded sermon. It makes a person want to praise God indeed, and thank Him for all that we have to be grateful for this beautiful world that we live in.
With that in mind, here is a psalm of praise for all we have been given and to appreciate together as a family in God. Please think of all of those things that you have been blessed with as I read Psalm 150;
1 Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4 praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Beautiful indeed, especially since all of you have the intellect to appreciate God’s manifold love for you!
And yet, that’s not the case for so many in the world today. Today like always through history, there are Christian brothers and sisters who risk their lives to worship God. Many around the world are indeed praising our Lord, while under duress and fear. They live in Ukraine, China, Rwanda, in Arab countries, and various locations and unfree regimes across the globe. Or maybe it’s a congregation struggling to meet in person during a lockdown, as in Canada last year. Today, they will be in the back of my mind as we praise, glorify, and magnify our Lord’s precious and Holy name, in their honor.
And still, being at risk is nothing new for the family of God. Our Apostle John understood this as he composed His letter of Revelation to the seven churches of Asia Minor of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago at a time when being a believer was risky in deed. All seven (like us today), had their issues and challenges, and John will be used by our Lord to instruct His Churches through their challenges. Reading again Revelation1: 4-8,
4 John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
*Side Note; I believe that the number 7 completion or fullness is representing more than just the 7 churches whose individual challenges and Faithwalks will be discussed in the following chapters, and as the number seven is used, this letter is symbolically claiming all the churches of the province of Asia, and also the whole church at large.
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
**Side Note again; My thought,John is giving greetings from himself, from the Lord God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, The Holy Hosts of Heaven before His Holy Throne, and God’s Holy Spirit 7-fold (in fullness), since Angels are not called Spirits in the Book of revelation.Additionally,John is instructing us in this passage that our Lord is the Great I AM from Exodus 3:14. That God is consistently the I am who I am, or was, ever will be… Is our confidence that His word is enduring forever.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
Cutting in; John finishes his formal letter greeting and introduction by rightfully giving the Lord praises. He is also teaching us that we are made for praising, glorifying, and magnifying His Holy name by being a people of priests to serve Him!
7 “Look, he is coming with the clouds,”
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”
So shall it be! Amen.
Cutting in Again; John is stating the fact that all people will see the Lord upon His return, even those of us that have pierced the Lord by our sin, for none of us are innocent of sin that continues to pierce our Lord and bring anguish into the very Halls of Heaven so to speak. This is why we mourn our sin, and are driven to ask for our Lord’s forgiveness, and why we try to do better with our sin issues each day that we fight the good fight that rages within us.
And yet, here is the Good News as stated in the preceding paragraph… Our Lord is the First Fruits of salvation who has created a place for you and me. This makes my challenges in this life barrable, manageable, and doable, since I know I am not alone.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Finally, John reinforces the I AM statement with our Lord’s proclamation of “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Christians across the planet, can and do place their faith and hope in the one who is alpha and omega (first and last), to make sense of all the misery that our free choice has, is, and will bring into our lives on a global scale.
Sometimes, it makes me think that if (heaven forbid) we had the same adversity that our brothers and sisters face around the world under totalitarian regimes, would we want to as a society cling to our Lord more than we do now?
It seems for much of humanity will not come to the Lord until everything else has failed. That until people reach the unspeakable terrors that a Godless time invites, they will opt to go it alone.
By the way when I mention Godless times, I am thinking of the perfectionist societies of Nazi Germany, Stalin and Mao, Po-Pot, and the Academies of the French Revolution. Institutions that believed that people could forcibly be made perfect without the input or help from God. But also, a Godless time is when many of us in our past were cutting the Lord out of our lives and doing our own thing.
That is when each of us desperately need the Gospel. God’s Good News that He loves us in spite of everything we have cooked up in the past. It’s that Good News that has the ability to reach me when I am trying it on my own and it’s falling apart as usual, and I am out of sorts and railing in upon myself, being tossed like waves on the water. That’s when having a relationship with our Lord is so essential for anchoring us back to the bedrock of faith.
Today, I want to claim to all of you that the entire Bible is actually Gospel, Good News. Now some at this point might be thinking, yea but… What about all of the brimstone, fire, retribution, judgement, hell, and damnation that makes up some sizable sections in scripture?
My thought, and again, you are charged with praying, studying, and thinking for yourself with the Lord. My thought, is all of that brimstone, fire, retribution, judgement, hell, and damnation and more scarry stuff, should not put fear in those who have a real relationship in and with the Lord, learning each day how to discern our God’s Holy Spirit, who aids us in our reverence to Him.
All of the brimstone in God’s word is there to remind us that He has been, is, and will be there for us, and that other stuff like vengeance and judgement will be just tools of our God to right in injustices perpetrated against God and His family. Those things exist for our benefit, and fear is just one more trick used to distract and confuse those wanting a genuine and real life in the Lord. We are not to be afraid of God’s vengeance, but to welcome His purity and righteousness into our lives.
It’s enough to make even a cynic take hope believe, and have faith. Or doubting and hurting disciples of all ages, when members of God’s family are feeling persecuted and alone. And God is always there at just the right times when we are looking for Him and open to the promptings of His Spirit and His Word, for they speak of Him.
To illustrate how our Lord has overcome all of the challenges of this world including even sin and death, we have today’s Message Reading from God’s Gospel, His Good News for you and me here and now. Reading again from John 20:19-31;
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
*Side Bar: The disciples fearing the authorities would sound familiar to much of the world today, and yet our Lord is faithful and has flawless timing. How blown away our disciples must be at this moment! Continuing with verse 24;
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
**Side Bar Again; For me what is so great about our God is that He knows what its like to be us because He was us. He also knows how easy it is for us to be distracted by fear, and cynicism. And yet, God still loves us! That is “The Purpose of John’s Gospel” God’s Good News through John, to share with you and me all that has been done by God for You and me, and everyone else. Finishing now with verses 30-31;
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Today, if you are hurting, sad, in pain, suffering from loss, feeling numb, having trouble in your relationships, or have outright torched your past relationships, alone, or think you are alone, there is someone who has been there all along the way wanting to be a part of your life. He is the reason we are here today, and every day, and He wants to be a part of each and everyone of your lives.
Our God is not looking for you to get just right before you come to Him, because you never will. Our Lord loves you and wants to walk with you as you and Him build your beautiful life, in which all of this is just a proving ground for eternity.
My hope and prayer for each of you is that you will in the days ahead learn to eagerly fall back on His Good News when hurting and in need of His soothing care and love. And that you will come to the same conclusion as I have that; God Made Gospel, Cuz Believing is Living! Amen!