The Locked Door In The Burning Building

John 3: 16-17 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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (NIV)

John 3:16. The most famous Bible verse. The most frequently searched for Bible verse on Google. Seen everywhere in the world. From sporting events to church houses, John 3:16 is a beacon of hope in a world that remain so hopeless. It is a promise from the lips of God Himself that there is more for you than this meager existence. This glimmer that lasts but 80 finite years or so. The Bible describes our lives as nothing more than a vapor here today and gone tomorrow. I think that this concept is widely accepted. The question is what do you do with such knowledge? Do you resolve yourself to this time frame and seek pleasure while you can or do you seek for something more? Something beyond this world.

This week saw a devastating earthquake, scoring an 8.9 on the Richter scale, hit the country of Japan. Besides the expected destruction from an earthquake so massive, Japan was then also hit with a resulting tsunami. Due to modern technology, we can see the resulting devastation. We can watch the water destroying everything in its path. We hear numbers like over 10,000 dead but I am not sure of we properly wrap our minds around events like these. Because it occurred so far away, we can sometimes fail to consider how it impacts us. Beloved you have to realize that these are the end of days we are living in. Jesus taught:

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Messiah,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Matthew 24: 3-8 (NIV)

Within the media protected shores of the United States we often do not hear the full scale of the atrocities occurring around the globe. We are spared the pictures of famine and death in other countries. We can throw an extra dollar in the offering at church or send some money to the Red Cross to feel better about it, but in the end these are the signs God has warned us about and it is time we paid attention.

Our key verses start with the fundamental underpinning of the entire Bible and of the reality of the God we serve. So God so loved the world. There is a God and He loves you. He made you, He formed you. He knows the number of hairs on your head (Luke 12:7) and collects your tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). You can say all day long that you do not believe in Him that doesn't matter because He believes in you. He loves you and believes in you so much that He sent His only Son into the world to die in your place. I know that sometimes this is where people get lost. They look at themselves and say that they are not that bad. They are a good person. As long as the standard you use for comparison is other men, then you are right. By that standard you probably are not that bad. But when stood up against the sinless, perfect God who created you, you discover that you probably aren't as good as you thought. This is how a holy and pure God sees you and me:

As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Romans 3: 10-18 (NIV)

If you think about the world around us, you will realize that these verses are true. When you deny the existence of God or treat His existence as if it somehow doesn't matter to you, then you are indeed living without fear of who God is, no? The bottom line is we had a sin problem before Almighty God. That sin problem is what separated us from God. The Bible teaches us:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6: 23 (NIV)

There is a cost for sin. There is a "wage" we earn. That wage is death. The world has its cute saying that the only two inevitables are death and taxes. The world is right. The government will always find some new way to tax you even God warned Israel about this when they demanded a king rule them! And the other inevitable fact is that within these mortal frames we have, death will come for us all. But what happens then? There are basically three schools of thought. The atheistic school says there is no God that essentially man is his own God. When I look at the sheer beauty and complexity of creation, I must dismiss that option. Besides, I see how man performs as God he stinks at the job. The second school of thought is to believe in some form of higher power, some "God" but to not be overly concerned one way or the other as to how that impacts your life. The third school of thought is to believe in God and care about how that impacts your life. This may seem overly simplistic, but sometimes we can make things more difficult than they need to be.

The atheistic school of thought simply refuses to believe. They still have a great measure of faith. They simply misplace it. They place it into the things of man. They ascribe their faith to science as the end all for example. Never mind that yesterday's science is the old wives tales of today. Science changes on a regular basis as man continues to try and discover more and more. What they discover can have a "God explanation"; but they have already dismissed that as being impossible. The notion of God is foolishness to them:

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 1Corinthians 2: 12-14 (NIV)

Rather than try to believe in something they see as foolishness, they dismiss it outright. The second school of thought is similar, in that the things of God are still foolishness to them however, they are trying to "hedge their bets." They essentially want the best of both worlds. They want to be able to say that they believe in God without having to care what that means in their lives. They are lukewarm in their approach. Jesus once addressed a church that became lukewarm:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. Revelation 3: 15-16 (NIV)

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that you believe in something and then proceed to act as if you do not care. Once you truly acknowledge the existence of a Creator; a God; the next logical step must be to figure out what He wants. Because even within the third school of thought, mistakes can still be made.

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder. James 2:19 (NIV)

It is not enough to say there is one God. From as far back as there is written history, there have been false man-made Gods. Man has always been recreating God in his own image. An image that makes him feel better about his sin about what he know he should not be doing. In modern day America we have seen the softening of absolute truth to the point that we don't want to speak the truth about eternal life for fear of offending people in this life. The notion of sin is offensive. The notion of hell is offensive. The Gospel message is offensive because it cuts to the heart of the hearer. Jesus taught:

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' Matthew 10: 34-36 (NIV)

The true Gospel message is divisive because some people will refuse to hear it. Instead we want to believe that there are "many roads" to eternal life. We want to desperately believe that parts of the Bible are "culturally out of date." Anything to make us feel better about being disobedient to God. We must take the entire counsel of God from the Bible, not just the parts that are easier. We must take all of it to heart:

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14: 6 (NIV)

There is no wiggle room or equivocation. Jesus is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. None come to the Father except through Him. That may sound offensive from a human standpoint but not taken in the proper context. The context of our key verses. God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn us beloved but so that we can be saved through Him. Picture it this way. We are caught in a burning building. There is only one way out, through a locked door. God is the only one who has the key and He is offering it freely to you. All you have to do is accept the free gift and believe that it will open the door. Belief and faith. You can doubt the existence of the God offering the key and simply sit down in the burning building. Throw your hands up in the air and wait for it to burn down around you. Or you can believe that the God offering the key is real, but yet not care that He has the key you need. The house is still burning down around you, but you refuse the gift being offered to you.

This world is that burning building beloved. You look around the world and see the signs. The signs of the times. These have been prophesized in the Bible. These are the beginning of the birth pains as Jesus taught. With each passing natural disaster. With each passing famine. Realize that events across the world will eventually come home to this country as well. In Egypt 40% of the population lives on less than $2 per day. That is the famine behind the revolt. I wish I could ease the suffering for those in mourning this week in Japan. Or those in such poverty in Egypt. Or the marginalized in America. But I am not the way Jesus is. I am not the truth Jesus is. I am not the life Jesus is.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2: 4-9 (NIV)

Jesus is the key. We were dead in our transgressions, our sins. But God so rich in mercy offered us the key. The way out of the burning building. The coming ages are upon us beloved. I pray that you see the signs for what they are and accept the gift of God He is offering you. Take the key. Unlock the door. Walk into your eternal life today. For God so loved you. For God so loved the world.

Reverend Anthony Wade March 14, 2011