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Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
Jerry
Varnado,
pastor April 7,
2002 In
closing the Easter
sermon
last week, I said that to
appropriate the power of the
resurrection into your
life, you need to do three
things: 2)
Open your heart to God's
grace; 3)
Open your mind to God's power.
4-Trusting
Grace
and
Grace
Alone I'll
spend at least two Sundays on
each of the three topics,
starting with the first one:
"Open you life to God's
love." Look
with me at Matthew
22:34-40: Jesus
replied: "'Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with
all your mind.' This is the
first and greatest
commandment. And the second is
like it: 'Love your neighbor
as yourself.' All the Law and
the Prophets hang on these two
commandments." Jesus
says very clearly that everything
hinges on loving God with all our
being -- and loving our neighbors
as ourselves. This ought to be a
concern to anyone who has thought
about it, because we are not
capable of it! The
difficulty of this is made even
more apparent when we read on and
discover that "neighbor" includes
those who are difficult to love
-- even our enemies. What
we have to understand is that
this love that Jesus is talking
about -- for God and for our
neighbor -- doesn't originate
with us. Our love is a
response to God's love for
us. Now,
for many of us there's an
obstacle here, because we have a
hard time believing that God
loves us. And yet we must believe
that if we're to keep these two
great commandments. Why
do I say that ? Look with me at
two Scriptures. The first is 1
John 4:19: I
don't think it would violate the
rules of translation to add one
word: "We can love because
he first loved us." His love
makes our love
possible. Next,
look at Romans 5:5: Believing
that God loves us -- not simply
that He's fond of us but that He
has a deep, passionate, holy love
for us -- is the basis for the
whole gospel. Back in December, I
preached about this very thing in
a sermon titled,
"Love
Came Down at
Christmas." We
must believe and receive God's
love for us before we'll gain
much ground in our spiritual
development -- before we can love
love Him, love ourselves, and
love others. Some
of us have experienced various
kinds and levels of abuse. Abuse,
regardless of its form, very
often results in some level of
self-hatred or self-abasement. We
irrationally presume that the
abuse comes because we are bad,
that we deserve it, it's our
fault. Some
of us have experienced poor
parenting and we transfer our
feelings for and our
presuppositions about our parents
to our heavenly parent, God the
Father. If "I didn't experience
love from my mom and dad, it's
difficult for me to believe that
God could love me and to receive
His love." Some
of us have experienced tragic
circumstances which we have
blamed -- consciously or
subconsciously -- on God. "God
must not love me because He
either caused or allowed all of
this bad stuff to
happen." Most
of us probably have -- or at
least used to have -- a distorted
understanding of "love." We
really don't understand what true
love is or what it looks and
feels like, so it's difficult for
us to recognize God's love.
What
do we do about that? Is it up to
God to fix it or us or is this
our responsibility? This is a
common issue in our understanding
of how God works in our lives. We
constantly have to wrestle with,
"What is my part and what is
God's part?" Now,
this may not be a hard-and-fast
rule, but it's been my experience
that God won't do for me in
dealing with the hurts and
struggle of life what I can do
for myself. He's given me the
grace and the ability to do
certain things, and he expects me
to do them. He expects me to take
action. The
late Oswald Chambers
put
it
this way: "God doesn't give us
overcoming life; He gives us life
as we overcome." Look
with me at a question-and-answer
from Romans 8 that touches on
this. First, the question, in
verse 35: Paul
answers that question two verses
later: Did
you see that? "We are... through
Him." Overcoming the hurts and
scars of living in a fallen world
is a joint effort between us and
God. He gives us the tools and
the power to do it, but we must
act. As
we do, we can begin to more fully
recognize and receive His love,
and live with Him in a true love
relationship. Let's
look at two texts that show us
how we can be liberated from the
bondage of our past. The first is
John 8:31-32: There's
a cause-and-effect here. To be
set free, we must hold to His
teaching. His teaching in the
truth, and it is the truth that
frees us. The
Apostle Paul reinforces Jesus'
teaching about the liberating
nature of the truth in Romans
12:2: Let
me give you and illustration
about how our minds are so often
influenced by things that simply
aren't true. In
some respects, you and I are lot
like computers. I know some of
you don't like computers -- but
bear with me because I think this
illustration will be helpful to
you. A
computer is nothing but an
organized pile of metal and
plastic that has some unique
capabilities because of its CPU,
or central processing unit. The
CPU consists of a series of
connected memory
chips. Now,
even with a CPU you can't do much
of anything with a computer until
it has been programmed. You first
must have an operating system,
which establishes a system of
communications that enables it to
do certain basic functions and to
respond to certain commands and
instructions from what we call
computer programs. Once
a computer is properly programmed
it will do a variety of things.
It can do high-speed mathematical
computations; it can assemble,
store, and then retrieve and
process or print all types of
information; it can send and
receive e-mail and
faxes. The
frustration comes when it does
something other than what it's
supposed to do. It adds instead
of subtracts, prints on the wrong
line on the page, or just shuts
down. The problem might be with
hardware, but most of time it's
in the software or the
programming. In computer
terminology, the software has a
"bug" or a "glitch" in it, so the
computer doesn't work like it is
supposed to. Back
when I first started messing with
computers in the 1970s, the
commonly used term that related
to a lot of the problems
computers would develop was
"GIGO" -- which stood for
"garbage in, garbage out." The
idea was that if your programming
or your database was bad or
unreliable -- if it was garbage
-- you shouldn't expect a clean
result from the computer. If you
put garbage in, you're going to
get garbage out. As
I said, human beings are
something like computers. Our
hardware is our body; our CPU is
our brain. When we malfunction,
act or react in society in a way
that's not considered within the
range of normal, it can be a
hardware problem. Physical
illness or chemical imbalance can
make us behave
abnormally. But
most of our malfunctioning is a
software problem. We have
a bug or glitch in our
programming. When
we were born our operating system
was already in place, we could
already hear, see, smell, feel,
taste, eat and process food and
make audible sounds, the body was
functioning. But from that moment
of birth we've been in the
process of being programmed. Our
brains are like memory chips,
everything that goes through
there gets stored somewhere. All
of that information affects how
we think, feel and act. But
particularly that part which
we've accepted as "truth" has a
lot to do with our personality
and our behavior. Some
of us still have a lot of garbage
in here as a result of negative
experiences and lies we've been
taught to believe as the truth.
Garbage in, garbage
out. Unfortunately,
we've even been taught lies in
the church. Let me give you an
example: "Cleanliness is next to
godliness." Sounds good, but it's
not in the book -- contrary to
what a lot of people think! I
suspect Abraham and Moses would
not have "clean" by our
standards. Ever
heard, "God helps those who help
themselves"? It's not in there!
Indeed, my Bible says, in
principle, that God helps those
who help others. Let's
look again at Romans
12:2. Some
-- or maybe a lot -- of the
programming that controls how we
think, act, and relate to God and
others came from the world. We've
got garbage in here -- that's why
we're garbage is coming out. Paul
says we should take out the
garbage, that we should let God
"change our programming" by
replacing the world's lies with
His truth. Here
is how it works. First you have
to decide what your standard for
truth is going to be. The Bible
is my absolute standard for
truth. I'm convinced that
anything that contradicts what is
clearly revealed in Scripture is
a lie. Now,
let me say something about the
term "truth." We have a common
misconception that truth is
always "objective" reality. What
color is this wall? I know it is
white because I can see it and I
bought the paint we used to paint
it. Unless something is wrong
with your eyes you have to agree
with me; it is objective
reality. Your
past experience, your programming
glitch, may be screaming loudly
that God doesn't love you. But
the book says He does. We
all know John 3:16: And
consider Romans 5:8: You
have to make up your mind -- are
you going to believe God? If you
do, the truth will set you free
to receive God's love, so you are
then able to love yourself and
your neighbor, even your
enemies. Now,
don't hear me wrong. What I'm
saying is simple but it's not
necessarily easy. Our old
patterns of thinking are deeply
ingrained in us. They must be
rooted out. You
may have to quote Scripture to
yourself over and over again;
insisting to your mind that we
you're no longer to live by the
lies but by the truth of God. You
must be stubborn and
unrelenting. In
time the truth will become
ingrained in you and, in the
process, will root out the
lies. But
it all starts with getting to the
place of allowing God to love you
and loving Him in return. Then
you have laid the groundwork for
your liberation from everything
that keeps you from abundant
living. Believe the truth and
it'll set you free. This
is all available because because
He first loved us.
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
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For the Gateway family
Pastor
Jerry's Weekly
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A
GATEWAY SERMON
Because
He first loved us
(First
in the series, Opening Ourselves to
God)
Gateway
Church,
Athens GA
1)
Open your life to God's
love;
As I was seeking God and
contemplating the upcoming
sermons between now and Pentecost
Sunday, I felt like these three
statements needed to be focused
on a bit more. So I'm starting a
new series today titled "Opening
Ourselves to God."
In
this
series
Hearing
that Jesus had silenced the
Sadducees, the Pharisees got
together. One of them, an
expert in the law, tested him
with this question: "Teacher,
which is the greatest
commandment in the
Law?"
Why
would God love me?We
love because he first loved
us.
And
hope does not disappoint us,
because God has poured out his
love into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit, whom he has given
us.
Now, as I said, trying to believe
that God loves us presents
challenges for many of
us.
Frankly,
some of us -- myself included --
have done some pretty bad things.
Because of that we don't think
much of ourselves and we find it
hard to believe that God could
love us.
Overcoming
hurtsWho
shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall trouble
or hardship or persecution or
famine or nakedness or danger
or sword?...
No,
in all these things
we
are
more than conquerors
through
him
who loved us.
The
road to freedomTo
the Jews who had believed him,
Jesus said,
"If
you
hold
to my
teaching,
you are really my disciples.
Then
you will know the truth, and
the
truth will set you
free."
Spiritual
and emotional bondage is most
often the result of believing a
lie, and a lie can be just as
powerful as the truth if we
believe it.
Do
not conform any longer to the
pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of
your mind. Then you will be
able to test and approve what
God's will is -- his good,
pleasing and perfect
will.
Taking
out the garbageDo
not conform any longer to the
pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of
your mind. Then you will be
able to test and approve what
God's will is -- his good,
pleasing and perfect
will.
The
practical steps
But if I say, "God loves you" --
that's a different type of
reality. Even though what I said
is absolutely true, we're no
longer operating in the realm of
the objective. It is
"subjective." You must exercise
faith to believe it.
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.
But
God demonstrates his own love
for us in this: While we were
still sinners, Christ died for
us.
The
groundwork for your
liberation
An
audio tape of this sermon is
available
free of charge (U.S. requests
only).
Request
a tape by calling
or writing the Gateway Church
office.
Please specify tape number
020407a: Because He First
Loved Us.
©
2002 Gerald R.
Varnado