MAR 30 2014

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · March 30, 2014
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Jesus cares about you where you're at. One of the things I've always tried to make as part of ministry is when people are in ministry alongside of me, I never want to use people because making the ministry more important than those who minister. Many times before I've said, look, for you, I just want to make sure that you're not getting burned out. I want to make sure that you're working at a good pace because the ministry is about the people.

And so we want to start there. And Jesus was so good at that. Jesus was so good at taking all, there's all these social issues that are going around, all these ideas of who the Messiah is. And he knew all these questions, but in the end, he brings it right down to Nicodemus in a way, in a conversation that really becomes an apex of Nicodemus' life.

Nicodemus' entire life shifts on this conversation, but it's still a journey. It's still a journey for him. I know when I was first saved back in the 80s and there was the tracks, there was a big impetus of having people make a decision in the moment for Jesus. And I think that that's important certain times. But there was always, hey, you know, you heard the story preached in church that perhaps, you know, that, you know, I was going to share with him, but I didn't.

And they got hit by a bus, you know, the next day. And you never want to lose that opportunity. Jesus was a journeyman in people's lives. And Jesus is a journeyman. If you look back in your life, you'll see that he's a journeyman in our lives and in your life. And he's willing to walk the journey. He's willing to answer authentic questions. And so here we have Nicodemus talking to Jesus in John 3, verse 1.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. And he had come, he came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know you're a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him. In reply, Jesus declared, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

How can a man be born when he is old, Nicodemus asked. Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born. And Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying you must be born again.

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear the sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. That's talking about spirit being spirit led. How can this be, Nicodemus asked. Now at this point, Nicodemus is out of his depth. Okay, let me just pause there. I know I told you a few weeks ago, my wife told me not to pause in the middle of the scripture reading, but I'm going to do it.

He is completely out of his depth. He doesn't know what Jesus is talking about. He's one of the supreme high court people. He should understand arguments. Jesus has got him backed into an intellectual and spiritual corner. And so, you know, I was thinking this week, Carol and Phil and I were trying to figure out a computer program we're trying to use here to email the congregation.

And we were perplexed. We were the Nicodemus, okay? And Google, or whatever company it was, was Jesus, and we were out of our depth. And it probably took us two hours. You ever been there and got it sorted out? You're just looking at the computer, all three of you, going like crossing your eyes, you know what I mean? Should I hit delete? No, don't hit delete, you know?

This is where Nicodemus is. He's completely out of his depth. So, and then Jesus makes it clear in verse 10, when he says, you're Israel's teacher? And I don't think he's mocking him at this point. And Jesus says, and you do not understand these things? I tell you the truth. We speak of what we know. And we testify what we have seen. But still, you people do not accept our testimony.

I have spoken to you of earthly things, and yet you do not believe. How then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. This is referring, obviously, to the cross. That everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

Now, here's the portion we're going to preach on today. 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. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God or his only Son.

And this is the verdict. Light. Light. Light. Light has come into the world. But men love, they love the darkness, Jesus says. And instead of light, because their deeds are evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light, for fear that the deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

Powerful. Powerful text. There's a reason this text is so well known. If you ask people that don't know anything about Christianity, many of them will be able to recite this text, and it comes out of a one-on-one experience with a person. That's where I want to start today, as I already started. Jesus wants to have a one-on-one authentic encounter with you.

That's the message of the gospel. We can talk. I was on Twitter yesterday, and there was a kid called AtAtheistTeen, and we were going back and forth a little bit on Twitter. You know, and he was actually, I think he was actually seeking and wanting to know about God. We were going back and forth with different questions, and he kept bringing up the Bible.

And I said, well, why do you keep bringing up the Bible? You don't need the Bible to know that God exists. Romans 1 says that. It says that it has been clearly seen that God exists. Separate. The first way that God revealed himself was through creative revelation. The heavens do what? They declare his glory. He kept wanting to go back to the Bible and tell me why the Bible was wrong, and I said, can we stop talking about the Bible?

Which kind of threw him off a little bit. I said, let's just talk about God. But it kept going back to the Bible. But it comes back to an authentic search, and the reason I kept going back and forth with this kid, atheist teen, on Twitter, was because I felt he was in an authentic search. He was there and he was searching. That's what we see here.

Before we go any further, I want to talk about where we have been. We are looking at the entire Gospel of John this year. We're going to be going back and forth. We're going to be in Joshua for a series as well. We'll be going in and out of Psalms and Proverbs. We're going to do about eight weeks total. This is the fourth week on John. We've got four more to go.

And we're looking at it through the threefold calling of John the Baptist. There is a threefold calling in his life, and we've preached about it before. If you want to go back on the website, you can listen to those. But first is a call to repentance. A call to consecration is the first thing that he spoke about. The second was to announce who Jesus is.

Not just the bits about Jesus you like. You hear that? Not just the bits about Jesus that we agree with, but all of the totality of who Jesus is, even the parts that we might perhaps be uncomfortable with. And then the third, and the one that's really close to my heart right now, is family reconciliation. Then in John it says that John's message would bring the hearts of the children out of Malachi back to their parents and the hearts of their parents to the children.

Can you imagine if our society had that happening right now? Where parents and children had their hearts directed towards one another. And that's where we want to start. And that is the calling that we are looking at. Now there are other ways you can look at John. If we wanted to just look at it through light, life, and truth, we could look at the entire gospel, because it's such an incredible work.

The gospel of John is such an incredible literary work. Separate of being a holy anointed text, it is a fabulous literary work. And there's so many ways you could look at it, and we could preach it over and over again. But we could look at the whole scope of light. And light will be a theme that is, I think I said it was 30 times or 60 times, I've forgotten the notes a few weeks ago, that we could just talk about light.

Or we could talk about truth. We could just talk about relationships, because there's so many relationships in this text. But we're going to look for the purpose, I felt like God's message for us is, that he wants us to be a church that talks the truth about consecration and purity. You know, the consecration and purity, purity of life and holiness.

I come out of a Wesleyan Methodist church, and it was about holiness. It was about holy living. The second would be announcing who Jesus is, the good news of Jesus. Jesus is good news. The gospel means good news. And I often hear bad news forecasted, and then I hear Jesus attached to that bad news. Jesus is good news. And we need to be able to share it in a way where Jesus is good news.

And then finally, the family reconciliation. We'll talk about that. I talk about this being a, one of these authentic encounters. Now, this is the third major character that we've come across in John. This is the first member that is, that we, a major character that we've seen that is not a member of his immediate family. We had John the Baptist, who is his cousin.

We had Mary at the wedding. He had a, you know, his mother. He had this interesting encounter with her. And then we see Jesus, for the first time, somebody coming to Jesus. And this is the first of his non-family members who are speaking to him. In the next chapter, we're going to see the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman at the well. It's a beautiful story, where Jesus really liberates women, I believe, and speaks to them.

And Jesus is always doing things that make the people of his day uncomfortable. He talks to women alone at a well. He allows the woman with the issue of blood to touch her and doesn't have her stoned like he could have done. I think that is in Luke. It might be in some of the others as well. But for John, in four, we have the Samaritan woman. We have the man at the pool in chapter five that we're going to see, where Jesus heals this man that has been born blind, and Jesus asks, excuse me, has been born lame.

And Jesus asks the man, do you want to be well? Has Jesus ever asked you that? Do you want to be well? And sometimes I have to answer, I'm not sure. Because there's certain areas in my life that I like my sickness. We become attached to our infirmities sometimes. Have you ever met anyone that their whole identity becomes about their infirmities? Constantly talking, that becomes an identity of your infirmities.

We see him. I'm preaching too many sermons right now. We have in chapter eight, the blind man. In chapter nine, Lazarus. He has an encounter with Lazarus. He brings him out of the grave. We have Mary in chapter 12 anointing his feet and so on. But I want to go back to the order of which this happens. You realize, looking at it again through this three-fold calling, is that Jesus, first of all, meets with John the Baptist, which is a call to repentance.

The first character, major character you see in the book of John, is John the Baptist, who is announcing. Is announcing who he is, and it is a family member. The second person that we see is his mother. And once again, he is coming first to his family. And then a reconciliation. It shows a family relationship. And then the next person he talks to is a leader of Israel.

The reason that is important, and I think John did it on purpose, or maybe the Holy Spirit just led him. The reason he did that was because he wanted to show the order at which reconciliation happens in a nation, in which reconciliation happens in the kingdom of God and on the earth. It starts at home. Starts at home. You see, the characters that he starts with, he takes care of business with John, with John the Baptist, and then he has a, talks and has a relationship with his mother.

And this is where we start. Before we have anything to say to the outside of the world, we have to first of all have an authentic encounter with Jesus ourselves. And then we have to have an authentic encounter with our family members around us. And live in a way that is plain, that when the world looks at it, it is plain to see that there's something different about those people.

You see, the way we live our lives individually, and as a community of family, and as a community as a church, is the proof that this, what we do today matters. That's the proof. We are the body of Christ. So there's an order here. We start with John the Baptist, his cousin, announcing him. And then he has, the next character that comes in is his mother.

And they have this little bit of a disagreement, but Jesus sorts it out with her. And goodness and power flows out of that. And then the next person he speaks to, a major character in John, is a Supreme Court justice. You see, Jesus is taking it systematically. Jesus is starting with us. He's fixing the issues in his family. He's sorting out his identity that they know who he is.

And then he goes and takes it to the highest court in the land. That is the, that is the path that we need to follow as well if we're going to be relevant. Let's just look at Nicodemus real quick. Nicodemus, understanding Nicodemus. First of all, he's a ruler of the Jews. There was 20 to 23 Sanhedrin Supreme Court justices. He was one of those. Nicodemus was on an authentic search.

Jesus didn't have time for pretense. Jesus doesn't have time. I mean, he has time for all of us. But you see in his, his dealings, when people came up, they would try to trick him. They would try to, try to slip him up. They would try to change, you know, make him say something wrong. And he would always be aware of it and he would speak so harshly sometimes.

You whitewash walls. You brood of vipers. When people came to Jesus in an inauthentic manner, he didn't have much time for it. But stop. When Jesus, when people came to Jesus in an authentic manner, Jesus had all the time in eternity. Not all the time in the world. All the time in eternity. To meet them where they're at. He was gentle. He was a shepherd.

He was kind. He was loving. He would be willing to be ridiculed, to love you. He would step out of his own comfort zone. I don't know if it was his comfort zone, but his disciples' comfort zone to care for individuals. You know what I say? When we're sharing the gospel, I would say, look for people that are on an authentic search. It's fertile ground. It's fertile ground.

And Jesus has that with Nicodemus here. Next thing we see is that Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. Now, this is again the light and dark theme that we could be speaking about. But it shows that there was a sense of spiritual darkness in Israel at the time. Jesus mentions it. You don't know what I'm talking about? You lead this nation and you don't know what I'm talking about?

In chapter 2, when we had the wedding, remember, what was gone at the wedding? The wine. That's right. It said that the wine was gone. The first three chapters have been telling us that this nation is in trouble. That Israel is in trouble. But Jesus still came to them. And he wanted to start again with individuals and that's where we will start. So he comes to him in the darkness.

And that relates to this idea of light. And so if you've seen your notes, John 1.14, from back from the first chapter, in him was life. And the life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it or overcome it. Make no mistake that there is a parallel between chapter 3 and this use of light and the opening passage of John.

It is, I mean, once again, if you were to go look at just a literary value of John, it is one of the most fascinating literary stories in the world. It's a phenomenal story. And so we see that. So darkness. And so we see that Nicodemus is afraid. He's afraid to be seen with Jesus because he doesn't know but he wants to know. And he was willing to perhaps pay a cost.

I think as believers, that's a good question. What does our faith cost us? I believe we're coming to a place in American history where being a Christian is going to cost you something. Jesus lost, a few chapters later, you'll read and he'll say, he said things and he lost many followers. Jesus isn't afraid to lose followers. Not afraid to lose followers.

It bothers him but he's not afraid to lose followers and he speaks the truth to people. I believe we are coming to a place where it will cost us something. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a very powerful, poignant book called The Cost of Discipleship. Now I can't read that book without reading Brennan Manning at the same time, Abba's Child because I just, I have to find a little balance.

Like I need a hug once in a while, Dietrich. You know what I'm saying? Like if you've read that book, you only kick me so many times, Dietrich, before, you know, I get the point. But Nicodemus took a risk for Jesus. Took a risk. I think that we want to take calculated risk for Jesus as well. You know, I think too often I've been told, just jump off the cliff for Jesus and he'll figure it out.

No, you know, I'm going to check my parachute first, you know, but I might jump. But fine, but Nicodemus on Authentic Search takes a risk and Jesus understands the risk. I'll tell you what, Jesus values your risk. If you take a risk in reconciliation in a relationship, this summer, I had a relationship, I had this one relationship where I felt that needs to get sorted out.

It's been 10 years I haven't spoken to this person and I took a risk and Jesus valued that risk and we're getting together to hang out. It was an old friend. You know, it was just a misunderstanding. Jesus values your risk. Where do you need to take a risk for Jesus right now? He's going to value that. So this is understanding Nicodemus. You can see him coming in scared, you know, with all this power that he has in the nation.

Here he is. But then he finds Jesus and now we need to understand a little bit about Jesus. First of all, Jesus is willing to meet with Nicodemus in his night. I'll tell you, Jesus isn't scared of the dark. Jesus is not scared of the dark and he's not scared of your dark. You know, the idea that when we sin or we have things in our life that we're ashamed of or we have darkness in our life that we have to go run and hide in the bushes.

That's so Genesis. That's so Old Testament, you know. They went and they hid in the bushes. The response in Genesis is to go hide in the bushes from God. But Jesus didn't die on the cross so that we can hide in the bushes. He came that you could expose your wounds to him like I spoke last week. There was something about Jesus that when lepers that were supposed to be unclean and they would cover themselves and they would hide and have to be out, they were never clean.

Because of the ceremonial cleansing rituals that you had to have. They were never clean. But they would come to Jesus and they would expose their wounds to him. A woman with the issue of blood that was willing to reach out and touch Jesus, you know, that if she touched a rabbi and made him unclean, she could actually be stoned. Was willing to take that risk.

Why? Because they could see there was something different about Jesus. There's something different about Jesus. And I want to be the kind of believer and I've met them before and I don't think I'm there yet. That when people see me they think there's something different about that guy. There's something different about this woman or there's something different about them where you're not maybe out there with a sign on the street but there's just something about the way you go about your business that says, hey, I got an issue here.

Maybe they're the person I might talk to. Maybe they're the one. And Jesus was this person. Jesus isn't afraid to enter the darkness. Verse 19, if you go back to verse 19, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world. Why is Jesus not afraid of the dark? Because he's light. If you put light in a dark room, even the smallest spark, the smallest candle, light will always win.

Always win. Always. And I would say the same thing with our own darkness and our hiddenness. Allow God's light to come into your darkness. I remember years back I had this thing and it wasn't a super huge sin that was going to probably take you out right away but I had this thing and I just didn't even want to give it up. Do you ever have a thing in your life you just don't want to give it up?

You like your thing. And it's really not that bad, right? Because you can get away with it, no one really cares or whatever it is. But I remember a friend of mine challenged me. He says, why don't you just pray that God gets you to the point where you will want to give it up? Because I didn't even want to pray about it and I'd get to that part of my prayer and I'd kind of like skip around it and keep going.

Just authentically and say, Jesus, here's this thing. Like, I love it. Okay? It's like my little pet, like, you know, Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. You know, my precious, you know, my precious. I do a bad Gollum. But you're looking at this thing and you want, and I said, Jesus, I don't want to give this to you and I'm not giving it to you right now. But I just asked it, could you at least touch it so that I want to give it up?

Like, that's authentic. When the person challenged me to do that, I thought, really, Jesus, he'll do that? Yeah. You can come to him because Jesus is a journeyman. You know, a lot of times we just tend to hide until things get fixed. But if you bring your darkness to him, he will touch it with his light. Jesus touches dirty things. He puts his hands in lepers' wounds.

He's not afraid because he is light, he is healing, he is truth. The first way is to allow God and Jesus light to enter into those things. And so Jesus is not afraid of the dark. The next, Jesus is on an authentic search to find authentic people. John 1.47. It talks about Nathaniel. It says, in him there was no deceit, no guile. Jesus likes that. Lives that are transparent, that's going to be the final point.

But lives like a pane of glass. That if we looked at your life, there would be nothing in your life, granted, there are private things in our lives that aren't to share, that are just, should be private. But in the way, perhaps, we do our taxes, in the way you run a church board, in the way that you, you know, whatever you do, your thing, if someone could look at every element of it, and there's no need to rationalize anything.

You might not agree with this, but this is how I did it. It's not illegal, you might not agree, but here's how I did it, and I'm going to show you how I did it. When I said, I heard one time, if it needs to be rationalized, it's probably not holiness. That's the standard I try to live by. That if I get one or two sentences into, well, you know, there's this, or perhaps, I just know that's a yellow flag for me.

Because I am so good at pressing that line out a little bit. One of my favorite sayings was, you know, like you play tennis? Like in tennis, if the ball hits the line, is it in or out? If the ball hits the line in tennis, is it in or out? It's in, that's right, that's right. Now, in, you know, different sports, if the ball hits the line in basketball, is it in or out?

Out. I would always say, I'm a tennis player. You know? I like it on the line. You know what I mean? Just walk that line. You know what? That, that actually little seed turned into a large bush that I couldn't deal with anymore. And at one point in my life, I had to get real serious. Are we going to have integrity? Or are we going to try to get away with things?

And that's been a thing in my life that I've really had to work on. And maybe you have that thing in your life where you can just give it and expose it to Jesus. But Jesus is looking for authentic people. Next thing is this. Jesus is going to be straight with you. He's going to be straight with you. The scripture is going to be straight with you. He's not going to, you know, pull any punches on you.

He's going to be straight. And he did not come to condemn you. And this is, this is where, and I think we need to stop here for a second and understand this as a congregation. This whole idea that Christians are always judging people. That they're always condemning people. And I think, many times, it is easy for Christians to step into a condemnation. Why would Jesus, I never understood that verse.

So, eventually, I looked at Romans where Paul talks about not judging the world. I think I had the verse, I think I have that verse there in Romans. Maybe it's not in your notes. But Paul says, I don't even judge the world. Here's why we don't judge the world. It's already under condemnation. There's no reason to judge something that's already been judged and is under condemnation.

When man fell, everything went under condemnation. It is like going to the jail cell of someone with 15 consecutive life sentences on death row and saying, I condemn you. You are condemned. I condemn you. You shouldn't have done that. I condemn... What more can you do? They're already condemned. And so, I remember, not long ago, a person, you know, was saying to me, well, look at this one singer and what she's doing and she's using the name of Jesus and this whole thing.

And I said, and she was all angry about it. I said, why are you angry about that? Well, you shouldn't talk... I said, it's the world. What do you expect of the world? Like, you can't expect the world to act like Christians, but they're already under condemnation. And so, here's the thing, is understanding that and being able to share the truth of the situation the world is in is not condemnation.

Understanding God's judgments and being able to share the truth of those judgments with people that they might be saved is not condemnation. I was on a bus recently and I heard two 14-year-olds, one said one thing and the other one said, don't judge. Don't judge. That's the new thing, right? You hear all that. Don't judge anything. We should never judge anything.

That's it. I don't know about you, but that's what I'm hearing in culture right now. Like, if there's an element of love, if there's an element of love in any way and it doesn't hurt anybody and no one's really getting hurt, you don't have any right to judge anyone. I want to say that I don't think most people live their lives that way. I think it's a nice thing to talk about, but I think everyone makes judgment.

Will I let this roommate move in with me? You know, he's got this issue with whatever it is and he never pays his rent on time, but don't judge. Don't judge, you know. Come on in. Take my room. Take my room. Of course, we don't judge in condemnation, but we understand God's judgments and we make decisions based on God's judgments. That's not judging. That's called wisdom.

That's called wisdom. And it's called love. Because Jesus was unwilling to separate love from the truth. Say that again. Jesus was unwilling to separate love from the truth. And what I see happening so much in culture right now as I'm writing and doing different things and meeting with different leaders about how to approach the different shifts in culture and apologetically because we are arguing words right now of how things will be portrayed.

There's been a lot of different words that have come out. And as we look at this, how do we frame things in a light that we can share God's truth but do it in a loving way? Jesus did not come to condemn the world. But here's the thing. Salvation is going to happen on Jesus' terms. You see, that's the thing with Jesus and the thing that people have a problem with Jesus is that Jesus says there's one way to salvation.

It's through me and it's through my blood. And that's it. And it's on my turn. It's almost like there's a burning building and Jesus runs into the burning building that he didn't even set the fire. The people inside set the fire and then he's all, I'm going to run in. He runs in. He opens up a window. He gets a ladder and he's going this way. I've gone all the way in.

The building, it's condemned. It is on fire. But I've run in and I've got this way to come in and people are like, no, no, no, no. You're judging me. To go out that way? No, I won't go out that way. If you expect me to go out that way on those terms, well then that's judgment. I tell you, that's what Jesus, Jesus is authentic and he's truthful and he's going to be truthful to people that there's one way to salvation through Jesus Christ and through his blood.

And that's the message of the gospel. Jesus says that the world will hate this message. He says it in this scripture right here. He says, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world but people love the darkness instead of the light because their deeds are evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light that it may be seen plainly what they have done has been done in God's sight. You know, skipping down to the, I'm going to skip down to the notes because I'm running out of time. I feel like right now the world is in love with love. The world is in love with love and if things are love, if a label of love can be put on something then you can get a green light to move forward in whatever that pursuit is as long as the idea or the level of love is on it.

You heard that in society. Right now, this idea is that as long as it's loving you can do this or as long as it's loving you can do this. People say God is love. Now let me just unpack this for you real quick. Love is a component of God. Okay? God is love in that love is a component of God. But love is not God. Hear me out. Love is not God. We are not called to worship God.

Excuse me. We are not called to worship love. Love is subservient to God. Even though it is part of his character, even though God is filled with love, love is a component of God but love is not God. Love is a servant to God. Love stands under God and love is judged by God. Love is underneath God and God is truth and God is wisdom and so when we act in love, love has a lot more components than just perhaps romance.

Maybe you've met the couple that said we're getting married in two weeks. We're in love. We are in love and you're like, whoa, oy vey. I have gotten that phone call many minutes, will you marry us this Saturday? Maybe Tuesday. I say, well I can do it Tuesday. If you want to do it on Tuesday, I can do it on Tuesday. And what you're thinking in your mind is this, guys, that's not love is what you're thinking.

It's a really good feeling. You know, the world right now, we're in love with romance. Don't we love romance? Our little girls are all princesses and I let my girl be a princess and do the same thing, but I want to have a maid's outfit right next to the princess outfit. Because Jesus wants us to be a princess, but Jesus came to serve and not to be served. And I want to have a one-two punch with little girls, with my little girls.

You know, you are a princess. You are daddy's little princess. Yesterday we had cat faces painted on them. They're running around with cat faces and we were having all this fun. And I want them to understand romance and candle-lit dinners. And Carrie and I, we're saving up right now to four years from now is our 20-year anniversary. And I'm starting to save. You didn't know I started yesterday.

We want to go somewhere. We want to go to England and renew our vows on a hill in Wales, on this beautiful hill. And I've got, I just got it all in our minds and we've been talking about this thing. So four years away we want to go do that. And I love that. I love romance. I love beauty. I love all those things. But I understand that's not the only part of love. Because when we sat down to do our finances yesterday, we weren't on the top of the hill in Wales.

Why do you keep going out to coffee outside of the budget? Oh, yeah. Church expense, you know. This is the thing, is love cannot be compartmentalized from truth, from wisdom, from obedience to God. From righteousness. You see, love, if you have love was in the center and spokes on the wheel, all these components of obedience and faithfulness and all these other things that go away after the romance is over is what makes up love.

And love isn't love without all those components. And today I keep hearing love, but it's just two spokes on the wheel. The Christian message of love, the message that Christ gave, was not separated from the truth of God's word of what love means. And so, you cannot do anything you want just because you love someone. I'm not going to marry my daughter because I love her.

Okay? I mean, just because I love and if we were in agreement about it, I'm not going to do that. Why? Because God's word says I shouldn't marry my kid. And if we have our own children, they're going to have genetic problems. As you can see, there's reasons God tells us to do things, not just because he's mean. God created human beings and then he gave us a book to say, hey, this is how you care for them best.

And if you obey this manual, you're going to have the best society, the best people. And so that's what we see with love. But this understanding of God, when you hear this, just say, hey, God is love, but love is not God. Love is submissive to God. And then the final thing, and we'll just close with one minute here, is love cannot be separated from the truth. I said this.

We want to learn how to speak the truth in love. And if you go down to this final verse, we have to figure out a new way to speak the message of Christ in a way that makes a difference. That I might not agree with what you're doing, but if you were dying, I might give you my kidney. Does that make sense? I might not agree with the decisions you're making. I might not come partake in what you're doing because I feel that it is outside of what I think the structure that Christ has given me to follow.

But if you were in the hospital with cancer, maybe I would sell my house in order to help pay your bills. You see, a sacrificial act, you don't have to agree with someone to love someone. That's what I said in the La Jolla Light. I said, you know, opinion, we need to get to the place where we can disagree in love. And so how are we going to do it? You know how Jesus showed love?

He gave his life away. You know, I don't think what the world needs right now is us to keep telling them that they're wrong, but rather to give our lives away to them. To give our lives away. That when we see something, we don't immediately, and I have the hardest time as well. I see something I disagree with, immediately I go into judgment, immediately I want to cause a separation.

I think the devil just loves that. He just revels in that. He loves it. Whenever he can get you to condemn something that's already condemned to cause a wedge between you and that person so that they never hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ makes him happy. What I would say is what I feel like God wants us to do is to give our lives away. To come in such a way that we are here for you.

Can I do your yard? Can I take you to the hospice care? That we give our lives away in such a way that, yeah, they disagree with me, but they're living their lives in such a way that makes a profound difference. Now let's bring it back to us. Jesus wants an authentic encounter with you. That Jesus is asking you to come to him in your night. And he wants to meet you, and he wants to look, and he wants to hear from you.

And he wants to say, where are you at? And he wants to bring rebirth in your life. And so I would say, as you're sitting here today, you probably thought of a few different things that came up in your mind, like, hey, man, this just isn't right. If there's something that's not right, Jesus wants to breathe on it. He wants to bring his life into it. It might seem like an impossibility right now that that could ever change in your life.

But what I would say, and what the scripture tells us over and over again, no matter who it is meeting with Jesus, is that Jesus wants to touch you. Jesus wants to embrace you. He didn't come to condemn you. He wants to journey with you. The message of God 316 is this, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

we're going to find out that Nicodemus ends up being the person who takes Jesus off the cross. If you go to the end of the story, he comes out of the dark and he shows up at the cross with enough anointing oils to show that this was a king who was killed. That he shows up in front of all the Roman centurions and everyone else with all this, and they knew that by him bringing all those embalming fluids and all those ointments, that he was saying this is the king in front of the soldiers of the Caesar.

You see, Nicodemus came out of his night. Out of his night. He was revolutionized. He was reborn. He was renewed. And he said, I will die with this man. All the disciples fled, but Nicodemus, who started in the night, not in the light, ends up at the cross. That's where I want to end up. That's where I want to end up. I want to make it there. I want to end up.

Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for your word. We bless you, Jesus, God. We give you praise today. Jesus, in our night right now, I want to present our night to you, Jesus. Lord God, we love you today. Speak to this congregation. Let us be healed. Let us be healed. We give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to ask the prayer team to come up. on the sides here.

We're going to sing one final song. It's going to be an opportunity, if you want to come up and pray with the team, you have something that you want to pray. These are trusted people that have been at the church. So if you'd stand and we'll sing our final song. And then after that song, I will close up the service. center from our meetings. punch from our abstraction.