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Romans
5:6-8
"The
Kind of People God Loves"
Romans
5:6-8, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still
powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous
man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to
die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in
this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Turn now
to the book of Romans, chapter 5, Romans chapter 5. And we'll just be looking at verses 6, 7, and
8, Romans 5, verses 6, 7, and 8.
As we look at the kind of people God loves.
"For while we were still
helpless" Paul says in verse 6, "at the right time
Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will hardly die for a righteous man, but perhaps
for a good man someone would even dare to die.
But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Ever kind
of wonder what kind of person God really loves? I heard David in the Old Testament spoken of
as a man after God's own heart.
I hear that Abraham was "a friend of God".
But you know, I don't know if I'll ever make it to
be a man after God's own heart.
I don't know if I'd ever be classified as God's friend.
But you know what I want to know?
I want to know whether or not he loves me.
God reveals the kind of love that he has for us here
in these verses. The first thing I see in verse 6, is that God's
love for us is unconditional.
Look at verse 6 again, "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the
ungodly." Who qualifies to be loved by God? Good, respectable and moral people? No. That
might be what you'd expect to hear, but instead the Bible
tells us that "while we were yet sinners Christ died for the
ungodly." Jesus (Yeshua) didn't just die for the goody-goodies,
the good people. He
died for ungodly people. And
that means you and I can qualify to be loved by God.
God's love for us, secondly, is incomparable.
Look at verse 7, "For one will hardly die
for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone
would dare even to die."
You
can't compare God's love to human love.
I mean, he tries, he says, 'Well, you know, maybe you
could comprehend somebody dying in the place of someone else
[Tale of Two Cities], if that person was really a good person.
I mean, for lack of a better illustration, he's been
the number one most admired, most trusted American for what,
20 years, and that's Billy Graham. Let's say, hostages had him, and they said 'Look,
we're going to kill someone, and it's either going to be Graham
or someone else.' And
unless someone steps forward to let us kill them in his place,
he's dead.' Well I
know and you know, somebody would. Right? But
what if it wasn't Billy Graham held hostage, what if it was
Adolf Hitler? And they
said, 'Look, it's life for life.
Either someone steps in and takes his place or we blow
him for here to eternity.'
Man, I know I'd struggle with that, wouldn't you? I wouldn't have my hand up 'Oh me, oh me, I'll
take Hitler's place.' (Maybe
he deserves it, Lord.) He's
a creep, Lord. Human
love is always conditioned by a person's behavior and intrinsic
goodness. That's why
it's so easy to love the people that get along with you. Don't you just love people that like the things
you like, and like to do the things you like to do, and think
the way you think? I
just love those kind of people, don't you?
I like to be around them.
They agree with me, and I agree with them.
But there's some other people that I have a hard time
being around, people that don't think like I think, people
that disagree with me--people that don't like what I like. Man, it gets harder to love them, doesn't it?
Human love will always let you down. Some of you are banking, and you're doing it
mistakenly, you're banking on human love.
Well, my spouse loves me, I'm getting my fulfillment
in life and security in life out of that.
She loves me, he loves me.
Hey, I talk to broken hearted men and women all the
time, who never expected that their spouse would step out
on them. Human love
will let you down. I
know my Daddy loves me, I know my Mommy loves me.
Yes, but you know, human love will let you down.
I know people who have been hurt and wounded by well-meaning
parents. But no parent is perfect, they're going to let
you down. 'Well my
friends will stick by me!'
(chuckle) You haven't lived long enough [if you think
that], that's all (if you say something like that).
Human love will let you down, I don't care who it is.
But Jesus Christ [Yeshua haMeshiach] will never let you
down. He's the friend,
the Bible says, that sticks closer than a brother.
[David said that of Jonathan, Saul's son and his best
friend-but they were both believers]
Human goodness is conditioned always, human love, I
mean, is conditioned always by a person's goodness and their
good behavior. When
I was growing up, the philosophy I was taught as far as God's
love for me could be summarized by just half of the song "Jesus
loves me, I know". Actually this is a verse I never heard until
I was a Christian a few years.
But there's a verse that summarizes my whole experience
in what I thought it was to be a Christian, and it starts
out by this verse, "Jesus loves me when I'm good, when I do
the things I should." And
that sort of summarized my whole walk with the Lord.
In fact I just discovered some books that we had stowed
away, they're little story rhymes for children, published
by the church I used to be part of.
Oh, what horrible stories, man. These little kids did something bad, and the
angels were frowning and crying, but that's what I was raised
on. I read it and thought, 'Man, this is nice stuff
growing up to.Jesus loves me when I'm good, when I do the
things I should.'
"What a tragedy, that
the world doesn't understand that the kind of people God loves
are the very people who think God doesn't love them."
But you know the truth of the Scripture goes
way beyond that. The
next stanza says "Jesus loves me when I'm bad, even though
it makes him sad." Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes! Jesus loves me! 'Yes, Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so.' God
loved us when we were helpless, ungodly, sinners, who were
living their lives in opposition to him and to his will.
We were his enemies.
And God has proven his love for us.
Look at verse 8, "But God demonstrates
his own love toward us."
The word "demonstrates" could be translated "God
shows" or "God proves his own love for us, in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
God wasn't content with merely mouthing the words
"Oh, I love you", you know.
He knew we needed a little more to hang on to than
that. Talk is cheap,
especially knowing that we would go into situations where
we might wonder, 'Does God love me?'
'If God loves me, then how could I be going through
what I'm going through right now?'
[that question was just answered in the preceding sermon
"Assurance in Suffering"] 'If God loves me, how could I be told by the
doctor that I'll never be cured of the disease I have? How could I be told that I've lost my savings?
How could I be told, that I'm going to be laid-off
next week if God's a God of love?' God knew he needed more than words. And so God proved it, he backed it up, he demonstrated
it. Because, how else
do you prove or define love?
You can talk it, but you have to show it, don't you.
"God so love the world that he"--what?--"he gave." He backed it up with action. Look at 1st John. Keep a marker here in Romans. Near the book of Revelation. 1st John chapter 4, verse 9. "By this"--John tells us about God's love and
how God's proven his love and demonstrated it--"By this the
love of God was manifested (or shown) to us, that God has
sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we might
live through him." In
this is love. You want
to know if God loves you?--you have to look at the cross. You have to look at what happened when Jesus
(Yeshua) died on the cross.
"In this is love".
"Not that we loved God" he says in verse 10, "but that
he loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice
for the propitiation for our sins."
The result of that is verse 19, "we love him, because
he first loved us." Oh,
God help us to begin to comprehend just how much we're loved
by God. A lot of times
you hear people saying, "If I were living a better.I would
come to Christ." Or
"I'm just too bad for God to love me."
What a tragedy, that the world doesn't understand that
the kind of people God loves are the very people who think
God doesn't love them. Isn't
that incredible? Think
of it, when Jesus was on the earth and the proud Pharisees
and Sadducees, the religious leaders of the day, they walked
around, and Jesus actually said they strutted around
in their robes and they had tassels and fringes on
their garments, and they loved to swing around and the tassels
would fly, you know. And
they loved to pray long prayers, and they'd pray prayers like
"God, thank you, oh thank you God, that I'm not a sinner like
she is",
you know. And there
you are, sitting there thinking 'Guess God doesn't love me.
This religious person thanks God he's not a person
like me.' And yet, who gave Jesus the hardest time?
His whole ministry, who fought him-tooth and nail,
and nailed him to a cross?
These religious goody-goodies, who outwardly were so
right, and inwardly were so wrong.
But who was drawn to Christ (Yeshua haMeshiach)?
Who did Jesus love?
He loved the people who needed help.
He loved the people who needed a savior, he loved the
people who were sick in sin, who were "hopeless cases", who
were at desperate ends. Those
are the people Jesus loves.
And he loves those people today, he loves me, he loves
you. How can you be too bad to come to Christ?
How could you be too gross for Jesus (Yeshua) to love
you? Explain it to
me. The death of Christ,
you see, doesn't become effectual for you when you become
good enough. There's nowhere in this book where you can see
that it's stated that God will love you as soon as you become
this good. Nowhere in
the Bible do you see God telling you, 'That in this book,
he says, that if he looks in you and finds a particle of goodness,
he'll love you.' You won't find that in the Bible. Instead, you'll find that the only reason why
God loves you, and the only reason God loves me, is not because
he looks in and he sees a speck of goodness in us, but because
he is love, and he just chooses to love us, period.
It is not based on anything emanating from us--not
based on anything in us. That has tremendous implications, because that
would mean that he couldn't stop loving us either. [Now here is where the theology of various parts
of the body of Christ have different interpretations. Some very real Scriptures say, Jesus' own words,
"that unless our righteousness far exceeds that of the Pharisees,
we will not enter the kingdom of heaven."
Only way to square this with what Pastor Martin is
saying here about Romans 5:6-8 is to realize that God even
loves those he's forced to throw into the Gehenna fires of
hell, which is true. It's
hard to imagine, but God must still love Satan and the demons,
which must infuriate Satan.
So don't confuse God's love for a license to do as
one pleases with total disregard for God's laws of love.
And I'm not talking about some legalistic guilt-trip
here. As we shall see
when we get to Romans 7 and 8, the only way to fulfill the
Holy Law, which James calls the royal law in James 1, is by
the empowerment of the indwelling Holy Spirit who dwells within
believers of Jesus, Yeshua.
Then as Jeremiah 31:31-33 and Hebrews 8:6-10 bring
out, God's Holy Law is written in our hearts and minds (by
this same indwelling Holy Spirit).]
In this section of Romans chapter 5, Paul reveals the
kind of people God loves. He loved, proved his love, by dying for those
who deserved it the least.
He died for us when we first of all, verse 6, when
we were helpless, or NIV says what?--"powerless."
Do you see that? When
there was nothing we could do to help ourselves.
When we were absolutely helpless, Christ (Yeshua haMeshiach)
died for us. And if you're helpless this morning, and somehow
by the grace of God you stumbled in here, and it was all you
could do to stay, but you're listening--listen, if you're
helpless, he died for you.
There's a little story Jesus told in the gospel of
Luke where he's talking about the kind of people he came to
save. And one of the
stories he uses was, he said, "A certain woman lost a coin"
and he was talking about in those days, and still you go over
and look at the Bedouin who wear their riches on their forehead
and around their necks. And
many women, when they became engaged, they weren't given a
big hunk of rock on a ring, instead they were given a chain
of coins, and they would wear them around their heads.
And it was very precious to them, just like ladies,
your engagement rings are precious to you.
Now he says, "What woman among you, if she lost
her coin, and it fell into the dust somewhere"--because they
had dirt floors--"wouldn't sweep that house and search diligently
until she found it?" He
says, "It's that way with me.
There are people he's saying today are like that lost
coin. They are stuck
and can't do anything to help themselves.
What could the coin do to help itself get found? 'Here I am.
Whoa, here I am.' Roll
out a little? No, I
mean a coin is a perfectly helpless object, isn't it?
The only way it could be found is if somebody else
did all the finding. When you were helpless, Christ died for you.
Christianity, Messianic Judaism, is not a self-help
religion. But some
people, you know, they look at Christianity, like here's a
guy drowning, and they start getting out the life-saving manual
and saying 'Lesson # 1 of swimming is.kick your feet.'
There's no time for that.
You see, Jesus, Yeshua has got to be the Savior that
pulls you out. And
he is.
Secondly, the kind of people Jesus, Yeshua
died for, verse 6 says, for the ungodly. "For while we were still helpless, at the right time
Christ died for the ungodly." An ungodly person is someone who's living like God
doesn't even exist. That's
what ungodliness is. It's
just living like "There isn't a God."
Just living like a dog lives.
You know, just for yourself, for your own pleasure,
for your own gratification, sniffing around the world, looking
for something to get into.
'Oh, here's a piece of dead meat.
I'll eat the road-kill. I'm a dog.
I don't know it's not good for me, I'm just a dog.'
And there are people today who are living like there
isn't a God, they eat the road-kill of this world.
And they wonder why their lives are so miserable, and
they're so sick. I'll tell you why you're sick. It's
because you're living like there isn't a God, when there is
a God. And there's
a God who loves you, and a God who has prepared a place for
you, and a God that you can never be happy until you know.
The third kind of person that Jesus died
for are those who are still sinners.
Look at verse 8. "that God demonstrates, shows,
proves his own love towards us, in that while we were yet
sinners"--or still sinners--"Christ died for us."
In other words, right now. You walked in here, you're still sinning, maybe
this very minute--I don't know what you could be doing, but
you're sinning. Christ
died for you. Sometimes we get this idea that he might have
died for us right up to that point.
The verse says he died for us while we were
still
sinners.
You know, before you can really appreciate the love
of God and experience his salvation, you're got to admit that
you're a sinner. Many
people today aren't interested in doing that.
We call sin any name except sin.
Don't we? The sin of adultery 'Awh now, we call it a fling,
just a fling, an affair.'
Oh that sounds so nice, come sit in my office and listen
to the broken hearts and the broken homes.
Listen to the cries of someone who's messed up his
marriage, or someone who's messed up her life, and you call
it an affair and a fling.
Sodomy, the sin of homosexuality, by an interesting
twist of words, is now being gay. Explain it
to me, I don't get it. I'm
really bugged by it, every Christmas I'm so bugged, because
I used to love "Deck the Halls", but I can't sing it. How
can you walk down the street singing "Don we know our gay
apparel???" They'd think we were a bunch of perverts wouldn't
they? We have to sing
now, "Don we know our happy apparel" now, I guess.
But we don't want to call it sin.
Drunkenness, it's a disease.
Give me a break, a disease?
They why doesn't a stay in a hospital cure it? Where's
the drug. It's not
a disease, the Bible calls it sin. Infanticide, killing babies, we call a choice today. Isn't that clean and antiseptic sounding?
And now if you're in favor of murdering babies, ripping
them apart, limb by limb and pulling them out of a mother's
womb, you're pro-choice. It sounds better than pro-murdering babies,
doesn't it? "I'm pro-butchering
babies." That just
wouldn't sell. You wouldn't get public support. So let's dress it up, let's call it pro-choice. Rebellion
has become low
self-esteem. Oh, that's the problem for everything, isn't it?
Oh, no, the real problem is, your parents did something
wrong.
Amen? Man, that's
got all the bases covered.
Right there, 'Mon and Dad messed up and that's why
I'm the nerd I am today.' 'My parents, they dropped me.' 'My mother, when she was pregnant with me, burped
wrong, and I've never gotten over it.'
'You know the prenatal influence, well I've been taken
back into my mother's womb.'
I hear Christians getting into this [modern psychology]
garbage, regressing. Watch out, gang, don't get involved in counseling
that takes you back in your past.
That is wrong. It
is metaphysical, it's part of the whole New Age deal.
You don't have to go back.
Paul said, "Forgetting the things that are behind me,
I press on, I go on to the goal of the high calling of God
in Christ Jesus, I press toward that mark." I don't go
back and, 'Oh, let me see, it was in the delivery room.' 'Oh, it was the bright light in my eyes, that
was it! That's made
me the person I am today.'
Give me a break. And then I think the funniest of all is when
your kid is hyperactive. You
got to change all the labels nowadays, I got to be so careful
of what I say. Because we don't have hyperactive children anymore.
Did you know, there aren't any more hyperactive children
anymore, there isn't a hyperactive child to anyone who belongs
here. Did you know
that? They are attention-deficit children
[attention-deficit disorder].
Now if you have a child with attention-deficit, aren't
they hyperactive? But
I mean, it's like, give me a break.
Call sin by it's name, it's sin.
[There really are a few children who truly are hyperactive,
where proper treatment with a drug has made them normal.
But not the huge numbers of misdiagnosed ones by school
systems and state agencies who only want to drug "problem"
kids as a temporary fix to solving a far bigger discipline/child-rearing
problem they chose to ignore.] The story is told, that one day Frederick the
Great, King of Prussia visited a prison and talked to the
inmates, and as he interviewed each of the inmates, they began
to tell him these long drawn-out sorry-stories, endless tales
of how they were innocent, and their motives were misunderstood,
or a miscarriage of justice has taken place, or they were
the wrong person in the wrong place, at the wrong time-and
this was all a terrible miscarriage of justice.
Finally the king stopped at the cell of a convict who
remained silent. He didn't volunteer anything [like] 'Oh, your
majesty, I need to talk to you, it was my attorney that did
me in, he was in collusion with the other person' you know.
The king looked at this guy who hadn't said a word
yet, and says "Well, I suppose you're an innocent victim of
a miscarriage of justice too." And he said "No sir, I am not." "I'm guilty and I deserve my punishment." Turning to the warden the king said, "Hey!
Release this rascal before he corrupts all the fine
innocent people in this place." [laughter] It's
interesting, his release came when he admitted "I deserve
this". That's why
I just talked about sin. It
wasn't to rile you. It wasn't to make you mad at me. It wasn't to pick on you. It was to tell you, 'You've got to admit your
sin before you can be released from the bondage of that sin. Because you see, until you need a savior you
can't be saved. Until
you know you are in trouble, and you deserve it, that's when
Jesus Christ (Yeshua haMeshiach) is right there to pull you
out. But until then,
I tell you, you don't have a chance of being saved, until
you're ready to admit your sin, and call it sin in the sight
of God, and stop justifying it. The Bible says that while we were his enemies,
we were saved by the death of Christ.
Look at verse
8 "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to
God through the death of his Son." The kind of people God loves, believe it or not, are
his enemies--the people who might shake their fist at God,
the people who at one point in their lives would love to tear
God off his throne, they hate him so much--do you know God
loves you? God loves
you, you rebellious person.
God died for you. Think
of the crowd at the cross as Jesus (Yeshua) is hanging there
on cross. Think of it.
As he hangs there, there are people who have spit on
him, there are people who have beaten him, bludgeoned him
almost to death. There were people who had taken him by the beard
and yanked his beard out.
They hated him so much!
He hangs there as they mock him saying "You claim to
be the Son of God. Well if God takes delight in you, let him deliver
you." And Jesus
cries out "Father, forgive them, forgive them." God loves you.
During the Revolutionary War a pastor by
the name of Peter Miller--I bet you didn't get this in the
history class last year, you won't get it this year either--but
during the war, the Revolutionary War, Peter Miller, a pastor
in a little town, had been harassed for years by a guy who
didn't live too far from him.
This guy was a scoundrel, he was a creep. Today you might be able to get an order of protection
from the guy, but back then this man breathed out threats,
he did mean things, he constantly harassed Peter as well as
his congregation. If ever, ever Peter Miller had an enemy it was
this old man. One day
troops came to town, a big commotion, everybody went out to
the square to find out what's going on, and here was that
terrible creep of a man in shackles being led away.
"What's going on? What did he do?" He was accused of treason. He was arrested and he was to be tried. Word got to Peter Miller that this man had been
tried for treason. If
he were to be convicted, he would be hanged.
So he began to walk and walk and walk, sixty miles
he walked [that used to be considered a day's walk in those
days, how unhealthy we've become!] He walked until he got to the camp where General
George Washington was stationed.
He'd gotten there too late to see his enemy, he'd already
been taken away, they were getting ready to hang him.
Peter Miller began to use all his persuasive skills
to try to get General Washington to grant a pardon for the
man. After listening a long time, Washington told
him, "Pastor Miller" he said, "I'm sorry, even though I've
heard everything you can say, I just don't feel I should pardon
your friend." "My friend!?
Let's get one thing clear General, he is not my friend! Why,
he's the worst enemy that I have on the whole face of the
earth. He hates my
guts. For years he's been harassing me. Look, call him anything, but don't call him
my friend." Washington
said "What??? You walked
sixty miles, and you begged this hour for this man's pardon,
and he's not even your friend, he's your enemy??
Why that sheds a whole different light on this."
And Washington granted a pardon, gave it to Peter Miller.
Peter Miller quickly took it to the scaffold. He got there just as his enemy was walking up
the steps of the scaffold, the executioner there, you know,
hanging onto him, taking him up.
The crowd parted. Miller is saying "Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!" His old enemy looked down and he said "Oh Peter
Miller, you've come to see me die, this is your way of getting
revenge, you've got to have a front row seat huh?
Well you watch me die." And
then he saw Miller come up to the top of the platform and
hand the executioner a piece of paper, and he was told "You're
a free man. Peter Miller has just delivered your pardon." While we were enemies of God, he sent his son
to die for us. Not
while we were good, not while we'd reformed, not after we
got cleaned up and made presentable, but while we were his
enemies. Obviously,
this kid of love was based on something God saw in us, get
that through your head. Or
better, get it into your heart.
God's love for you, that sent him to die for you while
you were helpless, ungodly, an enemy, was not because he saw
anything good in you or lovable in you at all. God doesn't love you because you're lovable. He loves you because he is love. And he's chosen to bestow love on you. He's chosen to love you, and that's why he loves
you, not because you deserve it, not because you're lovely,
not because you're lovable.
He was not loving us in response to something to love
about us. I love my
child. We were in the
mountains the last few days.
Beautiful up there right now.
It is indescribably gorgeous in the fields around Flagstaff.
The yellow flowers.
If you were to paint it, someone would say "I think
you're a little off here" with all this yellow.
It's just spectacular. Anyway, we were going on this hike and I said,
'Come-on let's go to the top of the mountain.' Have you ever tried to haul two kids and an
arthritic wife up climbing the mountains.
Anyway it seemed to be a great idea until I started
smelling something. I
was holding Ellie in one of these packs where you can hold
them in front of you and you sort of support them on your
shoulder. And I thought,
you know, these animals are very active, we must be tromping
right through their bathroom.
Boy, I can't get away from that smell.
"Oh, gross, what's on my hand!?"
She had pooped right through her diaper [laughter],
and onto me! And we're
in the middle of a hike! And
there's no diapers and no wipies, and what am I going to do
with this kid!? My
wife can't carry her. (It crossed my mind. Here Honey.)
Twigs, leaves, what do you do?
I moved her to my back, and I stayed so the wind was
blowing like this. The point is, my love for her was not in response
to something to love about her.
I mean, I was going to keep carrying her. I'm her dad.
She's mine. And
I love her, even when she's that way.
When we were spiritually bankrupt, when we least deserved
God's love, that's when Christ died for us.
Christian assurance is all hinged on this point, gang.
You know, it seems like things get simpler and simpler
as we go together in the Word, and I think this is one of
those things that's really gotten simple. If you really believe God loves you unconditionally,
then you're going to be sure of your salvation.
Because, this is really important because if you think
that you somehow deserve God's love and favor, then you can
never really be sure that God will keep on loving you, because
some day he might see something in you that doesn't deserve
be loved, and he'll stop loving you.
Wow, I just read the most incredible story in the Moody
Monthly Magazine this month about a lady, she's now older,
she was writing of an experience when she was sixteen years
old. And she was a
beautiful young girl. She'd
always taken a lot of pride in her outward appearance and
this beautiful physical stature. The family always referred to her as Daddy's
sweet little beautiful girl, and she had a tremendous relationship
with her Dad all the time she was growing up.
Even when she was sixteen she still just loved her
Daddy. They had a special relationship. In fact just two weeks before the accident she
had won a contest. Her
Dad had been standing there with his arm around her shoulder,
so proud of her. 'Honey, you're so beautiful, I just love you.'
And then she had a terrible automobile accident.
All she remembers is seeing the car coming towards
her, she remembers like flying through the window and that's
it. She woke up in
the ambulance, her face burning.
She started to reach up and touch it, the attendant
said, "No, no, no, no, keep your hands down, lie quietly."
Went into the hospital.
For weeks she was in and out of consciousness.
When she was conscious she kept asking for a mirror.
"I want a mirror."
She could hardly talk, her lips felt like they were
huge. Her face felt
just so tight. And
she could hardly open her eyes, just little slits that she
could see a little bit of light through.
"I want a mirror! Dad, I want a mirror! Let me see a mirror!" And he says, "No!, honey, and for the last time,
I'm telling you, No." And
then she said some incredibly harsh words to him, she says,
"It must be because I'm so ugly now, and you don't love me
because I'm so ugly." And she said to this day she remembered perfectly
her Dad's response. He
just sunk down into the chair there in her room, put his face
in his hands and began to cry."
The next day, still set on getting a mirror (and you
know how clever 16-year-old's can be) she pretended like she
was taking a bath, had the curtains closed, and when the cleaning
person came into her room she said "Oh, you know, I've misplaced
my mirror. Could you
hand me that one out there please.
I'm finished my bath."
"Oh sure." And the hand went in-between the curtain, you
know, just an arm giving her the mirror.She took the mirror,
looked at herself, and her heart almost stopped.
She was so ugly, so hideous.
Still pieces of gravel in her face.
Still huge bruises. Her lips were swollen and cut and oozing.
But she was staring at that mirror and didn't even
hear her Dad walk in and said "Oh honey, let me have that."
And he had to pry her fingers one finger at a time
away from that mirror.
And the
rage and the anger just spewed force, and she said "Now I
see why you didn't want me to see, no wonder you don't love
me anymore, I'm so ugly." And he sat down on her bed and says, "Honey,
you are so wrong. Honey,
I've always loved you. I've
loved you in the beautiful times and the ugly times.
Remember when you were a little girl and I was potty
training you, I loved you then, it wasn't a pretty time.
Remember when you were older and sick and bent over
the toilet and I held your head?
You weren't very pretty then, but oh I loved you."
He said, "Honey, it's not what you are on the outside,
I love you because you're my child."
And then in probably the most tremendous demonstration
of love that I've ever read about, her bend down and he kissed
her broken, disfigured, bruisy lips.
There was no doubt in her heart, she says "I know you
love me, if you could kiss me in all my ugliness I know you
love me." When you were at your ugliest, Christ embraced
you. The picture here
in Romans 5 is ugly. When
you're at your worst Christ loves you.
He doesn't love you because he looks in and sees 'Oh,
some day you're going to do this, oh, some day you're going
to do that.' He loves
you because he's chosen to.
And that has tremendous repercussions in a life.
Because if you believe that, then you'll understand
that even when you get ugly again, he doesn't stop loving
you. Were you ugly
last week? Has your
life been disfigured and made gross by the sin in your life? Christ will accept you right where you are today.
Jesus said, "Whoever will come to me, I will never,
no, never cast them away." It's not a chance that brought you here today,
it was not coincidence, it was God.
He wanted you to hear how much he loves you. He wants you to know that nothing can separate
you from that love once you accept it from him. And you may turn ugly again. And precious Christian, you may be ugly right
now. But it does not
effect at all God's love for you, because that's not why he
loves you. He has chosen
to love you-that's why he loves you.
And that can never be changed.
He can't love you more than he loves you now, he won't
ever love you less. Some of you, because of the ugliness in your
life, you've been staying away from God.
Christians perhaps have been giving you the wrong idea
about God. Maybe you were raised in a church where you
got the impression that as long as you were lovely, you would
be loved. But now you're not, your life is far from lovely.
You've heard it for yourself. The kind of people God loves can be the ugliest.
I want to give you an opportunity to let God love you.
OK? I want to
give you an opportunity today to ask Jesus Christ into your
life, to accept his offer to love you.
Human love will fail you, you know it, it already has.
Today if you'll accept his gift of love, you will actually
be finding what you are looking for, you'll find your guilt
will be taken away. He
died on the cross to take away your sins. He was punished in your place. The emptiness in your heart, you've been trying
to stuff it with all kinds of things and you're still empty
inside, that will be filled because there's a Jesus shaped
vacuum in your life. And only he can fill it. And you won't have to fear death anymore.
The Bible says that men and women are held captive
through the fear of death all there lives. You don't have to fear death anymore..The Bible
says, 'Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be
saved.' If you believe in your heart that God raised
Jesus from the dead, and you'll confess that with your mouth,
you will be saved. You are the kind of person God loves. Now, pray with me, 'Lord Jesus, please come
into my life. I always
thought I was too ugly, Lord, for you to want to have anything
to do with me. I didn't know how much you love me. I'm so surprised. I need you so much. Please accept me, just like I am. Please forgive my sins and set me free. Take away my guilt. Kill the inside emptiness, Lord. I believe you died for me. And I believe you rose from the dead. I accept you as my Savior and my Lord right
now. Come into my life,
in Jesus name, Amen." [transcript by permission of Romans 5:6-8, by
Pastor J. Mark Martin, Calvary Community Church, P.O. Box
39607, Phoenix, AZ 85069.]
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