A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a news article
about three kids who were struck
and killed by a car while they were trying to get
onto their school bus in Indiana.
The driver didn't
do it maliciously.
She made a huge mistake.
She was actually a children's ministry director at a local church.
My friend asked me,
"How do the parents of the children move on from that?
How does the driver move on from that?"
That's a tough question.
Truthfully,
I think of t
he fact that God
certainly knew that it was happening.
God is not to blame for anything
evil but he did allow it to happen.
I think of my sister, Erika,
who was killed by a drunk driver while she was in college.
I was a high schooler at the time.
That was tough to go through.
I mean, that was my big sister.
But, throughout the years,
a passage has given me a lot of comfort.
From Isaiah, chapter 57.
It says this,
And that's an important thing to remember at times like these.
My number one goal as a Christian parent
is for my children to be in heaven.
Period.
This passage says that sometimes
God actually takes
his children home "early" in our eyes
to make sure that that happens.
Take my sister.
Maybe God was guarding her from something awful
that was going to happen in her life.
Maybe God knew that there was
going to be something that would rob her of her faith
and so he took her before that could happen,
to make sure that she made it to heaven.
The truth is, I can't
tell you why God allows certain things to happen
in every circumstance.
We simply need to trust him.
But what we do know is this.
God cares about each of his children.
What we do know is this.
God loves each one of us.
What we do know is this.
God is in control of the evil and he works it for our good.
So, how do the parents move on?
They cry.
They pray.
Knowing that the God who hears them
can also sympathize with them.
God knows what it's like to lose a child, too.
They surround themselves with their Christian family
who will wrap them up in their love
and encourage them and help carry their burden.
They wait patiently for the Lord's deliverance.
Even if that deliverance
doesn't come until they see their loved ones again in heaven.
How does the driver move on?
Well, in much the same way.
She cries.
She prays.
Knowing that she prays to a God who says that
because of Jesus' sacrifice for her,
he doesn't remember her sins.
She needs to hear again and again
what God says about her in his Word.
"You are my child whom I love.
"With you I am well pleased."
And finally,
for all involved, we need to unleash the powerful Word of God.
Which we know will not return to him empty
but will accomplish the purpose for which he sent it.
Pray with me now,
for all of those who are experiencing darkness
in this world.
Dear Jesus,
for all who are suffering loss,
we ask you to fill them with the joy you alone can give.
Remind them of your love.
Remind them of your plan to bring your children home to heaven.
Use us to bring them comfort in their darkness.
Amen.
How do we answer the darkness of this world?
On a Wednesday night in November,
a 28-year-old man,
a gunman, walked into Thousand Oaks, California,
into the Borderline bar on college night filled with people.
He ended 12 lives before taking his own.
Unfortunately, that's nothing new.
In this country alone, there's an average of one mass shooting per day.
It's a sad illustration of the Bible's
comparison between
grass and the fragility of human lives.
Our lives are like grass.
You mow your lawn one day
and the grass clippings in the driveway are green.
The next day they're brown.
We are like grass.
But we're not grass.
There is something good and Godly about
the anger over something like the Thousand Oaks shooting.
Because God is angry.
But it's not just with mass shooters
that God is angry.
This is what Moses says in Psalm 90.
He says,
I mean, just think of it.
If only we knew how angry God was
when you clicked that website
that made someone's daughter, God's daughter,
do unspeakable things.
If only we knew God's anger.
Because he sees the tears that your high school friend still cries.
If only we knew God's anger.
Over the people who,
who heard the hurt and the pain and the rage of that shooter.
But said nothing.
Your wrath is
as great as the fear that is due you.
Just try to picture that.
Add up all of the,
all of the praise and worship and song that our world
owes to a God for his perfect love.
Could you count it all up?
His anger
is no less.
That's terrifying.
I don't know what to do with that.
But here's what God does.
Moses goes on to say this.
He says,
His answer is that he loves us.
Some people with ask,
you know, "Where is God when evil things are happening in the world?"
Well, God has an answer for that.
His name is Jesus.
In Jesus, God becomes us.
As true God, Jesus has no beginning and no end
and yet he chose to take a beginning
by being in the womb of a virgin named Mary.
That Jesus looked
at this world of suffering
and he wanted to be near us.
He saw our hurt
and he wanted to take it away.
That's compassion.
And he knew the only way he could do that
was to suffer and die on a cross for our sins.
The righteous one
suffered for your unrighteousness and mine.
That Jesus was judged guilty
so that you would be judged innocent.
And as hard as it is
and as much as it breaks our hearts and God's,
God allows sinful people
to do sinful things all the way up until the day
when he comes again.
Because he wants us to hear about our forgiveness
and live.
That's God's answer to the darkness.
Let's pray.
Dear Jesus,
Teach us your anger over sin.
But also your unfailing love by taking it away.
Use us to reflect that love in a dark world.
Amen.
How do you get to know someone?
By staring at their picture and memorizing their name?
No. You use words, right?
You have a conversation
and then you feel comfortable saying, "You know what?
"I know them."
Well, how do we get to know God?
The Apostle John, in the Gospel of John,
calls Jesus "The Word of God".
We get to know God the same way.
He says something profound in such simple words.
He says,
So, if you want to know God,
if you want to know how God feels about you,
then just look at Jesus.
And maybe you're thinking, "Well, I know all that already."
But, do we?
What is the first question we ask when something bad,
when something dark happens in our lives?
"Well, if God loves me then
"how can he be letting me go through this?
"Why would he put me through this?"
We want to come up with this
logical, rational
reason for how a loving God
could allow something bad to happen to us.
And the truth is, I can't give you that reason.
I don't know why.
I can't give you a logical reason
why losing your job
and having to max out your credit
is God showing his love to you.
I can't give you a logical reason
for why your child was born with
that particular set of difficulties.
And how that's evidence of God's love for you.
I can't give you a logical argument
how God is showing his,
his eternal love to you
when you get in a car accident.
Or when a loved one dies too soon.
Or if you're struggling with a mental disorder.
Or if your kid just doesn't get potty training.
But we still try.
We want to come up with this logical reason
why God is allowing this to happen.
And, sadly, when we go down that path,
the only conclusion we can come to
is a bumper sticker I saw recently
that said,
"God is not dead. He just doesn't want to get involved."
The truth is this.
We do not get to know God through logical, human reasoning.
We only get to know God
through Jesus.
And that's the cool thing about how
John talks about Jesus
in his Gospel. He calls him "The Word".
The Greek word for that is "logos".
It's where we get our word "logical" from.
Do you see the point?
If you want to get to know God,
it doesn't come through human logic.
It comes through Jesus.
Jesus is the logic of God.
You want to know God loves you.
Well, God doesn't give you a logical argument.
He gives you a person.
If you want to know how God feels about you,
if you want to know if God loves you, then
then take a look in the manger and see
the hand that flung the stars into the sky
gripping the finger of his mother, Mary.
Just look at the cross.
It doesn't come through logical reason.
It comes in his moaning and his sighing and his groaning and in his dying.
I can't tell you why something happened to you.
But I can give you the reason it's not.
It's not because God doesn't care about you.
My problem is not that I can't figure out the why.
It's oftentimes that I'm not looking at Jesus enough.
If you want to know God,
just look at Jesus.
Then you'll see God's logic in the darkness.
This week we're looking for light in the darkness.
Yesterday, we heard the apostle John
call Jesus, "The Word of God".
He goes on to say,
So John takes us all the way back to creation.
Actually, he takes us to before creation.
Go ten billion light years from here
to a place so far away that the Hubble will never
see it because it's just too far.
You're going to see all these stars
and planets and solar systems
that no one will ever see.
Jesus made all that.
That's how powerful he is.
This is mind blowing.
The Word became flesh.
Soft as a baby.
The Almighty became weak.
The omnipresent became tiny.
The immortal became kill-able.
Not only is that beyond my comprehension.
But it also doesn't seem like a very good battle plan, does it?
I mean, you look at all of the evil that is in this world.
I think of the Las Vegas massacre
that robbed 59 people of their lives
and injured hundreds more.
There are Ebola epidemics,
mall shootings,
the threat of ISIS - so much darkness.
Wouldn't it be better if Jesus came in
with guns blazing?
Well, John explains.
He says here,
You see the real problem with our world
is not the guns and the
bombs and the terrorists.
The real problem is the darkness.
Taking out evil doesn't really accomplish anything.
It just, evil will just come back in another form.
You take out the Taliban and what happens?
ISIS comes back in its place.
You outlaw prostitution
and the evil comes back in the form of pornography on the internet.
Eliminating evil is not the answer.
Eliminating darkness is the answer.
Ripping the darkness out of people's hearts
that make them do the evil things.
It's where Jesus says evil comes from.
From inside of the heart.
And, in case you missed it, he's talking about your heart and mine.
If Jesus came back with guns blazing, there'd be nothing.
And no one left.
And so Jesus came.
Not
to be crowned.
But to be crushed.
He came,
not to,
not to be served.
But to serve.
He came,
not to put evil-doers in the grave.
But to put evil, itself, in the grave.
Which is exactly what he did
by suffering and bleeding and dying on a cross
outside of Jerusalem.
Jesus did not come, in might, to be served.
But he came in weakness to serve you
by taking care of your greatest problem.
The darkness inside of you.
You see, that's what happens when light hits darkness.
The darkness can't exist.
When the light of Jesus,
shined in your heart, when he worked faith in your heart,
your sin had no choice but to be forgiven.
Forgiven,
forgotten,
forever.
That's what happens
when light hits darkness.
The darkness is destroyed.
Today is the last day that we're considering the light
in the darkness of a broken world.
Open up to Psalm 90.
It is the one psalm written by Moses in the book of Psalms.
In it, Moses is honest
about God's anger over sin and the wickedness of man.
He's also honest about God's compassion
for sinners and his unfailing love.
Moses would know.
Moses got to see God.
Moses was given, by God, the first prophesies to record
about the coming Savior.
But God also showed Moses something else.
He showed him the day that he was going to die.
You see, Moses had led the people of Israel
for 40 years in the desert
and they had come right up to the point
of getting into the Promised Land.
They were right at the border.
And God told Moses that he wasn't going to be the one
to lead his people into the Promised Land.
Instead, it was time for him to go to Heaven.
So, Moses said goodbye to his people
that he loved and had guided as his own children
in the desert for those 40 years.
And then he went to die.
But before he died,
God did something awesome for him.
He took him up onto a top of a mountain
that overlooked the Promised Land, called Mount Nebo.
And there he showed Moses everything
that he was going to give to his people through Moses' work.
Through all those years, marked with pain and sin and death.
And as he looked, he saw the Promised Land.
A land flowing with milk and honey.
He saw the streams and the rivers.
He saw the fields and the flocks.
He saw the very place where God would bring
the Savior of the world forth for his people.
For you and for me.
He saw his whole life's work
was going to mean something.
And as Moses closed his eyes in death,
he knew that what he did in this life, it mattered.
Well, sit with Moses
on the top of Mount Nebo for a moment.
And listen to him as he prays.
He says,
Unless Judgment Day comes first,
you're going to die.
So am I.
The houses that we've built,
may come down.
The bank accounts that we've filled to the top
may bottom out.
And, you know what?
That's okay, because
eternity with Jesus is better than anything we have here.
You know, I've had the privilege of spending
a lot of time with people who knew they were dying.
But who knew their Savior and knew that they were going to heaven.
For as much as we talk about
some of these topics now,
when I'm talking to them,
they don't talk much about
how nice their houses are and how they love them.
And they don't talk much about
how their bank accounts are doing well
or the great vacations that they took.
No, instead they talk
about the joy that they have
that they're going to be in heaven with their loved ones.
See what really matters in your life.
See what makes your life really matter.
See your children telling their children
about the love of their Savior.
See the house of worship that
you supported with your prayers and offerings
filled with people who've never met and will never know.
But who are all there
and who are all fellow saints because of the work that God has given
us to do as his church, as his people.
See the last day.
When God will gather all his saints together
into the true Promised Land.
See that,
and you'll see God's compassion.
See that,
and you'll see what lies
beyond the darkness.