What is the One Reality that Affirms Your Worthiness No Matter What?

That Saturday, it all started out so normal.   I slept in, like only a teenager can.  I sauntered down the stairs from my attic room to the kitchen, but nobody was there.   I looked in my sisters’ rooms. No one there either.   Now, I was beginning to get a little nervous.   I went down the stairs to the family room.   But every seat was empty.  

I feared the worst.   I feared that I had been left behind.  Do you know what I’m talking about?  Did you ever read the left behind novels by Tim LaHaye or saw the movie based on them?    Maybe you grew up in a church where everybody knew what those two terrifying words, left behind, meant.   Or you could be one of those folks who have no idea what those words mean at all.  

But lots of Christians believe that before God heals everything, seven years will come when everything gets really bad.   And what is the first sign of these years of tribulation?   It’s the rapture, where all the Christians get sort of beamed up to heaven, like in this picture.

   Or as the novels put it, Christians just disappear, only leaving their clothes behind.   That image by the way spawned all sorts of pics like this one.   

And that Saturday morning, as I wandered through my mysteriously empty house, that’s what I feared.   Somehow, Jesus had not found me worthy of rapture.   I had been left behind to face all the bad stuff that was about to happen.   What was it I wondered that caused me to miss the cut.  What lustful thought, what unkind deed, what disrespectful word had led to this?   But as full despair was about to hit, I was delivered.  I heard the garage door opening, the voices of my family filtering up the stairs.   I realized.  Jesus hadn’t left me behind.   No, my family had, to go on an errand.  

Now you may never have felt “left behind” anxiety.  I certainly hope not.   But have you ever worried about your worthiness in some way?   Have you ever feared that you weren’t good enough, if not for God then for one of the countless arbitrary standards that the world sets up for worthiness?   You didn’t make enough.  You weren’t thin enough or big enough.   You didn’t have the right stuff or the right relationships or the right job.   The list could go on and on.   Life can besiege you with doubts, doubts about yourself, doubts about your worthiness, your value, your future.    And the words you’re about to hear can do the same.  Yet, in these same words lies the way to freedom.   How can you know, no matter what the world might tell you otherwise, that you are worthy?   How can you live in that sort of confident self-assurance?  In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

I John 2:3-14

The world around you, around us, will give you all sorts of standards for worthiness.   If you look like this, then you’re worthy.   If you live here, you’re worthy.   If you earn this much money, then you’re worthy.   Yet all these standards are lies.  They only lead you into a very dark place.  But how do you stand against them?   How do you truly know your worth?   You live in the light, the light that again and again John talks about here.   

But when you look at the words we just read, they can make you nervous, especially that first sentence.   “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments.”

If we obey his commandments?   That’s the standard?   Then how can anyone be sure that they know God, that they are worthy?    Who obeys all of God’s commandments?  

But if you get caught by those questions, you are missing what God in John’s words is trying to tell you.   Do you know what command God delivers to people more than any other?  God tells them.   Do not fear.    In fact, often when a messenger from God appears, those are the first words the angel says.   Fear not.

So, if these words instill fear, then you are missing the point God is trying to make.   When it comes to God the knowing always comes first.   It’s the knowing that leads to the obeying.   And if the God you think you know instills in you fear, then you don’t really know God.   And however powerful that fear, it will never lead you to obedience. 

As I was coming to worship last week, I listened to a story on the radio about a Christian fundamentalist sect in England.    This group of folks had separated themselves from everyone outside their sect so they could be pure from any ungodliness.     And God help you, if they suspected as a member of the sect that you weren’t godly enough.   The leaders came and interrogated you, and then locked you up until you ‘fessed up to wherever you had fallen short.   But then the whole thing fell apart.   How?   The supreme leader, a man in his 70s, got caught in bed with the much younger wife of one of the leaders.   And 8,000 members of that sect left overnight.   They discovered what the writer Phillip Yancey put so well.  Legalism fails miserably at the one thing it is supposed to do; encourage obedience.

Fear doesn’t ever lead you to obey, at least not for any length of time.   But when you come to know God, really know God, it doesn’t fill you with fear.  It fills you with love.  And in that love, you obey. 

When I was growing up, reading the King James Bible, it always puzzled me.  When somebody had physical relations with their spouse, the strangest word appeared, like here in Genesis 4.   “Now Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Seth.”   But the translators of the King James had the word right.   The verb to know is the word that the Hebrews used for sexual intimacy, but only for intimacy in a marriage.  For sex anywhere else, they used a different word.

Why?  The Hebrews knew that when you come together with that level of commitment, that degree of love, it brings you to a depth of knowledge that nothing else can.   What do I mean?

Years ago, I remember talking to a close friend, who, over the years, had had many relationships.   But when she first came together physically with her husband, she cried.   And when he, concerned about this reaction, asked why.   She said.   “I’m crying because for the first time in my life, I know I am with someone who will not leave me, who will not walk away.”    In her husband’s act of love, my friend knew.  She knew her worth.  She knew her value in a way she had not before.

And like the Hebrews, the Greeks also used know in this same way.   So, when John talks about knowing God, he is talking about that level of loving intimacy, that level of loving commitment.   And when you know God loves you like that, it doesn’t bring you fear.  It frees you from it.   It frees you to love, to love like never before.    It takes you from darkness into light.

Now, how can you know God like that?   How can you know God with that level of intimacy?  It happens as you walk in this light that God brings.  And this light is bigger than just loving others.   Loving others just indicates that’s where you are living, in the light.  But walking in the light is far more than that.        

So what is this light that enables you to love others?   It’s the light of the gospel.  It’s knowing God’s love for you in Jesus.   That’s the light.  And the more you let that light shine into your life, the more God frees you from the darkness.   In that light, God will beam you up so to speak.  He will rapture you, but not in a way that takes you from the world.  He will deliver you in a way that enables you to see the world, to see yourself like never before.  As the Bible puts it, he will rescue you from darkness, and transfer you into the kingdom of his beloved Son, into light.

How does this rapture happen?  It happens as you see everything in your life through the reality of what God in Jesus did for you, as you see it through the gospel.    What does that look like?

Well, let’s take the example, John gives here, of loving your sister or brother.   That’s a nice idea, but how does it happen?  It happens when you see your brother or sister through the gospel. 

Last week, I went away to spend some time with my family.  Each year, we all live in the same house together on a beach in North Carolina.    And for the most part, we had a great time together as a family, but that doesn’t mean problems didn’t happen.   For example, in the kitchen that we all shared, we had a shelf in the refrigerator mainly for our son, Patrick’s food.  But on the last day, as we were preparing to leave, I went up to that shared kitchen to get my son some breakfast.  But I found nothing there.  I asked a member of the family what had happened, and she said that she had thrown it all away.   She didn’t apologize for that.  She just said the refrigerator needed to be clear, and so she had done it, throwing out our breakfast stuff, the sandwiches we had prepared for the road, everything.  As I was rummaging through the garbage can to retrieve a few things so my son could have breakfast, let me tell you.  I was not a happy camper.   And I carried my anger and resentment all the way home.   But then, last Sunday, I preached on this passage.   And I realized.   No way could I hold my grudge.   Why?  

Because, if you are seeing anyone through the gospel, you can’t.  It’s impossible.  What if God had held a grudge against you or me?  God certainly could have.   Where would we be?  But what did God do instead.  God loved you.  In Jesus, God loved you so much that though he was powerful, he lost all power so you might be free.  He who was invulnerable, became vulnerable for you.  He who lived in the glorious light, entered into infinite darkness for you.  And why?  He loved you.   And when you realize that it puts all your grievances in a whole different light.   The resentment fades, the anger, the hate.   After all, you know you had done worse to God than throw out some milk and fruit, but God didn’t turn away from you.  No, he reached out to love you, to love you more than you can ever even grasp. 

And this same light works for everything in your life.  Let’s say it’s not someone else you’re hating.  It’s yourself.   Maybe you hate yourself for some failing in your life, some place you let others down or yourself.    But whatever the failing, if you hate yourself because of it, you’re not believing the gospel.   You are saying to yourself.   This failure shows that I am not worthy, that I am a failure.   But your actions aren’t the proof of your worthiness.   Jesus is the proof of your worthiness.  And Jesus values you so much that he gave up everything for you.   Now, once you realize that, that failure may still hurt, but it will stop defining your life.   Healing will start to happen.   Why?   It’s because you are walking in the light.   You are seeing the only reality that determines your worth, God’s infinite, inexpressible love for you.

And the more you walk in the light of that love, of that grace, the more the love and grace of that God will penetrate you, like a beam of light shining into your darkness.   And in that light, you will know your sins are forgiven on account of his name.  You will know that in Jesus, you have conquered the evil one.  You will know the Father, because you now grasp that you are his beloved child.   And in that knowledge, you will grow strong, as God’s word lives in you.  And you will know that in that love, there is nothing that you cannot overcome.