August 9

by Jim Hetherington

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31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, 11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe)

All right, that means it’s official. Kevin’s lit the candle. It’s on now.

It’s on. So I had to, you know, Aubrey jokes about the stool of repentance. I had to do that this morning.

I had to go up and confess that I didn’t send all the scripture verses in through the week. I was so proud of myself, getting everything ahead. Like three weeks ago, I got everything into the office.

And yesterday, when I was reviewing my notes, I realised that I put in Romans 8.31. I’m looking around going, where are the rest of those verses? There was supposed to be a dash to 39. And I realised that I didn’t do that. So I had to go up and confess that, you know, that we need to take that slide out.

So in looking back at it, it’s going to work out much better. Because I want to read, you know, I should have just said, that was the plan all along was just not to have it up on screen. But no, we’re going to have one up on screen that we’re going to read together.

But the other one I want to read is a story because I’m going to read it out of the message. How many have ever read the message version of the Bible? Yeah, it’s not one that you would want to read and do studies from and stuff like that. But it just expands and it just kind of creates the Bible and reads like a story, almost like a novel, if you will.

And so it’s really good. And I think this particular verse that we’re going to look at will be encouraging. Is that outside? Is that inside? Is that outside? Okay.

All of a sudden, I thought I was going to get run over by something. I thought, what are they doing to me? So let’s start with First Thessalonians chapter four, verses nine to 12. We’ll read this one together.

Now about your love for one another, you do not need to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia.

Yet we urge you brothers and sisters to do so more and more and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life. You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as you were told, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders. And so that you will not be dependent on anyone.

And if you were with us last week, we talked a little bit about that, about just how we’re to live such lives that those outside of us would look and say, wow, they really walk the talk, right? We know that old expression, walking the talk. Some people talk a good game, but they don’t show up with fruit. There’s no evidence that they’re really doing it.

Others talk the talk and they’re walking it, they’re doing it. And I challenged us to look at two questions that I’ve been reading through a book by Jeff Henderson, Know What You’re For, F-O-R. And in that there was two questions.

One was, what do you want to be known for? And what do others know you for? Right? So it’s both sides of the coin, because I, you know, it’s kind of like branding, right? An industry, a product can say all kinds of amazing things about themselves, right? You and I may say all kinds of amazing things about ourselves, but it’s what other people are saying that really counts. That’s brand, right? Like McDonald’s can say wonderful things about their burgers and how great they are and how fantastic they are and so on. But if nobody is saying the same thing, that’s not a brand.

That’s just them bragging, thinking they’re the best at something, right? So I challenged us to look at that, and especially as the church, we need to look at it and say, what do we want to be known for? You know, we’re in a strategic time right now with new leadership. We’re looking at new options, but we really need to look at what we want to be known for. And it’s a question that we need to look at personally.

I had a conversation with a friend just yesterday. I’ve known him for many, many years, and we were talking about this, and he said, well, what do you want to be known for? And so I shared with him what, you know, what I want to be known for. At my final days, at my eulogy, people getting up to say these are the things that I want them to say, and we started talking about it.

He said, can I tell you what I see? And so he took those two questions, right? And he threw it back at me, and he said, let me tell you what I think you’re for. And he started to share some of the most deepest complimentary things that anybody’s ever said to me. And I didn’t have to pay him for it.

I didn’t have to buy lunch. I didn’t have to do nothing for it. He just gave it to me.

But that, you know, it spoke volumes to me. But that’s what you want is what people are seeing from the outside looking in. We can think we’re self-righteous.

We can think we got it all together. We can think, you know, highly of ourselves, which is wonderful, but we need to walk it out in such a way that others are looking back and saying, I see that in you. And we can look through the history of the church, and it hasn’t always been the way, has it? Right? The church has stumbled and has, you know, kind of tripped up on some of the stuff and hasn’t got the best reputation on the outside.

And this is what Paul is encouraging Thessalonians with, is to live such good lives that those looking out, those non-believers, unbelievers, those unchurched, those on the outside are looking in going, there’s something different about them. Because when we look at the whole of scripture, what does the whole of scripture say? We should be known for our fruit, yes, love. We should be known for our love, the demonstration of love.

Right? Because that’s one of those things in culture that kind of weaves and goes up and down. Right? Somebody might love someone today and not love them tomorrow, and then love them the next day and not love them tomorrow. The problem is we can’t differentiate like and love.

We’re called to love, doesn’t mean we have to like everything that everybody does all the time. Right? That’s discipleship. That’s building relationship and speaking into that stuff.

But if we don’t have a relationship with them, if we don’t love them, we can’t speak into their lives. That’s called nagging. Nobody wants a nag.

Right? Nobody wants to hear unwanted criticism. Nobody wants to hear that stuff. It’s only in relationship that we can really speak into people’s lives.

So that’s loving consistently, which Paul is saying that you’re doing that well, continue to do it even more. Right? There’s no law, there’s no limit to the love that God will give us. There’s no law limit that we can walk out in love.

Is it a challenge? Absolutely. Right? I get cut off in traffic. I get butted in front of just the same, you know, and I want to lose my sanctity some days.

But, you know, we have to step back and say, do I need to be, you know, do I want to be known for that or do I want to be known for one that just expresses and shares love? So that’s what Paul is encouraging the church with. The Romans 8, I want to read and I want to hear it like a story. So I’m actually glad that it wasn’t up on the screen.

So in Romans 8, in the message, we read this. Well, let me give you a little backstory first. Paul is talking in Romans 8, 28, God can use all things together for good.

Right? We know all that stuff. So he’s talking to the believers and saying, look, we know that things are struggling. We know that there’s a challenge.

We know that stuff is going on. You’ve come a long way in your faith. You’ve come a long way in your journey.

And you may not have had all the words. You may not have had all the stuff together all the time, but the Holy Spirit has empowered you. The Holy Spirit has come along to speak and give you the words and give you the answers.

You know, it’s those moments when you have those conversations with somebody, you don’t know what to say. And then all of a sudden the words just come into your mind. They come into your mouth.

You go, where did that come from? Right? That’s the kind of stuff that Paul is talking about here. They’re witnessing the expression of the Holy Spirit. So in, in verse 31, he starts with this.

So he says, so what do you think with God on our side like this being with us, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even point a finger? The one who died for us, who was raised to life for us, is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There’s no way. Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in scripture.

The scripture says they, they kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We’re sitting ducks. They pick us off one by one, but none of this phases us because Jesus loved for us.

I’m absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable, absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our master has embraced us. Doesn’t that paint a great picture of how God stands up for us? How he’s with us? And I love that part where he talks about a wedge, right? We, we all know what a wedge is. Well, maybe you don’t.

I brought a couple with me just for for demonstration. Because you know me, I like to have visual aids. So this is a small wedge.

Seems tiny and innocent, doesn’t it? Doesn’t look like it do much. But this one particularly is designed to go in an axe head. So the axe handle goes into the head, the big large metal head, and at the top of the axe handle is a split.

And this is to go in there and is hammered down so it splits the top of the axe head, the handle rather, so that it holds the axe head from coming loose. Which is a good thing, right? You don’t know the, you know, the dynamics of an axe. It’s a good thing that it’s held in place.

But that’s the proper use of a wedge. Now you can take a bigger wedge and you could take a log, for example. I could take a log and take this and hammer it down into the log.

And this would slowly push down and begin to force that log apart. Just by hammering this down inside it would force it apart. That’s the idea of a wedge.

And so what Paul is painting a picture of is, is can anything wedge its way in there and cause division between God’s love for us? There’s a story. You know the enemy’s a schemer, likes to brag, likes to show off. The enemy had a museum and in this museum he displayed all the ways that he has caused man to falter and fall and sin and be broken and all that stuff.

And he was showing someone through this museum one time. And all the things were on display. Signs and all the different things that ways that he has caused people to trip up.

And at the end of this one corridor was this glass case with a couple of shining lights coming down on it. And the man turned the corner. He said, well, what’s that? And the devil says, oh, he says, that’s my prized possession.

He says, well, what is it? And he says, come with me. So they walked down and they stood in front of the case. And that’s what was inside of it.

He said, it’s a wedge. The guy says, well, what good can a wedge do? He says, oh, he says, I can take a wedge and I can put it between a husband and a wife and I can cause them to separate. I can take it and wedge it down in between the pews of a church, in between leadership in a church, and I can cause division.

I can set it down in between nations and cause division amongst nations with a small wedge. It was his prized possession. And so Paul is painting a real vivid picture here of how God’s love for us is so tight.

He’s so committed to us that nothing can wedge its way in between us, but that doesn’t stop the enemy from trying to wedge his way in to cause us to move away. God isn’t going to pull away from us regardless of what we do, regardless of how bad our week was, regardless of what we’re going through. God isn’t going to pull away from us.

It’s us that pull away from him. And the enemy works strategically, endlessly, tirelessly, trying to force a wedge between God’s people and what he truly has for you. And it’s amazing how this can come up.

Three days ago, I was at Shopper’s Drug Mart. Seems innocent enough, doesn’t it? I was purchasing just a few things and I gathered them and I walked up to the cash register. Well, there was no humans around anywhere.

So I looked and all there was was the self-checkout. So I started to proceed to the self-checkout and I put the first one up there and, you know, I looked at the thing that said start. So I hit start and then it said scan.

So I scanned my first thing and it went from red to green. So I thought that meant go. So I put it over into the part where the bags are.

Now I looked up at the screen to scan my next thing and it was asking me all kinds of things. Do you want to donate? Do you have an optimum card? Do you have all these other things? I go, no, no, no, no, no. Just let me finish my order.

So I went back and I scanned the next thing. So it went from red to green. I thought that was go.

So I put it over on the other side. I look back up and there’s all those prompts again. I go, what is going on? And so I went over and I put the third thing through.

The fourth thing had a coupon on it and I said, well, how am I going to scan that? There’s no barcode on it. How am I going to scan this? And it says, need cashier assistance. Great.

I need a human. So I started to walk around looking for a human after going through all this. Found a human.

This human couldn’t help me. So they found another human that could help me. They came up to the cash register.

And so we’re standing there and we grabbed this one. She entered in the little code, put that over. I grabbed the last item and put that over there.

But I noticed that the first one, even though it went from red to green, it didn’t show on the list. And I thought, oh, that one didn’t show up. This little voice popped up in my head and said, that’s okay.

Just let it go. I thought, where did that come from? I haven’t thought about ever taking that. I wasn’t trying to steal hair gel.

I was just like, where did that come from? I said, no. And I pulled it over and I said to the girl, I said, did this make the list? I said, I scanned it, but it didn’t show. She said, no, it’s not on there.

So I put it on there and finished it off. But that’s how the enemy wants to wedge its way in to our lives. Just small little things, right? Because when we think back at some of the things that we excuse, where’s that dividing line? Where is it okay? Is it okay to take a, you know, $9 hair gel, but it’s not okay to take a $90, you know, piece of jewellery? Is it okay to tell a little white lie, but it’s not okay to tell the bigger white lies? It’s okay to hold something back from a partner or a friend or a loved one, but it’s not okay to hold back other things.

Where’s the dividing line? And I’m not here today to try to, you know, talk about righteousness and being, you know, no, but it’s just deciding in ourselves, if we’ve allowed these wedges to come in, to pull us away from integrity, to pull us away from truth, to pull us away from what God really has for us. One of the things that I noticed is that as we go through these times where we’re looking at different things and these different things have, it gets a little bit more difficult to look at ourselves sometimes in the mirror. If we allow these little things to slide, like if I would allow that little $9 bottle of hair gel to slide, you know, at nighttime, when I was brushing my teeth, I would go, and you stole that $9 bottle of hair gel, right? I would be remembering, and I’m rehearsing that.

And so oftentimes, those are the wedges that come between us and our self-esteem, our self-confidence. We look at it and go, oh, well, God can’t really love me because I did take that $9 bottle of hair gel. I did say that about Susie.

I didn’t stand up for so-and-so, and I allowed that to come in. But spending time and just saying, look it, we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to be, you know, godly saints with our shiny halos going all the time, right? Because none of us can do that.

But we have to recognise what this scripture is really saying. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God. But yet, things come up in our lives, and sometimes we say, well, God can’t love me because this is happening, right? It goes back to the like and love thing.

Just because bad things are happening, just because unforeseen circumstances are happening in your life, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love you. It could be the process that God has taken to deepen that love. When we look at what the disciples went through, we look at what the early church went through, it wasn’t because God didn’t love them.

It was just because the outward circumstances were trying to destroy that love, were trying to sever that love, were trying to get in there to continue to pull it apart. But when we step back and we say, okay, is this really true? That’s where it really hits. We have to look at scripture and just say, is this truth? Is this true about me? Is this true about my situation? Is it really that simple that God’s love can’t be separated from me, even though I’m going through some crazy circumstances, crazy situations? One of the most challenging things that we’ll ever do, I think, is being able to look at ourselves in the mirror and say that we like ourselves, say that we have confidence in ourselves, say that we love ourselves, right? We can tell all kinds of people on the outside world.

We can tell people that we work with, tell people that we live with, tell people all around us that we love them, we support them, we care for them. But when we look at ourselves in the mirror, what do we see? We see the old stories, don’t we? We look at those times where we allowed things to slip. And sometimes it’s ourselves that talk us out of the love that God really has for us.

We allow those wedges to come in because of our past experiences, because of the past things that we’ve gone through. Rather than recognising that we have freedom to come and stand in His presence and ask for forgiveness. And He’s faithful and just to forgive us.

And that we can pick up and move on, knowing that anything that we’ve done, nothing that we’ve done, nothing that we’ve thought of can separate us from the love He has for us. He’s so deeply committed and so deeply woven to us that nothing can separate us. And I love that part, especially about the wedge.

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us in Christ’s love for us? We need to understand that nothing can. But we can give ourselves, we can cause ourselves not to accept it. When we think about some of the language and some of the terms and some of the things that we say to ourselves, we would be slapped if we said it to somebody else.

Right? Like, I’ve called myself stupid. I wouldn’t dare call anybody else stupid. But we use that kind of language with ourselves.

We can fall short in our attitudes towards ourselves. And that’s what causes that separation. What I want to do is I want to reread Romans 8, but I want to read it in a personal voice.

So rather than saying us, say me. Rather than saying them, say me. Make it personal.

And as we read this, I want you to really reflect and just say, does God’s love really exist that deep for me? We’ve heard this expression a number of times, likely, that, you know, if we were the only person on the planet, God still would have sent his son to redeem us. Right? We’ve heard those expressions. But it’s not until we start to personalise scripture that we can actually begin to get the picture.

So let’s reread it. And when I say let’s reread it, I mean let me reread it. And what I want you to do is just imagine that it’s you saying it to you.

And if it’s helpful, close your eyes. If you doze off, that’s okay. Somebody will wake you up.

But just close your eyes and just imagine those words and just let them wash over you. So if we read it in a personal way, it would be this. So what do you think? With God on your side like this, how can you lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for you, embracing my condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own son, is there nothing that he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for me? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even point a finger? The one who died for me, who was raised to life for me, is in the presence of God at this very moment, sticking up for me.

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between me and Christ’s love for me? There’s no way. Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in scripture. Scriptures that say they kill us in cold blood because they hate me.

I’m a sitting duck. They pick me off one by one. None of this fazes me because Jesus loved for me.

I’m absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable, absolutely nothing can get between me and God’s love because of the way that Jesus, my master, has embraced me. It takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it, when you begin to read it and say, me? But that’s how personal this passage is, that it’s meant for you and I to recognise that God’s love cannot be separated from the things that we do through the week, the things that we’ve done through the month, the things that we’ve done through our past, the things that we’ve done over and over and over again. We can beat ourselves up saying, why can’t I ever get this right? Why do I keep tripping over the same thing? You know, as Paul said, the very thing I don’t want to do, I end up doing.

Every time I turn around, that thing is there. Same as me at that checkout. I had never thought about stealing anything forever and all of a sudden it’s like, let that slide.

Just take that. It’s not your fault. I had another experience like that where we were travelling up north to go and see our son and daughter-in-law up there.

And we were at a town about eight, nine hours away. We stopped into the dollar store. And as usual, we’ve got into the dollar store and we’re looking for little things to take up for the girls, our granddaughters.

And we gathered a basket full of things. And as typical, we left all the recyclable, reusable bags out in the truck. Been there, done that.

Yeah, I know we all got a collection of a hundred of them at home and none of them seem to be where you want them to be. So the dollar store knows that these things are going to happen. So they keep stacks of them right beside the checkout.

And so we grabbed one and started to, we scanned it. Again, I thought it was scanned. And we started to put everything through.

We proceeded. And as we’re walking out, out of the mall with all of our goodies in our brand new purchased bag, I recognised that 99 cent bag did not get on the list. So what did Jim do? He didn’t just let it slide.

He said, I got to go back. I said, I took this bag. I said, I can’t.

Mary’s like, it’s okay. You know, they expect that. That’s why they put them.

No, they put them there with a scanner to scan through to pay for them. So I went out to the truck, emptied everything into the truck, took the bag back in and said to her, I said, this is what happened. I explained what happened.

She said, oh, I don’t know how to fix that. Nobody’s ever come back and said that they took a bag that didn’t pay for. So I have to scan the bag, charge you for the bag, then refund you for the bag.

I said, well, that’s a lot of work for 99 cents. And so she found, finished, found a way to get around it. And we were able to scan it and I could pay for them.

And off we went. The point is that those things are going to continue to come up. But if we remember that everything written in scripture was for us personally, that it takes on a whole new meaning as we go through it.

That it’s not something, a passage that we just read over lightly and just say, oh, that’s really cute. That’s really nice. That would be good to, you know, put on my list and work on that.

But no, it’s one of those things that we’re encouraged to continue to do, to continue to look at. So I want to encourage us through this week to continue to look at ways that you can not only personalise scriptures, you’re reading through scripture, put I, me, mine, put those words in there as you’re reading through scripture and allow it to take on a whole new meaning. But I want to encourage us not to be afraid to look in the mirror.

None of us is ever going to get it right. None of us is ever going to be perfect 100% of the time. As much as we try, as much as we want to put on that persona, we know that we’re going to slip.

We know we’re going to trip. We know we’re going to fall. We know we’re going to stumble.

We’re going to know we’re going to get back up again. But nothing that we do today, tomorrow, or in the future can separate us from the love that God has for us. No situation, no circumstance, no illness, no sickness, no obstacle, no challenge, no struggle, no struggle in a family, no struggle anywhere can separate us from the love that God has for us.

And as we step into understanding that and having confidence in that, it will change the whole dynamic of the situation. We look at some of the underground churches that are happening around the world, in Russia, in China, and other places, India. They’re thriving because they get it.

They get that the love that God has for them has nothing to do with the circumstances going on politically, economically, structurally, anything around them has nothing to do with that. But as a North American church, sometimes we forget about that. Sometimes we think, you know, if it’s too hot, oh, God doesn’t love us.

The carpet’s starting to fade in the kitchen. All right, God just doesn’t care about me anymore, right? We don’t have enough bank account at the end of the month. Oh, God just doesn’t love me anymore.

None of those things has anything to do with the love that he has for us. But we can allow them to be the wedge and the thing that separates us because the enemy would like nothing more than for you and I to sit back and say, see, told you, God doesn’t love me because my family’s falling apart. God doesn’t love me because I lost my job.

God doesn’t love me because this situation’s happening in our country. God doesn’t love me because XYZ. But recognising that that has nothing to do with the love that he has for us.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for reminders, just simple reminders that your love never fails. There’s nothing that can separate us from that love, even though some days we just don’t feel that love.

Sometimes we just don’t want to express that love. Nothing separates us. Nothing can separate us from the love that you have for us.

I ask that you would help that to register in each one of our hearts today.