We’ll be reading from the book of Romans, chapter 5.

But, you know, I hope you had a good week. This is Valentine’s week.

For what good that does.

We get to eat out. We get to eat chocolate. Chocolate is from the Lord. The Lord would have us to have chocolate. I tell people all the time, I say, I believe the tree of life in the Garden of Eden was a cocoa bean tree. Or either a coffee bean tree. I’m not sure which one. But people look at me like, no, it wasn’t. I say, well, prove me wrong. Ha, ha, you can’t prove me. You can’t prove either way. But this is my story and I’m sticking to it. But Valentine’s Day. You remember the little chalk hearts that you got?

You know, in school, you know, be mine, my beloved and all that. I always wanted to be smooth, you know, and be my beloved. But I always came out. Like Ernest T. Bass on Andy Griffin. Would you be my beloved? So I never really got the smooth part down. Never really was smooth in that way. But, you know, it is good to have times where we do show each other a little extra love and a little extra appreciation.

And, you know, for my wife, it’s furniture and appliances, not chocolates and things of that nature. So, anyway, whatever you enjoy. All right. I’ll give you any time to turn to Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. And Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. I want to talk to you a little bit about God’s love. In particular, God’s accepting love. Because it is wonderful to be accepted by God and to understand that He accepts us even though we are not acceptable in our own selves.

But the fact is, God does accept us. So will you be putting that on the screen or I need to read? Word for word out of the Scripture here. I can do either one. I didn’t know. I just realized I didn’t give you that passage ahead of time.

Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. That’s okay. I can read. I’ll just… Huh? Yeah, I can read. I can read. I practice this. Romans 5, 6 through 8.

There we go.

For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ… Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps a good person, one would dare even to die.

But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Isn’t that a wonderful passage? To know that He died for us even though we were not deserving. Have you ever been afraid that maybe God wouldn’t accept you? I think we all have probably reached that point of wondering, at times, whether it was our first time we ever prayed or whether it was after a difficult situation. But, you know, really think about it for just a moment. Many times people turn away from an encounter with God because they don’t feel that He will accept them. Now, the thing is, we know our hearts. And the problem is, God knows our hearts too. God knows the very thoughts and intents of our heart. And sometimes when we go to God in prayer, we are not really aware of the fact until we start to pray that all of those thoughts, and the intents, and all of those things in our mind are going to come flooding back in. And that’s the reason a lot of people don’t want to pray is because they don’t really want to confront that. They don’t want to deal with that. And all of our imperfection and even sin and other things that we regret, we find that talking to God about our inadequacies and our sin is not really exactly all that comfortable. And many times people feel that God may reject them. But I want you to know that if we have a humble spirit, if we come to God in humility, God will hear us. Even if what we have to say is not something that we can feel good about it, God says, come and pray. He calls us to come to Him and calls us to ask and to seek and to knock, to persistently come to Him in prayer. And it’s not about whether or not we’re worthy to pray. People say, well, I don’t feel worthy to pray. I say, well, we’re really not worthy to pray. We don’t pray and talk to God because we’re worthy. We pray and talk to God because He’s worthy. And we are in need of His divine help and divine intervention. So a lot of times when we think about the voice of God calling us to prayer and, you know, we may get a little uncomfortable. We may think, well, I’m definitely going to repent before this prayer is going to be answered. But the fact is, God is willing to hear our prayers and willing to grant forgiveness and grace for help in our time of need. Because it’s not like God’s under some kind of misunderstanding or some kind of false impression. It’s not like God’s under some kind of false impression that we’re perfect. You know, I tell people a lot of times, you know, they talk about, well, you know, God, this and that. I said, you know, you’ll never see any instance in the Bible where God is sitting on the throne and He says, oh my, or oh me. And, you know, in that situation, I can’t believe they did that. I can’t believe they thought that. He knows us. And He’s understanding that we are weak and we have our failings, but come to God anyway. In His book, A Gentle Thunder, Max Cicado writes, God will whisper. He will say, He will shout. He will touch. He will tug. He will take away our burdens. He’ll even take away our blessings. If there is a thousand steps between us and Him, He will take all but one. But He will leave that final one for us. The choice is ours. Please understand, His goal is not to make you happy. His goal is to make you His. His goal is not to get you what you want. It is to get you what you need. God has what you and I have need of today. God has what you and I have need of today. And it is a relationship with Jesus Christ that is going to help us through all of our troubles and through all of our trials and through all of our adversities. Good days, bad days, happy times, sad times. It is knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior that gets us through those things. And He’s not going to turn us away. He’s not going to push us away. Think about it this way. God gave His only begotten Son to die on a cross. He’s not going to nail you on a technicality when you come to God in prayer and say, well, you know, He’s not like people. God is not like human beings that you’ve known. He’s not like ministers maybe that you’ve known. He’s not like parents maybe you’ve known. God is understanding and forgiving even though He calls us to a life of righteousness and holiness. And so in our text, we talked about, we just read to you, the text kind of reveals the depth of God’s willingness to reach out to humanity. And I want you to see when you read that passage of Scripture just how much, just how far God is willing to go to be able to reach out to us. And so let’s look here at several undeniable assurances in God’s Word starting with verse 6. And the message of verse 6 kind of sets the tone for it all. When it says in verse 6 that basically Christ died for us when we were powerless. He died for us when we were powerless. We had nothing to offer God. We had no power, no ability to save ourselves, no ability to save us. We had no ability to change anything. Basically we’re just dead in the water as they might say. And we’re without any kind of ability to persuade God and yet God died for us. Christ died for us then. You see Christ loves us in spite of our weakness. Not weaknesses, but weakness. It is not our weaknesses because some people say, well I have certain weaknesses but I have some strengths as well. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the business world you’ve seen them do that SWOT analysis. They use the S-W-O-T. It’s strength weakness. Weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And you kind of do these SWOT analysis and it’s supposed to help you understand how to maximize your ability and your talent and understand how to overcome things and so forth. Well what he wants us to understand is we don’t have strengths. We have weakness. We have weaknesses. It’s compared to God. God has all power, all ability, all everything and we’re just there. And we have weakness. So don’t think about my weakness. Think about he died for us in our weakness. It’s not that we have a few things that we need to work on. We need God to save us. I’ve heard people for years and years, well yeah pastor, I know I need to turn over a new leaf. You can rake the whole yard. It’s not going to make you a better person.

It’s not about turning over a new leaf. Well yeah, I know I need to do better. No, you don’t need to do better. You need to get saved. You need to turn your heart over to God because we have weaknesses. Weaknesses must be dealt with. Theologian Stuart Briscoe explains it this way. He says, We lack the power to live as we ought even though we may have the power to live as we wish. Our standards are so low. We lack the attitude and reverence and holy awe which a correct understanding of God’s person requires and demands. And we lack the capability to hit the mark or achieve the divine expectations. We’re just lacking in everything. We can live like we want to live but we have problems living like we ought to live. I can do what I want. I’m grown. My kids have gone off to college. Me and my wife are empty nesters now.

I’m a rebel without a clue. Without a cause. You finally get to a point in life where I can do what I want to do. Well, it turns out I just want to go home and sit down. You know. But it’s true. It’s just one of those things that we oftentimes get through in places in our life. We can do what we want to do. But can we live as God wants us to live? You see, Christ has met our greatest need. And that greatest need is to address our weakness, our sin. Christ did that for us through His death. In Galatians chapter 4 verses 4 and 5 it says, When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Verse 6 of our text says, In due time Christ died for the ungodly. The New Revised Standard says, At the right time Christ died for the ungodly. What is meant by the right time? He’s speaking about the time of greatest need. When nothing but His death, Christ’s death on the cross, would help. That’s the right time. When humanity was going down for the last time, at the right time, the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 1, in times past, I’m paraphrasing, he said God spoke in times past in various ways, through the angels, through the prophets, through all of these different means. But in these last days, He has spoken to us through His Son, who is Jesus Christ, who is the final word, for humanity. In other words, when God tried miracles, He tried signs and wonders and prophets and fire coming down from the heaven, He tried all kinds of ways, Mount Sinai, the earth quaked, and the mountains seemed to smoke as if it was on fire, and Moses came down with the commandments. God is trying to say, this is who I am. I’m trying to reveal something to you. And when He said, okay, I’m going to send one final message, and I’m going to send the perfect message, it was embodied in Jesus Christ. So if you want to know something about God, look at Jesus Christ. If you want to know about His love, His mercy, His justice, His wrath, if you want to know about anything about God, look at Jesus Christ. He is God’s final and perfect revelation to humanity about Himself. And in that revelation, it says that He came to save us from our sins. Not to help us do better, not to turn over new leaves, not to be, you know, to actualize our potential, and reach our fullest, you know, potential and all of these things, and to really evolve. No, no, no, no. He came to save us from our sin that we might be redeemed, that we might be able to live with Him in eternity. You see, Christ came into this world to be with us, like us, so that we could leave this world to be with Him in the future, you know. And so there is hope, the hope of glory, but there is also the hope of what Christ does in a person’s life. Right now, and the power that He brings to make it through difficult times without despair and without hopelessness, and without wanting to give up, we have Him that we can turn to. We can trust in Jesus Christ because He is all-sufficient. He goes beyond. His power goes beyond all of our limitations and all the limitations of others. If you have no one else and you have Jesus Christ, you have everything that you have need of. If we have no righteousness, but we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we have all that we have need of. Amen. If we have no one’s forgiveness, but we have the forgiveness that comes through Jesus Christ, then we have what we have need of. Amen. He is all and all. He is sufficient in every way. Amen. And therefore, that’s why we look to Him and His accepting love. And you have to understand, we need to understand the holiness of God, the righteousness of God. But we need to understand that God embraces us because He loves us. I never really understood a lot of things theologically until I had children. And it’s not that they brought any real answers with them. They brought a lot of questions and bills. But the thing is,

I never understood how God saw us as a father sees his children until I was a father and I saw my children. And I realized that even though my children did wrong, I was willing to embrace them. Even though my children did wrong, even though my children frustrated me to no end and made me crazy. See, I used to be sane before I had children, you know. And now through many years of psychotherapy, I am almost functional. But the thing is, you know, when it comes to that, no matter what they do, they’re my children.

They’re my girls. Even though they have done these things and that have frustrated me at times, irritated, annoyed me, even disappointed me at times, they are my girls. Don’t mess with my girls. They’re my babies. Now, they’re grown, but they’re my babies. They’ll always be my babies. I’ll be 80 years old, and they’ll be grown, and they’ll have grandchildren of their own, and they’ll be my babies. Come here, baby. And everybody will come. Like, no, no, that baby. The first baby. That’s my baby. And, you know, and I understood that God sees us in all of our imperfections and says, you know what? I love you anyway. Because you’re mine. You’re mine. You’re my child. And see, that’s why we have the assurance that God accepts us when we come to Him. Look in verse 7. Christ died for us when we were meritless. You see, man’s effort or humanity’s effort to be righteous has left us completely without redeeming value.

You understand what I just said? Our effort to be righteous has completely left us without redeeming value. Because the more we try to be righteous, the more we expose our weakness. The more we expect, expose our inadequacies. We have a problem with the truth of our own worthiness because we have a problem with our value system. The fact is that humanity has never been able to merit redemption. That kind of offends our system, our value system. We see ourselves as a righteous person, the righteous person, the good person, the person that somebody should die for. Somebody should die for me. I’m a good person. Listen. What we must understand is the nature of God’s value system. It is not that humanity is incapable of doing good. It is that humanity is incapable of being truly good apart from God.

You see, we have to come to grips with our own ability for evil.

Paul said, I know that in Christ, I know that without Christ, in me dwells no good thing.

He’s saying, I know that apart from Jesus Christ, there’s nothing good in me. And that offends, that offends a lot of people. And I’ve tried to talk to people about this. We have to understand, I have the capacity for great evil.

Oh, Brother Mark, you’re just, you’re a nice fella. I don’t care if I’m a nice fella. I need, I understand I have the capacity for evil. Without Jesus Christ, I could have been Charles Manson.

Apart from Jesus Christ, I could be sitting on death row. Apart from Jesus Christ, I could have injured many people, harmed many, done many horrible things, in my life. And unless Christ stays central to my heart, I know that in me dwells no good thing. I have no righteousness of my own. Now, before I got saved, I wasn’t a mean person. Just don’t cross me. Anybody who knows, you know, just don’t cross me. Because then I’m going to try to kill you. Okay? But I got saved, you know? And so, that helped a whole lot. And a lot of people are more safe because of that over the years. But the thing is, you know, I understand that if I were not a Christian person, I just don’t have any confidence in my ability to be a good person apart from Jesus Christ. And people are like, oh, I know, you just, you know. No, you don’t get it. And we need to understand is what I tell some people. You need to understand we have a capacity to do harm in this world. That’s why we need Jesus Christ. We are meritless. We are without merit. And when we see ourselves as that, we’re not putting ourselves down. We’re not destroying our self-esteem. We’re exalting Him and saying, you know what? He loves me enough that He died for me. Amen? That’s the wonderful truth there. Why then would Christ die for someone who failed to merit redemption? If I’m not worth saving, why would He die to save me?

Christ died for us because He loved us. Not because we were worthy. It’s called grace. Unmerited favor. He loved us giving, He loved us without us giving Him a cause or a reason. Now that’s a little hard. Don’t raise your hand, but how many people do you just love and they’ve never given you a reason?

Yeah, I have a problem with that too.

I have to have Jesus to help me, you know. I can care and I can try to love, but when nobody gives me a reason, okay, if there’s just a stranger, I love the person on the mission field. Oh, look at the wonderful missionary pictures. Isn’t that sweet? I just love them people. People don’t know who they are, but I care about them. All right? That’s a good thing. But it’s the person who will not treat me right no matter what that I have a biggest problem with loving. And God knows that. But see, even when we didn’t treat God right, even when we rebelled against God, even when we were sent, even then God said, I love them. We gave Him no reason. Humanity gave God no reason to redeem us.

Other than we were His redemption and we really couldn’t even appeal to that because we kind of ruined that from the Garden of Eden on. We kind of messed everything up. You know? But He said, you’re mine. You’re my creation. I love you. Let me read you what I had in seminary. This theologian I studied under was able to read and listen to him and his stuff. But Hollis Galls wrote this. He said, Paul’s emphasis is that while we continue our impious ways, Christ died on behalf of us. This is contrary to all human expectations. Even the sacrifices in the Old Testament assume that the sacrifice is less valuable than the person for whom the sacrifice is offered. It was better, in other words, for a lamb to be slain than for the firstborn son to be slain. So the Passover was born, Exodus 12. Very rarely will someone die for a righteous person, but a good man, someone dared to die, as the scripture points out. Paul, Paul’s point here is that such a thing might happen in men’s value system, although it is extremely rare, but Christ died for unworthy and helpless men.

The sacrifice was more valuable than the person being sacrificed for. So it changed everything and everything in the kingdom of God is always turned upside down. The least become greatest. The humble are exalted. The last become first.

God changes everything and that’s why we have to understand that we were meritless, but God died for us. Christ died for us just the same. Look at verse 8 here. Christ died for us when we were helpless.

Verse 8 begins, but God demonstrates His own love toward us. I don’t like being helpless. As you get older, you realize I’m not always going to be as strong as I used to be. You know, I remember, you know, it didn’t seem like it was that long ago. You know, that, you know, you see a 50-pound bag or something. You’re like, I grabbed that and throw it over my shoulder. Now I look at it and go, hmm, all right, lift with your legs.

Is there something I can roll it on? You know? Amen. You know, I grew up cutting pulpwood. Anybody know what cutting pulpwood is?

Pine trees, you chop them up and they make pulp and paper and all that and you see the logging trucks. Okay, we had to, smaller logging trucks and you had to cut them into six-foot lengths and so what you did was we had no loader. We had no mechanism to load them so I was the loader and being bigger, I was bigger than most people most of my life, you know, and even when I was young I was talking.

I remember lifting. We would take the biggest logs and we’d put them on the bottom and then as we went up higher the logs would get smaller and smaller but we had to load those logs by hand, you know. I was, hmm, I was a man, I was a muscle man of 135 pounds and, you know, you know, back then I thought I had muscles, you know, and I was young and I was, I’d grab things and do, and now as I get older I’m like, you know what? My theory is in another 20 years and somebody’s going to have to carry me around or roll me around if I don’t really get in shape or something other than the round is a shape but I’ve got to get in another shape than other than that, you know. But the thing is, his weakness is not desirable especially to us guys. Nobody wants to be weak. Anybody want to be weak? Nobody wants to be weak but he died for us when we were helpless. With full knowledge of who and what we were he still loved us.

He’s, the willingness to love even in the face of failure is illustrated by a story that I read about back in 1982 there was a, in Korea, you know how the, especially with all the, the Korean stuff going on, you know, with the, the guys, the guy threatening to shoot us with missiles and things. What you, what you find there is, there’s always been, for years since the Korean War there’s been this dividing line, North Korea, South Korea and we have a big military presence there. Well back in 82 there was one of our American soldiers that crossed over and defected to communist North Korea. Obviously he wasn’t right in the head but nevertheless he did it. Well they finally found out he did it on purpose and of course he was branded a trailer, a traitor. And a defector. And his parents held a press conference on their front lawn to talk about what their son had done. It was in the news and the father said he has lost his credibility, speaking of his son, he has lost his credibility in this country and even with me.

But then he showed the heart of a father. He said, I still love my son and I want him back.

God is that way. God is like that father. He says, I know. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. I know that you don’t have a lot of strength. I know you’re weak. I know you’re helpless. I know you can’t save yourself but I want you anyway. I love you anyway. It’s the heart of a father that looks beyond our failings. Romans chapter 3 verse 4 tells us though we have demonstrated that we are not trustworthy, God still loves us. In fact, God’s love is demonstrated all the more in light of our unfaithfulness. God will remain true and faithful if every man becomes a liar.

The more we fail, the more he succeeds. The more we are unfaithful, the more his faithfulness shines. God’s faithfulness just keeps on shining, keeps on, you know, just abundantly radiating. Why? Because it is a beacon of hope to us. In a dark world, we move toward the beacon of hope. I love lighthouses and I, you know, and I remember I was coming, I had to speak down around Gunterville the other night and I was coming by and you’re really at Gunterville Airport it’s not much of an airport especially at night you really can’t see it but I could see the light. You’ve seen the lights at airports that the strobe light that goes around so that people that are flying can see that’s an airport they find direction and it was dark and kind of rainy blah night but I could see that beam of light as it circled around the sky. And more importantly pilots in the air that might have been searching for that airport could see that beam of light through the darkness and the fog and the rain. That’s the way it is when this world is dark God’s grace and God’s mercy and God’s faithfulness is like a beam of light that says come this way come toward me and I will save you and I will redeem you. This is the wonderful thing for Christians. You see it’s with full understanding that we had not even ceased to sin that we were going to sin. That Christ died for us. I have a lot of people say when you start treating me right I’ll forgive you. I do a lot of marriage counseling. That’s the reason that something’s wrong with my head at times. You know I do a lot of marriage counseling and sometimes it’s like hostage negotiations and sometimes it’s like herding cats. But you know but there’s always a lot of hurt obviously because nobody comes to see me because they’re happy you know during the week. But the point is I hear people say things like when you do this I will forgive you. When you treat me this way I will forgive you.

And I always just pull the hair out of my chin when they do that and say well you know this person needs to change. They need to do different. They need to be different. But for your sake you’ve got to go ahead and forgive.

Otherwise they hold you hostage. They hold you hostage as long as it’s a condition. And they hold you hostage and God says to us He wants us to understand I’m going to love you even though you’ve not stopped sinning.

I’m not going to put the condition I will forgive you when you stop doing like you’re doing and behaving like you’re behaving. He said I’m still I’m going to love you anyway. And I’m going to forgive you if you’ll just call them. I’m going to die for your sin even though you’re not worthy of it.

It puts the focus back on us and our will that we have. The will that we choose.

You know it’s a wonderful thing to feel accepted. And that’s what God offers to us. Is that we are accepted through His love. He just loves us cause cause He wants to. You know. Just loves us cause He wants to. In the Whisper Test by Mary Ann Bird she writes a story about when she was growing up. She said I remember growing up and realizing very early that I was different from everybody else.

She had a cleft palate.

And she said the way she describes herself she didn’t look like other little girls. She had misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, garbled speech. Of course children would kind of make fun of her cause of the way she looked. Cause of the birth defect. And they would say what happened to you? What’s wrong with you? She said I would tell them that I fell on a piece of glass and it cut me. She said somehow it was more acceptable to be different because of an accident than to have been born different.

It’s not a pleasant life she had growing up. But a bright spot in her life was a teacher and her second grade teacher she said her name was Miss Leonard. And she describes her as short, round, happy, a sparkling lady. So I can imagine her. I remember some of my elementary school teachers. I think I had at least one that was like that. Short, round, sparkling, and happy. But you know and back then back in her childhood day they would do hearing tests but they didn’t do like they did when maybe you were in school where they would come and put things on your ears and so forth. They would use a whisper test and what they would do is this. They would have the children stand across the room and they would call on each child and the teacher would be sitting at her desk and she would whisper something and with one hand over their ear they would see if they could hear it and then with the other hand over the other ear they would see if they could still hear what the teacher was whispering.

And the teacher would say things like the sky is blue. Do you have new shoes? Or things of that nature.

But she said that day that they did the whisper test the teacher said something that changed her life.

She stood there with one ear covered listening did not want to be embarrassed by oh Lord did not want to be embarrassed let me hear.

With everything else going on she didn’t need to be able unable to hear on top of that.

And she’s straining to hear what the teacher whispers.

And she said the teacher whispered I wish you were my little girl.

I wish you were my little girl.

That’s what God whispers to us

before we ever come to know Him.

If you listen close you can hear the voice of God say I wish you were mine.

Or I wish you were all mine.

He may even whisper I’m so glad you’re mine.

God through the Holy Spirit works in wonderful ways but He speaks to us. God is the God who speaks. He’s not an idol. We didn’t carve Him out of stone or wood. He is the God who speaks. And I want you to understand that God is speaking to you and God has spoken to you and God will continue to speak to you.

And one thing He’ll always say I love you and I accept you. I love you as you are.

He just asked for the opportunity to change your life. Amen? Let’s pray. Heavenly Father we love you and we thank you for your grace and your love. Thank you Lord that

you have whispered to our soul

that you want us to be yours. That you love us. That you know who we are and you know our failures

and you know our struggles you know our sin but you still love us. You accept us. All we need to do is call upon the name of Jesus.

Lord I just pray today that you would hear our prayers as we speak back to you and say we love you and we appreciate what you have done and we want to be yours.

If you’ve never accepted Christ or you’re unsure of your your salvation I wish you’d call on Him today. He’s whispering to you. He’s speaking to you and said I’ll accept you.

I’ll take you as you are. You don’t have to turn over a new leaf. You don’t have to do better for a while. Come as you are. Just as you are.

And say in the name of Jesus Heavenly Father I come to you and I ask that you would forgive me of my sin that you would cleanse me that you would make me yours. I invite you I invite Jesus Christ into my heart to be my Lord and Savior. You can pray any way you want to pray but I want you to pray

and tell the Lord that you accept His invitation to be loved.

Would you just take a moment and maybe if you feel comfortable just raise your hands in praise and begin to tell the Lord how much you love Him. And how much you appreciate Him. Lord I love you. Just a way of symbolically I’m lifting up my hand as if God is reaching down His hand and say Lord I love you. I’m reaching up to you today with my heart. In my heart I’m calling upon you. And I pray in the name of Jesus that you would strengthen our fellowship and our relationship.

And I just want to thank you for being so gracious and merciful. And loving us so much. In Jesus name.