Deo Gloria
Sermon for November 5, 2023
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: 1 John 3:1-3
Theme: Don’t Lose the Wonder of God’s Love!
- He has made us children of God.
- He has even greater things in store.
I’m sure many of you saw it too. It was a couple of weeks ago now, but the colors that day were just spectacular. The sky was clear and blue. The sun was bright and warm. And the fall colors were simply spectacular as I was driving along the Minnesota River valley between here and Shakopee. Red and yellow and orange and green and brown. It almost made me want to pull over for a few minutes and just soak it all in. It was an amazing fall day!
Today in the verses of our text we see something even more wonderful, even more spectacular than the beautiful colors of fall. With the Apostle John, we cannot help but marvel at our gracious and loving God, that he would actually make us his children. And with John we can’t help but marvel at the wonderful things he still has in store for us. Don’t lose the wonder of God’s love!
Our identity is important to us, isn’t it? It gives us our sense of worth. It helps us feel special and secure. All too often, though, you and I fall into the trap of basing our identity on the same things the world does. We base our identity on our job, for example, or how much money we make. We base our identity on our accomplishments, our trophies, and our awards. We base our identity on the kind of car we drive or the home we live in. So often young people base their identity on their group of friends, whether or not they’re part of the “in” crowd at school. Or maybe they base their identity on whether or not they make a certain sports team or cheerleading squad. Or maybe they base their identity on their looks or the kind of clothes they wear.
But then what happens when we lose some of those things? What happens when we lose our job or our salary is cut by 20%? What happens when we can’t afford that fancy car anymore or live in that fancy home? What happens when we don’t win anymore awards or trophies or we get cut from the team? What happens when our friends at school turn their backs on us and give us the cold shoulder or they defriend us on Facebook? We’re devastated. We feel worthless and unimportant. We feel like our whole world is just falling apart.
How much better to base our identity on our relationship with God, that in his grace and mercy God has made us his children! Listen again to the words of our text: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” Isn’t that an amazing statement, that you are a child of God, that I am a child of God? It sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it? I mean, you and I were not born into God’s family. I was born into the Bentz family. You were born into the Anderson family or the Carlson family or the Manthe family or the Schmidt family. But we weren’t born into God’s family.
Besides that, we haven’t done anything to earn a place in God’s family—in fact, just the opposite. We have done all kinds of things to disqualify us from being part of God’s family. We have lied. We have cheated. We have stolen. We have disobeyed our parents and our teachers at school. We have hated others and hurt others. We have not loved God with all our hearts, and have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Do people who do and say things like that deserve to be part of God’s family? Hardly! Because of our sins, none of us deserve to be children of God. In fact, because of our sins, we deserve to be abandoned by God, banished from his family forever.
And yet, look at what God has done! Look at the love the Father has lavished on us, poured out on us over and over again. It started way back in eternity, already before the creation of the world, when God chose us. We didn’t choose him; in love and mercy he chose us to be his children. It continued when God sent his own Son into the world to be our Savior, to pay the penalty for our sins and rescue us from sin and death. And by his death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day, Jesus has done exactly that. He has taken our sins away so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be holy and pure in the eyes of God. And then, through the power of his Word and working of his Spirit, God has created faith in our hearts, faith to believe in Jesus as our Savior. And through faith in Jesus, God has adopted us into his family. He has made us his very own sons and daughters.
John doesn’t talk about that adoption process here in these verses, but Paul does in Galatians ch. 4. Let me remind you of what he said:
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. (Literally, the original says, “…that we might receive the adoption of sons.”) Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”(vv.4-6)
Just think, you and I, unworthy sinners that we are, and yet in the eyes of God, children, his dearly loved children! What an honor! What a privilege! What an amazing display of God’s love! Don’t lose the wonder of God’s love!
Would any of us be disappointed if that’s where it ended? Would any of us be disappointed if the story of God’s love for us ended with, “So he adopted us into his family and made us his children”? Of course not! We’d be thrilled. We’d be overjoyed that God loved us so much. But that isn’t the end of the story. As John tells us in v. 2, God will continue to lavish his love on us in the future as well. “Dear friends,” he says, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
Imagine it’s your birthday. Grandpa and grandma came over to help you celebrate. Your friends came over to help you celebrate. You blew out the candles. You had your piece of birthday cake, your favorite: angel food, with strawberries and ice cream. You opened all of your presents. And you were happy, because you received some very nice gifts. And then your mom and dad say to you, “We have one more present for you, but you’ll have to wait till next week to open it because it hasn’t come yet.”
“Well, what is it? What is it?” you ask.
“We can’t tell,” they respond. “It’s a surprise.”
“Oh, man!” On the one hand, you kind of like surprises, because it means you’re getting something else, something you weren’t expecting. On the other hand, you don’t like surprises at all, because you can’t stand the suspense. You want to know what it is.
God has demonstrated his love for us in this life. He has lavished his love on us by making us his children. But he isn’t done loving us. In fact, he has even more surprises stored up for us in the future, things that will demonstrate his great love for us over and over again.
What those surprises are we don’t exactly know. As John says, they haven’t been revealed yet. What will life in heaven be like? What is God’s house like? Does it have a swimming pool? Does it have a water slide? Does it have a Jacuzzi in every room? And do we all get our own room? What about the food in heaven? Do we get to have angel food cake and strawberries and ice cream for every meal? And what we will be like in heaven? Will we look the same? Will we be taller, shorter, fatter, skinnier? Will we be able to float around from one place to another or will we still have to walk? We don’t know, do we? But God has given us little hints in the Bible, little clues to whet our appetite.
John gives us one such clue in this verse. He says that when he appears, “we shall be like him.” Imagine! We shall be like God! One way we will be like God is that we will be holy. Now we are holy in the eyes of God because he has forgiven our sins and covered us in the righteousness of Jesus. When you were little, did you ever drown some of your food in ketchup? I know I did. Whenever we had liver or something else I didn’t like, I would just drown it ketchup. That made it taste better and easier for me to swallow. That’s sort of the way it is with us now. In order to cover our sinfulness and make us look better in his sight, God covers us in the righteousness of Jesus. When we get to heaven, though, we will truly be holy. No more sin, no more temptation, no sinful words will ever come out of mouths, no sinful thoughts will ever cross our minds—only what is good and right and pure, because we will be holy just like God.
Of course, that’s why we won’t be afraid of seeing him. Sin is what makes us afraid of God. Sin is what makes us anxious about dying. Sin is what makes us tremble in the presence of God and cover our eyes and say like Peter, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!(Luke 5:8). Once we get to heaven, though, we won’t be sinful anymore, so we won’t be afraid of seeing God. In fact, we’ll be excited. We’ll be thrilled, because we’ll get to see him as he is.
Imagine your spouse is in the military and he or she has been stationed over in the Middle East for over a year. During that time you kept in touch, of course. You sent emails back and forth. You talked on the phone whenever you could. You even got to Skype with them a few times. But now they’re coming home. Can you imagine how excited you would be? Can you imagine how happy you would be to see them again, face to face, to talk to them again, face to face? That’s the joy and thrill you and I will have in heaven. We will see God. We will see our Lord and Savior Jesus, face to face, as he really is—not with a crown of thorns on his head, but a crown of glory; not struggling under the burden of the cross, but victorious over sin and death; not lying lifeless in a dark and gloomy tomb, but as our living Lord, as the everlasting Light. We will see him as he is, in all his glory. What an honor! What a joy! What a blessing!
Another way we will be like him is that we will have perfect, glorified bodies. The Apostle Paul talks about that in Philippians ch. 3: “…who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body”(v. 21). Here we have lowly, imperfect bodies, bodies that are subject to sickness and disease and death. Here we have eyes that cannot see the way they should, ears that cannot hear the way they should, minds that cannot remember the way they should. But in heaven we will have perfect bodies and perfect minds. We won’t need glasses to help us see anymore, or hearing aids to help us hear, or post it notes to help us remember. We will have eyes that can see perfectly and ears that can hear perfectly and minds that can remember and understand perfectly. What a joy that will be!
From the rest of Scripture we know a few other tidbits about heaven. We know, for example, that there will be no sickness in heaven—no more COVID or flu bugs, no more heart disease or cancer. We know there will be no earthquakes in heaven, no floods or droughts, no hurricanes. We know there will be no sadness in heaven. Just stop and think about that for a second. There will be nothing in heaven to ever make you sad. No one will ever disappoint you or say something mean to you. You’ll never stub your toe or hit your head or jam your finger. You’ll never have a broken fingernail, or broken glasses, or a broken heart. There will only be joy and happiness in heaven—joy that will never end. Yes, I know it’s hard to imagine, but that’s what heaven is like. The joys, the surprises, the blessings God has in store for us will never end. Like his love, they will just go on and on forever.
Not every fall day is as breath-taking as the one we enjoyed a couple of weeks ago, but there isn’t a day that goes by that you and I can’t marvel at God’s amazing love for us. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!” As John reminds us today, God has demonstrated his great love for us by making us his children. And he will continue to pour out his love for us in the future as well, with joy and blessing and glory in heaven. Don’t ever stop marveling, friends. Don’t ever lose the wonder of God’s love! Amen.