It's called a photo bomb Somebody or something in the background of a picture taken blows up what that picture was originally intended for figuratively speaking Whether it's a family or friend who slips in behind a row of you and holds up the bunny ears or Somebody in the background making a really unexpected face a photo bomb One of my favorites of these we were serving in New Jersey and my youth group had an event Youth Bowl playing football and while the guys were out playing football the ladies were on the sidelines At this time setting up for a picture and a group of them work diligently to Set get all in the best row and expressions and get set up and have some the right person to take the picture and the last moment An older brother of one of these girls came running across the picture And I love it because all these girls have they've all found their best pose, you know They're all smiling with the exception of his younger sister Who's looking in horror as his face blurred and smiling is coming across right as it snaps and she's saying no, John A photo bomb It doesn't just happen personally though It's famous on television stations like or even shows like the today show Where people are in the background and sometimes they'll be doing things on their phone waving Even holding up signs Or wearing shirts That say different things doing different gestures that in some cases have taken over the segment You stop paying attention to what the anchor is saying in the foreground And the show actually becomes what's happening outside the glass And in times Square wherever they are the person in the background and what they're doing They hijack the meaning It takes over So I thought you know The difference between when you're with friends and you do it and when you're on television Is that millions of people will see you and all they'll know you by as those few seconds So if you've got a few seconds to convey a message or to do something what is it that you want to get across
what I think of The most persistent photo bomb I can think of Happens frequently on Saturdays and Sundays when at the football game. There's an extra point to be kicked And there's that guy holding up his sign behind the goal post as they kick the extra point It says john 316 And it's great. It's a great message if you've got one moment to get something across a great verse from people to read But have you ever read the rest of the paragraph
What if ironically What's in the background of this verse sets a whole new meaning Because of the relief of what said here
The most famous verse in the Bible I dare say that's where we're going john 3 is page 16 49 in your pew Bible Martin Luther called this The Bible in a nutshell But you can break your teeth on a nutshell
Let's hear from God beginning at verse 16
For God so loved the world That he gave his one and only son That whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world But to save the world through him Whoever believes in him is not condemned But whoever does not believe Stands condemned already Because he is not believed in the name of God's one and only son This is the verdict Light has come into the world but men loved darkness instead of light Because their deeds were evil Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light So that it may be plain seen plainly What he has done has been done through God This is God's word. Let's pray
Lord this morning we ask That you had pierced the darkness With the light of who you are
Show us who you are that we had run to you and your name we pray Amen All right here we find ourselves At this most famous verse and the thing that normally stuns people when you get down to it Is all this other talk around it here's of the verse the verse about God's love and What do you hear all around it? Darkness sin hate condemnation What in the world the gospel writer here John Loves to use the word love he uses it 57 times in this gospel That's two twice as many as any other book except for the first epistle of John which he also wrote In which he said God is love he loves to talk about Love but this is the first time He's mentioned this word in this gospel It's almost as if he's been saving it for this moment and when he introduces it he brings it out in the midst of all this other stuff So this morning what I want us to do is examine love In light of the darkness That John purposefully surrounds it with All right So first of all the thing that jumps at me men love the darkness
When I went to seminary you know just like when you go to college you get you meet a bunch of people that you've never met before And our hall really got close a bunch of single guys getting to know each other uh Omar was a six foot one Puerto Rican from the Bronx and he had his style He was a former model. He was a big guy and everybody loved him. He had a lot of charisma He said I've got to take you to the Bronx one day He said it for two years and finally we all said okay, we're doing it Omar took us to the Bronx from the middle of alphabet city one evening. It's near Halloween There's all kinds of celebrations going on We're walking down the street all of a sudden there's six of us in our 20s We round the corner and we start walking down the street and it's dark and it's empty
And Omar Looks innocent. He says we got to get out of here
When a six foot one Puerto Rican from the Bronx tells you you're in danger It's time to run we hustled back to where the people were Back out of the darkness because we knew I mean he knew we were gonna get mugged if we stayed there under the cover of darkness evil loves The darkness why well John tells us It covers up with what what what they're about What evil wants to accomplish it allows them to continue in what they were doing I mean the fear of light is it will expose what we're about And then we can't keep getting to do the thing that we want to do in the south Well We like to call I heard somebody this week saying that you know We love to call each other. That's a fine Christian man. It's a fine Christian woman But Jesus doesn't meant words about calling his own disciples evil Man, it would change the If it would change the situation if you said that is a fine evil Christian man It doesn't make sense to us But this is the bomb he's throwing down That evil loves the darkness and apart from God. That's what our hearts yearn for Is Jeremiah 17 tells us the heart Is deceitful above all things and wicked beyond cure I mean this is bad news for a world that likes to celebrate Doing what you want to do But here we find God challenging us with the reality that there is darkness within all of us You know somebody's coming over to your house You clean it up and you get it ready. You fix it up Spiritually we do the same thing and how we interact with people we put on our best face We go out we smile how you do it I'm fine all those sorts of things if you want to get to know somebody There's got to be a trust built to where they begin to see your spiritual basement They begin to get to go down and see the things that you hide in the dark from everybody else The things that are hidden away the things that you didn't have time to clean up or maybe they're just too nasty to clean up And you just lock that door and hope nobody goes down there
CS Lewis said if you really want to know What your spiritual life is like Check the basement Summing a crisis hits when bad things happen some of us people do horrible things or say horrible things But that's not who I really am it was just it was just a bad moment. I was just having a rough day You know what If it's not really about the circumstances if it's really the light coming into the darkness Maybe that's when we're most honest Lewis said if you want to know what's in your basement you don't open the door flip on the light and go Coming down in a couple of minutes just in case anybody's Thinking about that flipping on and off the light And then go down and of oh, of course, it's all clear down here You want to know what's in your basement you take a run and start you hit that door open it flip on the light Jump down the steps and land and watch the furry critters scurry away
When a crisis hits you begin to see what really your spiritual life is like it scares me It scares me in that moment You know st. Augustine blue blue people away When he wrote his confessions 400 years after Christ nobody wrote biographies like this If you were going to write a biography about somebody you wrote about all their accomplishments all the things they'd done How they were alleged and all these wonderful things and Augustine sat down and he wrote everything that was wrong with his life He wrote all the filth all the nasty he just detailed it nobody did that back then Nobody Why He said he wanted people to see honestly The depth which god was willing to bring them out of To be honest about the depth of the mess
And this is the guy who wrote in that very book Lord as he's becoming a Christian he's growing in his faith. He said Lord famously Give me chastity But not yet He was he was known for being a philanderer. He was known to struggle with that And he's basically saying god, you know what? I want you to help me But not so fast I want you to heal me, but you know, I kind of like this darkness Maybe if you just take your time on that or maybe for a little while you leave just leave me alone We like The darkness we like the certain areas of our life. We really don't want god to mess with I prefer if I get to keep it this way
It's scary When you think about a picture both at the beginning and the end of scripture of why this is the case and Genesis 3 Adam and Eve Turned their back on god they disobey him and that what's the first thing they do They hide They run and hide the relationships broken they know they physically feel like they got to cover up But spiritually they feel like they got to cover up they got to hide same same Physical presence is before what's changed? They got to cover it up They're not comfortable at the end of the Bible in Revelation 6 When Jesus shows up in all of his beauty and all of his glory It says that the people wanted to call out for the mountains to fall on them Just to cover them up let the rocks crush me and kill me Just so I can be covered up. I don't want to be exposed in this way
The radical insecurity of knowing something is broken that you can't fix We want to hide in the darkness
It says it Verse 18 This this is hard. This is just hard. They stand condemned already How are we getting this in the middle of a love verse Talking about condemnation they stand condemned already if you come at and you're visiting or you Hear Christianity and you're like why do people always have to bring up all this fear and guilt and condemnation And why do you got to tell me I'm so bad What does it say here? It doesn't say God is telling you you are are you are such a bad person saying you were already bad in the truth It's just exposing it You stand condemned Already numbers 32 says your sins will find you out It's not that God has to come and do something to you They will find you out While if work early on Friday or you're saying I'm gonna fall and break my leg tomorrow because of that No, I'm not talking about karma. This isn't karma But because God has made us a certain way and we go against it there are natural consequences to it It's not that God has to come smash us over the head Is certain things happen because of it Gravity if you break the law of gravity nobody has to stop you and write you a ticket It hurts you fall yesterday My son decided he was upstairs coloring He wanted to come watch football with daddy. He charges down the stairs and all of a sudden we hear and cry We're coming around the corner. It was a scary moment You know, he's got this huge goose egg immediately. There's nasty colored and his eyes You know you're thinking people will make a beat my child, you know, it's it was horrible But he was discovering I can't break the law of gravity just launching down the steps like this You try To break the way it's supposed to be and that their consequences that naturally follow they stand condemned already Let's talk about us. It's not us versus them thing humanity the world stands condemned already why If the doctor comes and says you've got cancer the doctor didn't just give you cancer The doctor just exposed the truth At that point if you say no, no, no, no, no, no, I you know, I don't need radiation. I don't need chemotherapy I'm just gonna go work out more It's not gonna fix the situation You are condemned if if there's not a something from outside to come and fix you You know, that's it God is coming and exposing the depth of our need. He didn't make us that way We made ourselves that way by what we did by what we do by how we operate and live This is a hard Difficult picture, but if it's accurate. This is absolutely important for you to understand for me to understand
and January of 2005 a man on the beach found a busted camera and He knew it had been obviously washed out the sea and washed him on the shore. It was ruined But he was able to bang the memory stick out of it And he took it home because he was suspicious. There might be pictures and sure enough there were See a few days before on December 26th of 2004 The tsunami had hit an Indian ocean The one that killed 240,000 people And this camera had washed back up on the beach It had been John and Jackie Nils camera a Canadian couple that was vacationing in Thailand And it had pictures where they were standing on the beach taking pictures They actually weren't directly on the beach they were back and up on a ledge above it Probably about two 300 yards back maybe about 50 feet above sea level and they're taking pictures of this beautiful overlook with people walking along the beach But you notice and the first one that's been released there's this thin line across the horizon They haven't noticed that people in the beach haven't noticed that but there's a thin line out there And it's got the date stand up in the time and five minutes later They take another picture. It's closer in they can see there's something going on out there Some of the people in the beach are still playing some of them are looking at this abnormality out there And then it starts getting faster the pictures that are taken as the wave gets closer and closer And then all of a sudden the people in the beach are starting to react and this huge wall of wave Which is too big to comprehend because of his zoom Is coming over them And John and Jackie who were always together to still taking pictures They had to be thinking we're 200 yards away. We're 50 feet up. We're okay And the last picture is of this wall of water so close and overwhelm
You know even if at the first picture they'd started running they may not have made it where they stood They were already condemned Now unlike them we have put ourselves in this position through sin and brokenness and it is a horrible picture We need to understand how God reacts and light of that if we're going to get what love is we need to understand why anger is attached to it So we love darkness secondly God's angry about the darkness People talk how can love and anger go together one of our professors at seminary He said anger is actually an expression of love Think about it You know if you love something what makes you most angry is when something comes between you and what you love When a man and I first had Hayes He was about two months old and one of her best friends was getting married Otherwise we wouldn't have dared venture to travel with Hayes, but we flew to the wedding Amanda was in the wedding party and it was in New Jersey on somewhat not really a remote location But but it was just this one building in a field across the Hudson River from New York City had a beautiful overlook at the reception Just two stories the top story was the party it was so loud and Amanda was part of the wedding party I had to take Hayes out and go downstairs So I'm standing there really just killing time holding my young son is a new father Just taking care of him and this woman comes down this young lady she's clearly Not altogether there. I don't know if she was one sandwich short or if she was inebriated But she didn't seem to understand the situation and she wanted To play with my son And I'm giving her all the body language of you need to back away now Both through my verbal communication through my body language the attorney there's nowhere for me to go It's just only one space and she's she's in my space and in starting to reach she wants to hold him And there's no way I'm letting her hold my son to put him at risk like this I love him. I'm passionate about my son and the more that you keep messing You mess with the bear cub you're gonna get the bear It was driving anger out of me because of my passion for my son my love for my son anger didn't arise in contrast to love It arose because of my love I mean this is critical for us to get because The opposite of love is not anger the opposite of love is hate and the final form of hatred Is apathy it's indifference I've mentioned this before but it really jumped out at me as a youth pastor that that middle school and high school girls Who were more socially adept than boys because boys just hit each other and then play video games the next day But girls who were more socially advanced and mature realized that if that girl wronged me There were ways I could get her back and whether it be gossiping or talking about her the the ultimate Was not to pull out a gun and shoot her was just to cut her off Pretend as if she didn't exist to exclude her from our social circle and and just walk by her as though she wasn't there at all I mean that's hatred that's murder without even picking up a knife you don't exist That's the opposite of love You're not even worth getting angry over you're nothing
understand When we treat God as if he's not even there It is hatred for God and his passion his anger Ultimately is for us when we're even against ourselves We're standing condemned already and we're frallicking on the beaches though the tsunami's not coming
And we think this is for our best
He is so for us He stands in opposition to the things that would destroy us. I mean think about it this way It's if if a young man grows up and his best buddy is the son of the mayor And he hangs out around the house they grow up together. They always play together. They they good friends They go to prom together and he's very close even with the mayor He's almost like an adopted son, but then he goes out and robs a bank once he gets older Well, he's virtually the mayor's adopted son But the mayor who loves him is going to say
You've stood in opposition to what was good for you Out of love for you. I'm going to stand in opposition to that evil I'm not going to get you off the hook You've stood in opposition to everything that is proper and and we're about and in love
This is this is key in parenting. I'm always hesitant to talk about parenting because I'm a parent and I know I'm a mess But they're two different approaches that you can go off the rail with parenting. On the one side You can just say yes to everything Which ultimately is just Absolute neglect. You're not worth my time and energy to actually say no to and correct the mistakes that you're going toward You spoil the child and it's actually Orfening the child because you're not loving them on the other extreme is the parent who's you know What did you do? What are you thinking so abusive and angry that all the child ever knows is no And some people tend to think of God one way or the other God always is out to say no to me. He's against my fun He's such an abusive mean God Or my God just says yes all the time he never says no Both of which are to miss the point God stands in loving opposition to that which destroys us that we're doing to ourselves His anger his passion is a furious love That loves us more than we love ourselves That is willing to pursue us Even as we go down toward death To move against God is to move against yourself
And the most loving thing he can do is be angry about the evil that would that would destroy you
We as an American society like to complain whenever our comfort is interrupted For this reason i want to put it like this joe novenson said this i love this he said look heaven hurts more than hell He likes to say it hurts like heaven Because heaven is out to change you and hell hopes you never will
We are enslaved and we call it freedom And God comes to break the chains and we don't want him to take the thing away that's actually killing us And that's why he's furiously in love with us So how does he do it how does he bring freedom? He brings in thirdly the light He brings in the light The thing that i think people love about this verse if we're just going to boil it down to one thing this morning The reason people love this verse is what it says God so loved the world that he gave
It cost him No other major religion has a god of love is this primary identity only Christianity does we've forgotten that in the west But it cost God We have to recognize what it cost him to understand it. It's not mommy and daddy's saying don't you feel bad I spend so much money and you wasted it. That's not what we're talking about It's an expression of his love to us
I went to Uganda with dr. Henry Krabindom who's a retired covenant professor He's a six foot eight dutchman Who you know my students started joking that he sounded like the count from Sesame Street to give you an idea he's got a passion For Jesus. He's a great theologian But he loves Uganda and he virtually lives there to share the gospel with people in Uganda. He took us over there to share um And he loved to tell the story to I took four guys with me they were seniors. They were going to college He knew they were going to be marrying somebody before too long. So he said Let me tell you have you ever heard about the 10 cow woman and they were like 10 cow woman What are you talking about you know here? We are in this third world country So they got a hands-on experience. He says I want you to think about Love in this society And he tells this old urban legend Where a man is going to get married and in that society the man would come and he would pay for the daughter He would pay the father for the daughter And so a reasonable price was two cows for a woman Of a beautiful woman with a lot to offer would be like three or four cows So this man comes to negotiate with the dad but the problem is everybody in the village knows this woman is very plain looking And she has very little to offer And if anything why would this guy want her at all in the first place So he comes to meet with the dad and the dad's going to it and he's telling his friend You know, I think I'll start with two or negotiating. I'll say two cows and that way at least I'll get one out of this And he comes in opens the negotiation two cows The groom says no He says okay one cow and he says no He's driving a really hard bargain here. I'll go to half a cow He said no You're going the wrong way go up And the guy starts going up three four five keep going He gets him up to ten cows before he agrees nobody in that society paid ten cows for a woman And the word got out not only did he pay ten cows but ten cows for that woman And the visitor came through he's hearing about this and he's I got to find out why this guy was willing to do this He went over and said you know everybody in this village says you are a fool for paying ten cows for a woman much less that woman He said that's fine He said look at my wife And she was humming Celebrating as she went about what she was doing loving him Being his wife He said my wife walks down the street and nobody says there goes a half cow woman They say there goes a ten cow there's never been a ten cow woman
see Not only Did he value her more highly by how he valued her he made her that value Her demeanor her life changed because of the expense he was willing to pay he said you are this valuable to me You cost this much when everybody else says no you don't And actually by all wisdom and accounts you don't but by being paid that much for you doubt do and it changes who you are I want you to get this because if you think we have a god who just wants to scare literally to scare the hell out of you You'll miss it fear will never change you Christ goal is not to come scare you into being a good person you can't Only love transforms He comes and says watch how I love you this will change you When you get how expensive you are to me
God has sent the most precious thing there is to pay for us And you notice it when Jesus interacts with people he makes people that the world says are worthless He makes them feel expensive
I think that's awesome. I want you to get this and In 1996 while I was in college and In Port Arthur Australia there was a horrible shooting a massacre this madman wanted to a cafe and just started unloading on people and over the course of two minutes He went back and forth in this area killing people and some of the family members who were in there Realizing what was happening husband's parents laid over the top of their loved ones Knowing he was going to find them and shoot And they took the hit To protect their families Most of them who got shot died But you can imagine if you're a little child growing up with this or even a widow Growing up knowing How you were loved How you were valued the depth of love of that person But they didn't even come close to how Christ loves Because that's talking about a family member that you already love the it says here God so love the world It's not talking about an expansive people. It's not even talking about six billion people in the planet or the planet or realms or whatever Whenever John talks about the world. He's talking about people who hate God God loved his haters The people who hated him he loved people who hated him
Ted Morris was 18 years old driving down the street when Tommy Pagagia who was drunk on the way home early in the morning crossed over and killed him
And his mom and dad were livid at this man as he went through the trial and then they were Absolutely upset with the judges rendering it because it was his first offense They're just going to get extensive probation his probation made national news But I didn't matter to them they wanted him in jail Because of what he'd done to their son, but instead The judge had said you'll go to jail, but you'll go every other weekend For one night and in the meantime you'll go serve at the ER where where the victims of drunk drivers come in So you can see what you've done and then I want you to go and tour with mad mothers against drunk drivers And speak to people about what you've done Well, Elizabeth Mars was so mad about this. She's like I'm going to make sure he does everything the judges asked him to do She was there at the jail every time he was supposed to be in there making sure he went in She checked up to make sure he was going to the hospital One time she finally got up the nerve to go in where he was speaking at a mad gathering And he got up to speak and she thought he's just going to dodge it He's going to dodge this issue. He's going to say it wasn't his fault. And he got up and he said I'm a murderer I killed somebody I never set out to do that And he started sharing about what he'd done wrong and began to break her heart And afterward she went up the talk to him and everything disappeared when she got close because she smelled alcohol on this breath And she was livid again And he failed his next sobriety test with his parole officer so he landed in jail But something about him confessing to being a murderer aggravated Elizabeth Mars So she decided to go to jail anyway and visit him And she started talking with him She started sharing her life with him and hearing about his life And because she was a Christian she started seeing God's love for her and what she was relating to with him And it transformed how she related to this enemy who had killed her own son So that after his time was up and he was released they actually had him come live with them They embraced him they forgave him
Who does that? There is no other love like this That God would make his enemies feel expensive That he would not only make them feel expensive that he would make them Family by what he does That the most valuable thing there is in the universe he's willing to pay For you and me That's what bringing the light into the darkness is about He brings his love to change us to shed light on what's wrong and to show us what he's about To show us that we're actually expensive That you're a tin cow woman
In reality that you'd be called a son of God You'd be treated like Jesus Christ himself As verse 21 says not because of what you've done, but what he did through you
Do you know what you are worth not because of what you've done, but because of what he did
You were expensive to God
Lord God, I thank you that because of what you did on the cross There's no wrath left to fall in us the tsunami of your wrath passed over Jesus Instead of us that we would be lifted up that we would be saved when he's the one who should have been saved
Lord help us to understand what this verse is about that we are in dark places and we need your light For folks who are here who prefer the darkness Which is pretty much every one of us For those who've never come into the light who never want to be a part of the light show us who you are For Christians who continue to want to walk back into the darkness show us your love Lord That we would not want to go back to worthlessness But we would want to be in your valuing in your estimation of us That we would want to be expensive Because of what you did Lord show us that joy That we would go out and we would treat our neighbors in Brookhaven With the worth that you've given them not the worth the world tells us they don't have Lord let this be an expensive town Because your believers Go out knowing they are worthless made full of worth That they were nothing and they've been counted expensive And that we would do the same to the world We ask it in your name
God didn't hold up a sign that said John 316
He held up his son to say you are worth this