Let’s get right to the Truth for the Truth sets us free!  It is really “sad-you-see” if you don’t believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, the One and Only Son of God who paid the debt of all the sins of the world.  No one needs to perish in death.  It’s sad-you-see if you refuse the most important, intimate, life-giving, relentless love of the One who loves us most.

“We love God because He first loved us!”  1 John 4:19

“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.”  John 3:16

“Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change.”           2 Peter 3:9, MSG

It’s “sad-you-see” if we refuse to believe and reject the most important relationship offered to us by God, our Creator!  It’s joy unspeakable and full of glory if we do believe!  We are saved for life everlasting in an intimate growing relationship with God through Jesus work on the cross of reconciliation (reconnecting to God).  Even in the bad times that happen in this imperfect and very temporary world, God holds on to us and never holds back on His promises to always be with us.  God’s love never changes.  God’s promises are true.

Mark 12, The Message

Our Intimacies Will Be with God

^18-23 Some Sadducees, the party that denies any possibility of resurrection, came up and asked, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife but no child, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and have children. Well, there once were seven brothers. The first took a wife. He died childless. The second married her. He died, and still no child. The same with the third. All seven took their turn, but no child. Finally the wife died. When they are raised at the resurrection, whose wife is she? All seven were her husband.”

^24-27 Jesus said, “You’re way off base, and here’s why: One, you don’t know what God said; two, you don’t know how God works. After the dead are raised up, we’re past the marriage business. As it is with angels now, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding the dead, whether or not they are raised, don’t you ever read the Bible? How God at the bush said to Moses, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? The living God is God of the living, not the dead. You’re way, way off base.”

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

God wants us to love Him back.  He had a plan in place for us to do just that without the sin that disconnected us from Him.  Jesus demonstrated God’s love on earth by serving humanity with healing and compassion before laying down His life for ours.  God is love.  God provided a way for us to love Him back with all that is in us.  Jesus took all our sin upon His shoulders and took the punishment we all deserve.  Yes, He loved each one of us that much!  THEN three days later Christ arose, defeating death once and for all!  And we, too, will rise with Christ!  I don’t know about you, but grateful praise rises from my soul this morning!

It’s not because of anything I have done but because of Who God is—the One who desires an intimate growing love with us.  He longs to bless us with His character traits developing in us so we will imitate Him as we grow in our undivided, intimate love for Him as our gracious Father.  This love is above all this world has to offer—even beyond the love we share in marriage to our spouses!  Surely, how deep the Father’s love for us, indeed!

I am convinced that I am a believer, not because of how tightly I hold on to God, but because of how tightly God holds on to me!  He will not let me go!  I’ve have strayed and been distracted from Him, but He quickly runs to bring me back with His outstretched arms.  He has brought me out the pit of despair, brought His light into my darkness, as he recues me from deep waters and eminent threats of danger.  He is God.  I am not.  I don’t know how He does it, I just know He does!  I need Jesus’ love growing in me, the love that led him to the cross for my sins every hour of every day. 

Call me weak, but that would be “sad-you-see” for it would seem that you don’t get how God works.  “The living God is God of the living, not the dead”. –Jesus

Jesus summed it up in one verse, John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” All of man’s questions of life are answered in this verse. It is Jesus who give us our growing intimacy with God.

“In the beginning was the Word and Word was with God”…”the Word was made “flesh” and moved into the neighborhood” of humanity.  (See John 1, MSG) So let’s “flesh” this truth out so we really understand what LIFE in Jesus means to us not only now but when Jesus comes back to takes us home to dwell in the presence of God for eternity as we pass from this life to the next forever life with Him.  (Yes, I know that was a mouthful.)

Jesus taught his disciples with this encouragement for all of us who believe:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14:1-7

Jesus IS coming back!  It would be really “sad-you-see” if you don’t know that.  Billy Graham once said that the end “will come with the return of Jesus Christ.  “That is why a true Christian believer in Jesus can be an optimist. That is why a Christian can smile in the midst of all that is happening… We know what the end will be: the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

We have two choices:  Be sad-you-see or glad-you-see.  Choose wisely.  Choose Jesus!  You will be glad you did!  I am!

Lord,

I love how you work in our lives to sort and sift the lies the world tells us while your Truth rises to the top to lead us.  I believe.  I’m listening.  I’m yours.  Guide me all day long and into the night for you are my strength and my song.

In Jesus Name, Amen