Sharing

The message of 1 John is simple, yet powerfully life-changing.

I had some great conversations with some of you last week, talking about the power of confession, the freedom of living life when we are forgiven by God.

Before we look at 1 John again this week, I want to look back, back to last week and the past week we’ve had. Would any of you like to share about last week? Did the focus on confession and freedom make an impact on you? Did it make a difference in how you lived and acted this past week? [ASK]

Many of us read 1 John 2 and part of chapter 3 this week.

Would you open your bibles with me, to 1 John 2 and 3? If you read this week, what stood out to you?

The message from this week’s text, 1 John 3: 1-6 which we read together to begin the service, is a very similar message to last week.

Sin, a lifestyle different from what God intends, is not supposed to be a part of our lives as followers of Jesus. We’re to be like Jesus; changed, different, free to live with integrity and wholeness.

But how? How do we get there? Last week, looking at chapter 1, the focus was on confession. In these first verses of chapter 3, the key is God’s love for us.

The overall theme is still there, and will be present all through our look at 1 John. We can live differently! We can leave behind our old habits and patterns which once got us through life, and find a new and better and different way to live with Jesus Christ.

[PULL OUT TIRE CHAINS]

What experiences run through your mind when you see these?

I’m testing a theory today. My theory is that almost everyone has a bad experience with tire chains. I’m going to ask in just a minute if you have a bad chain story to share.

My bad chain story goes back to when I was a kid. We lived in California, and had spent Christmas in Oregon with my dad’s aunt and uncle and cousin. We were driving home, and there was a huge storm in the Siskiyous. My dad was quite sick; running a fever, not in good shape at all. The roads were so bad, though, that he had to pull over, at night, in the middle of the storm, lay down in the cold, wet, slush and fight these beasts to get them to stay on the car.

I remember him getting in the car, and just shaking, uncontrollably shaking because he was so cold and so sick. As a kid, that’s a scary thing to see your dad sick and freezing and now having to drive over icy, snowy roads in the dark!

How about you? Anybody have a bad experience with chains? [ASK]

Chains are absolutely essential when you need them.

If it’s snowy and icy and you’ve got to get over the mountains, the bite that the chains give to your tires can literally be the difference between life and death. In the snow, in the mountains, they can perform a very important function.

But they have tremendous drawbacks. I don’t care what it says on the commercials or on the box when you buy them, they have yet to invent chains that are EASY to put on a tire. They NEVER seem to fit right; either they are so tight that it seems you’re forced to have superhuman muscles that can stretch steel to make them connect, or they’re so loose that the constant BANG! BANG! BANG! on the wheelwell is enough to drive you crazy.

AND…there’s always somebody…there is ALWAYS somebody who leaves those chains on the car WAY, WAY past the time that they are actually needed. Somebody is banging along at 20 miles an hour on perfectly dry pavement long after the need for traction is necessary.

And they are always IN FRONT of you. On a one lane road.

Chains are essential when you need them, but there’s a reason we don’t have them on the car all the time. They slow you down. They destroy the roads. They can damage your tires. They are LOUD.

It’s why, as you come off a mountain road, there’s usually a sign that lets you know about a “Chain Removal Zone”.

That’s the place where you get to pull off the road, take off the accursed chains, and return to the freedom of highway speeds on safe roads. When the chains don’t help you any more, it’s time to get them off.

1 John is a chain removal zone!

Our lives without Jesus are like a blizzard in the mountains. We slip, and we slide, and we’re in danger of careening right off the roads.

So we have to find ways to cope. We find things that work. We put chains on our lives because they are functional in a weird sort of way. They help us to get through the stress and the panic of life, keep us from driving ourselves off the edge.

But think about it: who would spend their whole driving career at 15 miles an hour in a blizzard over the mountains with chains? Do you think Pontiac could sell cars with a tagline of “Driving Excitement” if all driving was like that?

No! If we’ve got a way to get off the mountain, we take it. We drive out of the blizzard, down to where the roads are dry and we can open up the throttle a little bit.

The hope of life with Christ is that we can drive our lives to different places.

God can lead us to dry pavement, where the blizzard isn’t coming any longer, where the ice isn’t piled thick on the roads.

That’s great and wonderful news. And some of us have followed Jesus to different roads in life… but, we’ve left the old chains thumping away in the wheelwells.

We just can’t make ourselves take off those familiar chains. Our habits and patterns and the things we loved, that kept our sanity in our old way of life really were useful at the time. But now, John says, now we who claim to follow Christ can’t go on living in sin. We can’t let the old patterns, the old chains, thump away in our lives any longer.

I stole this whole image from Shaun McNay, the pastor at what’s now called Northside Community church.

Somebody in their church saw one of those signs that said “Chain Removal Zone”, and said to Shaun, “That’s what the church ought to be about!”

Isn’t that great? Wouldn’t it be great if we became a church where people’s chains, the chains that used to get them through life but now are slowing them down…wouldn’t it be great if we were known as, characterized by, DEFINED AS a “Chain Removal Zone?”

I believe the message of God to us in 1 John is more than just a message of forgiveness for our past sins.

Take a look at the front of your worship folder, at the words from 1 John 3: 1-6 that we read earlier. The end of this passage struck me in a new way.

You know that Christ appeared in order to take away our sins, and that there is no sin in him.

I think I’ve always read that, and thought of past sins. Jesus came to take away the things I’ve done wrong in my past.

True! Amazing! Powerful! Here’s what’s even better: Jesus also came to take away my future sins. There is no sin in Jesus Christ. He is living in my life. And he is working in me to make me like him, to make my future actions, my character, to make who I am- DIFFERENT!

Jesus wants to break and throw off the chains that are still present in my life. He doesn’t just want me to limp through the mountains with the enabling help of those nasty chains. Jesus wants to get me off the mountain, rip off the old patterns and habits, take the top down and experience what it’s like to hit 70 on the open road!

This whole chain thing is just an image, a picture, and it’s not even found in the bible.

But maybe it will help us really understand what it means to follow Jesus Christ. His life is our model, we said earlier in the service. Jesus is in our lives now, purifying us from all unrighteousness. His call on our lives is to live differently, and his presence in our lives makes that possible.

What are some of the chains you are still carrying?

What old habits, old thoughts, old patterns are holding you back? Can you let God take them away, and show you that you don’t need them any longer?

Perhaps the chains you’re still carrying are different than actions or habits. Maybe your chains are your inability to accept God’s forgiveness.

There’s a part of one of my favorite movies that illustrates both the pain of not accepting forgiveness, and the overwhelming joy of being free.

I’d like to show you this clip. The movie is called The Mission, and it takes place in the 1700’s in South America. Jesuit priests are helping native tribes in a remote area follow Jesus, while other men are capturing them to make them slaves.

One of the slave traders kills his brother in a jealous rage, and cannot forgive himself. So, in Catholic fashion, he tries penance. He tries to earn his forgiveness by hard work, carrying a bag full of heavy armor.

He cannot accept the freedom of forgiveness, and keeps punishing himself, until the very people he had tried to enslave bring him freedom.

Let’s watch…

God really does want us to be free. God really does love us deeply.

Will you read with me, again, the very first verse of chapter 3? Look again at your worship folder. [READ just first two]

John can just hardly contain himself as he writes this good news. His joy just leaps out, even in our translations, but especially in the original language!

Look! God loves us SO much. His love is SO great! He has called us his children! And we are! We really, really are his children!

God calling us his children is God’s free choice! It’s his choice out of his deep love for us. It’s not conditioned on us being good, or smart, or worthwhile, or important, or good looking, or beating ourselves up for our wrongs. It’s God’s loving choice to make those who follow his Son Jesus also become God’s children.

Friends, we are loved by God!

We are embraced and chosen by God! We are welcomed into his family! It doesn’t matter if we feel it or not. This is the truth of God’s choice, not our feelings.

We are children of God!

To be chosen and loved that way is yet another key that unlocks the freedom of living differently. We don’t need the old habits and ways of live, the chains that used to get us by in a hard world, any longer.

We are accepted and chosen by God! We don’t have to escape rejection by people any longer, or work hard to prove our worth to others. So many of our habits and chains are wrapped up in those two things, escaping rejection by others or trying to prove our worth.

They are stripped of their power when we accept and embrace the love of God for us!

I get like John when I talk about this!

I love being able to tell the truth of how God feels about you and me! We can throw off the chains that bind us, and live differently, because of the love God has for us. In a time of quiet, will you let the love of God wash over you?