SUMMARY KEYWORDS

god, jesus, menlo, give, paul, pray, campuses, love, consequences, titanic, sin, today, moment, facing, friend, perfect, repairs, heaven, feel, good.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

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Well, Good Morning, Menlo church. Welcome, welcome back to many of you, we're so glad that you're here. We are finishing a series that we've been in for the last several weeks, called Explore God, and over the last few weeks, we've hosted discussion groups and services at all of our campuses in Mountain View, San Mateo, Saratoga, Menlo Park, and for lots of folks online to help, hopefully, afford a safe place for this conversation about exploring God together. In addition, we've actually joined more than 160 Bay area churches in hopes of seeing a move of God that would capture the attention of a watching world and remind them no matter how they feel about God, that He loves them, and that His love will continue to pursue them forever. Now, we've been answering questions over the course of these weeks that are big questions, maybe questions you've never thought about before, or I've never given this kind of attention to, questions like does life have a purpose? Or is there a God? Is Jesus really God? Is the Bible reliable? You can catch up with all those online, we have one more that we're answering this weekend, which is can I know God, personally? And that question really brings all the rest to head for us today.

I don't know about you, but if there is a God who has an eternal plan that includes me and provides hope in the midst of the headlines that really lacks so much hope, I want to know more. And maybe you do too. Regardless of how comfortable your life is today, or how big the challenges and obstacles you face, here's the thing; whatever hope you have, if it doesn't include God, it is temporary, at best. And even in the worst of cases, if your hope is centered in God, it is always permanent, no matter the circumstances. I want to make sure that you know that later on in the service, I'm going to give you a chance to respond to make a decision to follow Jesus. And if you've never been to Menlo before, let me just reassure you that that will not be a heavy-handed or high-pressure sales pitch that is not us. We really genuinely, I really genuinely just want you to hear from and be able to respond to God, together.

Now, before we get started, I'm gonna pray for us. And if you've never been here before, or never heard me speak before I speak I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that is because I'm humbly asking God for a miracle today. I'm asking God for a miracle in your life, to find new life for the rest of your life that you could enjoy for all of eternity. Would you pray with me?

God for some of us, we walked into this room, we walked onto a campus, and Menlo, we tuned in online, because it's just what we do. We did it because we're in town for a reunion. We did it because we're in town on business, we did it because a friend asked us and we didn't want to be impolite. There's lots of reasons why we would walk into a place like this, and no matter the reason God, would you meet us here? Would you help us to sense your love for each and every one of us in a way that only you can? God, thank you. Thank you for the capacity that you have to never give up on us. And to love us, regardless of the circumstances. It's in Jesus name.

Amen.

I am the youngest of four siblings, and my oldest brother is 15 years older than me. Growing up, I was the only kid who went to church with my mom, who had been raised Jewish as a first- generation American, and she became a Christian in her early 20s. I couldn't have explained the nuances of theology or even why I necessarily wanted to go, but there was a passage that even as a very small child; I felt even before I knew the words to, and it was “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The apostle Paul put into words what I was feeling personally, and in my circumstances. I wasn't a bad kid, but I wasn't perfect. We usually have some sort of personal faith framework like that. We know some things to be true about ourselves whether or not someone has told them to us or not. And, really as it relates to how we think about faith, we can get to it very quickly if someone just poses this question to us. If you were to stand before God, and you needed to give him a reason for why He should let you into heaven, what is the reason you would give?

And we've all probably heard a question like that. Some of you have a very quick answer to that question. Others of you maybe you actually disagree with the premise of the question. But here's the thing. Either way, our answer will reveal a lot about how we think of this personal nature of God and what relationship we think is possible. I think that even if you don't believe God, even if you don't think there's an afterlife in play, we all sort of have like a backup plan just in case there is one right? We all have this argument or this logic about why we would if we were in that circumstance - I thought my whole life there wasn't one oops, there is - here's my three arguments. (1) I'm a good person. (2) I admit when I'm wrong. And (3) I'm trying to get better. And I think these are the three primary responses we have whether you would say you're a person that's trying to follow Jesus or not, those are in the water of our culture.

Now, I'm not even disagreeing with you at this point, but I want to examine each of these over the next few minutes together and give us a chance to examine them against the claims of God who deeply loves you and wants to be in a perfect permanent relationship with you. Before we get there though, I want to be really upfront about something. Your life is worth what God was willing to pay for it. Maybe that seems crass to you, or flippant. But at the end of the day, if the God of the universe is willing to do what I believe He did to win you back, it's worth considering. It is worth processing through your life priorities and goals. Speaking of considering let's consider that first reaction of why sometimes we say, you know, here's what I would say in order to get into heaven, which is, I'm a good person. And I think there's a footnote, usually when we say I'm a good person, what we really mean, but we don't say out loud is I'm a better person than right? I'm a better person than that coworker who colors outside the lines to get ahead professionally. I'm better than those people who would vote in the opposing political view that I would. I'm better than my spouse, but you keep it to yourself, you should keep it to yourself, right? What we really mean is we are comparing ourselves.

See our moral evaluation is flawed because we have no objective moral standard of our own. And therefore, we are always comparing our moral performance to the flawed moral performance of someone else. God doesn't work that way. See, for God, His standard isn't better than, God's standard is what's called a holy, He's set apart. He's perfect. He's not in comparison to. He stands alone. See, when we look back, just a few verses earlier than the verse I mentioned a few minutes ago, we discovered the way that the apostle Paul, a leader in a church planter in the first century, taught about human moral performance. He puts on a masterclass, seamlessly tying together the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. To make this point, he says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” So again, if this is your first time in Menlo church, welcome, we're so glad that you're here.

That’s pretty intense right? Now, the good news of Jesus love for us, is it always starts with the bad news of the spot that we would be in without it. The good news of Jesus or what we call the gospel without the bad news of our cosmic rebellion, and our sin is a solution in search of a problem. And I promise you, we have a big problem when we take into account our own condition. And if those verses offended you or they made you feel uncomfortable, join the club, I get it. Paul isn't saying this is true, by the way just about non-Jews. He's not trying to target one specific group. He's not saying just the people that are in the opposing political party or just the Cleveland Browns fans that you know, that's not what he's saying. He's saying we're all in this together. Not one understands God, not one seeks God, that's pretty all-encompassing. It turns out that the foot of the cross is even for all of us.

I know that between those joining us at our campuses this weekend, and those watching online, we have some of the smartest people maybe ever born and lived on planet Earth. And maybe your objection to this might be that you aren't even trying to live according to God's standards, so of course, you are failing at it. I had a friend in college named Davy, Davy was from West Virginia, he had grown up in a small town that he had almost never left. We went to school in downtown Chicago. And if you think that was probably fun to watch, it was hilarious. Because Davy almost blissfully was unaware that you could not show up in the way you behaved in a downtown environment the same way you could show up in rural West Virginia. He assumed as a West Virginia native that every restaurant was affordable, which was funny, like we can't go in there Davy nope. Or that the city was a universally safe place at all times for a West Virginia native Bible college student to explore any time of the day, which is not true.

See, there was part of it that was beautiful, an optimism that no one had taken away from him. But there were also experiences that would give him new perspective, help him see the world as it actually was even the difficult parts that he didn't want to look at. I think that sometimes we forget that for people who are turning to Jesus for the very first time, their experience of what it means to see the world as followers of Jesus is going to take time; that the patterns and choices they have been living on many times for decades, are going to take a while for God to do this work where their identity is slowly, slowly, slowly shifting to Christ in them. And as their identity shifts more and more to who they are in Christ, as Christians, if you're a follower of Jesus, your job is to encourage them, and to love them, and to be patient with them. As they take those steps. How often if you've been following Jesus for decades, do you expect someone who's been following him for days to have the same maturity level it's taking you decades to acquire.

Now, if you weren't a Christian, maybe you're thankful that I mentioned all that. But you're also a little annoyed, because again, you aren't trying to live by the same ethical constraints that you feel like Christians are sometimes holding you accountable to. And I agree, sometimes that happens. But Paul has something to say for us too. As a highly devout person, Paul reflects on his own limitations this way. He says, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.” Even if you don't describe yourself as a Christian, you have felt this right? Even if you say I'm not trying to follow what the Bible says you have a moral constraint, you have a framework; you have a list of things that you go, this is what I want to do. This is what I don't want to do. This is who I want to be, this is who I don't want to be. And what Paul would say is you violate your own standards.

Forget about the standards of God, you violate your own standards. So when you say you're a good person, what does that really mean? When you fail your own standards of what it would mean to be a good person, and we certainly all fail God's standards. Here's the difficult part of this concept. We are not morally qualified to meet God's standard. So in that way, we aren't good at all. But we are created in the image of God with infinite dignity, value and worth. So in one sense, we aren't good. But in another sense, we are simultaneously good, and valuable, and worth this connection to God because of the design of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. We want to select one or the other but God sees both. A quote I've used earlier in the series from the late great Tim Keller encapsulates this well. He says, “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

There's just one reason right there, that God's already showing us that He's willing to go to these kinds of lengths to win you back. For some of you, you know you aren't perfect or good enough. That's not really an argument you tried to make, you’re honest about it for you. The excuse you would say is Well, I admit when I'm wrong. And don't get me wrong, that's really admirable. Because when we look around when we look in the headlines, and we see what happens at our company, when we watch what happens at our school, when we see what happens with our friends, classmates, teammates. Someone just admitting that they're wrong feels like a milestone today. But it still isn't enough. See wishing you could take something back doesn't take back its consequences, right? I could give you countless examples of this with my kids, but I'm going to share one of my own.

When I was a senior in high school, my dad let me take his 2,000 Oldsmobile intrigue to a small party on New Year's Eve, be jealous, be jealous. He told me not to stay out too late, which to be honest, I took a little bit more like a suggestion than a boundary for the evening, and as I was leaving the party very late, I was driving down a major road in my hometown, there were no streetlights, there were no other cars coming the other way it’s totally dark, and a deer jumped out of the woods without notice. I couldn't avoid it and time and it destroyed the front of my dad's car. It was not a very happy new year for me. The next day, I was very apologetic, and my dad to his credit, was thankful that I was okay and had accepted my apology. But he also made me pay for the repairs to the car. It was expensive, and honestly it made me feel like he hadn't really accepted my apology.

We feel this way sometimes when we're kids, maybe if you have kids you've heard them say this before; when you're facing something like that when we're little and something like this happens we say this phrase, we say, but I said I'm [sorry], and that we feel like it's just the get out of jail free card of the consequences of our choices. But like I said, just because we're sorry for what we did, it doesn't remove the consequences for which we are sorry. Because we don't understand that being remorseful doesn't take those consequences. I wish it did. I wish it did for you. I wish it did in your marriage. I wish did it work I wish it did with your friends, I wish it did. But it doesn't. And there are stakes to our mistakes. The Bible calls them wages, the wages of our sin, they will cost us.

Paul, he continues that letter where he describes this hope that we have in Jesus by calling out this exact problem. He says it this way, he says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” See an awareness of our choices violating God's standards is an important step, but it's just a step. With the Oldsmobile intrigue, I could save up and pay for the repairs. But the payment plan of your sin and my sin is way too big. We could never pay it back on our own. What God has given us, what God is offering you, is so much more valuable and so much more costly than you could ever earn back, pay back, amass for yourself. In some ways we view what we broke like it's that car for my childhood. But violating the Divine Order of the Creator of the Universe feels a lot more like this, this is a Rolls Royce boattail, it's worth roughly $28 million. If I had damaged this car, I wouldn't have been able to pay it back, I'd probably be in prison, right? There's no way you're paying back for those repairs.

But Paul, he anticipates this conversation when he writes, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for 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.” This is really good news, because it means that God knows you can't be good enough on your own. God knows that you can't pay for the repair bill of what's broken in you are in me. It means that like when you apply for a job that you have inflated your credentials, you don't have to worry that down the road, they'll find out about it.

When you get into the job you don't have to pretend you know more or can accomplish more on your first day because God knows everything about you, and yet He still loves you, He still died for you, He still made a way back for you. So at the perfect time in human history, He intervened. And at the perfect time in your life, maybe today, He is intervening in your heart to draw you to Himself.

So if God was willing to send His own son to live a perfect life, to die on your behalf, taking the consequences for your sin, and the coming back from the dead, because He saw you as valuable. How do you understand your value? Is it because of God giving you value or because of your work? Because of what you've amassed. Because of God, you are worth more than your work more than your worry more than you're wavering, wandering, or wallowing your life is worth what God was willing to pay for it. And it still is. See the other reason that I mentioned that we're tempted to give for why we think we get into heaven If we were asked in that moment in this hypothetical conversation with God is; I'm trying to get better. Getting better is core to the human experience, right? And just a couple months, we're going to set new year's resolutions that we pretend we have the capacity to do on our own even though every year, we have tried and failed at the very same thing. See, we want to try and get better but order and sequence really matters with Jesus.

We all remember the historically accurate documentary The Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio. We can all agree by the way, if you saw that movie, that Rose was sort of hogging the door that Leo could have made it right, he could have survived. Let's just all grieve that for a moment. But the movie it calls back to the real-life tragedy of a boat that was thought to be unsinkable. See this early 20th-century event, it centers around a luxury ship that didn't turn in time and it hit an iceberg. And there are stories from the time where musicians are continuing to play, that the staff of the ship are still rearranging the deck chairs to compensate for the boat sinking. The problem was it was too late. Their effort was sincere but insufficient because it was too late. I think that a lot of us who are honestly trying to get better we don't realize because of what we've already read, we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic of our life. The human race hit the iceberg long before you were born. We never had a shot of doing this on our own. But the great news is that God knew that and because you are so valuable to him He was prepared.

In another letter to an early church Paul wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” See, God's love for you is so profound, that not only would He send His son to live this perfect life, die on your behalf, and then come back from the grave. He would do all of that and plan for it before the foundations of the world. That's how valuable you are to God, that knowing what would happen, He still went ahead with the plan. Imagine how absurd it would be if there was a bigger, better and fully intact boat next to the Titanic, and people just kept insisting on trying to fix the one that was sinking. But that's exactly what we do; we turned down the better thing that God has given for us through Jesus. Instead, we settle for the sickness of sin that we can never cure, and we wonder why we're in trouble. We wonder why it's not working. We wonder why our society is hopeless and helpless. But God didn't do all of that just to get you out of an eternity without Him. He did it so that you could have any eternity with Him in a perfect permanent relationship.

Jesus uses the idea of abiding like a vine and branches, that we would be so connected to God in our ongoing relationship that you would have power from God to help you every single day of your life. Are you facing something this week with uncertainty? Are you facing a doctor's appointment, a major presentation? Are you facing an assignment or an exam you have no idea how you'll be prepared for? If you are doing it without God, you are doing it without the source of life, to give you peace, comfort and power to walk out this life in light of the next one. I think we can all agree that Jack and Rose from the Titanic, they never really had a chance at their relationship, right? It was it was fleeting, that real relationships, they always, they always take time. They take long-term investment. And God's investment of you it started before he even made you. He was already planning on how he would win you back.

Not only that, but as Jesus ascended back to heaven after he resurrected from the dead, He left us with the Holy Spirit God himself living inside of every person who chooses to follow Jesus. And so I hope that you understand the invitation that your pursuit of Jesus is an ever deepening relationship and opportunity to know Him forever. And if at some point you walked away from your childhood faith are you walked away from a version of Christianity that you felt like you had gotten to the end of, I'm telling you, you may have been running the wrong race the entire time, because the God of the universe is infinite; the journey of exploring Him, it will not just take you your whole life, it will take you all of eternity.

If you think that being a good person will get you to heaven, it won't. If you think admitting when you're wrong will help you escape the cosmic consequences of your actions, it will not if you think that trying to get better on your own will eventually succeed, it will not. But the good news, is so much better than those options anyway. See, God was better than your goodest good. He already accepted all the blame for all of your mistakes. He already achieved all the perfection for all of eternity that we can't even reach for a moment on our own. So maybe, maybe I have you at least open to the possibility that if there is a God and that God loves you, and He sees you so valuable, that He would send Jesus to die for you, then what does that mean for you?

What would responding to that mean? If you decided to follow Jesus today? What would the steps be?

In the same letter where we started, we find one of the most famous verses about this very subject where Paul says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” In the midst of that, Paul is breaking down choosing to follow Jesus as a choice to acknowledge my need for salvation, God's work to save me, and the decision to live a life that follows Jesus forever. You can't earn it. You can't pay Him back, and you will never this side of eternity ever get it perfect. But He already got it perfect for you that His grace, His favor pours into your life. See now, as a follower of Jesus, God will see Jesus’ perfection when He looks at you. The word that we use for this as a word justification, and it carries this idea of a legal standing of a perfect sinless son or daughter because of Jesus' perfection on your behalf.

We talked about this a little bit last week, but while we want in 21st-century western culture, we want God to be a weak but welcoming friend, He is actually a powerful God who satisfies His own standards of holiness to win you back. I want you for just a moment to imagine a scene with me. Take a moment to envision the fact that you are on trial, and the penalty for the charges that you are on trial for is death. As you're making your case, as you're presenting evidence, as you're giving the best opening and closing argument you possibly can, you can tell two things at the same time; (1) you are going to lose, you're guilty. The evidence is not circumstantial, it is conclusive, everyone can tell.

The second thing you can tell the same time as you just noticed that through the entire trial, the judge on the bench is weeping. Weeping from the chair for the punishment that he will have to hand down to you because you are actually guilty. Then on the day when you will face the final judgment, and the gavel slams, the judge after slamming the gavel with tears in his eyes, gets down from his chair, takes off his robe and allows them to cuff him instead of you. Allows them to put him on death row instead of you. And allows himself to be executed instead of you; that's what God did for you.

So let me go back to the first question that I asked you; if you face the question of answering why God should let you into heaven, there's really only one answer for you; it's Jesus. Here's how I would answer the question, obviously this is not the way the conversation actually works. But I would say I'm not perfect. I failed all the time, even when I was trying my best, and I wasn't always trying my best. I tried to admit when I was wrong, but I wasn't even always aware of the things that were wrong in me and the consequences that they created around me. I tried to improve over time, but as I consider the chasm between my performance and God's perfection, my best efforts were comical compared to Him. Why should you let me in? You shouldn't. But you're not letting me in because of my performance; Jesus' perfection as a gift has been extended to me to be in relationship with Him forever, and I can never and will never deserve it or be able to pay it back. It shows how God sees me, and I couldn't be more thankful to receive His mercy and grace.

I have good news for you; if you want to make that your answer. If you want that to be the way you would respond with your life, I'm going to give you a chance to pray a prayer in just a moment. It's not a magic spell, it's not an incantation, it's just words. And these words can represent a decision that you make a decision to follow Jesus forever and to receive His forever love for you.

Here's what I'm going to do if you need to pray this prayer for the first time, I'm going to just pray a prayer you just repeat it after me in the quiet of your heart. And if you're a follower of Jesus and you call Menlo home here's what I'd love for you to do, to give some courage to those around you I want you to pray these words out loud with me. Let's see what God might do.

Campuses all around the bay area as we explore God in this moment, would you bow your heads with me? If you need to make this decision to follow Jesus for the very first time you just pray this in the quiet of your heart. And if you call Menlo home, you're a follower of Jesus. You repeat this out loud with me: God thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying from me. At the perfect time in the perfect way, even though I don't deserve it. I surrender my life to your way of life, for the rest of my life. Thanks for a brand-new start, that begins today and lasts forever. In Jesus name.

If you keep your heads bowed for me and your eyes closed, would you do me a favor and let our campus pastors pray for you? If you just made a decision to follow Jesus with that prayer, would you just slip your hand up; whatever room you're joining us from today across the Bay Area, if you just said Jesus, I’m in, I'm choosing to follow you for the rest of my life. If that's your decision today, would you just slip your hand up? Let us pray for you. Praise God. Praise God. Thank You. Thank You. Amen, you can look up thank you very much.

Before we go, I want to give you a few possible next steps. The first one is if you just made a decision to follow Jesus, or maybe somewhere along this series, you've made a decision to follow Jesus, we'd love to have you stop by Info Central at your campus and get a gift from us about how to help start taking steps and following Jesus in your everyday life, even beginning today. In just a moment, actually, we're going to take communion together as well, which is a amazing reminder of what Jesus did for us. And if you're a follower of Jesus, even if it's only seconds old, I would encourage you to take communion with us. And in a few weeks, we will see people go public with their faith through baptism. Maybe God's next step for you is to make your faith public, and to learn about baptism. The Bible says that there is a celebration in heaven for every sinner turn saint. So I just want to say, thank you. Thank you for letting us have heaven, throw a party for you. Can I pray for us?

God, the journey of exploring God here at Menlo and around the Bay Area, it didn't start five weeks ago and it's not going to end today. But we pray that this would represent a milestone, a moment God where people are choosing to turn from their way and believe that there is something so much bigger and so much brighter ahead for us because of what you've done.

And so God for people who have made a decision to follow you, would you give them supreme peace? Would you give them a deep conviction about what a next step with you might look like?

For people that are on the fence God, would you draw them to yourself today? And for those of us God, who have maybe been following you for decades, would you place on us a burden, not just for people in general, but for somebody specific in our life; for a family member, or a friend, or a neighbor or a coworker who just, they need you. They need this hope that we might lift them up, pray for them, be involved in their life and tell them about what you've done in ours.

God thank you so much. We give all of this to you, anticipating what you'll do next with it. It's in Jesus name. Amen.

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