The Last 10 Minutes of the Sermon: More on the 3rd Way of the Gospel
Several weeks ago, I preached through Luke 15:11-32 on the two lost sons. We talked about the failed approached to life and love of both the younger brother (the prodigal) and the older brother (the religious type). We talked about the way to life and love found in The Third Way: The way of the gospel. It assaults our hearts through the passionate and pursuing love of the Father and it conquers us through the willing sacrifice of our true Elder Brother, Jesus.
But as beautiful as that reality is and as much as it is the way of life, it is still difficult to grasp and live! If we’re honest, we have questions. Questions arise in our minds even from our study of the Scriptures and the varied, perhaps contradictory, descriptions of the love of God. We also have questions that simply arise from our own experience (or lack thereof) of the love of God. We’re going to examine these briefly, and we’re going to find that our experiential challenges are very much due to our misunderstanding of the Scriptures over the love of God. Faith begins with knowing the truth- its value is found in the object of our trust. So if we have failed to grasp truly the nature of God’s love, then it is no wonder that our hearts will be struggling to live by faith in the daily battle of sin, suffering, and brokenness.