God Sees You | Why You are Not an Accident

TRANSCRIPT

Radical Christmas for me has been amazing. I have just loved it and every facet of it. And as someone who's been here a very long time, I can say that I am more proud of my church than ever before because I just love the way our church responds to the giving call and just doing stuff for other people.

It's just been amazing. Rudy's gonna share a lot more on that later, in this series we have been on. I see you. We see you, and today I wanna talk about God sees you. God sees you, and. But first I wanna do a little recap of the previous speakers in this series. And I have absolutely loved their stories and I'm gonna condense them and I pray I'll get it right, but I'm gonna condense their stories and it's gonna help me in later on in my message.

Please speakers so I don't get exactly right. Forgive me, but I feel like I've got it. I've gone back and had a look at the tape. And I am gonna do a little recap. So in no particular order, we had Pastor Lynn sharing how he felt, perhaps a little bit sad and lonely about, almost rejected by being placed in another family.

He was in a family and then he got placed in another family and it was tough for him. And I know that would've been tough, right through perhaps his boyhood and stuff. But do you know what? When I think Len got adopted into God's family, things would've changed for Pastor Len and I see the man he is now.

And I know that God's family, Jen, this, there was five more stories before you're supposed to cry. I know that pastor land being adopted into God's family would have been the most amazing thing and I'm sure he would say so. Then we have Pauline's story was absolutely spell bounding. And I am going to call her the beautifully complicated Pauline, because I believe and I know she's here today, she might be out in the cafe, but I believe that God needed to give her a beautifully complicated story of her salvation.

And he did. And we know that Pauline said she only just scratched the surface, but it was an amazing story. About how God just moved the pieces around the board and put the puzzle together so that Pauline could find Jesus, and she did. And I'm sure she would say that's the best moment of all her life.

And you know what the added bonus was? She found a beautifully uncomplicated husband in Sam. And what a bonus for her as well as her salvation. Hallelujah. And and I megs, I loved your story. I loved your story and I believe that God chose the most joyous woman to go and spread Christmas joy to the family of prisoners.

And give them a gift. And not only did she spread joy to the children and the family, but she spread joy to the prisoners in jail who were able to choose their own presence for their own children. And man, as I was rehearsing this thing, this kept bringing a tear to my eye because how good is that?

How good is that? And. Meg's got to go and do that work for the Lord and so amazing. And I just love that Pastor Kev. Pastor Kev, I love this story. It reminds me of a CLINs Oxford movie. Pastor Kiev gets on a bus one day with his wife Annie, pastor Kiev. He says to his wife, Annie, he said, honey.

There ain't no one talking on this bus. There's no one talking on this bus. He said, I'm aiming to fix that. And he says, no, is she, Annie? Leave it to me. I'm doing this. And so Pastor Kev he goes around the bus, and he finds a lady and he sits down and he talks to her. And you know what? That lady hadn't been seen in a long time, I'm sure of that.

And Pastor Kef was able to see that lady. Did he solve all her problems? Absolutely. Not only God does that, but that day that lady was seen. And that is the thing that we are meant to do. See, people love people. And Kev did that, and I've got one more. Ruthie has just so many stories. And I think the most amazing thing about Ruthie is somehow God is able to download strategies into Ruthie's heart just to be able to help others.

And you know what when it gets into Ruthie's heart, there is no question that we are doing it Ruthie's heart. We get it. We do it, and we love it. And Ruth here. All I can say is the highest compliment I could give you is I think when God looks at your heart, he smiles. It's a heart. So that's the little synopsis of where we have been in this series.

It started with ICU. Then we see you. And today I am gonna share that God sees you. And I really hope that you can see that today I don't have a lot of time. So what I wanna do is I want to jump right into some scripture this morning that will show us that God does see us. And there's a scripture that jumped out at me in my devotions last week, and it's a little bit obscure and you probably think, where did you get this from?

But it's in first Peter chapter one now, Peter. Was a disciple of Jesus. He was one of the main men. He was the guy that was pretty close to Jesus and he just was the man that loved Jesus. And he had a few mistakes and he made a few blunders. But he loved Jesus. And this is what he says at the beginning of his letter to Christians in many different areas.

Now, there was a fair degree of persecution at this time, and Peter was primarily addressing Jewish Christians, but he was also addressing Gentiles, which is us, and he was addressing us and he was because he understood that Jesus died for both Jews and Gentiles, which is us. So he could be talking to us here.

So let's read it first. Peter chapter one, verse one and two. It says, Peter. To, let me just read it here, to God's Elect, strangers in the World is there scattered throughout Pontius, Galacia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bethia who have been chosen according to the fore knowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and for the obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling of his blood.

Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there, but I just wanna break it down to you. First of all, I want you to see that word chosen, people were chosen. You are chosen. And also I want you to see that our salvation. And if you are here today, and you dunno what salvation is, it's just coming to believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord and he can be the Lord of your life, and you just choose to follow him and obey the Lord.

You just want to come into that place where you obey the Lord. And so I want you to see that the salvation. It takes the whole three members of our Godhead to be working for our salvation. Just wanna explain that there's not three gods. There is only one God who has three functions. It's like we have a body, we have one body, but we have different functions of our body.

We see, we hear, we smell. So if you get that, it's only one God, but we have God the father who has the fore knowledge. Of us. He knew us before. He knew us before. And we're gonna see that a moment more clearly in the next scripture. God, the Father had the foreknowledge of us. How far back? We'll find out.

And then we have God, the Holy Spirit, and he sanctifies us. Sanctifies. What does that mean? It's a big Bible word for set us apart to do God's work. Maybe like delivering presence, maybe like getting on a bus to talk to someone. Maybe like just doing a regular day thing and you just tell, Hey, I am a Christian and I love Jesus.

He sanctifies us for the work that Jesus wants us to do. And then the third member of the Godhead is the hero. His name is Jesus. Yes. And Jesus went to the cross for us so that we could have our sins forgiven, so that we could be loved by the Father God again, so that we could just come into a relationship with God.

And so Jesus is the hero, and I think God just wants to understand what it took for our salvation. Let me just go to the next scripture.

It's Ephesians chapter one and verse four and five. The Apostle Paul is the author of Ephesians, and the Apostle Paul is one that used to murder Christians before he became a Christian. He didn't believe in this way. The sect, the thing, he didn't understand, but then God revealed himself to the Apostle Paul.

And Paul became one of the most prominent, perhaps the most prominent author of the Bible books. And he became a champion of the Christian faith. And so here he says in Ephesians, he's writing to Ephesians. He says, for he chose us in him before the creation of the world. Let's stop right there. He chose us in him before the creation of the world.

I don't know if you can get your head around that, but we need to just pause a minute and talk about that. He chose us before the foundation of world. In other words, he knew you and me. Before the foundation of the world. He had the blueprint. He had the plan. He had the plan for you.

Before the foundation of the world, can you see that? He sees you. He sees you because he's seen you right from the beginning. From the start. God sees you and has a plan for you to get to know Jesus, to put the puzzle together, to come into a knowledge of Jesus. God sees you. So let's move on. So before the creation of the world to be what Holy and blameless in his sight, in love.

He predestined us to be adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. He predestined us. You know what? He knew us from before the foundation. We, he had us in his sights. He knows the blueprint. He knows who we are, and he's decided, he's marked out beforehand. That's what predestined means, and he's predestined us to get to know Jesus.

This is pretty cool. Is it not? It is very cool that he had this in mind, right from the start. In accordance with what his pleasure and his will. When you come to Christ, there's a party in heaven. You may not know Jesus today, but I can tell you when you come to Christ and when a lot of us here have known Christ for a while, and when we came to Christ there was a party in heaven.

And I remember I came to Christ in September of 1980 and. You. You guys probably remember your birth date when there was a party in Heaven and it was for God's pleasure that you actually came to Christ. God sees you and it gives him pleasure when you wanna come into relationship with him. It gives you pleasure, it gives God pleasure, and it's his will.

That you come into relationship with him, and you know what? We are chosen. We are chosen. I come back to that word chosen because if we are chosen, then God definitely sees us.

He loves us, and those pieces come together just like Pauline's testimony. The pieces came together. God goes to a lot of trouble. He goes to, it's no trouble for God because he's gone, but he just puts pieces together. He gets the puzzle, puts it together so that you notice Jesus, and you may be here today for the first time, or you may be online and maybe.

You decided I don't want to go to church just in case the roof falls in. It didn't fall in when I came and when all these people here, it didn't fall in. Sometimes we feel like, oh, I couldn't darken the door. You can because God wants you to come, but today you may be looking online and realize that you know what, Jesus and God they love you and they want you to in that kingdom.

And so I. And God's ultimate goal for us is that we find Jesus. And the fact is we do nothing to earn our salvation. We do. Abso, remember that saying we used to have a long, a while ago, salvation equals Jesus. Plus nothing. Plus nothing. Do we get a choice? Yeah, we get a choice. We can say no. But God's gonna keep knocking on your door.

God's gonna keep knocking on your door if you say no today and no tomorrow, and no the next day, God's gonna keep knocking and knocking because he loves you and because he had a blueprint for you from the creation of the world, and he wants you to come into his plan for salvation. Knock knock.

He keeps knocking.

God has a plan. God's always had a plan. He wanted fellowship with Adam and Eve in the garden. He created Adam and e. And he wanted fellowship and he walked together with Adam in the garden in the afternoon. He just wanted fellowship and God had that fellowship for a certain time, and then Adam and Eve somehow mucked it up just like we muck it up.

If you think you're mucking it up. You are no different to any other person in the world. You think you mucked it up a real lot. You're no different to any other person in the world. If you think you mucked it up too much to be saved, that's not true. You haven't mucked it up that much. God had a plan. He wanted fellowship, and then he knew that he had to make a way for us to be able to come in and he made a plan.

And the plan was that Jesus was gonna go to the cross. It was heartbreaking for Jesus to go to the cross because why? Because he was separated from his father. He got separated, but from his father, it was heartbreaking. But he said for the joy set before him, who is the joy? We are the joy. We're the joy.

Yep. We are the joy set before him because we said yes. And for you today, if you don't know Jesus, all you need to do is say yes. You won't understand it. None of us understood it at the start. We had no idea we, what are we getting into? But we knew that we needed a second chance and we decided we would say yes.

And it's been the best decision ever made, best decision ever made, and we decided we are gonna say yes.

And I just want you to know I, we're gonna have communion in a minute, and as we do, we're gonna consider the elements. It's the body broken and the blood. So I'm gonna leave it there for a minute and I'm gonna pray and then Ruth's gonna come.

And we are gonna continue on and later we're gonna have communion and we're gonna have that great time of fellowship with God, and we're gonna consider the elements of the body broken and his blood for us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you today with humble hearts and we just say thank you.

We say thank you for this Christmas season. We say Thank you for your plan to send Jesus to this earth, humbly without fanfare, without any any big orchestra or anything like that. He came into a humble place and he had humble people around him. And he just had people that wanted to know him and love him, and they saw the signs.

And Lord, we thank you that he came humbly and we thank you father. For the plan that you had at the start so that we could come back into relationship with you, that we could have fellowship with God the father again. And Lord, while we all don't even understand the full context of that plan, we know how good it is.

Those of us have tasted. You have tasted that you are so good that we just want to be with you forever. And Lord, we thank you for all that you've done for us. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.