Bill Dogterom teaching from the Bible 12/22/25, 11/2/26

5:13–7:32

…in fact love forms the foundation for the hope, for the peace, for the joy. It is this awareness that God is for us. That at the very center of the universe is, in a sense, holding the universe in himself, that love enchants the universe that we live and move and have our existence in. God who is love. We are built for an environment of love.

And even using that language, it sounds kind of Hallmarky, you know, Lifetime movie things. And you know that kind of love, that feeling, that emotion, lovely, lovely, lovely, is not sustainable and actually won’t be enough to change the world. What we need is love that can put some work gloves on. What we need is love that persists beyond and past and through feeling, that shapes the universe by its dogged persistence.

And here’s the challenge with it. Love is technically a weak force. That is to say, it won’t overwhelm. It won’t flood. It always stands arms open, inviting. And that’s the challenge with it, because we think we need to grab things. In fact, this was the challenge in Genesis chapter 3, where the serpent came and said, “God’s not as good as you think he is. You need to secure your own identity as his image and disconnect from the obedience to the law.” And in so doing, we forgot who we were. And in forgetting who we were, we ceased to be who we were. We’ve become less and less human. I think it’s fair to say that this month, particularly in this last season, has revealed the depths of our inhumanity in multiple ways. And here we are in this season…

9:24–10:30

…that if I’m as dependent on love as the scripture indicates I ought to be, then that will mean at some point in time I will be taken advantage of.

The cross was not just for Jesus. He didn’t die, remember, so that we wouldn’t have to, but so that we would know how to.

So, by the way, do you already figure out why some of us have a hard time being loved? We’ve already done the road trip. We know where it goes. And we’re not convinced that love can get us out the other end just yet. And that’s the challenge.

That’s the challenge. So this is the focus for us this morning, to sit with this. And of course, the first place we turn is the one that you have memorized, the key passage. It’s in John chapter 3, where, in John’s poetic form, he has Nicodemus, this brilliant man who is…

12:18–14:35

And so he sets off. And yet with that same word, he also heard that it wasn’t going to go good for him. It wasn’t going to be roses and ice cream for him. He was going to experience some deep and profound challenges when he went. And still he knew that this is what he was supposed to be. He understood those warnings as just that. Not new direction, but: prepare yourself. Buckle in. This is going to be a rough ride. Don’t panic when it happens. And I just want to sit with that for a minute. What in the world?

‘Cause Jesus wants everybody to be happy, right? I mean, that’s why you came. That’s why you signed up. That’s why you decided to follow him. That’s why you became a Christian, right? So that you go to heaven when you die and have a fairly easy road between now and then. Right? And then you read the fine print and you realize Jesus did not come to make your life better.

He came to kill you, because he knows that’s the only way you can experience resurrection life. There’s no way to the resurrection without the death.

We need to get so good at dying daily that when the day of our death comes, it will not be anomalous to us. I use this day as a memento mori, to consider the day of my death. All Saints’ Day, November 1st. I use this whole weekend, the Day of the Dead, and realize that one day that’s going to be me. All other things being equal, maybe 10, 15 years.

I’m now in the process of my life of learning how to give my death away. First phase was getting a life. Second phase was giving that life away in mission and ministry. But then the last 10, 15 years is giving my death away… How do you do that? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

31:03–33:20

But if we have built a culture that shuts it down before it’s even heard, we will have missed the point of community.

So they hear this word and interpret it as you and I. I mean, frankly, wouldn’t you? Didn’t he come to prosper us and to bless us and to make good things happen to us? We pray for healing, don’t we? And people are healed. We pray for financial provision and it comes. Surely in a moment like this, we should take this word and… you hear what I’m doing, because we still want to pray for healing. Yeah. But not throw a hissy fit if we’re not healed.

It’s not about lack of faith. You will discover in Paul, as you did in Jesus, it takes more faith to die in Jesus’ name than to be healed.

And again, I’ve underlined it before. I still pray for healing. I still pray for people to be healed. I still pray for all of those provision kinds of things. But let’s be clear: the more full our hands are, the less capacity we have to receive the will of God. The more full our hands are of the provision of God, the less capacity we have to receive the presence of God.

This is why Jesus said it’s really hard for rich people to enter the kingdom. They got all they need. They got all they want. They’re not desperate. They don’t need a near neighbor. They got 911.

So this is a fence that I’ve got to walk. Do you feel the tightrope for me? Are you feeling it yourself? Because we still pray for healing. We still pray for deliverance, and we still get measure…

Yeah. Hard. So Agabus delivers his word. The people begin to wail and…