4th Sunday of Lent – March 14, 2021

4th Sunday of Lent – March 14, 2021

4LB21.     2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23.  The people of Judah (province around Jerusalem) were not living as God’s People.  Because of their gross infidelity to the Lord, the Lord delivered them to be crushed by the Babylonian army and taken as enslaved captives to Babylonia.  Much later King Cyrus who defeated the Babylonians, inspired by the Lord freed the Jews and promoted the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.  With great joy they returned.

John 3:14-21.  Jesus establishes the theme of rest of this gospel when he says, “So must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  Then John the Evangelist comments: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  By offering himself up on the cross, Jesus is saying that he loves us so as to give us, who choose to live in his love now, life forever with God in God’s love for us.  This is the foundation of our faith.  To live in the darkness is to choose to live without God’s love and in disobedience to God’s Will.  Jesus is the Light of the world.  Without him we are saying we choose in the darkness of a lie.  To live in the light daily is to live in the light.  To believe in Jesus is to draw our daily life from his personal loving presence in us.  To live in his love means to draw life through our submission to his Will that is his expression of love for us.

Ephesians 2:4-10.