Read John 3.16-21
Jeff Strite (Via SermonCentral.com) mentions: “I once read the story of a man had been driving on an out-of-the-way 2 lane highway running thru the rural countryside. He noticed an old tumbledown shack standing in the middle of an open field. He had to smile to himself as he read the crudely printed message on one whole side of the shack. Apparently, some young man had scrawled in large letters with a piece of chalk: "I love you - Kathy."
“A few weeks later, as he drove down that same road, he looked in anticipation for that same romantic message. His disappointment was as great as his surprise.
“Not only was the message gone, so was the barn. But his smile returned. Beside that field, on the back of a large road sign, scrawled in large white letters were the words: "I still love you - Kathy."
“John 3:16 is like that message. It is the message from God that He loves us – and that message seems to show up literally everywhere.
“You’ll see it at football games, basketball games, on billboards along the road, on bumper stickers of cars, on paintings and statues.
“I’ve even read about an eye doctor who has an eye chart in his office that – instead of traditional chart with the E at the top - has John 3:16 in letters with descending size. “Can you see this?” he will ask. While his patients smile, he sometimes has the opportunity to talk to them about the Lord.”
John 3.16 is familiar but also powerful. Martin Luther called it, “The heart of the Bible; the gospel in miniature.”
G. Campbell Morgan – “This is a text I have never attempted to preach on, though I have gone around it and around it. It is too big. When I have read it, there is nothing left to say. If we only knew how to read it, so as to produce a sense of it in the ears of people, there would be nothing to preach about.”
We have a God who fills us with wonder!
• Because of His Love for us
• Because of His expression of that love
God SO loved that he . . .
I. Served A Great Multitude – Everyone in the World
A. The Inclusive Nature of God – 2 Peter 3.9
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
1. Rain and Sun on evil/good; just/unjust
2. Because he SO loves
B. The Exceptional Nature of God
1. Outcasts are brought in
For I will restore health to you,
and your wounds I will heal,
declares the LORD, because they have called you an outcast:
'It is Zion, for whom no one cares!' Jeremiah 30.16
10And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" 12But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Matthew 9.10-13
2. This kind of love was beautifully described in story I read years ago by Mary Ann Bird. She wrote: “I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.
When schoolmates asked, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
There was, however, a teacher in the 2nd grade whom we all adored – Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy – a sparkling lady.
Annually we had a hearing test… Mrs. Leonard gave test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back – things like “the sky is blue” or “do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words that god must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”
II. Made a Great Expression
The Gettysburg Address was a simple speech made by A. Lincoln to dedicate the cemetery of that great battle. It consisted of 272 words and lasted a little over 2 minutes. Speeches of that day usually went hours, as Everett Edward’s two hour speech just before Lincoln. We have no photographs of the speech because the photographers were not expecting it to be so short and had not set up their cameras thinking they had plenty of time. Most Americans were embarrassed by the speech, yet, it has come down through time to be one of the greatest ever spoken.
John 3.16 is the same way – it is short, to the point, and embraces the point of God.
A. It is an Expression of God’s Love and Concern for us – It is About HIM
10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4.10
We love because he first loved us. 1 John 4.19
B. It involves Sacrifice
1. The Incarnation and Self-Sacrifice – John 1.14
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 1 John 15.12-14
2. The Sacrifice of a Son by His Father (Abraham at Mt. Moriah)
a. Greatest Expression of Love
b. After a few of the usual Sunday evening hymns, the church’s preacher once again slowly stood up, walked over to the pulpit, and gave a very brief introduction of his childhood friend. With that, an elderly man stepped up to the pulpit to speak, "A father, his son, and a friend of his son were sailing off the Pacific Coast," he began, "when a fast-approaching storm blocked any attempt to get back to shore. The waves were so high, that even though the father was an experienced sailor, he could not keep the boat upright, and the three were swept into the ocean."
The old man hesitated for a moment, making eye contact with two teenagers who were, for the first time since the service began, looking somewhat interested in his story. He continued, "Grabbing a rescue line, the father had to make the most excruciating decision of his life.... to which boy he would throw the other end of the line. He only had seconds to make the decision. The father knew that his son was a Christian, and he also knew that his son’s friend was not. The agony of his decision could not be matched by the torrent of waves.
As the father yelled out, ’I love you, son!’ he threw the line to his son’s friend. By the time he pulled the friend back to the capsized boat, his son had disappeared beyond the raging swells into the black of night. His body was never recovered."
By this time, the two teenagers were sitting straighter in the pew, waiting for the next words to come out of the old man’s mouth.
"The father," he continued, "knew his son would step into eternity with Jesus, and he could not bear the thought of his son’s friend stepping into an eternity without Jesus. Therefore, he sacrificed his son. How great is the love of God that He should do the same for us." With that, the old man turned and sat back down in his chair as silence filled the room.
Within minutes after the service ended, the two teenagers were at the old man’s side. "That was a nice story," politely started one of the boys, "but I don’t think it was very realistic for a father to give up his son’s life in hopes that the other boy would become a Christian."
"Well, you’ve got a point there," the old man replied, glancing down at his worn Bible. A big smile broadened his narrow face, and he once again looked up at the boys and said, "It sure isn’t very realistic, is it? But I’m standing here today to tell you that THAT story gives me a glimpse of what it must have been like for God to give up His Son for me. You see ... I was the son’s friend."
III. Offered a Great Promise
A. Eternal Life, Not Death (John 3.18-21)
1 Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short
That it cannot save;
Nor is His ear so dull
That it cannot hear.
2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. Isaiah 59.1-2
1. Begins Now
2. Includes the Presence of God
[Prodigal Son/Older Brother – wanted stuff, not their father
B. Based on Faith
1. What if we REALLY believed?
• What would happen if we took God at his word?
• 12 (or even 120) took the whole gospel to the whole world – what could we do if we believed?
• It is more than having the right gimmicks; technology; it is faith
2. Basis for Faith – Romans 10.17
• Word + Obedience (Action) – Deuteronomy 6.4ff
Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do." Exodus 24.3
• Not intellectual acknowledgement
• It is:
o Adherence to; Commitment to; Trust in; Faith in; Reliance upon
o It is not a hobby for us to take or leave at our convenience
It was young love. He wrote her a letter, trying to capture a poetic expression of how much she meant to him. He wrote, “For you, I would cross the hottest, driest desert. I would swim the deepest ocean and brave the wildest storm. I would climb the heights of Everest such is the depth of my love for you.
PS. I won’t be over this Saturday. The forecast is calling for snow!”
Impact of Yeshua (Jesus) coming to the world – Peace – With God/Within Self (casting cares)/with others
It was Christmas eve, 1914. All was quiet on France’s western front, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps. TRENCHES came within 50 miles of Paris. The war was only 5 months old then, but already 800,000 men and women had DIED or been WOUNDED. Every soldier wondered whether or not Christmas day would bring a new round of fighting and killing.
But something happened. British soldiers raised "Merry Christmas" signs above their TRENCHES, and it wasn’t long before CAROLS began to float across the no-man’s-land of BARBED WIRE and MINES. The SONGS came from German and British TRENCHES alike.
Christmas day DAWNED to find UNARMED soldiers leaving their TRENCHES, though OFFICERS on both sides tried to stop it. The men picked their way across the distance that SEPARATED them to exchange SONGS and CONVERSATION. Small GIFTS were exchanged. Christmas day passed PEACEFULLY along miles of the front.
In some places the SPONTANEOUS TRUCE continued into the next day as neither side was WILLING to FIRE the first shot. Finally, however, the WAR resumed as fresh troops arrived and the high command of both sides ordered that further "informal understandings" with the ENEMY would be considered high TREASON.
I find it interesting how the CELEBRATION of Jesus’ BIRTH can even STOP a WORLD WAR and make FRIENDS out of ENEMIES--at least for one DAY.
