John 3:16 is both the easiest verse in the Bible to preach on and it is the hardest verse to preach on. Of the 31,102 verses in the Bible, John 3:16 captures the very essence of the message of the Gospel. If we were to remove every verse from Genesis to Revelation, leaving only John 3:16, I still believe that souls would be saved. I one sentence, Christ established why He had come to this earth and what the world stood to gain by believing in Him.
This is also one of the hardest verses to preach on, because who doesn’t know this verse? It’s on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and billboards. We see it flashed on stadium screens during sporting events. John 3:16 is everywhere. We know what the verse says. It is perhaps the most well-known Bible verse in the whole world. And everyone thinks they know what it is talking about.
I feel like John 3:16 is like a photograph in that sense. One single verse cherry picked out of wonderful passage of Scripture that tells a much grander story. I must admit, even in preparation for this sermon, I was tempted to just focus on the single verse instead of the passage. Like a photo, you get an image, but not the whole scene.
Here is the setting for this passage: Nicodemas, a teacher of the Law, comes to Jesus secretly at night, to question Him. He desires to know more about the things that Christ has been teaching. This is the setting where we first hear Jesus use the phrase, “A man must be born again.” Nicodemas just can’t wrap his head around what Jesus is saying. Jesus ask of Nicodemas, “You’re a teacher of the Law, and you don’t know about these things?”
Jesus then teaches on the scope of God’s love for mankind. In this passage, Christ reveals why He has come and what that means for mankind. Jesus teaches the Gospel message in just a few sentences.
During the Christmas season, the theme of God’s love for us comes to the forefront of our thinking. God sent His Son, because He loved us. Christ came to this earth to be the willing sacrifice for our sins, because He loved us. This is revealed to us in John 3:16. Yet, there is so much more that Christ has to teach us here. So much more insight into the love that God has for all mankind.
I. We Learn the Object of God’s Love
A. “For God so loved the world” is how the famous verse begins and reveals to us who God loves.
- Miraculously, it is us. The whole of the human race.
- From Adam in the Garden to the newest baby born today, God has loved all of us.
- And because He loves us, He determined to make a way for us.
- God did not wait for the world to turn to Him before He loved the world.
- God gave us His only begotten Son when the world was still unworthy of such an awesome gift.
B. This idea that God loved the whole world, is a purely Christian idea.
- The Jew of Jesus’ day rarely thought that God the whole world. Many of them thought that God only loved Israel.
- This universal offer of salvation in Jesus Christ was revolutionary.
- That is the scope of God’s love for mankind. That salvation would
- be offered not just to a singular group of people, to all the people of the world.
- That message has been spread to the whole world. It did not stay within the borders of Israel, but has touched every continent, been translated to every language, and declared from shore to shore.
• The message of the Gospel has even made its way into outer space! Neil Armstrong famously read from the account of creation as Apollo 11 orbited the earth.
C. Knowing that God’s love is for all men, the whole world, reveals to us the very nature of God.
- 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us that God desires all people to be saved and come into the knowledge of truth.
- God loves us so deeply, that He made a way for us, so that we could pass from life to death.
- God gave us the most precious gift in His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we can have salvation from our sins. So that we might know the Father and the Father might be revealed to us.
- What John 3:16 reveals to us is that God is love.
- There is no sin He will not forgive, no trespass He will not redeem, and no life He will not restore.
- The resounding, echoing message of John 3:16 is that God loves you.
II. John 3:16 also reveals to us the expression, the recipient, the intention, and the duration of God’s love.
A. The expression of God’s love is seen in His giving us His Son.
- God’s love didn’t just feel for the plight of a fallen world.
- God did something about it.
- In sending His Son, He proved the lengths that He was willing to go to, to demonstrate His love for us.
- God withheld nothing in His desire to see men forgiven of sin.
- That word begotten is a special word: that word means unique, special, the only one of its kind.
- Why that is significant is because there was no one else God could have sent to do what Jesus did.
- When no other substitute for the sins of man could be found, God sent us His Son.
B. The recipients of God love are seen in those that will believe.
- We have already established that God loves the world, but the world does not receive the benefits of that love until it believes in the Son.
- God gave us a gift on that first Christmas, but it is the task of each individual person to accept and believe in that gift.
- To believe in means so much more than to just have an intellectual awareness of Christ.
- It means that you trust in, rely on, and cling to Him.
- It’s not enough to just know about Christ, you have to believe on Him, confess your sin to Him, and allow Him to transform you from the inside out.
C. Next, we see the intention of God’s love for mankind.
- What God intended for mankind by sending His Son was to save mankind from eternal destruction.
- God looks at fallen man, does not wish to see him perish, and so in His love extends the gift of salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.
- God desires that no man should perish, but that all should come into the knowledge of the truth. The saving power of that truth. What is that truth?
- That all you must do is believe and call upon the name Jesus, and you will be saved.
- That was God’s intention for mankind when He sent His Son into the world.
D. We then see the duration of God’s love.
- The sad truth is that the love we receive from people may fade or turn. People fall in and out of love all the time. Who here has not lost a friend, because of a change in affection?
- But the wonderful truth of the love of God, is that it will never change.
- God’s love for us is everlasting and eternal.
- His love for His people will never stop, even into the furthest distance of eternity.
- This is what make the reality of those that reject Him, even more depressing.
- Even those that reject the offer of God’s love and go into eternity never have known Him, God will still love.
III. The closing verses of this passage remind us that there is condemnation for sin.
A. Notice what Christ says in vs 17, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world.”
- God did not send Christ into the world to point out our sin and not provide an escape.
- Jesus, in coming into this world, revealed the heart of God.
- Jesus came to offer salvation, rescue, hope, and healing for the soul.
- Jesus did not come to the point fingers and lay blame, but to show and demonstrate that there was a better way that God had provided for all mankind.
- That within Him, and Him alone, there was a path to life and life everlasting.
B. But then Christ states this chilling truth: those that do not believe, are condemned already.
- John 3:16 is the most gracious, wonderful offer conceivable: Eternal life for all who will believe.
- But that offer has inherent consequences.
- For any that would reject that offer made by God, for those who refuse to believe, face certain condemnation.
- Those who deliberately reject the message of Jesus Christ, face judgement and eternal separation from God.
- Jesus came to bring salvation, but those who reject that salvation condemn themselves.
C. Jesus then reveals why there will be condemnation.
- Why do people reject Jesus?
- No doubt many believe that they have rejected superstition for reason. That they prefer to look to seen world, rather than the unseen. They see themselves as people of logic and intelligence.
- Jesus offers another explanation that has dire moral compromise at the root of their rejection: It is because they are drawn to the darkness and love it more than the light.
- That is, they love their sin and don’t want to face it or face a God who will judge their sin.
- When we think of the love of sin that sends people to hell, we often think of notorious sin. But the simple demand to be lord of my own life is enough of a sin to deserve condemnation before God.
D. Look at the hope in vs 21. If we do what is true, we are brough to the light and are wrought in God.
- The amazing truth is that even those who reject God, God still loves.
- Even those who would say that they don’t have time for God, God would still bring into the light if they would except His gift.
- Is there any greater love than this?
- How great is the love of God, that He will still pursue the one who has rejected? He would still provide a way for those that turn away.
- Mankind has never known so great a love and will never experience such a profound love in this life.
CLOSING
Many times the great hymn of F.M. Lehman, "The Love of God" has thrilled our hearts. The familiar first stanza goes:
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell,
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win:
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.
Then the chorus:
O Love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forever-more endure
The saints and angels song.
The story goes that when Lehman tried to write a third verse to the song, but the words just wouldn’t fall into place. He then thought of a card he had once received that had on it a poem about the love of God. He searched for the card and soon found it. Lehman read the words on the card, and his heart was just as thrilled with the poem as it was the first time he read it. He began to voice the words of the poem with the melody he had composed for his song. They fit perfectly and he knew he had his third verse to his song, "The Love of God."
Lehman noticed at the bottom of the card some smaller but heavier printing. It told the story of the origin of the poem. It told that the poem was found written on a cell wall in a prison some 200 years earlier. It was not known why the prisoner was incarcerated; neither was it known if the words were original or if he had heard them elsewhere. Whatever the circumstances, he had written them on the wall of his prison cell. That third stanza goes:
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill
And ev’ry man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Tho stretched from sky to sky.
How true the words of that song is!
Our tongues fail to properly express the gratitude we have for hoe deeply God loves us.
As we enter the week of Christmas, we are once again reminded that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. That whosoever should believe in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This is what Christmas is truly about.
Forget the lights, the decorations, and the gifts under the tree. The lesson of the Advent season, is that God so deeply loved us, that He sent Jesus to be the sacrifice that was needed for the sins of mankind. The miracle of Christmas is, of course, that Christ did willing come to be that sacrifice.
Such love. Such wonderous love, that God should love a sinner a such as I. How wonderful, wonderful, wonderful is love like this!
