God So Loved: John 3:16-21

God so loved the world.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

And this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and the people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

This is the reading of God's holy and precious word.

Let's pray for the Spirit's work.

Spirit of God, we do pray that you would illumine our darkened minds and hearts.

Lord, you know, Spirit of God, you know what's blocking the light, what's keeping us in unbelief.

Overcome our unbelief this morning.

Let your light shine even in our darkness, that we would give all glory to Jesus.

Lord Jesus, that we would be seeing you lifted up high and mighty.

That we could worship you with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.

This is our prayer.

In Jesus' name, amen.

We just finished the sermon series serving our city and our world in the name of Christ.

And I've been thinking about that in the last few weeks.

Well, what's going to follow this sermon series?

And the Lord really put on my heart, He put on my heart that Tom preach about my love.

Because you know, you can do as a church, you can try to serve your city, and you can try to serve your world, and not really out of love for God.

And not really out of love for other people.

Have you found that to be true?

I have.

Sometimes I just feel like I can go on automatic.

I've got a job I have to do.

Ministry.

But that's just not right, is it?

God wants this church, He wants you, and He wants me to serve our city and our world in the name of Christ, because we really believe that God loves this world.

And we really believe that God loves us.

And when you believe that, it's just different.

It's just different.

Why we would have no mission if God had not sent his son on his mission.

We wouldn't be here this morning.

This morning, let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture of God's love.

The Father's heart, the first point.

Oh, the scriptures love to say so much about our loving God.

And again, it doesn't begin in the New Testament.

It's throughout the Old.

Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 3.

Jeremiah 31:3

Yes, yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Think about that.

An everlasting love God loves his children with.

God's love never runs out.

There's no expiration date.

Isn't that good news?

He doesn't get tired of us and say, you know, I'm done with you.

I thought I'd give you a chance, but you know, you're just not really measuring up.

What does it mean to us that he would never say that to us?

His love is everlasting.

It never, he never runs out of love for you.

Everlasting.

He's never going to stop loving you.

Not just on this earth, but throughout eternity.

1 John in the New Testament, chapter 4, verse 10.

This is love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us.

And He gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice, as a propitiation for our sins.

Do you know what that word propitiation means?

God was really, really angry.

At you.

At me.

Justly so.

But he didn't take out His anger on you or me.

He took it out on His own Son.

That's what that word means.

Jesus took all the wrath of God that we deserved.

And John the Apostle says, this is love.

This is love.

When you see what you deserved and you realize what you received, and it is because God is a God of love and mercy.

The Father's heart.

As we heard earlier this morning in Ephesians read, the Apostle Paul prays this prayer.

Ephesians is really one long prayer.

Just pay attention.

Notice how many times he's praying in this letter.

What's he praying?

Let me paraphrase what he's praying.

I know you all think you know about the love of Christ.

I know you've experienced the love of Christ.

And he means that.

It's legit.

But I know that you have no idea how much deeper Christ's love can go.

Paul says, I need to pray this prayer myself.

And only the Holy Spirit can take you there.

You can't just sit back and think great thoughts about God and get there.

Only the Holy Spirit can take you there.

He says, I pray what?

That in your inner being, in your heart of hearts, what you believe most, that you will believe that God is for you, that you will believe that God loves you at a great cost.

It never gets old.

We never master it.

He says that according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant you to be strengthened.

That language, granting, is gift language.

Did you know it's a gift to understand these things?

We don't just naturally think these truths.

He says that you will be strengthened with power through his spirit, his Holy Spirit in your inner being.

Well, again, we can ask the question, well, what's the deepest part of me?

Some people would say anxiety.

Some people would say the deepest part of me is I'm just always anxious.

Somebody else might say, well, I think if I'm going to be honest, the deepest part of me is maybe lust.

I just feel like I battle lust.

Somebody else might say that I think the deepest part of me is just anger.

I just feel like I'm always angry and I don't know what to do with it.

The list could go on.

Paul's prayer is this that the deepest part of you is to believe that God loves you.

What would that look like if you really believed that?

I was asked by my presbytery years ago to start a group for pastors in our presbytery who were really struggling, their churches weren't doing well, maybe, and they weren't growing like they thought they should.

And in one of the first meetings, one of the pastors in the circle, a pastor of one of our larger churches, and he and he looked me in the eye and said, Tom, I can't remember the last time I thought about God's love for me.

And I thought to myself, oh my, how sad.

I mean, how can how sad for my friend?

How sad for his church.

How do you pastor?

How do you preach if you don't believe that God loves you?

And we don't get up here and just preach about his love.

You don't just teach about his love.

You don't just talk about his love.

That you can say the Apostle Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter 3, I'm experiencing it.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

There's a connection that's taking place.

The Holy Spirit is making the truth about him real to me.

That's what Paul's talking about.

Interesting Greek word that Paul used, to comprehend, apprehend, to grasp, some of your translations say.

This is a word that was used in military in the time of Paul's writing, that when to break through the walls of your enemy, when you would break through the walls of your enemy and get through, this word was used.

So I have a question for you this morning.

What walls have you built up that make it hard to grasp the love of God?

What walls do we build?

What walls do we construct without even knowing it?

That make it, you know, God couldn't possibly love me.

I don't feel loved.

I'm not sure I am loved.

This is a struggle.

Trust me, I'm a pastor, I know.

This is a struggle.

Paul's saying this, that you may have strength to comprehend, to grasp, to break through the walls of your unbelief with all the saints.

It's not just for one or two here, it's for all of us.

What is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Our finite minds can never fully grasp infinite love.

However, it's not that it's unknowable, just not fully known, not fully experienced, but that's the whole purpose.

He wants you to know it.

He wants me to know it.

He wants his love for me to be the thing that rings most true in my heart.

In yours.

And only the Holy Spirit can make that happen.

The good news is, friends, we have the Holy Spirit.

But we have to ask him.

We have to ask him to make this truth so real to me.

More real than my anxiety.

More real than my lust, more real than my greed, more real than my anger, whatever it is.

Do you know the love of God can do that?

Henry Nowon, theologian, wrote on this in his book, The Return of the Prodigal Son.

And I think this really speaks to my heart and perhaps to yours.

He talks about when you know the love of God but forget the love of God.

He talks about first love and second love in the Christian's life.

Well, God's love is the first love, but then there's these second loves that we can get wrapped up around.

He says, sometimes I ask myself, to whom do I really belong?

To God or to the world?

Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God.

A little criticism makes me angry.

A little rejection makes me depressed.

A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me.

It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down.

Often I feel like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.

All the time and the energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows me that my life is often a struggle for survival, not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it's the world that defines me.

As long as I keep running around asking, do you love me?

Do you really love me?

I give all power to the voices of the world to put myself in bondage because the world is filled with ifs.

The world says, Yes, I love you if you're good looking, intelligent, wealthy.

Yes, I love you if you have a good education, a good job, or good connections.

Yes, I love you if you produce much, sell much, buy much.

There are endless ifs hidden in the world's love.

These ifs enslave me since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them.

The world's love is and always will be conditional.

As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain hooked to the world, trying, failing, and trying again.

I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.

Why do I keep ignoring the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere?

Why do I keep leaving home, my true home, where I am called a child of God, the beloved of my Father?

I am constantly surprised at how I keep taking the gifts God has given me, my health, my mind, emotional gifts, and keep using them to impress people, to receive affirmation and praise, to compete for rewards instead of developing them for the glory of God.

Yes, I often carry the very gifts that God gives me off to a distant country.

I put them in the service of an exploiting world that does not know their true value.

It's almost as if I want to prove to myself and to my world that I don't need God's love, that I can make it on my own.

Beneath it all is the great rebellion, the radical no to God's love.

It's pretty powerful.

Only the Spirit can make the love of Christ go deep and real.

What is the breadth, the length, the height, the depth, the love that surpasses knowledge?

I think that what that kind of means is maybe when people see what you're going through and they say, I don't know how you're making it.

When people see what you're going through and they say, How are you doing that?

It doesn't add up.

And when you can say, because something's there's something deeper than my problems, and that's the love of God in my heart.

This is true.

The second loves, we have to reject the second loves.

We have to learn how to reject the praise that we get from our teachers, our bosses, our spouses, our kids.

We have to learn to stop living for the second loves.

Enjoy them.

Receive them, but keep them in proper perspective.

Don't live for the second loves.

You know why?

It can't help but crowd out the first love in your life.

Does that make sense?

There's no vacuum in the human heart.

There's only room for that one love.

And if the second loves take over, and if we keep going back out into the distant country, prodigal of the parable, prodigal son, if we keep going out of our true home, we're gonna keep we're gonna keep struggling with the same stuff.

That's just the way it works.

We need the Holy Spirit to make the love of God so real to us that it pushes out our restlessness, trying to find it in our second loves.

The law cannot take you deeper into God's love.

Only God's love can take you deeper into God's love.

The law is good, holy, and perfect.

The law has a job to do, but the law can't drive God's love deeper into your heart.

It can show you your need.

It can show you where it is to be found in Christ.

This surpassing knowledge to go beyond, to exceed.

No matter how much experience we have of the love of Christ, it's been said there are oceans of love in the great heart of God that we have barely touched by experience.

That's true.

You have a thimble.

You ever feel like that?

You got a thimble of God's love.

And you look out in this ocean.

Some dear friends of mine just came back from seeing the ocean for the first time in their life.

I couldn't stop talking about the ocean.

How big it is.

How powerful it is.

The waves.

Do you ever feel like you've got a little thimble of that vast ocean of God's love?

If this passage means anything, in Ephesians 3 and John 3, it means this.

God says, get a bigger cup.

All right?

Get a picture.

Get the biggest container you have.

Do you believe that's possible?

You may not if you just base this on your experiences.

You might say, well, I've not experienced that, so I'm not sure it's possible.

Stop basing your your understanding of God's word and God's love on your experiences.

Don't judge God's love by your circumstances.

Judge your circumstances by God's love.

This is what the Bible is saying to us.

It's been said that we oftentimes add according to our blessings and subtract according to our difficulties, estimating how much God loves us.

You want to hear that again?

We often add according to our blessings and subtract according to our difficulties when we estimate how much God loves us.

Don't you do that sometimes?

Yeah, you do.

So do I.

It's wrong.

Well, God couldn't love me that much because look what he's allowed in my life.

Or God must really love me because look how he's blessing me.

They're both wrong.

They're not for you.

We don't base estimate God's love based on how we're feeling, whether things are going well or not so well.

We base God's love on the truth of what he tells us in his word.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

The Father's gift, second point, the Father's gift to this world, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.

In the Greek Language that's in the past tense.

It's a historical event.

It happened.

I'm so glad, I'm so glad that God's not like us.

You know, you ever find yourself thinking thinking a lot of good stuff you never follow through on?

Good idea.

A good thought.

You know, I think I'm gonna do this.

And you don't follow through?

Sometimes, but I had a good thought.

Like, so what?

God didn't just think about loving you.

God proved it.

For God so loved this world, God so loved you that he gave, he gave, he gave his only son.

The gospel is good news.

I shared this with some of my friends in the inquiry's class last weekend.

True story.

World War II, two chaplains that were shot down over Germany.

One was with the Allied troops, and the other one was with uh troops from Europe.

The Scottish preacher's name was Murdoch MacDonald of Glasgow.

He was a paratrooper in the war.

He bailed up bailed, they had a bail out of the plane, taken prisoner with their fellow soldiers, put in this concentration camp for many months.

MacDonald was put to be with the Americans to be their chaplain.

His friend was with the British and others on the other end of the camp.

For some reason, the German guards would not allow the British prisoner prisoners and the American prisoners to fraternize, even though the fence was high in the middle of the camp.

But once a day they would allow the two chaplains to come together and speak.

One of them had a shortwave radio that they could get some outside news.

They would come unknown to the guards and pass on information to each other.

They realized, these two chaplains realized that eventually that the guards knew German and English, but they didn't know Gaelic.

And so they started speaking in Gaelic.

One day the news came over the radio that the German High Command had surrendered and the war was over.

The guards didn't know of this because the communication had broken down in Germany.

McDonald said, I took that news to the fence that day and I gave it to my friend, and then I just stood back and watched.

Well, I knew what was going to happen.

My friend took the news to the British barracks, and all of a sudden it sounded like a great party was going on.

There was a thunderous roar and celebration.

The most amazing thing had happened.

For three days, prisoners of war walked around the camp singing and shouting.

We were gloriously happy.

We didn't complain about the food.

We waved at the dogs and the guards.

We knew that we were free.

Nobody else could explain it.

On the morning of the fourth day, we the prisoners we woke up and realized everything was different outside.

The guards were gone.

They snuck out in the middle of the night.

Apparently they heard the news and slipped out into the forest.

They left the gates closed but unlocked.

On the morning of the fourth day, we walked out as freed men.

We had been set free for days by news that the war was over.

Listen to this.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not good advice.

It's good news.

A fundamental difference between Anne Landers and Jesus Christ is that she offers advice.

Jesus offers news.

The gospel of Jesus changes everything inside our own prisoners, our own prisons.

The gospel is never advice.

It's never a program.

It's news.

It means that the war was won.

And you know who won the war for us.

Jesus Christ.

So loved this world that He came.

He became the propitiation.

Because Jesus is news, not advice, we can evangelize our city and our world.

With this message of hope, we can begin the liberation program.

You see, it makes all the difference what you actually believe and what you don't believe.

If you believe that you've been freed from your prison, you can go tell other people how they can be freed from their prison.

And there's a power in this.

The good news.

This is what our God did to prove his love for us.

He took action.

He always takes action.

He doesn't just sit around and talk about it.

God gave his greatest gift, his one and only Son for our greatest need, a Savior.

There's a story in the Old Testament in the book of Numbers, some of you may remember where the Israelites were doing what they did best, complaining, murmuring, grumbling.

You know, and God says, look, I've had enough.

I've had enough.

God sent fiery serpents, poisonous snakes, and they started biting the people in the camp, and people started dying.

Out of his mercy, God told Moses to build a bronze serpent and lift that bronze serpent up on a pole in the middle of the camp.

And anybody who looks at that serpent, I will spare from death.

That's the background for the verse in John chapter 3, verse 15.

John 3:15

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Jesus was put on a cross and was lifted up on a cross so that we would be freed from our prisons, that we would be freed from hell itself, that we would be free from condemnation.

This is no cheap gospel.

Some people today think that, right?

If you talk to somebody and says, well, you know, it's just too easy.

Are you saying all I have to do is believe?

Oh, when somebody says all I have to do is believe, they don't have a clue.

What you have to believe is that the Son of God saved you from your worst possible condemnation.

Nothing cheap about it.

God gave his greatest gift, his one and only Son for our greatest need, a Messiah, a Savior.

Isaiah talks about it in chapter 53 in the Old Testament.

Such a wonderful passage.

Just going to read a couple verses from it.

Talking about this lifting up in verse 10, yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

It was the will of God the Father to crush his own Son.

He has put him to grief.

When his soul makes an offering for his guilt, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days.

The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.

By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

That's you.

That's me.

Out of his excruciating suffering and death, he would make many to be counted as righteous.

Because God gave us the righteousness of his son when we come to Jesus Christ.

And he shall be satisfied.

Do you know who's satisfied with the full and finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross?

God the Father is satisfied, fully satisfied.

Secondly, the Son, Jesus, is fully satisfied.

Here's my question: Are you satisfied?

Or do you still doubt it?

Do you still doubt it?

Oh, I don't know.

How could he love me?

Look to Jesus.

As the people in the desert looked to the bronze serpent and were spared, were saved from that death.

Look to Jesus Christ, and you will be spared, and you will be saved, and you will be freed like nothing else can.

He gave.

Which brings us to the last point.

The Father's invitation.

Whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Whoever, I'm pretty sure that includes you.

Whoever.

You're not beyond God's reach.

You're not beyond God's love.

Some people don't seem to know that.

Invite the Holy Spirit in to make this love of God real to you this morning.

Eternal, everlasting life.

We will share that with each other.

You know, I said in the first service this morning that, you know, we're going to have so many stories to tell.

Like after the service is over, you go downstairs in the fellowship hall.

Go down and get your coffee, make a new friend, meet somebody, see a friend.

You know, in heaven that's not going to end.

We're going to be together with each other.

Forever.

With God.

Think about that.

Think about the love of Christ.

That he came for people, sinners like us.

Jesus Christ died for sinners.

That's the point.

Jesus Christ did not die for good people.

He died for sinners like me.

Like you.

But you have to come to him.

None of this happens automatically.

It doesn't happen just because you think about it.

It happens when you come to Jesus.

You come.

Oh, friends, this morning, I would say come to the come to the one.

Brownlow North, one of my favorite Scottish preachers of the 19th century, said in a sermon, Come, you who are invited to come, come.

Those of you who are totally blind to your own best interests and don't know what to do, I tell you again, come.

This is the best invitation you've ever had.

You've never had an invitation like this, and you never will.

Don't live and die without accepting it, or you will regret it for eternity.

Be wise then when you have the opportunity.

When the Holy Spirit says to you to come to Jesus, come to Jesus.

You will never accept the invitation but by the Spirit.

However, the Spirit says, ask, come.

The Spirit moves.

Invite the Spirit to point you to Jesus Christ this morning.

Whether it's for the very first time as Savior or as Now and reminded us earlier this morning, you know, maybe a lot of us need to come back because we've wandered off.

Second loves have gripped us.

Second loves have just kind of taken over.

And it never satisfies.

Look to Jesus again this morning.

For the first time or the thousandth time.

This invitation to you is quite free.

It cost you nothing, but it cost Jesus everything.

Come.

He was rejected, spit upon, gorged, crucified, died, buried, was raised again before he could say, Come.

There is a day coming when he will say depart.

But he never says it to any man on earth, any woman on earth.

The whole Bible is one great call to come.

You will not hear depart on this earth.

You will hear come.

Come this morning to Jesus.

He knows what to do with you.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we we come now.

And we do ask, Holy Spirit, that you would open our minds, open our hearts.

We can't do it.

We are full of unbelief in ourselves.

Lord Jesus, give us grace to believe this morning.

Perhaps for the very first time in our lives, we're going to come.

We're going to come to you, Jesus, as Savior and Lord of our life.

But Lord, for many others of us.

Perhaps it's time to come back.

Because we've wandered.

We've wandered off and we are settling for second loves.

Father, we pray for forgiveness for that as well.

God, make your love known to us.

Spirit of God in our inner being.

May we know your love.

May we rest in your love.

May we receive your love.

May we believe your love and act on it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.