John 3:1-21 - Advent Love of God in Christ

We studied through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We've got extra copies.

If uh if you'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real house.

Somebody will drop one off for you.

Anybody at all need a copy?

We also have a network there.

You're if you have a Bible on your uh your device and you'd like to uh follow along there.

I think the password and all of that is up there on the screen for you.

Uh today, as we begin our Advent series, of course, we'll depart from our book study.

Still looking, though, at a passage of Scripture from John chapter 3, if you want to join me there.

John 3 · chapter mention

I hope all of you have recovered from your trip to fan nap you know tendencies.

If we see anybody nod off, I'll just know you probably ate more turkey than the rest of us.

Uh sorry about that to all of the Auburn fans out there.

I suppose we need to mention that, don't we?

All you Bama fans are rolltide roll, that thing, you're very happy about the outcome there, I'm sure.

Uh but this is the first uh Sunday in Advent, the four Sundays that lead up to uh what we call Christmas and where we celebrate the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

And uh so we're gonna take a look at these four different themes, as has been said already.

And I'm so glad that uh as part of our creed there, we just read that last little bit because that's actually part of the text we're gonna look at here.

Advent means arrival or appearing.

And in the Christian churches, uh we we typically look back at the first arrival of Jesus, but we also lean forward and look with anticipation toward the second appearing of Christ, where he has promised to come and to set things right.

And I don't know about you, but the longer I'm on the planet, the more chaos I experience, the more uh nuttiness I see in the culture and all that sort of thing, the more I go, come, Lord Jesus, Maranatha, come, come, come.

In the ancient scriptures, uh Advent actually begins in the dark, and I think that's an important thing to note that the world had been silent for 400 years, no voice from God, no voice of the prophet for all that time.

And uh so that darkness is something we don't want to just sidestep and try to get right to, you know, because we're sort of into the romanticized version of Christmas.

Um we need to we need to see that there's a real great need for the light of the world to come.

And there still remains that uh great need, doesn't there?

There was poverty, racism, abuse, political unrest, and violence everywhere in the first century.

Sound familiar?

Yeah.

Uh on top of it all, the heavens, as I say, had remained silent.

And here are the people of God, the the ancient Jews of the first century, wondering when God would speak again, wondering if he is even listening.

Does he even hear?

Some of you may have felt that in the last two years yourself.

God, are you still there?

God, do you still hear?

God, if you do hear, don't you care?

Behind uh the eyes of everyone that might ask a question of you about your faith if they were to do that, they at least are also thinking, is it does the God that you want me to believe in, that you seek me to persuade me to believe in, does that God actually care?

Does that God love me?

That's a very important thing for us to remember.

I don't know of anyone that ever got argued into belief in the faith of Jesus in this beautiful gospel of grace.

Uh love, on the other hand, seems to have had quite an impact on a lot of folks.

As we approach this year's Advent season with its clouds of darkness, how should we approach it?

Should we think about that?

Is that a good thing?

I think it's a good thing to think about.

In this room, especially during this season, there'll be all the normal TVCers that have been with us for a long, long time.

But there'll also be some CEOs, some Christmas and Easter only's.

Some people that come because it's the holiday season and that's what you ought to do.

And maybe even drawn just out of curiosity, perhaps uh just a sense of maybe the holiday romanticism or nostalgia or sentimentality, whatever.

But none of that, sentimentality and nostalgia, none of that can really carry the weight of the burdens that we feel in real life.

And so we're gonna take these four wigs and talk about love and joy and hope and peace.

And especially today, as we look at the love of God for sinners, it's really uh profound.

I think a lot of times we we hear about those kinds of things and they go in and out one ear.

But something ultimate, Fleming Rutledge says, something ultimate has entered our world.

Something or someone that calls us to attention.

Calls us out of our daily preoccupations and our routine points of view.

And that is what this season, with its special biblical readings, is designed to reveal.

This holiday season, I think, can be useful in many ways.

We're fortunate as Bible-believing Christians.

We get to enjoy the Christmas trees and the candles and the presents and all the sort of humanistic stuff that happens.

That's all right.

That's fine.

That's we're not a we're not a church that is all concerned about the fact that Santa can be rescrambled into Satan.

That doesn't bother us at all.

Um we're not we're not concerned about people that you know celebrate the season in any way like that, but we we ourselves get the great joy of actually focusing in on this remarkable event.

It really is the pivot point of human history, when God became one of us with a reason, with a purpose.

And um, and it's it's beautiful.

It has to do with Advent love, joy, hope, and peace that Jesus brought with him.

So we'll kind of focus in on this kind of a statement each week.

You're gonna see it in the uh when you, those of you that will follow along with Curates Corner, the um daily devotional podcast that will be available as well, you'll hear this statement a lot.

Because of the love of God for sinners, he sent Christ to bring us the joy of salvation, the hope of eternal life, and the peace of God to rule our hearts.

And I don't know about you, but I need all four of those in full measure.

Some of you will be familiar with the text today.

Um, we're gonna call this the Advent Love of God, and we're gonna we're gonna look at that as we look at a narrative from John chapter three.

If you'll turn there in your Bibles or swipe there on your devices, that'd be great.

Let me back up uh three verses into chapter two, remind you that this is the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, still on the front side of his three, three and a half year public ministry.

Um as John, the eyewitness to the life of Jesus, very credible, this gospel, very credible record because it's one of Jesus' closest disciples that's writing.

And he tells us, like in verse 23 of chapter 2, as we'll just get those three verses and lead into chapter 3, okay?

When he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name.

So there's a gathering, sort of a groundswell of belief in Jesus at this time.

All right?

Beholding his signs, which he was doing.

And so those miracles that serve multiple purposes, they're not just a sensational sideshow, but they reveal his compassion.

They display his power and they confirm his identity.

If he's the Son of God, like he claimed to be, you would think he could do some of these kinds of things.

We just studied the book of Genesis, which begins in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And I've made the point over and over again for years now that if God can do that, he can do all of this other stuff is just a cakewalk, including walking on water, raising the dead.

That's easy if you can create everything ex nihilo out of nothing.

So here many are starting to believe he's been in Jerusalem.

Jesus, on his part, was not entrusting himself to them, for he knew all men, and because he did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man.

So he became one of us, and there's so many ways in which, you know, Almighty God condescending to become one of us.

That's like a painter stepping into his painting somehow, or a playwright stepping out onto the stage and being a part of it, but much more so for God to become one of us.

This is amazing.

The infinite God to somehow or another, this amazing thing that he did, become one of us.

We're just like tiny little ants on a dust ball-sized planet, and yet he chose to become one of us.

And he came on a mission, and his mission is even wrapped up in his name, Jesus, which means God is salvation.

So he came to bring salvation.

But why?

Why would he do that?

Well, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews.

So, right there you get this guy's resume, and there's lots there about him.

He's one of the Pharisees, not the Sadducees.

He's one of the Pharisees, not the Essenes.

He's one of the Pharisees.

And so that's one of those three groups that were on the ground at that time that made up most of the religious Jews of the time.

And he was a ruler, actually, it says here as well, a ruler of the Jews.

So he's on the Sanhedrin, the 70-member, you know, really prestigious group of people.

When he walked down the street, there were there was a lot of whispering and finger pointing.

This is this is a first century version of celebrity on 10, is what this is.

They didn't have, you know, the kind of celebrity that we have in our day and time.

But this is that kind of thing where people on the street would have known him by his clothing, by his the things he wore, the way he looked, and of course his name would have been talked about quite a bit.

He's one of 70 of the rulers, Pharisees, and the Sadducees made up the Sanhedrin.

The Pharisees were probably the more theologically conservative.

The Sadducees were a little more anti-supernatural, didn't believe in angels, demons, only embraced the first five books of the uh Old Testament.

But the Pharisees, on the other hand, embraced the whole Old Testament, as did Jesus, by the way.

And so this man, Nicodemus, ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

So curious because of the groundswell in Jerusalem of people that we read about in chapter 2, their last three verses.

Curious because of that?

He comes.

He takes a risk to do this.

Why?

Because there's already a groundswell against Jesus as well.

We'll read it, gets that that groundswell really grows intense.

And by the end of this book, John, we'll see them plotting the murder of Jesus, those religious leaders that should have been the ones to believe, yet they're so upset at the fact that his movement, the movement that's following Jesus, is gaining esteem that they become jealous and they seek to put Jesus to death.

This man, on the other hand, takes a little bit of a risk.

He's curious, but he's cautious because he comes at night under the cloak of night, and he says, he makes this statement.

He doesn't even ask, this isn't even asking a question.

This guy is just making a statement.

Nobody can do the stuff you're doing, except he's come from God, or God is with him.

Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

And that answer struck me first as it doesn't have anything to do necessarily with the statement that Nicodemus makes.

I also noticed, maybe you did, that little couplet, truly, truly.

And I checked.

There are 25 of those little couplets in the Gospel of John.

In some of your translations, it will say, Amen, amen.

Some of them might say, uh, verily, verily, if you've got the King James, of course, we all knew Jesus carried the King James Bible with him, didn't he?

Yeah.

No, he didn't know.

Um, truly, truly, amen, amen, verily, verily, they're really all the same thing.

And what Jesus is basically saying 25 times is, this is really true.

Pay attention.

This is really important.

I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So the kingdom of God is not a zip code.

What is the kingdom of God?

We read about that a lot in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

We read a lot about the kingdom of God.

Um, this gospel, John's gospel, is perhaps the more individual in terms of the way that the content of Jesus' teaching often is to an individual.

And in this particular case, this is the longest he actually talks with anybody as Jesus talks with Nicodemus.

This guy who was a ruler of the Jews, this guy who should have known all of what he's saying.

He should have already, because he really knew the Old Testament really, really well, he was a teacher, a Pharisee, a teacher.

And he is recognizing that something's going on.

And Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one's born again, you can't see the kingdom of God.

So what you're curious about, Nicodemus, this thing that's puzzling you, what you need to see is the kingdom of God, and you're not seeing it right now.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he's old?

He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?

So Nicodemus, like some of us in the room, I'm I'm a bit like this, more of a literalist, can't see the poetic metaphor that Jesus is trying to convey some really powerful truths by.

He can't see that, Nicodemus.

He's thinking black and white.

And those are his, that's his color scheme, you know?

And so he's a literalist.

He doesn't understand.

How in the world, I mean, his mother's probably dead at this point in time.

So how can I go back into my mother's womb and be born again?

Can no one can do that, right?

So he fixates on the process, and that's what some religious people do.

Fixate on the process, and they think that's all the Christian faith is about.

And Jesus says, now it's about this destination, this new kind of being, this new ontological reality.

God is going to make you new human persons.

It's not just a tune-up, it's an engine transplant.

There's so many different ways you can talk about it.

But Jesus answered and said, truly, truly, there's another one of those couplets.

I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

So now it's been talking about seeing the kingdom of God.

Now he's talking about entering the kingdom of God.

He's making it a little bit more clear by saying that, I think.

Because Nicodemus, who should have been able to understand some of this stuff, but did not, too steeped in literalist thinking.

And here Jesus says, you've got to be born of the water and of the spirit.

Now there are a lot of commentators that debate what does water mean?

Is it water baptism, or is it when you're physically born, the water in the womb?

What is it?

And I encourage you to read that for yourself and come to some conclusion.

I think there are probably meanings in both directions, but the idea is that you must also be born of the spirit.

He says, verse 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

And this must is this there's a couple of musts in this chapter, and it's worth, it's worth uh circling that.

You must be born again.

In other words, it's not enough just to be religious and curious.

You must be born again.

A lot of people in our world today will show up in the building that has a little tall steeple and a cross on it, and they're religious, but they haven't made that jump from just knowing religious data up here in their heads to actually being born again.

Now, when I lived in Philadelphia, born again was a pejorative term.

They would call you born againers, they put an ers on the end of it because you were the people that believed in the Bible, or you you believed the gospel, or you talked about Jesus all the time.

You were weird and you met in that building.

Sometimes it was a, sometimes it was uh just just an old grocery store that had been turned into a church downtown somewhere.

But it, you know, for people on the outside, they'd look at that and think it was weird, and they'd call you born-againers.

Now it's interesting that Jesus is the one that's brought that up as an idea.

Don't marvel, Nicodemus, Mr.

Religious Guy, that I've said to you, you must be born again.

The wind, and now he illustrates it again with another metaphor.

Maybe he'll get this one.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit, Nicodemus, answered and he said to him, How can these things be?

You know, I I'm still not getting it.

Again, I'm I don't know, maybe you're wired like that.

I'm I am wired like that.

I'm a bit of a blockhead, I'm a bit of a philosophical, analytical guy.

I don't, you know, my wife's a painter.

She thinks in in metaphor all the time.

She's sort of the queen of analogies.

And sometimes she'll show me a painting of hers that she's beginning, and she'll say, What do you think?

And I'll go, you know, and trying to get it.

I want to be encouraging and everything, but I'm just kind of a blockhead.

Don't get it, you know, sometimes.

Don't have eyes to see it yet.

And then just half a day later, it's like, oh my goodness, you know, as she develops it a little bit more for me.

So here's Jesus developing the theme a little bit more, using the wind metaphor.

Hopefully he'll get that, you know.

Instead, he goes, How can these things be?

Jesus answered and said to him, Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?

In other words, you've got education, but you don't have insight.

You've got education, but you don't see what you need to see.

And again, so many of us could be this way in our own day and time as well.

Truly, truly, oh, there it is again.

Truly, truly, and this is really true.

I say to you, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen, and you do not receive.

Circle that word, our witness.

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

I mean, Jesus, this is like this is like a mother and and f uh, you know, a pregnant woman talking to her baby in the womb, and Nicodemus is in the womb, and he just can't quite hear it right, you know?

And he's not getting it because he's so steeped in religiosity.

You may be here today and have been steeped in religiosity.

And whether that's the case or whether you've been steeped in irreligion, either way, Jesus says you must be born again to see this.

You must be born again to enter this.

And you might be thinking, well, how does that happen?

And I'm gonna continue to read here because it's so beautiful the way he describes it.

And there are a couple of a couple of things that he says here that are some of the most famous things that Jesus says down through history that people have talked about what Jesus said.

So if I told you earthly things and you don't believe, how how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

And no one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, even the son of man.

The son of man is Jesus' most often used self-reference title, son of man.

For a first century Jew, they would have understood that that was lifted out of Daniel chapter 7, verse 14, what we call Daniel 7, 14.

Daniel 7:14

That it's a messianic title.

And Jesus is effectively saying to a first century Jew, especially a teacher, a Pharisee, who would have known that Jesus is effectively saying, I am Messiah.

Okay?

As Moses was lifted up, uh, as Moses lifted up, rather, the serpent in the wilderness, now he kind of references back to a story that we read in Numbers 21.

Um, but this Jew would have known that.

Nicodemus would have been well aware of this story.

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes, that's a great word too, may in him have eternal life.

And here it is, you you read it just a little while ago.

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

Whoever.

That's such a big word.

Whoever is such a broad offer.

Whoever includes you and me.

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

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

There's Jesus' primary mission.

He came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Those persons who are lost and cannot find their way.

Those persons who have been through religion like Nicodemus and still think there's something missing.

There's something we need more than this.

And so he's curious about this Jesus guy who's doing these miracles and who's saying these kinds of things.

And he, under the cloak of night, goes to meet with him, and his curiosity is cautious, but I'd also say it's mixed with courage for him to do that.

And he comes and he asks these questions.

God did not send his son to the world to judge the world, but the world through him might be saved.

He who believes in him is not judged.

He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

How plain is that verse, verse 18.

Is that clear enough for everybody?

Our response to Jesus is what ultimately matters.

Okay?

Not what kind of clothes you choose to wear on a Sunday when you go to church.

Although y'all shine up, we hopefully we're shine, we're doing our best and all that, but but no, no.

What matters most is how we respond to Jesus himself.

And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, verse 19.

And men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.

And so this is about the direction of my affections.

The direction of your affections.

Do we love darkness more than light in our lives?

Great question to ask ourselves over and over and over again.

One thing that I can't seem to do on my own is train my affections or discipline my affections.

And that's why I must be born again.

To receive a new set of affections, to have my priorities reordered, my affections redirected by him.

This is the judgment.

The light is coming to the world.

We love darkness rather than light.

For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

But he who practices the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be manifested in having been wrought in God.

And I'll close, I'll stop with a reading anyway, there because there's so much here.

And I really want to be able to focus a little bit on that verse 16 that you're so familiar with.

Because I think sometimes what happens to us is, you know, we're kind of like at the football game, and the banner man has John 3, 1, 6, down there, and just after a while nobody sees it, nobody knows what it means.

It's just a goofy guy that everybody dismisses because he's got that banner.

Um I think we will see that the love of God in Christ is surprising.

That it's mysterious, but that it's also compelling.

And it is indeed transforming.

So when I say it is surprising, here's what I mean.

Surprise! Look at who loves you.

I mean, when you were a little kid and they were picking up sides to play a sports game, and when I was I was very, very small as a kid, you probably wouldn't believe it looking at me now.

But I mean, I was I was really tiny, weighed about four pounds most of my life.

And and nobody would pick me for the football game.

Why?

Because I weighed less than the football itself.

So I was too small, and it was life-threatening anyway, so it was you know better better for me not to be chosen in any way, but to be picked, to be chosen, you know, a little older, to come out of the cafeteria line, to turn and face the crowd and wonder if anyone would say, sit with me.

To be chosen, to be loved.

And as you become older, there are many forms of that that show up in our lives, to know that we're loved.

And so many of us spend so much time trying to hide the real us because we're afraid the real them won't love the real us.

And maybe you're even doing that in the confines of your own most closest relationships.

You're afraid.

And we, we as a people, we as a race, we sometimes I think are schooled in fear by the voices out there for any number of different reasons.

But especially when it comes to God, a lot of our religious upbringing has been about that troll under the bridge kind of God, waiting for you to cross so he can smash you, waiting for you to have some fun, or to laugh, or to feel some joy, some sense of peace, whatever, so that he can interrupt all of that and just be the grumpy God, this grumpy deity in the sky.

Um, is that the God that we just read about?

No.

Surprise! Look who loves you.

The one who created everything out of nothing, the one that holds Orion's belt in place, the one that designed our solar system to be exactly 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way so that we'd be just balanced perfectly, so that there could be carbon-based life forms on this dust ball-sized planet.

And we'd have enough light and enough water to be able to exist at all.

Accident or design?

Interesting.

Some of this.

Look who loves you.

It's the God of the Bible, the creator of the universe, the righteous judge loves you.

All of that, that's just blows my mind.

Um Stott says it this way you can never take God by surprise.

You can never anticipate him.

He always makes the first move.

He's always there in the beginning.

Before man existed, God acted, before man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man.

In the Bible, we do not see man groping after God.

We see God reaching after man.

Now, most of the world religions are about humanity groping after God.

That's, I mean, when you just step back a little bit and start looking at the Bible, what you see is man in pursuit of God.

You see this God of the Bible from Genesis all the way to Revelation in pursuit of a people he can call his own.

And doing everything necessary for those people to come to know him.

That's so beautiful.

Then it becomes an offer.

See, belief is an offer.

Here he comes, here's the sun, here's the light breaking through the darkness, and here's an offer to you and to me.

How will you respond?

God is always the initiator of the God of the Bible.

We are always the responders.

God is sovereign over all there is, and there is no such thing as a partially sovereign deity.

I invite you to believe in the real God who's really there, who's really sovereign.

Okay?

And that's what the Bible invites us.

That's how the Bible casts God and reveals God to us, and that's one of the reasons we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

This love of God for us is surprising, but it's also mysterious.

Um, so surprising because of the one who's doing the loving is God.

Um, it's mysterious because of the ones who are loved.

Look around the room.

It's us.

We're the ones who are loved.

This is remarkable.

And Nicodemus is feeling that that night.

He's he knows something's missing in his great learning.

You know, I mean, this guy, if if there were a PD, if there had been a PhD in that time, this guy would have had a PhD.

Pharisees with higher, I don't know, discernment or something.

I'm not sure what that would be.

But he would have been the guy, you know, most learned ruler of the Jews.

He should have known all of this, and yet, no, he didn't.

He still was just schooled in religion.

We've all asked the question, what in the world does she see in him, right?

Or what in the world does he see in her?

There's a mystery sometimes when we see people that actually connect, or somebody is somebody's loving someone else, and there's sometimes it's mysterious to us.

And I would suggest to you that that's certainly the way it is with this God that we are talking about here.

Why would he love us?

Again, dust ball-sized planet.

Again, we're just a bunch of tiny ants on that dust ball-sized planet.

And we're mostly rebellious.

We mostly demand that God orbit around us.

Not that we find our life in him.

That's really mysterious to me, why God would love us.

And some people think that the most, the greatest mystery or the biggest conundrum in the world is, you know, why there's only one way.

And I've said it over again, I'll say it again.

I'm, I think it's the better, the bigger mystery is why there is even one way.

Why should there be a way?

Um it's a mystery to me why indeed God loves us.

Some of us are friends with uh Luther Whitlock, um, who um uh wrote this in a book of his own called Divide We Fall.

Love doesn't happen in the abstract, it needs an object.

And when you are, when you know the Bible tells us that God is love, all right?

So when you are infinite love and you have this huge storehouse of love, you're just looking for a direction to aim it in.

I say pick me.

What do you say?

Pick you, yeah.

You know, look look at what God did.

He picked us.

He that's a great mystery.

Why?

Is it because we we dress up nice on Sundays and go to that building?

No.

Is it because we live in the South?

No.

Uh is it because we we we give philanthropic philanthropically to others?

No, actually not.

That's not why he loves us.

No.

Um, and we'll read why he loves us in just a second.

I want to talk about that.

But who does God love?

All the self-righteous religious people like Nicodemus.

All the self-righteous irreligious people in the world as well.

Who does God love?

All the prodigal runaways too embarrassed and ashamed to come home.

Who does God love?

All the prodigal parents waiting at home, praying for with all their hearts for a phone call, a text, or an email from their daughters and sons.

Who does God love all the repeat sinners drowning in guilt and shame and think it's too late for them?

There's no way God would ever forgive them this many times.

Who does God love?

All the angry, frustrated, contentious, or confused cynics who just don't know what they believe anymore.

Who does God love?

All those with broken hearts and crushed spirits who had to say goodbye to someone they love over the last couple years.

Who does God love?

All those who've had to reinvent themselves just to make a living and provide for their household.

Who does God love?

All those who cannot seem to say no to controlling habits like drugs, alcohol, pornography, spending, eating.

Who does God love?

All Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and etc.

Who does God love?

All corrupt politicians, manipulative media pundits, and arrogant pontificators?

Who does God love?

All those who've been used, abused, and cast aside, all those who have given all they thought they had to be rejected and disrespected, all those who see a threatening storm ahead in the windshield or a giant closing in the rear view mirror.

Who does God love?

We're the ones that God loves in Jesus Christ.

For God so loved the world.

The world is uh the word is cosmos.

It's it's this immeasurable love of God.

It's so broad and deep and high and it's amazing.

It can't be described.

There isn't a word big enough to say how much God loves and he still loves the world.

So Jesus, as Hordberg says, Jesus is mysterious not only because of what we don't know about him, but because of what we do know about him.

Yeah.

He's definitely mysterious for that reason as well.

And seeing the love of God for us in Christ as mysterious, we take note of its objects, its cost, its scope, and its impact.

And we see all of that, of course, in Nicodemus as well.

Thirdly, the love of God in Christ is compelling as well.

Uh, the miracles of Jesus, as I say, revealed his compassion, displayed his power, and confirmed his identity, Son of God, his claim to be Messiah.

Um, that's compelling.

That should, as a matter of fact, we'll see.

If you want to finish reading John's gospel, you'll see how this all impacted Nicodemus.

Uh, in chapter 19, he actually is one who goes along with Joseph of Arimathea to take the body of Jesus Christ down off the cross, to wrap it, and to bury him in Joseph's tomb.

Nicodemus is with him.

That's pretty amazing how compelling this person, Jesus, was in that day.

Now, um, evidently Nicodemus drawn to seek out Jesus in this particular case because of, I think, that first pass of miracles in Jerusalem there.

But at some point something happened, and at some point this became deeper, more meaningful, and he actually decided I must be born again.

I must follow Jesus and give my all to him because of this compelling love of God in Christ.

What did the Apostle John mean by love?

We have, you know, some people nowadays will short, they'll shorten words for social media purposes, especially when we used to be out of characters, you know, when we were limited on a certain platform or whatever.

They'd say L-U-V.

So love became a three-letter word.

But it it, I just want you to know, man, the love of God is a four-letter word.

And it's a brilliant four-letter word.

And it is bigger and broader and deeper and richer than we might imagine.

We use the word love all the time to just say uh a lot of things.

We we say I love God.

We uh I say I love my wife.

I also say, though, that I love music.

I love Lou Malnotti's pizza.

Um, I love a lot of things.

I love pumpkin pie.

Somebody say amen.

I love the Titans.

I am there's just so many things that we might love.

And we use the same word for all of those things, and certainly we don't mean the same thing, do we?

Kim certainly wants me to love her more than Lou Malnotti's pizza, so I buy one and we share it together.

And she's happy for that, I think.

Yeah.

Um love is a beautiful word.

Um, but God's L-O-V-E is not just L-U-V.

And there's a lot of L-U-V out there.

It's shallow, it's veneer, it's not self-sacrificing, it's not self-donating, it's demanding.

And some people get it into their heads that they're in love when they really aren't in love, they're just in L-U-V.

And I would suggest to you that that's not enough for us in life.

It's not enough when you stand next to a casket.

It's not enough even when you've been just disappointed at the way circumstances have gone in your life.

You need more than L U V.

You need the great love of God.

Dane Ortland has a great book.

It's called Gentle and Lowly.

It's about the heart of Jesus.

He says, we love until we are betrayed.

Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal.

We love until we're forsaken.

Jesus loved through forsakenness.

We love up to a limit.

Jesus loves to the end.

Yeah.

Amen?

Read it with me.

Read it one more time.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

All through John's Gospel, there is this thread that runs all the way into chapter 20, actually, where he talks about these things have been written, all these things have been selectively written, so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.

And that in believing in him, you might find life in his name.

So you have, throughout the Gospel of John, you have believe, you have received this thing of eternal life.

And so it's always about believing in Christ, believing in Jesus, placing your full weight, your hope, your confidence, everything in him, not in yourself, not in the culture, not in your career, not in another person, Jesus.

See, it's all about him.

And it's trusting him, and in him you find life.

And so what we have in John 3.16 is we have the story of the initiating love of God.

For God so loved the world.

That's how the thing begins.

The expansive reach of God's love is the world, the cosmos, the whole thing.

The motivation for our salvation is God's love.

The motivation isn't Jim's loveliness or your loveliness, it's God's heart of love.

That's what motivates God to love.

Not that I'm in some way deserving of something.

Not that in some way, you know, I've balanced out the moral scales.

None of us can balance out the moral scales.

We've got to start there.

And when you start there, you get humble enough to see just the white-hot holiness of God and how amazing.

It starts to blow your mind.

Why he would love us again, it becomes surprising and mysterious and compelling.

The source of our salvation is God Himself, not in what we do, but in what Christ has done.

The effect of God's saving love is that we have, we don't perish, we have everlasting life.

And then the glory of God's saving love goes to Jesus because he's the one who has loved us.

This is why God's love for us is transforming as well.

And I want to close with just a couple thoughts on that.

His message, Jesus' message, was not about you or me finding our best life now.

The message of Jesus was not about you or me following some kind of religious rules.

He didn't come to merely affirm us, he actually came to save us.

And we get that mixed up all the time, see.

We want unconditional affirmation.

Instead, God's offering unconditional love.

And the two are not the same.

To demand unconditional affirmation is to deny unconditional love, as our friend Sam Albery would say, and I think he's right on there.

So whether you're talking about the historical religious leader, Nicodemus, or the pastor and Bible teacher that you're listening to right now, we must be born again.

We must come to the place where we believe in Jesus, trust, hope, place our confidence in Jesus, that he's the Son of God, that He's the solution to our great need of God Himself.

And then we receive, we simply lift up the empty hands of faith and receive from him the life that we so desire.

There's a man named Daniel Whittle who wrote a song called I Know Whom I Have Believed.

It's based on 2 Timothy chapter 1, I think it's verse 12.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

I know not why God's wondrous grace to me he has made known, nor why unworthy Christ in love redeemed me for his own.

Great mystery.

I know not why.

I really don't get it.

And some of you know the chorus, but I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.

Hmm.

Beautiful, wonderful hymn.

Look, I've got a lot of questions for God when we all get home.

Maybe you do too.

That's alright.

That's really all right.

One day I look forward, though, to having him clear up some of those things for me.

But the greatest mystery in the world is the love of God in Christ.

And it puts my heart in a state of awe and wonder.

And I hope it does that for you as well.

Advent uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, Advent creates new men and women.

Look up, you whose eyes are fixed on this earth, you who are captivated by the events and changes on the surface of this earth.

Look up.

This is beautiful.

You who turned away from heaven to this ground because you had become disillusioned.

Look up, you whose eyes are laden with tears, you who mourn the loss of all that the earth has snatched away.

Look up, you who cannot lift your eyes because you are so laden with guilt.

Look up.

Your redemption is drawing near.

How near is it?

It's near as near as you simply turning to him and surrendering to him, believing in him, trusting in him, and in him finding the life that you so desperately need.

So the Advent love of God for us in Christ, surprising, mysterious, compelling, and transforming.

That's so true.

Close with a Lewis quote, or a couple of them.

Though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not.

It's not wearied by our sins or our indifference.

And therefore it's quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins at whatever cost to us and whatever cost to him.

You see how he's in pursuit of you and in pursuit of me?

And it's not about how you feel in any given moment.

Because he's God, he's sovereign, he's the initiator.

You're simply the responder.

And we invite you, we implore you, I beg you if I must.

Come to Christ.

Trust in him.

Who wouldn't want what he's offering?

I don't understand that.

There is a uh metaphor that Lewis used.

He said, This world's a great sculptor's shop.

We're the statues.

And there's a rumor going around the shop that someday some of us are gonna come to life.

Might that be you today?

I don't know.

Maybe, like Nicodemus, you've been religious all your life.

Maybe you even know some things.

Maybe you got some data up in your head.

Um, but have you been born again?

Jesus is the one that said, Ye must be born again.

So famous for that.

So famous also for saying, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

And here in this one chapter, we have on full display the Advent love of God in Christ.

And it's an offer to you today.

Will you believe?

Will you receive?

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for coming.

You didn't have to come.

You didn't owe it to us, we didn't deserve it, but you came anyway.

Thank you for displaying your love most brilliantly, most uh luminously on the cross where you died in my place to pay the price for my sins.

And the same for these folks here and the folks watching us online.

Holy Spirit, move on our hearts in new and fresh ways.

Open our eyes to be able to see and be astonished at this love you have shown to us in the person and work of Jesus.

And Lord, for any that maybe for the very first time getting a hold of this and starting to understand this, starting to quote, see or would like to enter the kingdom of God, I pray, Holy Spirit, you move on them.

Draw them to yourself, the kind of work that only you can do.

Um, and that they might find life in the person and work of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen and amen.