This is the manuscript of the sixth sermon in the series "Responding to the Living Word".
Look what love does. It gives and gives and gives and gives even more. God’s love gives his creation a second chance. God’s compassion reaches out to all the world and gives us an invitation. And then God gives attention to our faithful response. He gives us cause for celebration, because he has removed our fear and given us life with him now and forever!
John 3:16 NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Scripture Reading:
John 3:16-21 NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
Text:
John 3:16 NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Introduction
There is a story about a man who was very angry after a church service. He muttered to the deacon on his way out of church, “Give, give, give. That’s all that the preacher knows to talk about!” The deacon called him back and said, “John, I want to thank you, that’s one of the best definitions of Christian love I have ever heard.” Give, give, give.
Right at the heart of our text today is the word “gave.” It is the word that expresses what love does. “For God so loved the world that he gave. . . .” Today let's look at what love does.
I. Love gives another chance to the creation and of course mankind is the culmination of God's creation.
Like the Bible itself, John 3:16 begins with God.
Genesis 1:1 NIV In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The story of God’s love is that he was not content to create a world without beings who could respond to him. So from a love that reached out to bring into being those who could be loved and love in return, God created man and woman.
Genesis 1:26-28 NIV Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
But all too soon it was clear that human love was flawed.
Mankind would not love back with the same devotion and trust God had given to them. Mistrust, disobedience, and pride entered the human family, and suddenly life was out of joint. The humans went into hiding. But, God did not give up on his creation. He came searching for the man and the woman.
Genesis 3:8-9 NIV Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
The story of Jesus is that God never really found us as he wanted to until he “so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” And then Jesus came and found us. God has found us in Jesus not to cast us out of the garden but to bring us in; not to condemn but to save.
John 3:17 NIV For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
II. Love gives compassion to all the world.
At unbelievable cost, God’s love comes fully to us. He poured all his love out upon us. The warmth of his devotion came cascading down to us in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
Every religion that talks about sacrifice speaks of the sacrifice that people bring to their god, seeking to appease him and to justify themselves. But not the Christian faith. The Christian gospel states that there is nothing people can offer to God in exchange for their souls.
Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
God has himself provided the sacrifice.
Jesus is not man’s best gift offered to God; he is God’s best gift offered to man. God himself has become the sacrifice of atonement. He died in our place, holding nothing back. He emptied his heart, and the love drained out.
As I said and proved in the second sermon of this series, God took on human flesh and revealed himself to us; he was incarnated among us. Incarnation is the word we use to communicate the truth that God became flesh and dwelt among us.
Who did the love cover?
It covers “Whoever believes in him.”
John 3:16 NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God loves the world, not just a certain part of it. His love for the whole world is forever a judgment on our petty prejudices. God’s love reaches everyone. It reaches down to include the humblest and most forgotten person anywhere on the earth.
When the church prays for its missionaries at home and scattered around the world, it is praying with the certainty that God intends for all people to be reached and wants every person to be saved.
2 Peter 3:8-9 NIV But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
And in our hands, which have been richly blessed, he has placed the responsibility to go to all people everywhere.
Matthew 28:18-20 NIV Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
2 Corinthians 5:16-21 NIV So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Our love will cause us to give our lives as he has given his.
III. Love gives attention to our response.
One of the evidences of God’s love is that he pays attention to us and seriously considers our response to the love He gave freely, but painfully, to us in Jesus Christ.
John 3:16 NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
“Believe” in our text means trusting with the whole heart, holding nothing back, casting all that we are on Jesus Christ in faith.
We believe he will save us from death, deliver us from hell, rescue us from the punishment that is due us because of our sin.
Romans 6:23 NIV For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He who believes in Jesus realizes that He is our only hope. If he drops us, we are lost; if he forgets us, we are alone; if he fails us, we are helpless. Believing in Jesus is trusting that he will hold nothing back. He will be faithful to us and bring us home.
Believing is our greatest act of response to God’s love.
John 3:16, NIV For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
God requires us to believe. Nothing substitutes for believing.
John 3:18 NIV Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Believing comes before any work of worship or service. We can do good all our lives and fail to please God if we turn our backs on his Son. Love for others and ministry to the world is the healthy and necessary response that believers make to the needs around them.
IV. Love gives us cause for celebration.
As God’s love touches us and we are delivered from death, we are released from fear. We are brought from the darkness to the light.
We have cause for celebration.
The promise that we have eternal life is the antidote to the fear people feel when they face eternity without the assurance that they will be with God when they die. This terrifying fear comes upon unbelievers when they are suddenly confronted with their doubts and uncertainties about the meaning of their lives and the eternal destinies of their souls. And well it might. For without Christ people are dying without hope, perishing without God.
Christ’s love compels us to tell others about the hope we have in him. The Bible says, "Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that [he] died for all" (2 Corinthians 5:14 NIV).
God’s promise of eternal life is not only the antidote to our fear, it is the medicine of joy. It is the cup of celebration. The lively and joyful hope of the Christian believer is that eternal life has been given to us now and we can live rejoicing in it today. Eternal life is a new kind of life—Jesus calls it abundant life which God intends to bring about in us now.
Jesus said;
John 10:10 NIV The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Eternal life is not just living forever with God; it is living God’s kind of life forever, beginning now.
John 14:6 NIV Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
One Christian said it this way, “All the way to heaven is heaven because Jesus said, ‘I am the way’ ”
That kind of life is worth living forever.
Conclusion
Just look at what love does. It gives and gives and gives and gives even more. God’s love gives his creation a second chance. God’s compassion reaches out to all the world and gives us an invitation. And then God gives attention to our faithful response. He gives us cause for celebration, because he has removed our fear and given us life with him now and forever!
Sermon Audio
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