Agapē-We Are Lavished With Love. An Advent Sermon. Series

Agape-we are lavished with love. An advent sermon.

There are some truly magnificent things that can happen in a person’s life. I think of life itself, the meeting of those two cells that contain all the coded DNA required to form a fully-fledged human being, that turned out to be you, with your on average thirty-seven-trillion cells. Another magnificent thing is foundations of true friendship as you meet people for the first time, and you know that there will be or somehow is a bond between you. Something else I think that is great is the Earth, God’s creation; to look out on the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, I think of the times I have flown between islands in Fiji and looked down upon coral reefs alive with an abundance of life and colour, tiny little coloured fish or massive ones who are further up the food chain, or to gaze across the McKenzie Country to the Southern Alps, or to Ruapehu from the Desert Road and just take in the magnificence of the mountains the vastness, the life and the reflected light and the knowledge of the danger that could lurk below the surface of that ocean or in a freezing south-westerly blizzard in the high country, or even how cold the fast comes in the high country when the Sun sets. Then there’s love of a wife for her husband and vice versa or adults for children in their care that gives assurance and understanding, a union of understanding, the sort of love that gives more than it takes, that delights in the other persons company, words, imperfections and quirks. Perhaps to see God’ love for creation in the garden to follow the growth of a seed to maturity and the blooming, and development of more seed, of food and nourishment from a very small beginning.

These are magnificent things. These are things that I consider outstanding, splendid things, for some it may be different, they may understand and relate to God’s handy work in a different way. Magnificence for some is well written song or poem, the sound of a valley of bellbirds as they welcome the sun into the day, around Tawa it might be the song of a Grey Warbler or Tui, for car enthusiasts magnificence could be the sound of a finely tuned V8 purring onto a raceway after many hours in the workshop, while for others it may be the silence of a time alone - but in the presence God.

In Johns first letter.. This great apostle says this about something magnificant. 1 John 3:1-10.

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

So from that reading we see the role of The Father, and of Jesus in our salvation. The position the Father has put us in because of his great love, love we have been lavished with through Jesus Christ. The interesting thing is that often it is thought that we are the instrument of our own salvation. When in fact, it is God who made it possible, in doing so:

As the Father

A)

1) He bestows his love upon us (3:1a). It was a choice of the Father to give us His love and the word that is used in the NIV translation is that His love was lavished on us, this means he bestowed on us in generous or extravagant quantities His love! It gets me thinking of a cupcake lavished with icing.