God's Great Love

God’s Great Love

Am Service March 15th 2009

John 3:16

Introduction

There is a lot of hurt in the world each and every day. Life does not seem very fair at times does it? Good people are losing their jobs, homes, and retirement accounts. Even the planet Pluto is not considered a planet anymore. Where is the justice in that!

When you look at the world around you it can be easy to get so wrapped up in the bad stuff that we forget about our God. It is easy to think He is not there for you, that He does not care about you. There are times when hope seems to be far away. I believe the world is spinning out of control because people do not understand God.

The world needs hope, they need the hope that is found in Jesus! They need to have the hope that springs from the Easter holiday that we will celebrate in just five short weeks.

John 3:16 a verse that helps us to understand what we read in the bible, it helps us to understand what God is all about. It helps us to understand why God has done what He has done as well as why He is doing what He is doing.

It tells us that the mainspring of God’s being is love. It is easy to think of God as looking at people in their self-centeredness and their disobedience and their rebellion and saying: "I’ll break them: I’ll discipline them and punish them and scourge them until they come back." The text reveals that we have a God who loves us more than we can ever imagine.

I know that more the odds of every one of us in here have heard this verse is pretty good. In fact I’m pretty sure that most of us know definitely have this verse memorized.

I read something recently that said a Sunday school teacher kept a copy of this verse in a walnut shell on his desk because he was taught long ago that John 3:16 is the Gospel in a nutshell.

Makes sense to me. I suppose if there was ever a verse that could change the world this would be the one. Today I want to break it down a little and examine it a piece at a time so that we can see what it tells us of.

Read Scripture: John 3:16

I. The Greatest Love

Vs. 16 “God so loved the world”

I find it so amazing that God has enough time to love me when He has the whole rest of the world to love. He loves me. Little – well not so little – insignificant me. He loves you. He loves me. He loves us even though we are sinners. He even loves those who don’t believe He exists. He loves all of the atheists of the world. That is hard to believe, but He does.

Name any kind of sinner there is in the world, and He loves that person. He doesn’t love their sins, but He loves the person. Every person in the world can be assured of God’s love.

The human mind will never grasp the love of God. All we can say is the love of God is uncaused, uninfluenced, spontaneous, and sovereign. Jeremiah. 31:3 – “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.”

His is an everlasting, unending love with no beginning. God had no beginning so his love had no beginning. All earthly love had a beginning but God’s love reaches back

to before the world was as well as forward to when all mountains are but dust. God’s love is infinite, illimitable, unbounded.

The little chorus sung by children says it best, "Wide, wide as the ocean, High as the heaven above, Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Savior’s love"

A SINNER MAY GO TO HELL UNSAVED, BUT HE CANNOT GO TO HELL UNLOVED.

II. The Greatest Gift

Vs. 16 “that He gave His One and Only Son”

I don’t know why my life is so important the God allowed His son to go to the Cross for my sins. He loves all of us so much that His Son made the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. When I was a “Baby Christian” I suppose this was the easiest thing to accept and the hardest to understand. In fact I still don’t understand. I’m just thankful for it.

I love many people in this world. I know what it is to love. But I also know what it is to lose someone you love. Knowing those two feelings, and knowing that God chose to allow His Son, His perfect blameless Son to die for me still dumbfounds me every time I think about it. I found this article that makes it easier for me to understand: