John 3:16 For God So Loved The World Series

Note: I used notes from Preachers Sermon and Outline Bible on John and John 3:16 The Numbers of Hope by Max Lucado also How big is God? By Judith Koch

Title: John 3:16 For God so Loved the World

Theme: To show who God is and what He has done.

Text: John 3:16

Introduction

We have enough it is now time for us to give out.

We began a series on John 3:16. Last week we learned what it is to be

“born again”. Jesus says that this is important because we will not be able to “see” nor “enter” into the kingdom of God unless we are born again and that of “water and spirit”.

Many people cannot see the activities and workings of the kingdom of God today because they are not “born again”. This is a mystery yet the mystery is more reliant on our trust in God and dependence in Him than that of ourselves.

This morning we will be looking at this verse of scripture. Often called the summary of the gospel. In it I believe is contained every answer to questions about salvation.

We will begin by analyzing this first section.

“For God so loved the World”

I. For God

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (4) In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

How Big is God?

We have a tendency to view ourselves as the center of the universe, and sometimes feel that we have problems that are overwhelming. But the truth is that our minds can’t fully grasp the vastness of the universe, and by extension, the vastness of our God. If the purpose of this universe was to be a home for you and me, it is grossly oversized. But that isn’t its purpose. Scripture tells us in Psalm 19:1

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.

NLT 1 For the choir director: A psalm of David.

The heavens tell of the glory of God.

The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship

Based on the vastness of the universe, we have grossly undersized how big our God truly is.

God spoke all of this into existence. He simply said “Let there be…” Can you imagine a ball of fire the size of our sun, coming forth just from the commands of His lips? Our sun is a huge ball of flaming gas, so large that if it were an empty ball it would take 1,300,000 earths to fill it.

On earth, we have our measurements – a foot, a yard, if we want to get big, we count in miles. God’s measuring stick is in light years. At 186,000 miles per second, one light year is 5.88 trillion miles. Our beautiful blue planet is just under 25,000 miles around the equator, so light could circle the earth about seven times in one second.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to be 100,000 light years from one end to the other, and our sun is just one of billions of stars in it. If we were to count one star per second, 24 hours a day, it would take 2,500 years to count all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. To show the size of our solar system, our sun and its planets, compared to the size of our entire galaxy, imagine our solar system as the size of a quarter. Now throw the quarter on the floor – how many of those could you line up side by side to cover every square inch of your house? How many more to cover every square inch of your yard and driveway? Now imagine this: the size of our solar system is roughly equal to the size of a quarter compared to the size of the entire North American continent – Canada, the US, and Mexico put together.

Scientists believe that there are at least several Billion galaxies in the universe. Galaxies often group together by gravitational pull in what is known as a super cluster of galaxies. Within the super cluster are located smaller clusters. The Milky Way isn’t even the biggest galaxy in our “local” cluster. Our earth holds seven continents. If our solar system is the size of a quarter to one of those continents, then imagine our size compared to a planet big enough to have billions of continents. It is far more than our humans minds can comprehend.

We don’t know how big the universe is. Scientists have been able to see stars that are 14 billion light years away, so they know that the universe is at least 28 billion light years in diameter. And it is getting bigger. Scientists estimate that a new star is “being born” every second.