INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• 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.
• Today we are going to begin a series based on Max Lucado’s Book “3:16 The Numbers of Hope”.
• SLIDE #2
• The world needs hope, they need to 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.
• This series is built upon on the verse that is the key verse in the Bible.
• John 3:16 is the Rosetta Stone 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 men 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.
• Today our focus will be on the fact that He Loves!
• This word is a word we have worn out, we love our spouses, food, sports, the list of what we love is unending. Over use of the word love has left the word with the punch of a butterfly’s wing.
• As we examine this love He has for us, let us begin our look at God’s love for us by seeing that we cannot win God’s love.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
I. YOU CAN’T WIN IT.
• This is such an important concept, and it can be a hard one to grasp because of our need to try to win the love and approval of those around us.
• If you are driven by the need to win the love of others, you will have a lot of problems in live.
• I had a young lady I used to coach when I was in another town who was a sweet young lady; however, this young lady was driven to try to win the love of her father.
• This girl told me once that she had struck out some like 12 hitters, and she got the win. She walked a couple of batters and her father berated her all the way home.
• Nothing this young lady could do was good enough. This life of this otherwise sweet young lady has been ruined because she never felt she could measure up to what her father wanted for her.
• That is a sad dose of reality isn’t it.
• The issue of God who created us loving us is something that can be hard to grasp.
• As a result we try to win God’s love by trying to be good enough, work hard enough, give enough, and look good enough.
• For whatever reason we have this desire to try to win or earn what we cannot win or earn.
• The sad thing about trying to win God’s love is that when we realize we haven’t been able to do it, it leaves us bitter and disillusioned concerning God.
• I want us to examine a passage in Deuteronomy that speaks of God’s love for His people.
• SLIDE #4
• Deuteronomy 10:15 ( ESV ) Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.
• Beginning in chapter 8, Moses is warning the people to be obedient to God, he wants them to remember the past and anticipate the future. Then he goes into chapter 9-10 and gives them warning in light of their past failures.
• Then he gets to 10:12 and starts to speak of God’s love for His people and their responsibility to God.
• By the time Moses gets to verse 15, the people have to wonder how God can love them, they were so unworthy; they DID not earn or win God’s love.
• They had to feel bad about the future based on how they acted in the past.
• When they heard Moses speak verse 15 to them, it shook their world.
• This passage seems rather nondescript to us, but the Hebrew word that is used for love literally means to be tethered to someone or something.
• The word denotes a tethered love. It means that God was attached to His people, that God Himself had attached Himself to the people.
• Why did God do this? Did they deserve His love, did they WIN His love?
• SLIDE #5
• Deuteronomy 7:7-8 gives us a reason.
• Deuteronomy 7:7-8 ( ESV ) It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
• God loved Israel and loves the rest of us because He CHOSE TO!
• The type of love the Hebrew word describes is a love that will not let go of the object of love.
• This is what we need to understand concerning God’s love for us. God loves the whole world; He loves the saved and the lost.
• He loves mankind. He loves the lost so much that He has done all that can be done by Him to bring them into the family.
• His love is such that He wants all to be saved!
• SLIDE #6
• 1 Timothy 2:3-4 ( ESV ) This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
• As a Christian, you cannot let go of the fact that God has tethered Himself to you and He will not let go. If you do not know Jesus yet as your savior, you need to hold on to the fact that God LOVES you and no matter what has not given up on you!
• You need not win His love. You already have it! Since you cannot win His love, you cannot lose it.
• SLIDE #7
II. YOU CAN’T LOSE IT.
• This is something nice to know. The way the economy is going, many people are fearful of losing thing like their jobs, cars, homes, and other possessions.
• Isn’t it nice to know there is something that no matter what, you cannot lose!
• The world is full of people who have given up because they think they have lost God’s love or that they could not possibly possess it because of things they have done.
• God loves who we consider the best and worst of us.
• Romans 8:35-39 tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ!
• SLIDE #8
• Romans 8:38-39 ( ESV ) For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• In the Old Testament we have the story of the prophet Hosea.
• God commanded Hosea to marry Gomer, a woman who was a harlot.
• God was using the marriage as an object lesson to point out the infidelity of the nation of Israel.
• Anyway, how would you men like to introduce your lovely wife GOMER.
• Gomer had the fidelity of a rabbit as she hopped from man to man. She ruined her life and shattered Hosea’s heart.
• Gomer really made a mess of her life.
• Finally she became penniless, and was placed for sale in a slave market. Guess who stepped forward to buy her?
• Hosea, who had never removed his wedding band.
• The way he treated her you would have thought she’d never loved another man. God uses this story, indeed orchestrated this drama, to illustrate his steadfast love for his fickle people.
• Look at what God tells Hosea in Hosea 3:1
• SLIDE #9
• Hosea 3:1 ( ESV ) And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”
• (RAISE CAKES WERE USED IN PAGAN FESTIVAL WORSHIP.)
• This is the love described in John 3:16. The Hebrew word for love is replaced in John 3:16 with the word AGAPE.
• Agape love. Less an affection, more a decision; less a feeling, more an action.
• As one linguist describes, “[Agape love is] an exercise of the Divine will in deliberate choice, made without assignable cause save that which lies in the nature of God Himself.”
• This is the love that keeps a couple together when one is suffering from the ravages of Alzheimer’s. This is the love that is there through think and then, for better for worse, for richer for poorer!
• No matter what you have done, you cannot lose God’s love for you! Israel was disobedient, they cheated on God with other god’s, yet He STILL loved them.
• Knowing God loves you no matter what can be such a life changing thought!
• This love explains why Jesus came; it explains how He endured such suffering and shame.
• Look at Ephesians 5:2
• SLIDE #10
• Ephesians 5:2 ( ESV ) And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
• He did it all for us!
• God’s love: your goodness can’t win it. Nor can your badness lose it. But you can resist it.
• SLIDE #11
III. YOU CAN RESIST IT.
• This has to be the most frustrating aspect of God’s love to God.
• After all He has done to give us the opportunity to be with Him for eternity to have people resist His love has to be devastating to Him and sad for us.
• How can we resist such love? Can’t God make us love Him? He could, but would you want to be married to someone you MADE love you? How empty would that be!
• WE have freewill and God will not take that from you.
• We need to understand that just because God loves us does not mean we will all go to heaven.
• There are consequences for rejecting God.
• When we resist God in this life, we will not be with Him in the next.
• SLIDE #12
• Hebrews 2:1-3 ( ESV ) Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard,
• This is what God wants for you.
• Take the challenge given forth to us in Ephesians 3:18-19
• Ephesians 3:18-19 (TMSG) you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
CONCLUSION
• God’s love is not static or self-centered; it reaches out and draws others in. Here God’s actions defined the pattern of true love, the basis for all love relationships—when you love someone, you are willing to sacrifice dearly for that person.
• Sacrificial love expresses itself without assurance that the love will be returned in kind. The timing of that love was highlighted by Paul’s words, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 niv).
• Are you ready to accept God’s love for you?
• This sacrificial love that God has for us explains next weeks message, “He Gave.”
