John 3: 14 – 21 / Whoever
Intro: 2 gentlemen were seated next to each other on a plane. One turned to the other, “What do you do?” “I am a minister.” “Oh,” said the 1st man. “I don’t believe in that religious stuff. It’s for kids you know, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…’” The minister politely laughed asking the other man what he did for a living. “I am an astronomer,” said the man. “Oh, that stuff,” said the minister. “I thought it was just for kids, you know, ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star . . .’”
I. Often what we know about God is what we were taught as a child. Faith never fully develops into a close relationship or deep friendship.
A. The church has trouble attracting and keeping committed members who attend regularly. Some people even say, “Why bother? Why labor to keep the church up and running? Let is fail – and invest your time and talent in work that helps people.”
B. What the church often fails to realize is that the love of God isn’t love until you give it away.
C. Vs. 16 – “God so loved the world that He gave . . .” How do you show the world the love of God that caused God to give Jesus for you?
II. Vs. 16b – that whoever believes in him ANYBODY! WHOEVER!
A. We only want to extend the love of God to those who are like us. We want to set up all kinds of conditions to our love for each other and our relationship as Christians to one another.
B. Unless you do things the way I want, I won’t --- The only condition that God placed upon those who would receive God’s love was “whoever believes in him (Jesus)
C. A grandmother went shopping with her 2 small grandsons. They had learned a new word and when they became angry with each other preceded to use it. “I hate you.” I hate you, too!” Grandmother, “That’s not very nice. I’m certainly not going to take 2 little boys who hate each other to McDonald’s for lunch.” One child backed down and quickly responded, “I don’t really hate you, Billy.” With that Billy responded, “I still hate you! I’m not hungry.”
III. God’s eager love, stretched to its utmost cannot save a soul or a world unless it believes in the Son whom God sent. Vs. 18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
A. God knows everything about us and loves us anyway! With all the warts and winkles, faults and foibles, God loves us!
B. Vs. 19 – “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
C. You cannot demonstrate God’s love through constant criticism and negativity or by continuing to insist on having your own way. You cannot believe one way and live another.
Conclu: vs. 21 – But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
Augustine said, “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.
This is the way in which each of us is to live with the other. We are to love, respect and treat with dignity everyone with whom we come in contact as though they were the only person in the world we had to love.
