The Greatest Sentence Ever Written

THE GREATEST SENTENCE EVER WRITTEN

JOHN 3:16

The greatest sentence ever written is not found in some magazine, or in some book in a library, but is found in God’s Word, The Holy Bible.

When Sir Walter Scott was dying, he told his son-in law to bring him the Book. What book he replied. Scott replied back, there is only one book, The Bible.

William Phelps, formerly of Yale, said, If I had to choose between the knowledge provided for by a college education , and knowledge learned from the Bible, I would always choose the knowledge gleamed from the Bible.

But if all the Bible were destroyed, and only John 3:16 remained, that would be enough to save the whole world if they would listen and obey.

Martin Luther called this verse the Gospel in a nutshell.

This is the easiest and the hardest of all verses to preach. Easy that anyone can preach from John 3:15, but hard, because, one cannot give justice to all that is contained in it.

I-NOTICE THE CAUSE OF SALVATION MENTIONED IN THIS VERSE:

“For God so loved the world”

Some think of God as a monster in the sky. A God of wrath. We need to recognize the fact at the end of the way, if one tramples the blood of His Son, he will feel His wrath. But by His wrath, is always His Love.

A-Notice The Span Of God’s Love:

“loved“ (how long or when He did it)

The tense of the word Loved here means not loves us if we believe in His son, but He has already loved us in the past.

It is hard to me to understand that He loved me before He saved me but he did according to Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

A mother will say to a child, go wash your face and I will love you, But God says, I love you, go wash your face.

When Jonah was in the belly of the great fish, he proclaimed a great truth when he said, Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation does not begin in the goodness of man, but in the heart of God.

ILLUSTRATION: When Nansen was looking for the North Pole, his ship entered deep waters. Each day he gathered up rope and let down the plummet to measure the depth of the ocean at a given point. One day he came to a place where the water was exceptionally deep. He let down the plummet but was not able to sound the depth. He gathered up all available rope on board the ship and attached it to the line, still it never reached the depth. In his report, he wrote the exact length of the line and then wrote, “Deeper than that.”

When we think of the depth of God’s love we are reminded that we were sinners, but God’s love goes deeper than that. Many had sunk in the quagmire of sin and the depths of depravity, but God’s loves goes deeper than that.

B-Notice The Size Of God’s Love:

“so loved”

This verse doesn’t say, God loved, but God so loved. When a man say to a woman I love you, that is fine. But when he says, I love you so much, that’s a big difference. That is the way God loves us.

Someone has said the biggest word in the Bible is Nebuchadnezzar, but that’s not true, it is SO. God’s love is great because He so loved us.,

ILLUSTRATION: A young father and his daughter were on a "get-away" cruise, because his wife and the girl’s mother had just died. As they were huddled together on the deck of the ship, coping with the pain, the little girl asked her father, "Daddy, does God love us as much as Mommy did?" At first the father didn’t know what to say. But he knew he couldn’t side step the question. Pointing out across the water to the most distant horizon, he said, "Honey, God’s love reaches farther than you can see in that direction." Turning around he said, "And God’s love reaches farther than you can see in that direction." And then the father looked up at the sky and said, "And God’s love is higher than the sky, too." Finally he pointed down at the ocean and said, "And it’s deeper than the ocean as well."

After hearing that, the girl responded: "Oh, just think, Daddy. We’re right here in the middle of it all."

C-Notice The Scope Of God’s Love:

“the world”

I can understand how God could love the little children of the world. But I have trouble that he loves sinners, those who have spoken against Him. But then I realize we are not talking about man’s love but God’s love. A love of grace.