Good morning, everybody. As I say every year, but I think it's it bears doing so. We're delighted that many of you have come from up north and are down here amongst us. But if you would just call back up and ask them to close the back door. Well, we are here this morning Because of the Fourth Commandment and Westminster Shorter Confession Catechism, rather, question 58, which just happens to be as a part of your bulletin insert. The Fourth Commandment requires the keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his word expressly one whole day and seven to be a holy Sabbath to himself. And before I get started, there's somebody I want to thank, who I often get my material in, it seems close to the deadline, and a woman I've never met, Sherry Snook, just so graciously gets it all done, including the beauty of these slides. I'm tempted to kind of do this, so nobody gets up and walks out, but I, You'll notice that my sermon text is John 3.16, followed by Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. So get comfortable. Just relax. Hear now the very Word of God, John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. I believe that the Holman Christian Standard Bible may have a slightly different and maybe better translation. For God loved the world in this way. He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. The importance of this I cannot exaggerate. Martin Luther called this the Bible in miniature. Notice it is not universalism. It's for those who believe in him. What I'm going to do now is pray. I invite you to listen in. This is a prayer to God, not so much a prayer to you, but a prayer, as I dare to, step into this pulpit to God. Lord God, Creator of all things, I praise and adore your glorious name. From you all love comes, filling the universe and our very souls. Lord, would you let it sink into the depths of the sheep of your pasture and immerse all of us in your presence. Lord, would you let your love fill all of us to such overflowing that we ache with your desires and weep with your compassion. Settle our hearts and minds, Lord, as I now seek to share your Word. Thank you, my Creator, Redeemer, King, for what you have done for me. Enlighten me now, Lord, as you speak through my very feeble attempts to reflect your great love for this congregation and for all of your elect. In Jesus' name, I make my prayer. Amen. I have one goal this morning. And that is to so convince and overwhelm you through God's Word the reality and enormity of God's love for all of you who are His elect, such that you leave today utterly changed. I've set a high goal for myself, one I cannot and I know I cannot achieve. but the Holy Spirit can. And God helping me, we will leave today with a little different view. I want you to realize, and I decided to do this as both physician and pastor, that so many doubt the depth of God's love for them. And the truth is that all of us do. to one degree or another, or at least during certain seasons. And I want you to realize, you are worthy of that love. You are. With everything I know to say, I promise you that's true. There is nothing in God's Word that is not true. His Word is all or nothing. And you're not hearing my promise, you're hearing God's promise. And it is exactly that, an eternal promise for those who love Him. Frederick Lehman wrote this, a love for believers that never fails or rejects. and the reality that the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. I wrote a different sermon. And as happens once or twice a year, and my wife puts up with it because it means that she goes to bed alone, I felt like I needed to write a very different sermon. And what I'm going to share with you today is that sermon. And I decided to write this sermon as I imagined God might pen a letter to you, his bride. Now, he has. We call it the Bible. But I thought I would try to explain it all around the grand metanarrative of love. I will struggle at times to get through this. And maybe you will too. And so after the service, Rachel and several of the elders and myself will be available and we'll stay up here for prayer and to meet with any of you because I'm hoping the weight of God's love will settle here. Oh, Holy Spirit, come that this might be the case. So let's start. I'm going to read a letter as if God had written. Beloved sons and daughters of my church, I love you. I created you. I planned for you from the beginning of all time. Yes, you. You were the most precious thing I created. I know everything about you. I hear your thoughts, your prayers. I see your tears. I feel your struggles, your pain, your angst, and even your doubts and disbelief in me. Yet even now, I am as close as the very breath inside you. My spirit is in you. Everything in my world is designed for you and your understanding of who I am and what my plan is for your life. You see, the point is I love you, but you have missed this point. You think you are unlovable because you hear the accuser and gods of your own making sowing doubt, and you hear them louder than you hear me. But I want you to see and sense and feel the depth of my love for you. If you did, everything would change. everything in your life, your family, your workplace, your community. So let me explain it again, book by book. I know it's a long love letter and that some of what Paul writes is hard to understand, but I will clarify. In Genesis, I told you the most intimate thing about me, my name. I am. I gave you life. And as I said, I am your very breath. I formed you, everything you see and feel and taste. I created it. From Genesis on, everything in my word is designed to teach and illustrate and demonstrate me so that you might know and believe. I did it in parables, stories, rules, commandments, laments, songs, illustrations. For your benefit, I used contrasts. Good versus evil. Love versus hate. War versus peace. Bread versus hunger. Lion versus lamb. Poverty versus riches. Pride versus humility. Eternal versus temporal. Strong versus weak. Healthy versus disease. Past versus future. East versus West. Life versus death. Forgiveness versus hatred. My word to you is filled with it. For your benefit I use these contrasts that you might see the point that my love for you is so great I gave you the most precious thing, my son, rather than what the Prince of Darkness gives to you. Do you see the point? They're all contrasts. Every bit as real as the contrast between I am and the chief deceiver But some of you insist on shades of gray and of comparisons among each other instead of me. You look to your neighbor and say, I'm not as bad as him in your heart. Not realizing the standard is my word, not your neighbor. And so in Genesis 3, I taught you about sin and why sin is a part of your life and of your experience. It corrupts and distorts and causes you immeasurable pain. And yet you keep choosing sin over me. Why? I warned you about the serpent, the father of all lies, and the deceiver who holds so many in bondage to this very day. I told you how much I abhor sin and disobedience, such that I destroyed with a great flood everything I had created. But I also gave you a sign, a rainbow, that you might remember my great love for you. I confused your languages because you thought you were like me, like I am. I taught you about faith through Abram and his wife, made a new covenant with you and told you my eternal promises of blessings you would receive by that faith and by that obedience. I taught you about my mercy and my judgment and gave you the freedom to choose. And throughout my word, I demonstrate what happens when you choose the world rather than I am. I taught you not to depend upon what your eyes see and your limited understanding of my plans. Joseph understood that what man planned is evil. I meant for good. And it's good for you. In Exodus, I showed you that I am the promise keeper. Everything I told Abram was fulfilled, but this was only a precursor to the ultimate fulfillment in my Son given to you. I brought you out of the very house of bondage and slavery and affliction because I am the Lord your God. I gave you a national constitution in the Ten Commandments that you would know exactly how to live in a manner that led to your peace, your prosperity, your happiness, and life itself, because I love you. In Leviticus, I gave you insight into the divine human relationship and how I would deal with sin. You must understand the depth of my holiness, that you must be wholehearted in your devotion to me, and that by my grace, my grace, your sins are forever atoned for. As far as those contrasts, east from west, in Numbers I clarified my covenant with you, that I would be your God and you would be my people. because I love you. To Moses, I spoke mouth to mouth and not in riddles that you would hear and understand. I illustrated this in having you wander for 40 years with no other distractions in the bare and dry desert until you saw and tasted and experienced my love and my mercy to you. I was the fire by night that protected you. I'm the cloud by day that surrounds you. In Deuteronomy, I showed you the way to the promised land, a foreshadowing of my ultimate good plans for you to live with me in paradise. I promised you I would never leave or forsake you. if you are mine. In Joshua, I told you not to fear or be dismayed, to take courage, because I love you. And even though you could not keep your part of the covenant, I fulfilled my part and your part, because I love you. My servant Moses taught you to love me, the Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. In Job, Proverbs and the Psalms, I answered your inner question as to whether I could be trusted and whether your faith was well placed in me. Job witnessed to you as he finally understood my great love and put his hand over his own mouth. to stop his words. And I ask you, shall you fault finders contend with me, the Almighty? And because of his faithfulness, all that Job could ever have dreamed of was restored to him. And so, too, for you. My psalms are addressed to each and every one of you. to teach you how to think and pray even in times of deep despair, of distress and lament, to illustrate praise and joy and adoration for my love and mercy to you and the riches I promise I will heap upon every one of you who are mine. But some are of little understanding. stiff-necked and stubborn people who listen to voices that are not of me. So I gave you my Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that wisdom might prevail and that you might understand that wisdom is found in me, I am, and not in human wisdom, which is folly. And my prophets, who gladly gave their very lives that you would hear and see my truth, They taught you that everything in the world is to be interpreted through me and its relationship to me, because I created all things and am sovereign over all things. I am the Holy One who forgives your sins and whose wrath for those who reject me is sure, swift, fierce, and final. My servant Isaiah entered into my chamber and he fell on his face at my overwhelming holiness. I warned you so that you might stop and change your ways, that some among you are a people who keep on hearing but do not understand, who keep on seeing but do not perceive, whose hearts are dull and whose eyes are heavy. and whose eyes are blind, lest you see with your eyes and hear with your ears and listen and be healed by my great love for you. Jeremiah warns you that my judgment is sure on infidelity to my covenant, and yet I am determined to restore you through a new covenant that I will keep for you, because you are not capable Such is my grace and mercy. This is how great my love is for you. In Lamentations, I further explain that belief in me and my mercy would restore our relationship, even for those of you who have felt my judgment. you must see that life in me is a life of hope and not of despair like the pagans. Ezekiel, too, told you this. I will bring judgment on those who reject me, who cling to false gods and hope, but heap on you, my elect, true and abiding hope, if you are vigilant in holy living. Remember that my steadfast love for you never ceases. And again, I foreshadowed, even back those millennia, that I would send the very one who would rule with perfect justice and stand between me and you, making live your dried bones of sin. simply because I love you. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi all told you my truths so that you would hope in my love and never despair. That the truth is that it is possible to live a faithful life because I will vindicate you. I will raise you up the lowly, and I will help you persevere until the end, when you will receive your eternal reward and crown. I have a good plan for you. Know that the world and the Prince of Darkness will get worse and worse. You're seeing this. It will not get better and better. until I bring my kingdom that will know no sin and that will never end. But these, what you see now, are shadows one day replaced by your recognition of the reality of the cosmic battle going on. And even this very moment, the battle continues between my angelic forces and the devil and his fallen angels. And I asked you, given this great love, that you would love justice and care for the widow, the stranger, the poor, and the orphan, just as I did for you. In the meantime, be patient, be faithful, and look to I Am for your hope and deliverance. Read and understand and heed my word to you how often I have longed to gather you together as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings that you have not been willing. And then silence! For four hundred years, that you might read my word, practice it and grow in my wisdom and know that human wisdom is folly. All that preceded was designed to give you my wisdom, to woo you and teach you to anticipate the great unfolding of redemptive history. I have planned to save your very soul because of my great love for you. In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I stunned the world by me, the great I Am, humbling myself and coming to be born as a mere man and live among you, that you might see with your own eyes and recognize the enormity of my love for you. I literally became flesh and dwelt among you. I shared my life, my wisdom, ultimately my blood for you. I fulfilled the promise I gave you of peace, deliverance, and of the long-awaited Messiah. I taught among you that you would understand that I came to deliver you. And I taught you that belief in me would lead to eternal life. But woe to those among you who do not believe, for they shall see my wrath. The time is coming. I have warned you that I will irrevocably separate my sheep from those goats, for there is one shepherd and one flock. I longed that you would see with your eyes and understand with your heart, and I would heal you. John gave my words to you that I, the light, came into the world, but you loved darkness rather than the light. Oh, that you would know the truth, and the truth would set you free. I inspired Luke and others to write a full accounting of where and how my gospel spread. I sent you a helper, my Holy Spirit, to empower you and keep you because of my great love for you, that you would not be left as orphans. And still you are unwilling. My disciple Paul explained to you in Romans my saving righteousness rooted in my gospel and belief in me that you would know and understand that in my cross you would know viscerally and forever of my saving love and mercy. I died that you would live because of my great love for you. I adopted you. as my sons and as my daughters. Yes, you are worthy of me. Paul told you and demonstrated in his own life that suffering is a part of life in me. And I gave you the Holy Spirit to give you power and to persevere and to overcome. Paul told you of my great love. Who should separate you from my love? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No! In all these things, my precious sheep, you are more than conquerors through me who loved you. In Ephesians, I told you 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 of creation could ever separate you from my love for you. That's how huge my love is for you. Nothing can conquer that. And Philippians, I encouraged you toward kingdom service and living, for you are citizens of heaven and not of earth. In Colossians, I made clear that you participate with me in my death, life and resurrection. Do you see that I am the Lord over all of creation, including that which your eyes do not see and your ears do not hear? In Thessalonians, I made clear the reality and purpose of my second coming, where unbelievers will be judged and receive my wrath. And you, you, my precious elect, you will be delivered and inherit, inherit everlasting salvation and peace. My justice I will bring to you and no one can defeat my will. In Timothy, I made clear that belief in me would lead to visible changes in how you live. Belief in my gospel always leads you to me and to godliness and away from the sickness and evil and pain of sin that you cannot wash off or get rid of on your own. This I reinforced in Titus. There is an inseparable link between faith and practice, belief in me and your behavior. Philemon further pushed this point. The power of my gospel is of transformation, transformed lives, transformed marriages, transformed families and communities for such is my great love. for you. In Hebrews, I taught you a critical lesson. But instead of wisdom and application, you argue over who wrote it. That was a little fun. I am wrote it. The lesson is to hold fast to faith and to me and me alone and to encourage others in your church to persevere. For I know you, your wills are weak and easily distracted by this culture. As James wrote, be a doer, not just a hearer of my word. Make peace with me, foolish ones, for the time is coming when your delay will be too late. Peter, too, told the same story. Persevere in the faith, even though you will suffer persecution. It is me refining you because of my love for you. Be full of hope, for you will inherit eternity and riches beyond your ability right now to understand. All of this you are empowered to do not by your weak hands, but by my strength. John confessed to you the truth when he wrote that that which you heard, which you saw with your own eyes, which you looked upon and touched with your hands. This is the word. of life that testifies to you of eternal life. If instead you love this world or the things of this world, you're doomed. Believe me, let no one deceive you. My love for you is evident in this, that I loved you and I sent my one and only Son to you to forever cover your sins. But you say you don't know what I've done. But I do. And I love you so much that those sins are forgotten. They're cast away, never to be brought up again because of my love for you. John told you of two musts. You must be born again and my son must be lifted up. Do you see the connector between these two is my great love for you? The enormity of this great truth was so overwhelming that even Nicodemus struggled with this and said, how can these things be? because my measure of love is not yours. My love is measured in how much it gives, not in what it gets. And finally, I gave John a vision into the future, one so fantastic that your human words cannot fully express the beauty and totality of what is to come. It is the crescendo and momentous ending of my words to you. In the last days, I made clear that you live in the midst of a deadly war between good and evil, between heaven and hell, between salvation and eternal separation, darkness and despair. For the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and those liars, I will cast them into the lake that burns with fire and sulfur forever. So too with those who never really loved me nor followed me. Since I first created you, I have asked this question. Do you love me? Do you want to be healed? If so, follow me. Follow me. For I am the way and the light, and through me there is eternal life. Behold the man! Have you ever been mocked and spit upon? Have you been beaten to the point of shock? Have your hands and feet been hammered through with iron spikes? Have you been hung on a cross until you suffocated to death, pierced by a sword while others gambled for your clothes? I have. And I did it for you. So great is my love that I redeemed you by the tortuous death of my only son, pouring my wrath on my beloved child. Here is my love for you, demonstrated forever. For you, here today, who cannot believe that I could ever love you because of your sins and misdeeds, let me speak tenderly to you. Devote yourself to me, and your sins will be forgiven, forgotten, and cast far from you For I will triumph, and I will inaugurate the new heaven and the new earth, and because of my great love for you, I myself, I will gather you in my arms, and I will wipe away your every tear by my own hand. Death will be no more. nor will there ever be mourning or crying or pain anymore. I promise you, for all of these things will have passed away forevermore. Live now as the loved, forgiven and redeemed people that you are, for I love you and I always will. with eternal love, no matter what the cost, I am who loves you forever. So, beloved, let us understand some important points today that both tell us about God's love and make clear how we apply this gift. We should be so overwhelmed with the reality of God's love for His elect that we leave today changed. If you are a believer, cast away doubt. You are precious beyond words. When you step into my exam room, and my patients call me the crying physician because I look in your eyes and I see the pain and I see the doubt and I just want to tell you God loves you beyond what you can ever imagine. I am convinced. I am convicted. The second is that the grand metanarrative of Scripture is God's love, His mercy and His grace. It is, as I tried in my feeble way to illustrate, written throughout Scripture. The third is that God gave His Son as a ransom for us. Shouldn't this motivate us to seek to save those around us by pointing the way to Him who freely and truly gives eternal life? 1 John 4.11 says, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. There is not a time that Gene and I leave this church where we don't raise up an amen. Sixty-seven years of going to church and truly I have never been in a church so encouraging, affirming, and with so much love among you. You are to be commended. And you have had role models that I hope to be like Pastor John and Pastor Patrick. Second, third, or rather fourth, knowing that God has given his son to us, how can we doubt that God wouldn't give us everything we need to endure and persevere in this life? Let that give you peace and confidence through all of life's storms. and boldness in your prayer to Him. And lastly, if the greatest love is God giving us His Son and adopting us as His own, is not the reverse also true? that rejecting or ignoring Him is the greatest evil? John 6.29 tells us, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent. And the writer of Hebrews hastened to add this, How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? May we today be overwhelmed in gratitude for such a costly love to woo and save us. And Christ calls us His bride. And He will never reject us. Amen? Now, thank we all our God. with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom this world and its people rejoices. Stand with me as we sing. ♪ How great Thee are, God! ♪ ♪ In heart and hands and voices, ♪ ♪ Two wondrous things have done, ♪ ♪ In all the earth's lovely voices. ♪ ♪ Oh, make this mountains loud, ♪ ♪ Oh, what a life we live ♪ ♪ In the countenance of God and sin ♪ ♪ And that's when we come to live ♪ ♪ When we touch His face ♪ ♪ And I pass with the blessings of Him ♪ ♪ Can't we ask the Father ♪ ♪ It breaks the river's edge ♪ ♪ No angel can stir it up ♪ ♪ No father shall be there ♪ ♪ Just come and hear the rains ♪ ♪ If man could die as it is ♪ To earth and heaven above, To your mountains our hymns cry, And hail, ye heavens above. Come, love of heaven above, Let the stars shine your way, I'll just kiss your brow and still rejoice. I do want to say hello to Pastor Patrick, who I trust is watching, and that he and Kathy and their mothers are doing well. And happy birthday to his little grandson. Receive now this benediction from God's psalm, the 91st. For those who hold fast to the Lord most high in love, may he deliver you and protect you. When you call to Him, may He answer you, be with you, rescue you, and honor you. And with long life, may He satisfy you and show you His salvation. Go now, each of you, into your mission field. rejoicing and marveling afresh at the great love that God has for you. Go and be part of the rescue party that points the way to others who are yet far away, remembering always that we live Coram Deo, that is, before the very face of God. God bless each and every one of you.