And I'll ask you to turn in your Bibles for the reading of God's Word that comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, reading verse 16. Reading verse 16. I'll give you a chance to turn there, and you may want to keep a Bible open there. I'll obviously be referring to the verse throughout the sermon. This is God's Word. Let us give careful attention to its reading. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And that is the reading of God's word. Let us go to the Lord in prayer. Oh Lord, as has been prayed, We ask for ears to hear and eyes to see, hearts that will understand and apply this most well-known of verses, known intellectually by the power of your spirit, write it upon our very souls. In Christ's name we pray, amen. During marriage counseling, I ask a couple, generally at the very first meeting, they're there and we talk and we get some information, names and different ways of contact and things like that. But one of the very first assignments I give them to come back with and answer the next time is to define love, especially to define it biblically. Because some people, now hearing that, might jump immediately and say, well, that's easy. And they start reading off the things from 1 Corinthians 13. Technically, but I think very importantly, 1 Corinthians 13 is not a definition of love. It is a description of how love acts, but those things are not the same. What we have here in this verse, we have a lot of truth here, no doubt, but one of the things we see clearly is the components of what the Bible means when it speaks about love. And that's what we will be addressing tonight. Now this verse, of course, is probably the most well-known verse to people, not just within the church, but people at large. We're gonna look first at the connection of the verse, primarily, with what has gone on before, just very briefly. But I wanna take a look at three main points. We wanna talk about, I've entitled it this way, God's love, a reality, God's love in action and God's love in application. And, of course, we see in this that the beauty of God's love for us is to draw forth, obviously, the specific response here of belief, of true faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's begin. The connection. This verse starts with the word for, and you'll note that there are some common words in verse 16 that were mentioned just before. If you had a red letter edition of the Bible, and there is some confusion here, sometimes the red letters continue into verse 16. I don't think that's the best way to understand this. I think we have our Lord Jesus speaking to Nicodemus at least through verse 15. And so, he is saying to Nicodemus, he has said, Nicodemus, you're a teacher in Israel, you should have understood that a person is born again by the Spirit of God, and you should have understood that Just as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and then, listen, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. Those two phrases, whoever believes in him and eternal life, or actually have eternal life, those phrases are repeated in verse 16. But I think now John, the gospel writer, picks up and he says, four. In other words, these things are true. The Lord Jesus was certainly true in speaking to Nicodemus about him being lifted up on the cross, the savior of mankind. And now John, the gospel writer, is telling us why, what has caused this to be so. And it's going to be, of course, the love of God. And so with that, we see something of the connection. And I'll leave it to Pastor Sean there. Next time we have evening service, he will pick up in what follows that still continues this train of thought. But with that understanding, now let's focus on this verse, John 3, 16. And let's mention first God's love, a reality. And I'm just picking up the words, God loved. God loved. For us to know that our God is loving is an enormous, I mean, how do you put a value on that truth? I was reading from someone the other day about who was a defender of the faith, involved in apologetics and such, and he was speaking about his encounters with agnostics and atheists and skeptics, and in their discussions they would routinely and regularly and as if they had every right to speak about how they understood right and wrong and it was right to encourage human beings to love one another and to be kind to one another and things like that. And one of the things he did, he especially challenged them on those issues. In other words, he attacked their presuppositions. You're talking about human beings being kind and that's the You ought to do those things, though you say you do not believe in God. And he challenges them and he says, how did you come to the conclusions in a way like that, that humans are supposed to act this way? He says, where'd you learn this truth about dealing lovingly with others? Did you learn it from observation of the natural order? Did you observe how the lion deals with the antelope? Did you observe how the fox goes into the hen house? How did you come to know these things concerning human beings? If all you've got is the data you see with your eyes and your ears, how do you come to that conclusion when you observe human beings and their wars and their atrocities and their crimes and their abuses to one another, and it goes on and on? How did you come to that? You see, Richard Phillips, I think he's right. He calls this the greatest verse in the Bible. He compares it. There are other well-known verses. Psalm 23 is well-known. The very first verse of the Bible is well-known, and it's a mighty and a staggering truth, too. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but he said, that this is the greatest verse in the Bible because we needed special revelation to know this truth about God. Creation reveals God's existence and some of his attributes. We could go to Romans chapter 1 and see how it reveals his existence and his might and power and things of that nature. But quoting Phillips now, he says, John 3.16, presents a message that cannot be known apart from the Bible. How does God feel about us, and what has he done, if anything, to help us? Crucial questions. Martin Luther called the verse, I'm still quoting, Martin Luther called this verse, the Bible in miniature because it contains the heart of God's entire message. This is why John 3.16 is the greatest verse in the Bible. Well, whether you follow that or not, he's on the right track. It takes special revelation to understand that our God is a loving God. And you could just go down the annals of history and think about Roman mythology and their gods in Greek and all of that, and those gods were not at all necessarily loving. Now, to say that God loves us or has love as an attribute specifically is to say things about that love. All of God's attributes work together in perfect harmony and union. You know the catechism question, what is God? I won't make you recite it, but God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and is being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. That's our catechism answer to that. And it gives us a little structure to saying God is not in conflict with himself. We begin this process tonight of understanding more fully the love of God when we say, for God to have the attribute of love means it's an infinite love. God is infinite in all of these attributes. There's no limit. There's no way to measure. There's a reason why Paul will express in Ephesians chapter 3 to try to know the height and the depth and the width of the love of God, which is beyond comprehension. It's infinite. It's an eternal love. Colin O'Brien did a great opening exercise about the Trinity, and just this wonderful application of how from all eternity within the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they have loved one another, and the expression of that love to human beings is the overflow of an eternal love out of this relationship they have together. Infinite, eternal, unchangeable love. Our love ebbs and flows, doesn't it? But not God's. And we could begin just to go on. His love is not in opposition to His holiness. His love does not run in contrast to Almighty, His power. In other words, He has Almighty power backing His loving actions so that He never fails to accomplish His love for whatever purpose and object He has. And we could go on and more and more. I said this is a matter of special revelation, but it's not as if every religion that has a sacred book understands this truth about God. It is specifically a truth contained in the scriptures. I think it's important to take the time to mention this in our day and age. Doing a little research, came across this article about the Quran, about Islam. And so this individual who The author is Farid Mahali. And he did a word study of the word love in the Quran. And his conclusion is this. It's an article of several pages, but he concludes this. So now we come to the crux of why we deemed it important to investigate the Quranic teaching on the love of God. What we have observed is that while the Quran tells of the love of God, in most cases, That love is expressed in a negative fashion. God, or you know they would say, Allah loves not. Allah loves not the thief, loves not the immoral person. So many, many, and they're not many, by the way. They're not many references or use of the Arabic term, verb, love in the Quran. Most of them are those kinds of negative statements. Many others are that God loves the one who does good. God loves the good. He loves the pure. He loves the just. He loves those that trust Him. He loves the patient and persevering, the one that takes up arms to fight in His cause. The author concludes, but where is there room for a God who initiates love in order to win over the lost and erring? Where is He who loved us while we were yet sinners? Where is there room for the one who was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, so that we might be made rich? The contrast is too great to overlook. The scriptures, and I'm convinced the scriptures alone, give us this truth about who God is as a God with the characteristic of love. And this now provides a good transition to the next point. We wanted to say, and it is true, God loves. God has the attribute of love. And so now we want to say, let's look at his love in action. God's love in action, and that comes to me using this lot of use for the title of the sermon. This is how God's love from the little words so. for God so loved." That's not an insignificant word. It speaks about the greatness of the degree to which God loves, and especially, I think, into the manner of God love, of His love. It would be an appropriate translation to say, God loved the world in this way, in this specific way. It's not left to doubt or not left to conjecture as to how he has acted in love. And so let's begin to focus now. I wanna mention four things about God's love in action. God's love is focused on this world. God so loved the world. Now this is a point, and we don't have time for it tonight, to look into differences between Arminian thought and Calvinistic thought and such as that. I think the best way to understand this word world here is to see John referring to this whole complex mass of humanity. He's not really looking at each and every individual. But he's doing in a simple word there something about what Paul does in Romans in the opening three chapters of Romans. In Romans chapter one, he gathers up the Gentile world and characterizes them in a certain way. In chapter two, he gathers up the Jewish world. And then in chapter three, he brings it all together and he says that the world now, is held accountable to God and that all are before God as sinners. And so this is not some verse, of course, that teaches you some type of universal salvation of each and every individual. That's not his point. But it is an important point to say that God focused on, he looked upon this world, this mass of humanity, and look at how it is characterized. He looked upon this mass of humanity that is characterized by its sin, by its evil, by its corruption, by its guilt, by its misery, and in a host of other ways. And John is saying, God loved this world. He loved it. That which, remember what I said, his love is a holy love. And he is going to determine and fix away in which his love will not approve of any of this, will not be stained in any form or fashion. But he loved this world instead of simply being repulsed by it. Instead of putting a period after the rightful wrath and indignation that he has against sin. He loved this world. God's love is focused on the world. Secondly, God's love addresses our greatest needs and desires. Here I pick up on how the verse ends. God loved the world in such a way. He loved people in such a way. that He is going to address their deepest needs, that they should not perish but have eternal life. What is contained in that one word, perish, that they should not We think about all the images that our Lord uses and what is contained in the scriptures. The flames, Pastor Sean referred to it in his prayer. There are flames that are used as the picture of hell. The torment is there where the worm never dies. Where people become monuments for eternity to the eternal justice of God against sin. We think about Lazarus and the rich man and how he's crying out, let him come over and let him just touch my tongue with some water. The pain and the torment, all that is contained in that word perish and for which we by nature are heading apart from Christ. What greater need do you have than to escape hell? And that's what John is saying here. And that's what Jesus is saying as he's lifted up. Like the serpent, I'm addressing your greatest need that you might not perish. But it's not just a pulling out of danger from hell and just kind of being left. But whatever distance there is to be removed from that situation is equally as great a distance to say, Don't you have a need to really live? Let me give you eternal life that they should not perish, but have everlasting life and a life that begins even here, that cannot be extinguished, that will go on forever and ever. You know, several of us have dealt in recent days with the loss of loved ones. Death comes, and you know that. You have had your own loved ones to die and depart this life, and there's that separation that is there. Is our only recourse to look back and say things like, oh, do you remember when? Oh, I have such fond memories of her when she did this. Oh, when he was such a great worker in this. Is that all we have as Christians when we know especially that the departed one is one of God's children? And we say confidently, that is not all we have. We say, tell me I'll see her again. Tell me I will speak to him again. Tell me we have a life together again. And that is the truth. It is an eternal life. That death here on this world does not extinguish. They live on. And that is the truth of what is contained in the simple words here. Should not perish, but have. life in all that that means. So God's love was focused on the world and he is addressing his love, addresses our greatest needs. And thirdly, his love enables the widest possible and most available response from us to his love. That was my longest point on this. And it's simply picking up the words. I didn't know how better to summarize, simply picking up the words, such wonderful words. that whosoever believes, whosoever believes, whosoever, however you describe yourself tonight, However you know your children, your grandchildren, your brothers, your sisters, your parents, whatever we would use, whether they are of another nationality, another skin color, whether they're poor, whether they're rich, whether they have a foul mouth now or living in some adulterous relationship, whatever it is, whether they're pride and arrogant and feel no need of these things, whosoever. That's what God has done in his love. He has enabled by loving, though he has enabled the widest possible, and I'm calling it the most available response, belief. What if God had said something, and this was a point in the New Testament scriptures. What if God said, you've got to become a Jew? Listen, I'm for the Jews especially, and yeah, I'll take you if you're a Gentile, but first, you gotta become a Jew. What if he said you had to meet a certain height dimension? Some of us would be challenged in that, wouldn't it? And on and on and on it goes. But people are believing all the time. They don't believe in Jesus Christ necessarily, of course. but there is the capacity that God, as He redirects our hearts for faith. Short of catechism, question 86 is, what is faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to us in the gospel. It is that simple response of faith in Him that enables a person to escape from perishing and have eternal life with God through Jesus Christ. Final thing, we said he's focused on the sinful world. We said he addresses our greatest needs and he makes this salvation as widely available as possible. We got this wonderful universal call of the gospel going out to all the world, whosoever would believe. And last point, God's love cost him dearly. God's love cost him dearly. He gave his one and only son. How do you put a measurement on that? I'm looking around this room and many of us, most of us have children. I have three sons. I don't know what it would take. for me to voluntarily sacrifice one of my sons. How do you, once again, we come to this singing wall or this expanse, maybe more something like coming to an ocean and saying, how many gallons or how do you measure something like this? God's love cost him dearly. We will rightly sing. in just a moment. What wondrous love is this? There's a great Presbyterian minister, Samuel Davies, 1700s. He wrote a hymn called Great God of Wonders. I'll read it to you. It says, Great God of wonders, all thy ways are matchless, godlike, and divine, but the fair glories of thy grace more godlike and unrivaled shine. In wonder lost with trembling joy, we take the pardon of our God. Pardon for crimes of deepest dye. A pardon bought with Jesus' blood. A pardon bought with Jesus' blood. Oh, may this strange, this matchless grace, this godlike miracle of love fill the whole earth with grateful praise and all the angelic choirs above. Those are the three stanzas. In each stanza, you have the refrain, Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? Or who has grace so rich and free? And just for a moment, Let me address, we said God's love of reality, God's love in action, God's love in application. So now I come full circle. So what's your definition of love? I'll give you mine. Bob, I see you out in the congregation here. I think you attributed it to Jonathan Inman. He had the simple word that love was being inconvenienced, right? He's on track, but I wanna give you a little fuller one that I use in my own brain to try to evaluate and to challenge myself, but I think it arises naturally from this text. This text is the definition of love in the Bible. I put it this way, love is that intelligent and purposeful commitment. There was nothing in God that required him to love me, but it is his purposeful, intelligent, dare I say even joyful commitment that seeks my true good even at great personal cost. That's what love is. the purposeful, intelligent commitment to an object, to a person, to a spouse, to a child, to God himself, to seek their true good, even if it costs a lot, at great personal expense. And now the application to me is, and to you, Do you dare believe that your God has loved you that way? Do you believe that He has come with an eternal, an unchangeable, a holy, an almighty love? His coming to you to seek your true good, it has cost Him dearly. What objects of love we are before the Father. And the second application is obvious, isn't it? If we have been loved in this way, ought we not to love one another? That's the whole logic of the scriptures. From me looking at you and you looking around here, do we love one another that we're going to seek the other's personal good, true good, even if it costs us plenty? You know, this has been obviously strongly referenced to the crucifixion, to our moment of salvation, but Paul uses this kind of thinking in Romans chapter eight. He says, if God's given us his son, how much more will he give us all things necessary? This love keeps of God to us. is daily coming to us, always pursuing our true good, leading us ultimately to His eternal home with Him. D.L. Moody says this in one of his autobiographical accounts. Early in his ministry, he had been in England and came across a fellow last name Morehouse. And he said that Morehouse was an Englishman and a preacher as well. And Moody had kind of carelessly said, well, if you're ever in Chicago, come by and I'll let you preach. Well, Morehouse came by in Chicago and Moody was kind of perplexed as to what he should do. And he said, well, I'm about to be gone on Sunday. Told his session there, his elders, he said, let Morehouse preach, and if the people like him, let him preach one more time that evening, and I'll be back in a week. Well, he was gone that week, and when he returned, he said to his wife, how did the young preacher do? And she said, oh, he's a better preacher than you are. He is telling sinners that God loves them. And Moody responded, that's not right. God does not love sinners. Well, she said, you go and hear him. And I said, what? And Moody said, what? Do you mean to tell me he's still preaching? She said, yes, he's been preaching all week. And he's only had one verse for it. John 3, 16. Moody went to the meeting that night. Morehouse got up and began by saying, I have been hunting for a text all week, but I've not been able to find a better text than John 3, 16. So I think we will just talk about it once more. It says, he began to preach and afterward Moody testified that it was on that night that he got his first clear understanding of the gospel and the great love of God. A great text. Well-known. Go back to it repeatedly. Meditate on it. Be amazed and astounded. at our God's love for us. Let's go to him in prayer. Lord, all I know to say is please forgive my own shallowness of thought, waywardness of living before such an astounding, loving God. Give us grace to understand and even immediately voices to sing of how you have loved us. Let us live it out so that we might be seen as your people because we are marked by your love. It is in Christ's name we pray. Amen.