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Merry Christmas. God bless us. God bless us, everyone.
Well, it comes that time of year to acknowledge and celebrate
the miraculous conception and birth of Jesus Christ, the baby
in the manger. But I would like to take us to
a point in His life later on after that scene in the manger
And it tells us much about who he is, about who God is. After
Jesus revealed himself to Israel and began his ministry in Galilee,
there was a man of Israel who wanted to talk privately with
Jesus. He was an important man, a member of the Sanhedrin that
held religious and political authority in Israel. As a good
Israelite, he believed in God. He believed there was a God.
He believed that God had revealed himself to his forefathers, Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob. And he wanted to meet Jesus alone
at night because he didn't want any of the other leaders on the
Sanhedrin to know that he was doing this. And by this time in Jesus' public
ministry, he had worked many miracles, cast out many demons,
and preached sermons to many people. And this man realized
that only a man sent by God could do these things. This man's name
was Nicodemus. And I'm sure Nicodemus had many
questions for Jesus about God. Why has God sent you? What message
do you bring from God? How is it that you possess this
power and authority to preach and to heal and to exercise authority
over the unseen world, over evil spirits and over demons? How
is it that you can heal people? How is it that your speech is
with such vibrant authority? But before Nicodemus could ask
any of his questions, Jesus explains to him, he takes over the meeting,
he guides the conversation, and Jesus begins to explain to Nicodemus
the necessity of the new birth, the mystery of the Holy Spirit,
the nature of the things he preached as being from heaven. and that
he himself had come from heaven. And it's from this meeting between
Jesus and Nicodemus that we have perhaps the most well-known words
in the Bible. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus
said those words, Nicodemus, in this night meeting. Jesus
says this twice because in the words just before in verse 15,
Jesus talking about how Moses would lift it up, a serpent,
so also Jesus must be lifted up looking forward to his crucifixion
one day. And Jesus says it there, whoever
believes in Him, whoever believes in the Son of Man will have eternal
life. And that was the purpose for
John's writing. John says at the end of his Gospel, I have
written these things. These things are written so that
you might believe in the name of the Son of God and that believing
in His name you might have everlasting life. That summarizes all of
what John says. But in our verse tonight, I want
to focus on John 3.16. It's a simple verse. It's not
complicated. And if you look at it in the
original writing, the very first word is so. For God so loved
the world. In English it comes later in
the phrase, but in Greek that's the first word. So it is that
God loved the world. And it means thus, or in this
manner, a rare word that occurs not that often. The root of it
does quite a bit, but in this form it only occurs here and
a few other places. So I got to thinking about that,
and as we think about how God loved the world, we can summarize
or approach this in two ways. There's two ways that I'd like
to focus on that we come at this. First of all, the manner or the
method in which God loved the world. the process, the logistics. And secondly, what was God's
heart? What was His attitude as He showed His love to the
world through His Son? Well, so first of all, how did
God do it? What was the logistical method
or mechanism in His doing it and sending His Son? And that's
the word, send. John 3, verse 17 starts, that
God did not send the Son to the world to judge the world, but
that the world through him might be saved. So it's a negative
statement. God sent the world not to condemn the world. God
sent the Son so that through the Son the world might be saved.
That word send, it's a translation of a word from which we get the
word apostle. God apostled Jesus to the world. He sent Jesus to the world. And
that simply means to bring a message by someone or through someone
or to send word. You see, Jesus was sent by God
to the world on a mission to bring a message of salvation
in order to establish the judicial foundation for salvation by his
word and by his message. In other words, Jesus was the
first apostle. He came to explain to us how God was going to do
this. in a practical, judicial, and
even maybe a forensic sense. That has to do with courtroom
language, where God is the judge and man has sinned. Man stands before God as a sinner
and needs help, needs saving. He muscled his son into the world
to overcome the consequences of the sin of mankind by taking
upon himself those consequences. This is what the son would do.
This is what the baby in the manger would do. He would grow
to become a man, and he would take upon himself the consequences
for the sin of all those who believe in him. See, God is holy
and just, and perfect and without sin. No sin can come near to
God. If we were ever to have any hope
of approaching God ever, it would have to be through some mediator. In some way, our sin would have
to be dealt with, erased, taken away. And of course the whole
Old Testament, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament,
the covering, the blood that was shed, all the sacrifices,
points forward to a final and full sacrifice. And this is what
God the Son would be. He would provide that sacrifice.
So in one sense it's very mechanical, judicial, forensic, logistic,
and we see this in Paul's words. where he says in 2 Corinthians
5, For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that
we might become the righteousness of God in Him. For our sake. And again in Romans 5.8, But
God shows His love for us. You see, there it is again in
Romans 5. God is showing His love in this
practical, logistical way. In that while we were sinners,
still sinners, Christ died for us. And the important words are
for us. baby in the manger would grow,
and He would lay down His life for us, for those who believe
in Him. Jesus died on the cross in the
place of, or instead of, all who would believe in Him. And
we call this vicarious atonement, substitutionary atonement, if
you want to go home with a big word. He suffered the punishment
for sin in our place, to put it simply. He stood in our place
before God's justice. God has reckoned that He would
be the one. He designated Him to be our substitute, our sacrificial
lamb. Now, how does this come to us?
By faith. Ephesians 2 verse 8, For by grace
you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's
a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. It's by faith. Where does the
faith come from? God gives the gift of faith to
His people. They believe. By His grace, He
gives them this gift. And through this faith, we are
saved. That's called justification by
faith. Another theological term. So first of all, we see that
God sent His Son to the world in order to provide the legal
foundation for the fulfillment of His plan of salvation. Very
simple. That's how it works. You believe
in Jesus. On the last day, when you stand
before God, you will not stand alone. Jesus Christ will take
up your cause. This one has believed in me.
Let him into our kingdom, O Father. And on that basis, God will recognize
this. And your sin will have been punished
in Jesus on the cross. And his righteousness will have
been reckoned or imputed to you by faith. And it's on that basis
that and only on that basis that any of us will ever have any
hope of heaven. So God sent His Son. But if we
stop there, if that were all we were to say about how God
loved the world, we would fail to fully understand, I think,
God's love in sending His Son. And this is kind of where I want
to land this evening. What was God's heart? What was His attitude
as He revealed His love to the world in Jesus Christ? Was it
grudging? Was he reluctant? Was he upset
because we're sinners? Because Adam and Eve had eaten
of the fruit in the garden so long ago, and they sinned, and
we like them sin, and there's sin and bloodshed and misery
throughout the history of mankind. And God says, well, I just have
to send my Son if I want to do anything with these people. Here
you go. No, it wasn't like that at all. It wasn't like that at all. And
we see this in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should
not perish but have everlasting life. This giving, it's a word
that appears everywhere in the New Testament. It means to give
something of value freely. It occurs too many times for me
to really say a lot about everything it
says, but one thing that stood out to me as I thought about
this is the time that Jesus Christ fed the 5,000 on the hills around
the Sea of Galilee. He had been ministering and he
had just heard that John the Baptist had been executed, and
he got in a boat and he went to a secluded place. But the
crowds knew that someone spied on him and saw him, and they
followed him. And they ran around the sea and they met him where
he was, And hundreds upon hundreds kept coming and coming, and pretty
soon there were thousands, 5,000 people, 5,000 men, not including
the wives and children. And Jesus ministered to them.
He had compassion on them. He healed them. He taught them.
And it was all day, and now it was getting dark. And Jesus said,
give them some food to His disciples. And the disciples said, look,
if we go out and buy 200 denarii of food, it would be barely enough
for just a little bit for each one of them. Where are we going
to get all this food? Well, Jesus says, we will give them some
food. Have them sit down. So the disciples are scurrying
about. He got a crowd of 5,000 people
here. And we're told in the Gospel of Mark that they sat them down
in companies of hundreds and fifties and got them all arranged.
It was a large grassy area. 5,000 people with kids. 5,000
men with their wives and kids. And Jesus was given a basket
of two loaves of bread and five fish. And he bowed his head and
he sat down and he said a blessing over the food. And then he began
to break the loaves and break them. And he gave the food that
he broke to the disciples, who in turn then passed it out to
the people. Now you have the twelve apostles,
maybe other disciples, but I can just picture all of them scurrying
about, handing out food, and Jesus is breaking the bread,
and it's coming, and it keeps coming, and it keeps coming.
They go back, they get more, maybe they can get containers,
and they bring it around, and they distribute it to the people,
and they're eating, and they're bringing, they're eating, and
the food never stops. He's giving, and He's giving,
and He's giving, and He's giving. He gave to the disciples, they
gave to the people, and they all ate. All of them. And they were satisfied. When Jesus blessed that basket
of food, oh God, please bring your favor upon this meal. That's
why we pray, isn't it, over our meal? Because Jesus did. And this miracle happened over
and over and over. And I think that in the eating
of it, I would imagine there was great joy. That God enjoyed
doing this for these people, that Jesus enjoyed giving it
to the disciples, the disciples running around enjoyed giving
it to the people, the joy on their faces as they went from
being very hungry to being full, they were all satisfied, had
more than enough. And I think we see this also,
this joy of God and joy of Christ in the message of the angels
when they said to the shepherds when they were stricken with
fear at the appearance of the angel, the angel said, fear not,
because I bring you what? Good tidings of great joy. This
is good. This is good, what you're going
to see here, what you're going to find. This is very good. For
unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, Christ
the Lord. And they went and found the babe
later on. But then also the rest of the
angels came and sang, Glory to God in the highest and on earth,
peace and goodwill toward men. It's a message of peace. It's
a message of joy. And God has great joy in bringing
this message and bringing this Son. I believe that God loves
saving people. God loved sending His Son. Although
it was mixed with angst and turmoil and had to overcome sin, yet
God's heart was such that He took great joy in bringing salvation
to the world. For God so loved the world that
He sent His only begotten Son. And I think that's why we take
joy in giving. Don't you take joy in giving?
Don't you love to give? I mean, you buy a gift, you bring it
to that person that you love, and you watch them open it, and
it gives you great joy to watch them open it. I like to do that.
That's why we give at Christmas, isn't it? The Lord loves a cheerful
giver. We're created that way. We're
created in the image of God. This is the feeling that we have
that God has as well, because we're created in His image. This
brings us great joy. God loves a cheerful giver. It
is more blessed to give than to receive. And just as we take
joy in giving, so also God takes eternal and boundless and perfect
joy in giving His Son to the world. So God has sent his Son,
he's put everything in place for our redemption and our salvation. All we have to do is believe
in Jesus. Now there's a cost with believing, you also have
to leave your sin behind, but believing is free, it's of the
grace of God. God has sent his Son and God
has given his Son with great joy, limitless joy, boundless
and perfect joy. given His Son to the whole world,
so that if anyone believes, whosoever will believe, will not perish
but have everlasting life. That at the name of Jesus Christ,
if you call upon His name, you shall be saved. What shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare
His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not
with Him also freely give us all things? For God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. I
think Nicodemus departed that night, departed his meeting with
Jesus that night, with a choice to make. He could either believe
what Jesus said or not. And here we are. You could call
this a meeting with Jesus. We've looked at the words of
Jesus Christ. You have a choice to make. I have a choice to make.
Do we believe this or not? Do we believe that really in
Jesus Christ is eternal life, salvation, that by placing our
simple faith in Him, you shall be saved? Do you believe that?
I believe that. Let's pray. Father, bless us. Thank You for Your Word. Thank
You for Your grace. Help us to believe You, Lord.
Forgive us for our unbelief. Thank You for sending Your Son.
Thank You for the joy we see in Your giving of Your Son. In
Jesus' name, amen.
How God Loved the World
| Sermon ID | 1226212133305484 |
| Duration | 18:02 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | John 3:16 |
| Language | English |
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