The Immeasurable Greatness Of The Love Of God

The Bible’s Meta-Narrative of God Reclaiming Prodigal Sons and Daughters

The entire Bible is the meta-narrative, that's the big story, the big picture, the entire meta-narrative of the Bible is about God simply reclaiming prodigal sons and daughters, of which you and I are some of them.

I would like us to turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 33 to begin. 2 Chronicles chapter 33, and we will read verses 1 through 13, and here is a story of one of those prodigal sons that God forgave and reclaimed, the story of King Manasseh.

2 Chronicles chapter 33. Think of Manasseh as being a prodigal son, and think of yourselves in the shoes of a Manasseh here. Give ear now to the reading of God's word. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.

He did evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord dispossessed before the sons of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down.

He also erected altars for the Baals, and made Asherim, and worshipped all the hosts of heaven, and served them. He built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, My name shall be in Jerusalem forever.

For he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. He made his sons pass through the fire in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and he practiced witchcraft, and he used divination, and he practiced sorcery, and dealt with mediums and spirits.

He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Then he put the carved image of the idol which he had made in the house of God, of which God had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever, and I will not again remove the foot of Israel from the land which I have appointed for your fathers, if only they will observe to do all that I have commanded them, according to all the laws, the statutes, and the ordinances given through Moses.

Thus Manasseh misled Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel. Therefore the Lord, excuse me, verse 10, the Lord spoke to Manasseh through the prophets, of course, the Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention.

Therefore the Lord brought the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria against them, and they captured Manasseh with hooks, bound him with bronze chains, and took him to Babylon. When he was in distress, he entreated the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.

When he prayed to him, God was moved by his entreaty and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Amazing grace, amazing grace. Now I call your attention to one verse in the New Testament, a very well-known verse.

Luke's not going to have to come to get this reference. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Shall we pray for illumination?

A Prayer for Illumination and a Yearning for Good News

Sitting before me this morning, O Christ of God, are people who are tired of hearing all the bad news that this fallen world has to offer. They are tired of listening to the godless opinions of the political pundits and the television commentators.

They are hungering and thirsting to hear some good news from your inspired, inerrant word from another world spoken into this one. So, Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, thou fount of life, thou light of men, from the best bliss that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to thee again.

And I ask you, faithful Savior, that you would, by your Spirit, prosper the message of your grace in this place this morning as I tell your people about the immeasurable greatness of your love for this lost world.

Grant once again that your Holy Spirit will work by and with the preached word in stony hearts and transform our hearts into hearts that love and desire to serve you. And for these things I humbly cry to you in your strong name, O mighty, merciful Savior.

Amen. Christian hymnody is filled with poetic efforts to express the immeasurable greatness of the love of God. We can all think of hymns such as Love Divine, All Love's Excelling, Joy of Heaven to Earth Come Down, that seek to do this.

Or this one, O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me is the current of thy love, leading onward, leading homeward to my glorious rest above.

Or this one, the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. The guilty pair bowed down with care, God gave his son to win.

His erring child he reconciled and pardoned from his sin. Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made? Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade? To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure, how measureless and strong, it shall forevermore endure to his saints and angels' song. These are indeed remarkable efforts to declare the love of God to this poor, lost world.

The Love of God in John 3:16

But no uninspired hymn, however sublime its poetry, however exalted and lovely its mental conceptions, excels the simple majesty of, or brings greater assurance to the human heart than the Apostle John's simple, inspired declaration, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

It is the immeasurable greatness of the love of God for his fallen world about which John teaches his readers in this beloved verse of the Christian church. And it is this verse that I want you to consider with me today.

Now, of course, our little English word God, for God so loved, that little English word God is the obvious grammatical subject of this biblical affirmation. But if we move too quickly over this small, familiar noun, thinking about it only in terms of its being a point of grammar or a mere noun and do not reflect upon it, we shall not take the first needful step in understanding our text.

We must endeavor to appreciate this word with regard to its intended referent. In other words, when we come to John 3 .16 and see this noun God, our minds should immediately be flooded with the wondering awareness that the God about whom John writes here is the one living and true Lord God Almighty, more specifically, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for John informs us that this God has a son, so he's talking about God the Father here, who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his majesty and ineffaceable exaltation, stainlessly perfect in his holiness, righteousness, and flaming purity, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, to whom the earth is as the small dust on the balance, and before whom all the nations are like a drop in a bucket, indeed, before whom all the nations are like nothing, who regards them as worthless and as less than nothing.

You know what less than nothing is, don't you? That's a zero with the rim rubbed out, nothing, nothing. This God of John 3 .16 has need of nothing, nor can his unsullied blessedness be in any way affected, whether by way of increase or decrease, by any act of the creatures of his hand.

What we think of as infinite space is but a speck on the horizon of his contemplation. What we call countless millennia and eons are in his sight, but as yesterday when they are past, appareled in unapproachable glory and majesty and girded with matchless strength, his will is the resistless law of all existences to which their every motion conforms.

Righteousness and judgment are the foundations of his throne. Now it is this God, mind you, this God about whom to say that he is the Lord of all the earth is to say really so little that it is to say virtually nothing at all.

It is this God, I remind you, of whom our text speaks. And if we are to discern its intention, we must bear all of this fully in our minds. Now our text tells us concerning this God, concerning the almighty, infinite, eternal and unchangeable God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the first person of the triune God, our text tells us concerning this God that he loves.

Of necessity then, his love is as boundless and as majestic, as pure and as stainless and unfathomable as he is. Accordingly, it is the immeasurable greatness of the love of this God that receives the emphasis of the verse.

This is evident from the word order itself in the original text. For in the Greek, the text literally reads for so loved God the world. John throwing the two words loved and its adverbial modifier so, so loved forward in the sentence before everything else, even before the word God for our contemplation.

Note then that John does not say loved God the world, but rather so loved God the world. Now, what does John tell us about the love of this God in this verse? He tells us that God loves, but what does it tell us about this love?

I would suggest that it tells us the following seven things and developing these ideas for your pure mind's reflection this morning will occupy our time. God the Father's love, John tells us here, and if you want to take notes, here's the time to do it.

God the Father's love, John tells us here, is extraordinary in the object of its affection. It is expressive in its action. It is expensive in its sacrifice. It is extensive in its offer. It is exclusive in its bestowment.

It is exceptional in its work, and it is exhaustless in its benefits. Look now with me at each of these features of God's love in turn. First, John tells us that God's love is extraordinary in the object of its affection.

He loved, John tells us, the world. Now, many might ask me here, why should it be thought extraordinary that he should love this world? Why wouldn't he love this world? Many people would say. For consider how many people there are who live in it.

Would not the sheer number of people, going on now some seven billion of us today, would not the sheer number of people move the great heart of God to love this world? But dear friends, the mere uncounted multitudes of men are hardly a reason for God's loving it.

For as great as this conception might be, the mere measure of the number of mankind cannot compel the love of God to action. All the multitudes of humankind, what is their mere finite sum? However immense compared to the infinitude of God.

Do we praise the blacksmith's brawn in the slightest when we declare it capable of supporting a mustard seed in its outstretched arm? Have we said anything about the love of God when we say that it can love almost seven billion people?

Of course not. The mere number of people in this world is too small to be the standard for measuring the greatness of God's love. Conceive of the multitudes of mankind as vastly as you may. Double it, triple it, quadruple it.

Put so many people here that we can't even move, we're standing shoulder and shoulder. Their number remains ever a poor measure, an inappropriate index by which to measure and to comprehend the immeasurable love of God.

Well, if it's not then the number of men in this world that gauges for us the extraordinariness of God's love, why do I say that this world is an extraordinary choice of his love? For our answer, we must let the scriptures themselves tell us and primarily that apostle to whom we owe this great declaration.

Nor does John fail to tell us and that without the slightest ambiguity. The world, John tells us, is just the synonym of all that is evil and noisome and disgusting and odious. There is nothing in this world that can attract God's love.

It is not that God's love is so great that it is able to extend over the whole of a big world. It is rather that his love is so great that it is able to prevail over his hatred and abhorrence of sin and love the world that lies in the arms of the wicked one.

The word world here in John 3 16 is not here a term of demographic extension so much as it is a term of ethical intensity. Its primary connotation is ethical and the point of its employment is not to suggest that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it all but rather that the world is so bad that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all and to love it the way God loved it in giving his son for it.

This passage is intended to arouse in our hearts a wondering sense of the marvel and the mystery of the love of God for the sinful world conceived here not quantitatively but qualitatively as in its very distinguishing character a sinful world.

A world that he tells us elsewhere that we are not to love as our home. Search the universe through and through and you will find no marvel so great no mystery so unfathomable as this that the great and good God whose perfect righteousness flames in indignation at the sight of every iniquity and whose absolute holiness recoils in abhorrence in the presence of every impurity yet loves this sinful world yes has so loved it that he gave his one and only son to die for it.

It is this marvel my beloved it is this mystery that our text would carry home to our hearts. God loved this world a very extraordinary object for his love. God the Father's love is indeed a very extraordinary thing I say then when we take due note that it set itself upon this lost ruined guilty world.

What was there in this world that should compel God to love it so? There was nothing lovable in it no fragrant flower of corresponding love for him grew in it anywhere but rather only the weeds of enmity toward him hatred toward his truth disregard of his law and rebellion against his commandments.

Nothing and no one upon the face of the earth merits his love. Humankind deserves only his displeasure. There are about 7 billion reasons today on this earth he should still detest it. Yet God loved this world and with a love that was so deep so wide so strong so incredible so immeasurable so beyond all human imagining that even inspiration found it difficult to compute its measure in human terminology and hence the Holy Spirit gave us that wondrous little word so.

God so loved the world and left us to attempt to comprehend the measurement. God's love is extraordinary in the object of its affection. He loved you and me. Second, God's love, John tells us, was expressive in its action.

God so loved this world, he writes, that he gave that he was moved to action. One night before one of his musicals was to open Oscar Hammerstein pushed past Mary Martin his singing star in the soft red glow of the semi-darkness of the curtain stage and he pressed into her hand a slip of paper and on it he had penned these words a bell is not a bell unless you ring it and a song is not a song unless you sing it and love is not love unless it gives itself away.

Words which later were to become the basis of one of the hit numbers in the uncut version of his The Sound of Music. Similarly, God's love was not just in word. Indeed, real love is never just a noun.

It is always a verb. God did not simply shout to us from heaven that he loved us. He loved this world of sinful people and he expressed his love for it in a very tangible, concrete way. He reached out and he touched our world with his love.

Indeed, he embraced it as Hosea embraced his adulterous wife, Gomer. And it is my earnest prayer if he has never yet touched you personally that before this service is over you will have come personally to appreciate and to love and to know his loving embrace and will have been drawn down into the infinite depths of his affection.

God's love was expressive in its action. Third, God's love was expensive in its sacrifice. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son to save this fallen world. Like Mary who broke the alabaster box of perfume, her most valuable possession, and filled the house with its sweet aroma, so God the Father gave the alabaster box of his own beloved son, breaking him in death upon the cross that the fragrance of his saving benefits might pervade an entire world.

None of us has ever had such a son as our Heavenly Father had. Ours are the sinful sons of men. His is the pure Son of God, the Father's other self, one with himself. When God gave his son, he was really giving himself.

For Jesus is in his divine nature not less or other than God. When God gave God for us, he gave himself. What more then could he give? He gave his all. He gave himself. Who can measure this wonderful love?

Judge, you fathers, how you love your sons. Could you give them to die for your enemy? Judge, pastor, you who have only one son. Does it not seem that God loved us even better than he loved his one and only son?

True it is that many a father has given a son to the service of his country, and many a mother's son has become a casualty of war. But we regard theirs as honorable deaths. But to what did God give his son?

To some profession in the pursuit of which all mankind would respect him? To an honorable death? Oh no. God gave his son to exile among men. He sent him down to hunger and thirst amid poverty so dire that he had no place to lay his head.

He sent him down to the scourging and the crowning with thorns. To the giving of his back to wicked smiters and his cheeks to those who pulled out his beard. And finally the father gave his son up to death on the cross.

A type of execution so ignoble and reprehensible that it was reserved for the meanest and lowest criminal types. Roman law even excluded the Roman citizenry normally from death by crucifixion. And he gave his son up to that awful loneliness expressed in that cry of dereliction, that cry which John Murray says is the strangest utterance that ever ascended from earth to heaven.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I hesitate to say it but say it I must in those hours at Calvary God the Father in a sense became a sonless father and God the Son a fatherless son. We hesitate to say it but we have to say it.

Oh, wondrous reach of love that God would give his one and only son to the divine abandonment to and to the dread suffering of a Roman cross for us. Think, my beloved, a Roman cross the last place in all the world where you would look to find your God or expect to find a saving transaction being worked out there, a Roman cross.

The Extent and Exclusivity of Saving Faith

Fourth, God's love is extensive in its offer. God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever, whoever. Here John moves to his explanation for John for the father's largest to sinners of the gift of his son that whoever that little word whoever small as it is is a word that in itself has no limit.

It is a large enough chariot that it will carry everyone who is encompassed by it all the way from earth to heaven. Whoever hears this sermon whoever in this world regardless of his past regardless of what he may have done regardless of what he has said and thought about God that's its meaning.

God's love is indeed extensive in its offer that whoever, whosoever but and this brings me to my fifth point God's love is exclusive in its bestowment. This exclusivity of bestowment is underscored in our text in two ways first by its word believes and then by this verbs tiny modifying phrase in him.

Let's look at both of these restricting thoughts. First, we're not taught here that God gave his son for those who try to obey his law for that none of us could ever do and if even one of us could earn our own salvation that way then righteousness would have come by the law and Christ would not have come at all nor does our text declare that God will save those who will both believe in Christ and also try to keep his law.

Some as J. Gresham Machen pointed out years ago believe, some people believe that going to heaven is like going across a river in a rowboat. If one pulls only on the oar of faith he will simply go around in a circle.

If he pulls only on the oar of works he will simply go around in a circle in the opposite direction but if he pulls on both oars faith and works he will move across the river to the other side. Now that would be a fine illustration Machen said if we were going to heaven in a rowboat but we're not going there that way my beloved.

Whoever would go to heaven must turn from his labors and cast himself in faith upon Jesus who is alone the savior of sinners. Nor does our text say that he gave his son to save all who experienced terrible despair and bitter remorse.

Some people you know believe that they will go to heaven because they have known such despair and remorse here. They say they've already in a sense experienced their hell but many do not feel such emotions who are still nevertheless the Lord's own and many feel such wretched depression who are not Christians at all.

What does Augustus' top ladies hymn that we often sing say. Could my zeal, no respite know. Could my tears forever flow. All for sin could not atone Thou must save and thou alone. What does Horatius Bonar's hymn say.

Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Nor does our text state that God gave his son that every man will certainly and finally be saved.

No, a part of mankind will not be saved. John's declaration makes it crystal clear that God must find one specific condition in all who would be saved and that condition is trust. A trust that looks entirely away from all one's own self-help efforts at self-salvation and all one's pretensions of good works.

So the word believes in the text excludes works even our so-called works of righteousness and restricts the bestowment of God's love to those in whom is the condition of trust. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son to those to whoever believes.

How about you? Are you trusting to any degree in your alleged good works? I hope not. For to do so is certain eternal death. Second, I mark well the exclusiveness of God's love as to its bestowment is not found simply in that little restrictive word believes.

Some years ago a popular song you might recall was entitled I Believe. One of the verses said every time I hear a newborn baby cry or touch a leaf or see the sky then I know why I believe. But the song never stated what one believed or in whom one believed.

John, however, declares clearly who is the object to be of saving faith. Whoever believes in him, that is, in God's son. So we see that the exclusiveness of the bestowment of God's love is found not only in the word believes.

That word alone circumscribes the whoever a great deal for it excludes all human works. But it is found also in the phrase in him which phrase restricts salvation exclusively to those who put their trust in God's son.

Whoever believes in him and only him will be saved. With these two little words in him and I do not say this with any triumphalist spirit or in any prideful boast. I say it because it must be said. Because of these two little words believes in him all the other religions of the world must be judged to be useless insofar as saving anyone is concerned.

Muslims will not be saved by their devotion to Allah. Buddhists and Hindus will not go to heaven by their religious devotion. Jews who follow the teachings of Judaism will never know God's forgiveness.

Professing Christians who look for salvation not only to Jesus for their acceptance but also to the righteousness of Mary to the righteousness of the other saints and to their expiation of their own sin in purgatory will not see God for by doing so Paul says they have made the cross of Christ of no effect.

They have fallen away from grace in the sense that they have placed themselves once again under the law. Therefore the church must proclaim Jesus as the only saving way to the Father as he said of himself in John 8 24 if you do not believe that I am he you will indeed die in your sins.

And in John 14 6 he said I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me by which he meant if I may paraphrase the words of Thomas I Kempis without me as the way there is no going and without me as the truth there is no knowing and without me as the life there is no growing.

I'm often asked if I believe that Jesus is the only way to God. Would you be surprised if I told you that I say no? Jesus is not the only way to God and Jesus did not say that he is the only way to God rather he said that he is the only way to the Father.

You see every religion whatever it is with no exceptions Christianity, Roman Catholicism Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Religious Humanism every religion will bring its devotees eventually to God.

But if they're not Christians trusting only in Jesus Christ they will stand unforgiven before God in the filthy rags of their own righteousness and the God of wrath will consign them to perdition. Only Christians will come to God and find him to be their Heavenly Father.

Now I know that that's hard hitting and I know that that's politically and religiously incorrect to say today but it is the teaching of Jesus Christ who stated with no qualifications that he is the only way to God and find him as one's Father.

Here we have the single greatest offense of Christianity among men today. The exclusivity of the Reformation claim that only those who trust Christ will be saved. No wonder men hate Biblical Christianity.

But Jesus himself said and I say it again I'm the way and the truth and the life no one comes to the Father but by me. Peter declared salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

Paul said there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. John declared he who has the Son has life he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. And bear in mind that when these faithful preachers said these things they were fully aware that there were other religions in the world.

But they declared Christ's saving uniqueness nonetheless. This means my beloved that it's not just self-acclaimed atheists who someday will be condemned. Every person who goes to hell will be a religious person.

A theist of some sort or another. Someone who believes in some God or other. But in order to be saved John declared Christ and Christ alone must become the object of one's reliance and confidence. Apart from faith in Christ there is no salvation.

So I ask you again are you trusting him? Are you trusting him alone? I regularly will every now and then in my classes at seminary even in class I will suddenly say to my seminarians gentlemen I must ask you is Jesus enough for you?

Or do you think you need something else beside him? Is Jesus enough? Is he sufficient for you? I certainly pray that all of you will say to yourself yes he is. Sixth, God's love is exceptional in its work.

The Saving Work of Grace and the Promise of Eternal Life

How so Mark? Well this point underscores why all that I have said thus far is so terribly important. That whoever believes in him should not perish. Even in this much loved verse a dark shadow falls across our path as we move through it.

It's the shadow that that word perish casts, perdition. What does it mean to perish? It is to lose all hope, all light in the blackness of darkness, all peace, all joy, all bliss after death and all of these things forever.

It is to know no love at all and to experience only conscious eternal torment forever and ever with the devil and his angels in the lake of fire. So God's love accomplishes the exceptional work of saving men from these horrible conditions of perdition.

But there's another index of his love's exceptional work here. Imagine if you will a man who has been guilty of all the lusts of the flesh to as deep a degree as is possible for any man to sink. Suppose that he is so detestable that he is only fit to be treated like a moral leper by the entire world.

If that man turns in true faith to Jesus Christ in that moment he shall at once be cleansed from all of his defilement, be forgiven and be granted new life, that life like that of a newborn infant. What an exceptional work of grace.

Imagine this same man from another's perspective. Suppose he's not only a moral leper but suppose he has hated Christ and despised the gospel all his life, has consciously and openly repudiated every cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, has given his entire professional lifetime of 40, 50, 60 years and devoted all of his possessions to the destruction of this most holy faith of ours.

Again were this man at death's door to repent of his sins and turn in trust to Jesus Christ. In that moment he will be forgiven and received into heaven. What an exceptional work God's love accomplishes through the sinner's simple response in trust to what God arranged for Jesus to do at Calvary.

God's love for us in Christ and I stress only that love saves us and saves us forever from the dreadful end contemplated under that word perish. Seventh and finally God's love is exhaustless in its benefits and this truth underscores the eternal glory of our salvation for we are told we will not perish but we will have everlasting life.

God gives the believer life that is everlasting. What is such life but life that shall last throughout our all too short three score years and ten. Life that shall last us should we live to be a hundred.

Life that will still be flourishing when we stare into the mouth of the grave whatever our age. Life that will still be strongly abiding in us when we have departed our bodies and leave them rotting in their coffins.

Life that will be still shining brightly when our bodies are raised from death in the eschaton. Life that will last as long as God himself lives. Life that will last until God dies and angels sing a funeral dirge over the grave of God and that will never be.

Life forever the person who has entrusted himself to the arms of Christ our good shepherd may be assured of the triune God's exhaustless care and safekeeping. God himself declared can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born.

Though she may forget I will not forget you. Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed says the Lord who has compassion on you.

And Jesus said the one who comes to me I will never cast out. My sheep will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. No one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. Moreover writes Paul the father 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 needful for our everlasting salvation.

The father who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he has loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins made us alive together with Christ. By grace you are saved. Therefore we may be assured that he who began a good work in us we sang it this morning will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

Because Christ is able my beloved to save forever those who come unto God through him because he has an unchangeable priesthood and never lives to make intercession for them. You are kept by the power of God through faith for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last times.

In some we are eternally secure in God's immeasurable love. I'm not afraid that I might slip through his fingers and finally be lost because my name is engraved on the palms of his hands in his own blood.

John 3:16 and the Sevenfold Glory of God’s Love

Well there you have it a plain simple straightforward exposition of John 316. What a mighty attribute is the love of God who so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall never perish but have everlasting life whose love is as we've declared extraordinary in the object of its affection expressive in its actions expensive in its sacrifice extensive in its offer exclusive in its bestowment exceptional in its work and exhaustless in its benefits.

What a mighty work his love accomplished for us through the gift of his son at Calvary. Do you know personally the father's love in his son? Everyone here do you know that? Have you placed your trust in Christ?

I trust that all of you have done so. If not I implore you to do so now for nothing nothing relates so more closely and needfully to the dire plight of our earthly condition than does the immeasurable greatness of the love of God.

We are tiny lonely specks on the face of a vast universe quantitatively insignificant involved in sequences of events and activities in which all is vanity and constantly threatened by nature and the events in the inexorable march of history over which we have little or no ultimate control.

Yet into our insignificance our insecurities our inability to save ourselves our loss of true identity intrudes the gracious redeeming love of God and suddenly the lights go on for us for we learn because of his love that we matter immensely we matter immensely, we matter titanically to God.

God's love illumines our darkness redeems our lives from sin and the threat of meaninglessness and he places his family name upon us granting us as children of him an identity that causes our hearts to make melody always and in every circumstance.