Declaration of the Love of God

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I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 3 and verse 16.
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It might be that some of us would think that the reason why we're in John 3, 16 today is because of a choice made that today is
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Father's Day and therefore what a wonderful verse to talk about the love of God the
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Father. And yet it's not because of the day that we have landed on this verse but it is because in our church we practice what's known as sequential expositional preaching, verse by verse through books of the
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Bible and it just so happens that in the providence of God that we have landed on this most famous verse in all of Scripture today,
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John chapter 3, verse 16. And as we enter into this verse for our study today,
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I want us to ask this question to ourselves. Ask this question to ourselves.
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How do you know someone loves you? How do you know someone loves you?
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Let's stand together and read the single verse for today. For God so loved the world that he gave his only
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Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
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Father in heaven we come to you in Jesus' name. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than that of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And at his name every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is
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Lord to the glory of God the Father. And so we come in that name because there is no other name, there is no other
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Savior, there is no other one to whom we can look, there is no other forgiveness of sins, there is no other provision of righteousness, there is no greater demonstration of your love, oh
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Father, than the Lord Jesus Christ. And so today as we seek to embark upon a journey of study through this tremendous text of Scripture I pray that you would keep me from error as I pray every week.
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I don't pray that God merely to be repetitious,
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I pray it because it's truth. I am intimidated by your word.
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Moreover I am in dread of preaching something that is wrong about your word.
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Even your word says, let not many be teachers, for teachers will be judged with a greater strictness.
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So God I pray for your spirit to sanctify the message that will be preached today.
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Sanctify me as the vessel, Lord, sanctify my mouth, sanctify my brain, and may your spirit use the medium of preaching to apply your truths to the heart of every person here.
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Father, for the believer, oh God, that they would be moved toward greater conformity to the
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Lord Jesus Christ, that they would be moved with the reality of your love for your creation, may they be moved regarding the power of your love for every one of us.
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And Father, for the unbeliever, may they hear today of the awesome love of God which should lead us to repentance.
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We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. How do you know that someone loves you?
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How do you know that someone loves you? Love is more than just words.
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Love is action. Love is verbal.
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Love does something. Therefore, if someone says they love someone else, but it's just words, it's just verbal, but there's no action tied to the words, then it would cause us to look upon those words with great suspicion.
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If a husband says, I love my family, but he does not ensure that his family is provided for and protected, cared for, then we would say, no.
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If a mother says she loves her children, but there's no nurture, there's no rearing, there's no love in action, we would say, no.
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If a friend says he loves you, but it's just words, and there's nothing tangible in that expression, you would be quite suspicious, and rightly so.
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God says he loves us, and he demonstrates that love in action.
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He doesn't just declare his love, but he demonstrates his love.
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And how? How does God demonstrate his love to his creation?
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How does God demonstrate his love to mankind? How does God demonstrate his love to you?
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That question is answered in the most famous verse of the
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Bible. In fact, for a moment, I want to just consider the impact of this verse.
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Most of us are very familiar with John 3 .16. Just like most is everybody.
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James Montgomery Boyce, wonderful pastor, preacher, theologian, and commentator, wrote in his comments on this passage that there are many passages in the
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Bible which have been chosen by some great person or as a favorite text. David Livingston chose the last words of Matthew, Surely I am with you always to the end of the age.
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John Newton chose Romans 5 .20, Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.
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Luther had Romans 1 .17 as his life text, The righteous shall live by faith. And each of these verses has spoken to some man in his own particular condition, and has become for him the greatest text in the
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Bible. But John 3 .16 is everyone's text.
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It's everyone's text. There is hardly a place in the world to which the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone that this verse has not become almost instantly known.
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It is often the first text that is translated into another language.
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Millions of people have been taught to recite it. It is inscribed in books and upon buildings.
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It is reflected in songs. This great verse with its emphasis upon God's love and the gift of God's love in Jesus Christ is stupendous.
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End quote, James Montgomery Boyce. It has been called the gospel in one sentence.
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It's become a symbol of faith in the public square. We've all watched as we see the football make its way through the uprights and when we glance out into the audience there in the end zone, we see a giant rainbow colored wig and a man holding a sign that says what?
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John 3 .16. John 3 .16. We look out onto the field and we see the players and some of them have the blackout under their eyes and written across their face.
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John 3 .16. It is certain that this verse has been used by countless evangelists in leading people to faith in Jesus Christ.
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As I said, it is the gospel in one sentence. If we had very little time to share with someone the wonderful truth of God, His love and His son, this verse would be a passage that we could recite and though we know there is much more to say, there is nothing less than need be said.
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This passage falls within a context and yet it stands alone.
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We could preach John 3 .16 all by itself and never mention when it was uttered and yet it's important for us to know as Bible students where passages do arise and this passage arises from the text where Jesus is there in the room with Nicodemus at night as this
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Pharisee, this teacher of the law, this member of the Jewish ruling council, the
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Sanhedrin, had come to Jesus at night to inquire of Him and to have a private audience with Jesus.
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And he came to Jesus at night. He says, good teacher, we know that you are sent from God for no one can do the things that you do unless God be with him.
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Jesus immediately goes into His deepest need. He says, unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God.
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This explodes into a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus where Nicodemus is asking
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Jesus to clarify, do you mean I need to go back into my mother's womb? Jesus says, no, you must be born of the
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Spirit. And he clarifies and he says, that which is born of flesh is flesh, but that which is born of Spirit, and unless you're born of the
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Spirit, unless you're born again, unless you're born from above, you will not enter the kingdom of God.
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And then he takes Nicodemus back into the Old Testament and he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and we talked about this last week, this was last week's sermon.
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In the Old Testament, the people of God sinned against God, so God sent serpents, fiery serpents, poisonous snakes to bite them and so that they would receive the punishment for their sin and when they were bitten, they began to die and they cried out for forgiveness, they cried out for salvation and God told
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Moses, take a serpent, put it on a pole, set that bronze serpent up in the middle of the people and when they look at it, they will live.
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And Jesus said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too must the
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Son of Man be lifted up. That everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life.
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That's the passage right before John 3 .16. That's the context that leads us into the next word, which in English is the conjunction for.
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We could say, therefore, the idea is because of that, understand this.
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As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life.
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For God so loved the world that He gave
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His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
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This is the context of the passage. It's interesting when we consider this part of John because scholars disagree on whether or not these are the words of Jesus or whether this is a divinely inspired commentary by John himself.
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Verses 15, up to verse 15, it's certain that we are hearing the words of Christ Himself, but it seems as if in verse 16, there's a shift where it begins to make comments there to verse 21 about what was just said.
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And so the question that the scholars will raise is, is this Jesus making these comments or is this
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John the Gospel writer adding a divinely inspired commentary to what
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Jesus just said? Because Jesus certainly said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life.
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But is the next word Jesus? Now if you have a red letter Bible, I imagine many of you do, the red letter editions will take it all the way,
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I think it's verse 21, I think is where they stop. That's fine.
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I will give my answer. I don't know. I don't know if this is a commentary by John or if this is
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Jesus continuing on the statement. But I do know this, verse 16 is meant to explain verse 14 and 15.
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Verse 16 is a commentary on verses 14 and 15. So whether it was uttered by Jesus to Nicodemus that night or whether it was written by John later for our benefit, doesn't matter, we know what it's there for.
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Therefore we understand the context, therefore we understand what the purpose of writing it was.
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And yet, even within its context, it stands out. It sort of becomes like the nucleus of this whole section.
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Because before this, it's all about being born again, it's all about all of these things, but after this, it's about the condemnation that comes to those who don't believe.
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Because belief becomes the nucleus of the text. It's those who believe versus those who don't.
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So verse 16 sort of sits in the middle here. And as I said before, it stands out.
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It's powerful. It's useful. It's truthful.
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And what I have done, and I said this Wednesday night to our
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Wednesday night group, I said this has got to be the hardest sermon I've ever written. It's tough being famous.
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And this verse is famous. This verse has been preached so many times by so many different people, and broken down in so many different ways.
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You couldn't study everything written about this verse. Even if you had a year, and I was thinking, well, how am
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I going to do this? How am I going to break this verse down? And what
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I've decided is we're going to look at three parts, and because I'm a good Baptist, they all start with a
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D. Now, will we get to all three today? No.
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This may end up being three sermons, but today we're going to focus on the first.
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John 3 .16 is three truths about the love of God.
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Number one is the declaration of God's love. That will be our focus for today.
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Number two is the demonstration of God's love. That will be next week.
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And then, depending on time, we will see the delineation of God's love.
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To delineate, to set a border, to draw a line, we're going to talk about God's love and distinction for those who perish and those who have eternal life.
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But today we're going to talk about God's love and its declaration.
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Its declaration. So let's begin by looking at this very important phrase.
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For God so loved the world. The word so is important.
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I'll bring John 3 .16 back up. The word so here is very important. The word so, I would say, is the word that is often most debated in this text.
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And you might think, why would such a small word be given to such a large controversy?
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Well, here's the debate about the word so. Does the word so here indicate intensity or does it indicate manner?
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Does it indicate intensity or does it indicate manner? And you say, well, what do you mean by those two things?
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Well, I want to read some translations for you. And I want you to hear first the translations that translate.
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And this, by the way, this word in the Greek is hutos. It is an adverb. It's meant to modify the main verb.
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The main verb is agape, which is love. For God so loved the world. So this is, hutos is modifying that.
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And in what way is it modifying it? In what way is it attached to the main verb? That's the question.
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And you guys know I'm a grammar nerd, so that's why I bring that up. When the word so is used, a lot of people take it this way.
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God loved the world so much. That's the idea of so in the idea of intensity.
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And I'll give you a few translations. The contemporary English version says this.
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God loved the people of this world so much. That's the way it's translated in the contemporary
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English version. The way mouth New Testament says, For God so greatly did love the world.
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Added the word greatly there as the translation of so. Amplified version.
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The amplified version adds words to help you understand. And the amplified version says,
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For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world.
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So those translations have taken the adverb hutos and they have interpreted it in the translation as meaning intensity.
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God loved the world so much. Now I want you to know something.
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I do believe God's love is great. I do believe God's love is intense.
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I do believe God's love is amazing in its expanse, depth, breadth, and width.
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I 100 % believe in the intensity of God's love.
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But the word so is not intending, in my understanding of the original language, is not intending to emphasize intensity, but rather it is intending to emphasize manner.
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And therefore it is saying God loved the world this way.
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In this way God loved the world. And I'll give you a few, there are a few verses that you can think of.
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In Matthew chapter 5, you don't have to turn there, I just want you to hear this. You'll remember
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Jesus is speaking in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all the house.
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In this way let your light shine before men. That's the word hutos, that's so.
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In this way do this. Acts chapter 1, when Jesus went up into heaven, remember the two men stood by in dazzling apparel and what did they say?
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Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This Jesus who was taken up into heaven will come in this same way.
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Will so come when he returns. He'll come this way. So the idea is in this way.
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This is the way that adverb is being used. One more, Mike will be happy about this.
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Revelation chapter 11, as Mike is teaching through Revelation, it says in chapter 11 verse 5, it says,
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If anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed.
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In this way he is doomed to be killed, right? So. So all of those are examples of hutos, so, being used not to express intensity but manner.
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So now coming back to John 3 .16. When we come back to John 3 .16, we read the text from other translations that agree with this and the
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New Living Translation, for instance, says, This is how God loved the world. I think that's the best one. It's simple.
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You know what's funny? I'm not a huge fan of dynamic equivalent translations, but sometimes they really nail it.
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Sometimes they really nail it. The New Living Translation is one that sometimes just hits it right on the head.
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And this is what it says. It just says, This is how God loved the world. The God's Word Translation, I haven't even heard of that one, but I was looking it up in different translations and I found this one online.
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It says, God loved the world this way. And the New English Translation, which
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I use all the time, the New English Translation is a textual critical edition of the New Testament. It says, For this is the way
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God loved the world. So again, I think that is the best way to understand so.
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For God so loved the world. How? He loved it this way. This is how
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He did it. This is how He loves. And if you feel like maybe I've pressed the issue too hard,
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I want to tell you something. This is building up to next week. Because the whole point of John 3 .16
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is to show you how God loves you. And how does God love you?
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That He sent His only begotten Son. That's how He did it. That's the manner in which it was done.
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That is the way God demonstrated His love toward us. And that while we were yet sinners,
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Christ died for us. This is how He did it. This is how
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He loves in this way.
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God loved the world. So we've seen the conjunction, for.
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We've seen the adverbs, so. Now let's look at the subject of the sentence.
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You remember from school there were subjects and objects and verbs. The subject does the action to the verb.
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What is the subject of John 3 .16? God. God is the subject.
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In this way, God loved the world.
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God is the subject. Loved is the verb. The world is the object. We use the word
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God very flippantly. In fact, I think so often when we consider just the idea of God, we think way too lightly.
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I grew up in the 80s.
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In the 90s, I was a teenager. And in the 90s, there was this massive explosion of something called the
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Seeker Sensitive Movement, where church began to be less about theology and more about how to win people to the church, how to bring people in.
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What can we do to be appealing to the outside?
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And there was a massive decrease in theological thinking as people began to become very shallow in their understanding of God.
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And we see this not only in sermons, but we see this in songs. We see this in all of these things where it was just like everyone started to be like feasting on pablum.
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Pablum is baby food. And one of the most destructive things that came out of the
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Seeker Sensitive era was the diminishment of God.
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That God became something common in the minds of people.
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That God became like a boyfriend.
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It is weird. Thank you, Hope. You're not wrong. Go back and listen to the music, some of it.
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Jesus Is My Girlfriend type music. When the
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Bible talks about God, it is talking about the creator of the universe.
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It is talking about the thrice holy God. It is talking about the one who himself is the only one who carries the three omnis.
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He is omnipresent, meaning he is in all places at all times. He is omnipotent, meaning he is all powerful and nothing he cannot do.
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And he is omniscient, meaning he knows all things, even to the very hairs on your head and the very thoughts you're thinking right now are known of God.
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This is the God of the universe. This is the God who made you.
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Consider how flippant we become when we talk about someone who has died and we say, oh, they met their maker.
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You understand the power of that idea? That one day, in fact, you will face the one who made you.
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That the one who made the world lives today and is inescapable.
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You realize that the text of Scripture says that I can go up into heaven, I can go down into Sheol, and I can run to and fro, and I cannot escape the presence of God.
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God is almighty, magnificent, powerful, and fearful.
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It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living
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God. When Isaiah saw the
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Lord high and lifted up and seated upon his throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple, and it was filled with smoke, and he saw the
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Lord, he did not dance, he did not laugh, he did not express giddy emotion.
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But when Isaiah saw the Lord seated upon his throne high and lifted up, and he saw the seraphim surrounding the throne, flying to and fro, saying, holy, holy, holy, is the
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Lord God almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory. It says Isaiah put his hand on his mouth, and he said,
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Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the king.
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Woe is me. See, as much as Isaiah knew, in that moment he finally knew
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God, and he knew himself, and he recognized himself as a sinner before an almighty
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God, one who deserved God's wrath, one who deserved
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God's punishment, and that God loves you.
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When we see the word
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God in John 3 .16, we should stop and be in awe.
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That is the one who made us, the one who created us.
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When you compare yourself to the Lord, here's an interesting thought.
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Compare yourself for a moment to an ant. You say you're much smarter than an ant, and you are.
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You're much more complex than an ant, and you are. You're much more valuable than an ant, and you are.
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But the relative comparison between you and an ant is much closer than the relative comparison between you and God.
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And that God who is higher than all heights, whose power is beyond measure, and whose wisdom is infinite, loves you.
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That's amazing. That's amazing. For God so loved the world.
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Now let's go to the object. I'm going to spend our last few minutes on the verb, so don't think I've missed the verb.
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We are going to talk about love and what it means, but just for a moment I want to jump from the object, or excuse me, from the subject to the object.
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Because it says, God loved the world. The world.
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Tan cosmon comes from the root word, or it is the word, it's just another form of the word, cosmos.
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What is the cosmos? Remember back in the 70s? Well, some of you won't.
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But for those who are maybe my age, you'll remember there was a television show.
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Carl Sagan was a scientist. And he wanted to explain the universe.
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And the universe, the name of the television show explaining the universe was called Cosmos. Cosmos.
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What is the opposite of cosmos, by the way? Chaos. Chaos. When you look at two words in juxtaposition, that's the juxtaposition.
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Because when we look at the universe, we don't see chaos. We see order.
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We see beauty. We see design. This is the hardest thing for the atheist to have to consider, is that when you look into the universe, you don't see a disorderly, disconnected universe.
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You see a universe that has all of the handprints of design. And that's why we call it cosmos, not chaos.
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Because cosmos has in its meaning, and it's what we call the semantic domain, the semantic domain of the meaning of cosmos is the idea of order and beauty.
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In fact, you know this because some of you this morning, on your way here, or maybe before you left home, you applied cosmetics.
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What do cosmetics do? Well, they dress up. They make you, I don't know.
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Well, let's make it simpler. Cosmetic surgery. What's it meant to do?
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It's meant to fix the outside, right? There's something. You've had an injury which caused, left a scar or something, and you need cosmetic surgery to fix that blemish, right?
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So cosmos, cosmetic, this idea of order and design, creation, that's within the realm of this word.
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So we can step back, and we can say, God loves what He made.
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God loves what He created. But there's more to it than that, not less.
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I can say God loves the world. He loves what He created. But there's more to it than that.
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Because within His creation, within the sphere of God's creation, there is one part of His creation that has been given a particular stamp, and that is the stamp of His image.
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And God made man in His image, in the image of God, made
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He them male and female, made He them.
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Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, tells us that mankind, that being all of you, were created in the image of God in a way that nothing else in the universe is said to be created in the image of God.
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I heard a scientist say something this week. He was actually arguing for why we should go to Mars.
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This is what he said. Amazing thought. Never even thought of it this way. He said, you realize,
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Earth is the only beautiful planet because it's the only one that has life.
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Everywhere else you go, it's deserts and lava pits and everything else. Every planet we can see is arid and desert and ugly, but the
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Earth is beautiful. The Earth is bountiful. Whether you go to the deepest part of the sea or the highest part of the sky, you find life.
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God filled the Earth with life, and with life, there's beauty. With death, there's ugliness.
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But with life, there's beauty. And everywhere else in the universe is death and nothingness, but on Earth is life.
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And what is the high pinnacle of that life is man. God made man in His image.
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And therefore, I will say this. When the Bible says, for God so loved the world,
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I don't think we need to limit that to only some men. I believe the world here refers to all people of all time.
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Now, I recognize that some of you may be a little confused by me saying that because you know that theologically
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I align with what's known as Calvinism, and I'm not ashamed of that.
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And if anybody didn't know that, now you do. But it's not hidden.
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But Calvinists are often accused of limiting the word cosmos here to the elect.
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And some do. Some believe when it says, for God so loved the world, that what it means is
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God loved the elect. I do not believe that is the case.
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In fact, I believe that's just unnecessary. I just think it's an unnecessary intrusion into the text.
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I don't think that's the point that's being made. This has not yet gotten to the delineation.
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We'll talk about the delineation when it says that whosoever believes in Him will not perish.
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That's the delineation, right? That's when we start to break down, okay, who's going to receive the covenantal, saving, redemptive love of God?
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Yes, we're going to distinguish that when we get to the delineation. But we can step back and we can say God has demonstrated loving kindness to all men.
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In fact, the Bible says that God's loving kindness should lead men to repentance.
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That's proof that all men have received the love of God because it's the very thing that they're condemned for.
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They have received His love and it should lead them to repentance, but it doesn't because of their hardness of heart.
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The Bible says that God sends rain on the just and the unjust.
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We've all got people in our family who don't believe in Christ. Are you afraid to tell that person
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God loves them? You shouldn't be, you shouldn't be because God has shown so much love to them.
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The very fact that their heart is still beating in their chest and they have not died and fallen into the pit of hell in this very moment is demonstration of His grace and the common grace of God is an extension of His loving kindness.
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So even as a Calvinist, I have no problem saying, for God so loved the world, and I have no problem singing,
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Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
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By the way, we're going to sing that later. Warm up your pipes. We're going to sing that while we get ready for communion.
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Karl Barth, who I have many theological issues with, so don't think I'm endorsing everything ever said.
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Karl Barth was a theologian in the 20th century, a very well -known theologian. Toward the end of his life,
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Karl Barth was asked by a group of students in a Q &A, what's the most profound truth that you have learned in all of your years as a theologian?
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And Barth, in his elderly voice, said,
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Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
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There is no greater or more profound truth than that.
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There's no more profound truth than God loves you. We don't deserve
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God's love. We deserve God's punishment. We don't deserve God's love. We deserve
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God's wrath. We don't deserve God's love. We deserve God's abandonment. But God so loved the world.
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Love is difficult to define, isn't it? Love's a hard word to define.
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We're going to end now on the verb, loved. Love is difficult to define because in English, we really don't have a synonym.
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We got a lot of words that kind of mean it, but nothing that really means it. And I'll tell you how I can prove this to you.
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Remember when you first started dating your spouse, or courting, or whatever it is you did?
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I don't know how many heard that, but that was great.
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That was great. Things change when you tell someone you love them, doesn't it?
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That's the moment when the relationship changes. And that's why I said there's no other word in English that quite,
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I mean, you can say, I have affection for you. I have passion for you.
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It's not the same. But when we say, I love you, and what's the most important thing to hear next?
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I love you, too. You want it back. That's an awful big matzo ball to have hanging out there if they don't respond in kind.
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But my point is when we think about love, as many words as we have in the
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English language, and even in Greek, there's all these different words. There's eros, which means like erotic, passionate love.
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There's storge, which means like natural affection. You know, when my children are born, you hold your children, you have a natural affection for them.
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It's not something you can really explain. It's just natural, right, that affection that you have. In fact, the word, the way it's used in the
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Bible is astorge, means without natural affection. That's one of the things if somebody being turned over to a debased mind in Scripture is someone who is astorge, without natural affections.
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This is what we see in all of the massive nonsense that's going on right now with the love is love movement and all this crap because they have contorted and destroyed what real love is, and they've made unnatural love natural love.
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They've actually gone against natural love. The natural love is the love that is between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, a parent and a child.
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That's natural love. Those are natural things. There are two very important words in Greek, translated love, and while there are distinctions between the two, there are also times where they're used synonymously, and that's the word phileos and the word agape.
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Phileos is often connected to love between friends or love between brothers.
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This is where the word Philadelphia comes from. Adelphos means brother. So the city of Philadelphia is called what?
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The city of brotherly love. Philadelphia means brotherly love. Agape is the word
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God uses here, and many of you have heard agape sermons, I'm sure.
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Agape is one of those Greek words that everybody knows because it's been talked about so many times, but it does have within its scope of meaning the idea of sacrifice and the idea of loving the object even though the object is undeserving.
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That's sacrificial love. So when the Bible says
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God so loved the world, remember this. God loved us even though we didn't deserve it.
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God loved us even though we couldn't earn it. God's love is a gift, not a wage.
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My friends, you cannot earn the love of God. You cannot purchase the love of God, and you will never in all your days do enough good works to make
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God love you because God's love is not a wage.
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God's love is a gift. It is not something that can be bought.
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It is only something that can be received in faith. God loved the world in this way, and we'll see this next week, that he gave his only begotten
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Son that whosoever believes in him. Believing in him is how we receive the love of God. This is how we truly understand the love of God.
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I am convinced that if a person is outside of Christ, they don't really understand the love of God because the love of God was demonstrated in this way, that he gave his
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Son, that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
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My question to you this morning is, do you believe in him? Do you believe in God's Son?
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Have you received the love that God has extended to you by trusting in his
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Son? If you have, praise the
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Lord. In a moment, we're going to share in the communion table. And when we share in the communion table, we're reminded of the love of God because you remember what
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Jesus said on the night before the crucifixion. He said, Take, eat, for this is my body which is given for you.
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And as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth my death until I come.
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Why does that matter? We're showing forth what he did to show he loves us. We're being reminded of his love.
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What was the name of the meal that the Christians had that included communion? The agape feast.
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The love feast. Where we come around the table and be reminded of the love of God.
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If you're not a believer this morning, if you've never come to faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, maybe you came here today and you didn't know that God loves you. God loves you.
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He has demonstrated his love towards you in so many kindnesses that they are immeasurable.
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But most of all, the Bible says that if you believe in his Son, you will have everlasting life.
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Turn from your unbelief and trust in the only one who can save you and you will experience the love of God.
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And you will experience what it means to love him. Let's pray.
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Father, as we consider the love of God, and we sang earlier, the love of God is greater far than tongue or pen could ever tell.
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It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. Could we with ink the oceans 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.
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Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. Lord, may it be that today your love has been magnified among us and proclaimed as truth.
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And Lord, those who are objects of your love today and who have received that love, Lord, I pray that they would bask in it, that they would be moved towards greater conformity to Christ because of it.
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But for those who do not know Christ and have yet to bow their knee to him and trust in his saving work,
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I pray that today your love would overwhelm them and drive them to the cross.