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Christmas Certainties in an Uncertain World: God Loves Us
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
David C. Wright
John 3:16, 17
December 20, 2009
A number
of times when I’ve been watching a football game on TV, I’ve
noticed someone holding up a sign in the endzone with the words “John
3:16.” You’ve probably seen it, too. It
seems kind of strange and out-of-place, but it happens fairly often. Clearly,
it’s a kind of Christian witness, but why would people choose
that particular verse? Well, it’s probably the most
famous verse in the Bible, and it contains an excellent summary
of the gospel in just a few words. If you are like many Presbyterians,
and have trouble explaining your faith to others, listen carefully
this morning, because the essence of the entire Christian faith
is found in this verse.
We live in a world of
uncertainty. Some of the people who were sitting with us in this sanctuary
last year are no longer with us this year. Some are ill or have moved unexpectedly. Some
have even died. We live in a world of uncertainty. Christmas brings
some certainties to us, including the certainty that God loves us. John
3:16 summarizes that certainty very well. For God so loved the world
that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but may have eternal life.
Now let’s break
it down so we get the full impact. We begin with God, the Creator
and Manager of the entire universe! For reasons which our puny brains
will never comprehend, God is concerned about us, the creatures he made who inhabit
this small ball called earth as it hurtles its way through space. It is
significant that John begins his summary of the gospel with God, for that reminds
us that our salvation begins with God’s initiative, not our’s. Sometimes
we’re tempted to think and act as if our salvation were dependent on us,
but, as we will see, it is actually dependent upon God’s action.
When Keith Brown was pastor
of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, he noticed one of his parishioners wearing
a bulldog pin on his lapel during coffee hour one Sunday morning. “Frank,” he
asked, “What does that bulldog symbolize?”
“It’s the
symbol for Mack Truck, where I work,” Frank responded. “But
it has spiritual symbolism, too. It symbolizes the tenacity with which
I hold onto Jesus Christ.”
“Well, that’s
a nice sentiment,” replied the pastor, “but I don’t think
it’s very good theology.”
“What do you mean?” Frank
asked.
“It shouldn’t
stand for the tenacity with which you hold onto Jesus Christ. It should
stand for the tenacity with which Jesus holds on to you!”
Pastor Brown makes a good
point. The gospel begins with God and continues with God. Let’s
keep going.
God so loved. The
Greek word here is “agape,” which denotes a special kind of self-sacrificing,
action-oriented love. It is the kind of love to which we all aspire, but
only rarely reach- a love which always puts the needs of others before our own. And
God is agape-love! As Bible scholar William Barclay put it, “the
mainspring of God’s being is love.” So it isn’t as if
God has to work up some kind of love for us. It is God’s nature to
love, a love which is on display in the inner, mysterious workings of the Trinity,
where the three persons of the Godhead work in unison as one.
God is love. The
prophet Hosea portrayed God as a lovesick husband desperately hoping to win back
the love of his unfaithful wife. Jesus portrayed God as a love-filled father
waiting expectantly for his wayward son to return home. It is God’s
nature to love.
And God’s love has
an object. “For God so loved the world.” Now there
are several things to point out here. First of all, this would have been
a shockingly new thought to Jesus’ Jewish audience. They understood
well that God loved Israel. The Old Testament is filled with promises of
God’s love for his people. But over time, they had developed a corollary
thought suggesting that God’s special love for Israel meant that God hated
everyone else! They completely forgot about the part of God’s original
covenant with Abraham back in Genesis when God promised that he would bless the
whole world through Abraham and his descendants. They forgot about God’s
compassion on pagan Ninevah in the story of Jonah and Jeremiah’s understanding
that God is sovereign over all the nations of the world. God doesn’t
just love Israel; God loves the whole world with all of its people, the entirety
of creation.
And this world makes it
difficult for God to love it! In fact, the Bible says the world is in active
rebellion against God and God’s purposes for his creation! It’s
as if we raise our tiny fists and shake them in God’s face saying, “I
know you abhor violence, but we’re going to justify our wars anyway. I
know you hate lying, but I really need to tell one this time anyway. I
know you call us to give generously to the poor, but we’ll get serious
about that only after we are outrageously comfortable and secure. I know
you want us to serve one another, but I’m going to insist on my rights.” You
see, we often actively oppose God’s work! And the result is the kind
of pain-filled, uncertain world in which we live. You get the picture. Yet,
astoundingly, this is the world which God loves! It is truly beyond our
comprehension. Apparently this world is valued by God because God made
it and believes in its potential.
“For God so loved
the world, that he gave his only Son.” God’s love
for the world was costly. It caused God to sacrifice that which was most
precious to him- his only Son, Jesus. At Christmas we celebrate that gift
of God to us in the birth of Jesus. That is why Christmas has always been
such a joyful season! We are excited and grateful when we remember that
God’s Son entered our world.
But, we sometimes forget
that it wasn’t such a joyful time for Jesus and his parents! They
were far from home because the occupying Romans insisted that they travel to
Bethlehem to register for an oppressive tax. The birth took place in poverty
apart from family and friends in grim circumstances. Soon after his birth
the family was forced to flee in terror from murderous King Herod and
wound up as refugees, immigrants in the foreign land of Egypt. We are
right to be joyful over the coming of Jesus, but let’s not forget that
it represents the costly love of God, which led Jesus to his horrifying death
nailed to a cross.
God so loved the world
that he gave his beloved Son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.” John uses this phrase “to
believe in” 98 times in his gospel! It always appears as a verb,
reminding us that believing is always active. It never means to simply
believe something is true. There are other Greek verbs which mean that. This
verb means literally to throw yourself on something, to trust completely in something. It
means far more than mere intellectual assent. It means to actually live
in the light of an intellectual conviction.
I have a stool here. I
believe in this stool. I believe that this stool will hold me if I sit
on it. I can examine the construction. I can note the manufacturer. I
can point out the fact that I have seen others sit on this stool and it supported
them. But until I sit on the stool myself, I have not believed in it the
way John says we need to believe in Jesus. To believe in Jesus means to
risk living your life according to his teaching as well as trusting in him for
your salvation.
“God so loved the
world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.” The present trajectory
of this world is toward destruction. With nuclear weapons, we now have
the capacity to destroy the planet many times over. And some of those weapons
are in the hands of people we don’t trust, and other nations (like Iran
and North Korea) are working hard to get them. Biological and chemical
weapons have added more horrific ways to destroy one another. And the threat
of global warming brings yet another possibility for the destruction of the planet. So
there is a real sense in which the very existence of our world seems precarious,
a reminder that we need God’s intervention to save us from ourselves.
But there is also an individual
sense in which this is true. Because of the pervasiveness of sin in our
hearts, our tendency is to live independently, apart from God and God’s
ways. God is patient with us, but without God’s intervention and
our submission to it, we are bent toward our own destruction and the destruction
of others through our hate or greed or jealousy or self-centeredness.
The Good News here is
that God offers an alternative to destruction- eternal life. This, of
course, includes spending an eternity with the Lord in heaven. But it involves
more than that. It involves a new quality of life available to us now,
life lived the way God intended it to be lived. A life lived in love, a
life lived in imitation of God’s character, who after all, created us in
his own image. Through believing in, through trusting in, through acting
on our belief in the Son of God, we can live a new kind of life. And this
is a very satisfying life, because we have the sense that we are doing what we
were created to do and are part of something far greater than ourselves.
On Sunday, Aug. 16, 1987,
Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after takeoff from Detroit. 157
people were killed. One survived- a 4 year-old named Cecelia. When
rescuers found her, they didn’t believe that she had been on the plane. They
thought she had been a passenger in the one of the cars which was struck by the
plane when it came down. But the passenger manifest listed her name.
Cecelia survived because,
as the plane was falling, her mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her seat belt,
got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around
Cecelia, and refused to let go. Nothing could separate that child from
the protective love of her mother- nothing. And she was saved. That’s
a pretty good picture of the self-sacrificing love that God has for us. Nothing
can separate us from God’s love.
“For God so loved
the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may
not perish but may have eternal life.” God loves us. That is
a Christmas certainty! Do you believe in his Son, Jesus? Are you
ready to put that belief into action? If so, as we pray in silence, tell
God that you accept his gift of love and desire to follow Jesus with your life. That’s
when your eternal life will begin!
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