Numbers of Hope - Lenten Midweek

So Loved the World

John 3:16

February 13, 2008

For 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. John 3:16

That verse is a beautiful thought and a blessed truth. It tells us of God’s nature, His motivation and the way He is toward us. But what about us? Do we have Scriptures that tell us how we are toward God? Well not each of us by name, but lets see if things we read fit.

In Exodus 32 the people of Israel came to Aaron and said "make us gods who led us out of Egypt." They were afraid of what was ahead of them. Moses was on the mountain so they thought they were alone. They were not in control of what was around them. So they wanted a god they could see and maybe a god they could control. A god like the Egyptians’ gods. They got an idol of gold.

We wouldn’t do that, statues of gold - gods - that’s ridiculous. But . . .

What do we do to forget our fears of the unknown, fears of not succeeding, fears of being unimportant?

We focus on this, acquiring them, shopping for them, complaining about other people having them. Or maybe we try to forget our fears covering them with alcohol, drugs or work.

Maybe we make ourselves feel important by always complaining, running things down and gossiping about people. We think we are bigger when we belittle others.

What we really do is to put ourselves in the God spot instead of the golden calf.

These things distract us from our insecurities and fears, making us think we can go on without God being in control of our life.

But what if it is God that we are afraid of? Afraid that He has full authority over us - afraid that He will tell us to change.

We are very likely to make God in our image. We give Him our position on things by reading the Bible the way we want to, rather than just what it says. Or we only listen to part of the Bible, the part that agrees with us. These are very comfortable and very wrong.

There are also those who realize that if God exists, then He has authority and they don’t want to be under anyone’s authority. So they deny that God exists and beginning with that position form their view of the world and of its history.

Charles Darwin said he could not believe in a god that would create a world full of death, deases and cruel violence, even among animals. So he grabbed on to the pagan idea that the world evolved on its own and said the material world is all there is.

Darwin saw the evils of the world quite clearly but ignored the truth of our text in order to ignore and reject God’s authority. Darwin missed the fact that God didn’t create the world as we see it, but He created a perfect world, one without death and suffering.

We humans brought all that into the world when we rebelled against God. Our sin brought death into the world. So you see we deserve nothing good from God. There is nothing lovable in us but God still loved the world so that He gave His only begotten Son.

This is the undeserved, self sacrificing love the Greek calls "agape". God loves the unlovable world, the unlovable human race because the cause of agape is in Him and not in us.

When the apostle John wrote that "God is love" it was agape.

Only God can truly give us the definition of agape to its full extent. That definition is Jesus of Nazareth.

The fulness of agape is God loving us so that while we were still sinners, still rebelling against Him, God paid for our sins with the death of His Son, Jesus.

The perfect sinless Son of God taking the punishment for the unlovable sinners, purely out of His love for them. That is agape. That is love. That is God.

It was after all, truly love and not nails that held God the Son on the cross.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Amen

SDG