THE LOVE OF GOD – PART ONE

Greetings, friends. Today, I want to speak on, The Love of God. And it’s taken from the popular scripture that almost every child knows, John 3:16.

John 3:16

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

PRAYER:

Father, again, we come; and we are asking, that the Holy Spirit would help us, as He had helped us in the past, to understand what You have for us today from Your Word; and in understanding, that You would grant us the strength to do what You say…in Jesus Name. Amen!

The passage we have, John 3:16, that popular passage, is very profound. I consider it not only the most popular, but also the most profound verse in the bible. But then, if you have a knowledge of the Word of God, you would say, doesn’t that scripture contradict the bible? Because in 1 John 2:15, the Word of God says,

1 John 2:15

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Hmm. God so loved the world. And the same God said, do not love the world or the things in the world. And so one can jump to the conclusion: You see, I tell you this your bible, it contradicts itself. Not yet: don’t rush to that conclusion.

The bible is speaking of two different worlds as it were: the world of men and women, boys and girls, the world of people; as against the world system organized under the leadership of Satan in rebellion against God. Those are the two worlds. That is the world 1 John 2:15 is talking about, which God says we should not love.

But God so loved the world of people, that He gave His only begotten Son. What kind of love is this? It is the love that the world had not known, and does not know, except by divine revelation. It is a superlative love, in the sense of His quality; it is the best love – that’s what I mean. No love is greater than this love of God. It is not only a superlative love – the best love. It is a given love: For God so loved the world, that He gave. And what He gave is His only begotten Son: in whom He said He is well pleased. That’s Luke 3:22.

This love is not only a superlative and given love, it is also a sacrificial love; for the Son that God gave was the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world of people. Do you know that people can give without love? People give, as a matter of reciprocity: you-scratch-my-back-and-I-scratch-your-back kind of love. Some men give financial help or other kinds of help to girls who are desperately in need only to take advantage of them sexually. That is giving, quite alright, but not out of love. And some people can give out of love but not sacrificial love. They can never give to the point of inconvenience. Only God has this kind of love.

Why did God give His only begotten Son to the world? He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. But why was this provision necessary? This leads us to a brief history of the world of people –the world that God gave His Son. A history of the world of people dates back to Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve, the first parents of the world rejected God’s revealed knowledge and opted for experiential or experimental knowledge. Adam and Eve rejected a life of dependence upon God for a life of independence from God. This is the crux of the tragic fall of man into sin, and this is the crux of the matter of man’s sinful condition today. The world is in a mess. It is because of sin.

God’s revealed knowledge given to Adam and Eve is found in Genesis 2:16-17. There, we have the revealed knowledge God wanted Adam to work with. It says,

Genesis 2:16-17

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

But here is the tragic experimental knowledge Eve and Adam chose instead. Because in Genesis 3:4-6, we read,

Genesis 3:4-6

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ So when the woman [Eve] saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

This is the Genesis; no pun intended, of what we know as the Fall of Man – the entrance of sin into the makeup of man and into man’s environment. A sorry situation indeed. This truth is confirmed in Romans 8:18-22

Romans 8:18-22

¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; ²¹ because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Our world is messed up. And the mess is as a result of the experimental knowledge that Adam and Eve chose instead of revealed knowledge. And let me tell you, friend, that the experimental knowledge can never be a substitute for revealed knowledge. To put it differently, what you know by experimentation cannot substitute for what you know as a result of divine revelation. It is safer to live by what God says than by what you find out by trial and error. The error may turn out to be your undoing. Ask Adam and Eve who went into hiding because they lost divine consciousness and fellowship, because of the experimental knowledge.

For in Genesis 3:9-10,

⁹ Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”

¹⁰ So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

Where are you, Adam? God was not concerned with location. He was talking about relationship. Where are you now in our relationship, Adam? Ask Adam and Eve what experimental knowledge does when you reject revealed knowledge. Ask those who have experimented with illicit sex, experimented with alcohol, experimented with mind-altering drugs. Although Adam and Eve rejected God’s revealed knowledge and got into trouble with their experimentation, the God of love still came to their rescue. Right away, He made provision to give them a measure of dignity in their sinful state. That is why we read in Genesis 3:21,

Genesis 3:21

²¹ Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.

He gave them dignity in their sinful state. But more important than that was the plan He put in place to restore man to the glorious divine image and likeness ruined by man’s disobedience. This is the foretaste of John 3:16. And it is in Genesis 3 15, where God said to the devil represented by the serpent:

Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”

This is a prophetic declaration of the coming of Jesus Christ – the seed of the woman that took the sins of the world upon Himself, thus providing everlasting life for all who would believe in Him. This is the Good news of Christmas.

Friend, will you give your life to this savior who died for you, for your sins; for you and myself? All have sinned and have come short of the glory of God. But you have to receive the Savior to be restored into the image of God.

Let us pray

PRAYER:

Father, we come again to You, asking that the words we have heard now we would use, that we would not ignore Your Word. So as many as are inviting Jesus Christ into their lives, dear Lord, may they experience the fullness of this eternal life. May You renew, change them, inside out, in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen!