Creekside Church Sermon of March 9, 1997 "He Came to Love " John 3:14-21	Rev. David Bibbee
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To clearly communicate a message with just a few words is always a challenge, and all the more so when dealing with the Christian message. Imagine God putting you in charge of a billboard campaign. You have to decide upon the message that most clearly and concisely captures the heart of the gospel. What would you say? Driving on Route 33 through Benton is a curious place on the east side of the road with signs that say, "Jesus saves." "Are you ready for judgment day?" I have seen similar signs, "The wages of sin is death! These signs would probably not be your first choice, but they do express what people believe about who really rules, and where the future is headed. But what would your billboard say?

I believe there is a verse that does more than any other at capturing the heart of our faith. You learned it as a child. You've heard it untold times since. You will see it in shorthand in the end zone at football games and behind home plate at baseball games. John 3: 16, it says. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." The great, deep truth we proclaim before all others is that God loves. This love is the defining truth of our faith and life and to it all other truths are tethered.

Maybe you are already sensing that this text is in marked contrast to those we have heard during these first three weeks of Lent. Lent is a time of confession, penance, and self-examination; a time to face our anemic discipleship head on and ask for God's mercy. But today is Refreshment Sunday, as it was called years ago. It is the mid point of Lent where the preacher lets the congregation up for air. John 3: 16 has usually been the text read on this day. The march toward the cross of Jesus can only be understood in light of the claim that God so loved the world.

I can think of no message in all the Bible more pivotal to preach than this, and yet I can think of none more challenging, not because of the text, but because of its hearers. You can know John 3: 16 by heart, but not believe it. It's much easier to name the reasons why God shouldn't love you, what with all your broken promises and the myriad of ways you found to mess up. It's not that we don't want to believe deep in our bones the conviction of Saint Augustin who said, "God loves us each as though we were the only ones to love." We do. What prevents us is the fear that God is more like a pointing finger prosecuting attorney than a loving father. We read the billboard and it says "condemnation" not "God so loved the world."

Someone said our problem is "oatmeal theology." Steven and his mother locked horns over the issue of oatmeal. His mother was using every persuasive tool in her arsenal to convince Steven to eat it. Nutritional logic didn't work. He could care less about vitamins and minerals. The parental authority argument didn't work, either, so in desperation she appealed to a higher court. "Steven, if you don't eat your oatmeal, God will punish you!" Still Steven refused to eat it, so his mother sent him to bed. Before long a big storm arose. The lightening flashed, thunder rattled the window panes, and the wind lashed the house with rain. Mother ran upstairs to comfort Steven. She opened the door and asked, "Are you OK?" "I guess so, " he replied, "but this sure is an awful fuss to make about a little oatmeal."

We all have our bowl of oatmeal, and we're susceptible to the threat of punishment for not eating it. There can be little room for believing God loves us when we're stuck on the things which warrant punishment. Last week I quoted from the Westminster shorter catechism which asks and answers the question, "What is the chief end of humankind? To glorify God and enjoy him forever." Enjoy him. Do you? When you wake, is your first thought, "This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it!"? Or, "I've got to be careful not to do anything wrong today."? To enjoy God...is that what we expect when we come to church, or do we come with poker faces to swallow a foul- tasting spiritual prescription? Do we come to lift up God and his incredible love in Jesus Christ and in the process be lifted ourselves, or do we come to have our toes stomped on by the preacher and thus move no closer to God?

God so loved the world...not to condemn it, but to save it. This is where it all begins. It is only through the Son that we come to know about God's great love. Creation reveals the beauty and majesty of God. The starry nights reveal the incomprehensible power that created the heavens before which we shrivel in insignificance. Only when Jesus stands between us and God can we know who God is and what God's intentions are. Right up there with the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai, I would put the tuna and noodle casserole revelation. While eating a piping plateful of tuna noodle casserole when he was three years old, my son declared..."I know what God looks like." "Really?" I said. "What does God look like?" "He looks like Jesus."

"No one has ever seen God, the only Son who is in the bosom of the father, he has made him known." And what did Jesus reveal about God? To the sinner, he was a forgiving friend. To the lost, he was the way. To the sick, he was a healer. To the grieving, a comforter. To the suffering, he was all compassion. Add it all together and what you get is a God who loves. And if you're not sure still, plod along with us over the next Sunday's as we make our way to Golgotha. There on that cross of pain, humiliation, and suffering, he was lifted up for all to see...see from his hands, his head, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Apart from Jesus it's easy to look at religion and conclude it's all about obligations and sentences of condemnation, and we will either want nothing to do with it, or else be subject to it in fear.

I am grateful that God is not like us. I'm glad God does not deal with us as we deal with each other. I heard of a pastor who regularly goes to the airport and spends a couple of hours sitting in the concourse watching the throngs of all kinds of people go by. And as he watches, he keeps a question before him, "Did Jesus really die for them?" Reflecting on John 3: 16, Roy Harrisville said, "If I were God, it would have been a horse of a different color. If I were God I would have pitched the heavenly hierarchy on their celestial noses in a wild haste to get even. To hell, that's where the world would have gone. I would make another world, and if by some cruel trick it turned out like the first, I'd destroy it and build another. And I'd sit on my pale blue cloud and rub my omnipotent hands at the burning."

I am grateful that God is not like us. It's hard to conceive, but I am glad God loves the world. Not just me, but the world. Not just people like us, but the world. Not just folks who go to church, but the world. Everyone we would exclude from the circle, the compass of God's love encircles. I'm glad God doesn't use our accounting procedures of goodness, and righteousness. I'm glad God is soft where we are hard. When we finally grasp the fantastic fact that God's desire is love, not condemnation, then we see our self-righteousness and attempts at goodness and playing at church for what it is...our attempt at making ourselves acceptable.

I've got news for you...it won't work. God doesn't love you for what you've done or not done--not for what you've earned or intend. God decided long ago to chain condemnation and unleash his amazing grace upon us for no other reason than he loves us. Oh...to be freed from the burden of what we have to do for God and remember instead what God has done for us. To be free from the shackles of musty religion which says you must do this and you must do that. To be freed from the outward forms of religion which are so boring, but which we feel bound to because it's better to be safe than sorry. If this characterizes your relationship with God, it's not love, and you aren't free. I love the way someone put it, "The way to get rid of that nagging feeling that God is always on your back, is to let God into your heart."

God so loved the world that he gave his Son...gave him to give us life. It was love that brought him here. Love to set us free and set our hearts afire.

Two weeks from now the plot will thicken and the powers of religion and government will conspire against Jesus. The clouds will gather dark on the horizon and we will resume our prayers of confession, our need of repentance and the resolve to be more committed to his way. We couldn't bear to listen to the story of Jesus last week if not for the motivation behind it. If it wasn't love which led him to the cross, we couldn't stand under the sentence. But it was for us that he did it, not to condemn, but to love...and for us, and through us so others would be drawn to him.

Come back with me to the year 1944. It's late in the year, and we find ourselves behind the barbed wire that encloses the concentration camp called Treblinka. Word has just come from Berlin that three- fourths of the prisoners are to be "eliminated" before the end of the year. In order to avoid creating a major disturbance among the captives, the guards are given daily quotas for the gas chambers. A few at a time, a day at a time, the numbers dwindle. But something was about to happen which would utterly change the life of the Jewish philosopher Isaac Berdwaev.

The day is near gone and a guard needs just one more captive for his quota. His eyes lock on a young Jewish mother nursing her child. Like a monster he comes, reaching for the baby. The mother screams in protest clutching her child as close as she can. All eyes look at them. The horror of the moment made it seem like an hour, even though only seconds pass. Berdwaev writes, "A willowy, dark-haired girl known only as Maria steps forward, stands before the guard and says, "Take me. Let the child live another day." A friend tries to prevent her, but Maria responded, "The Lord knows the way through the wilderness, all I have to do is follow."

Forty years later this Jewish philosopher said, "At that moment, I saw the power of Christ at work in the world for the first time, and I knew that never again could I be the same person."

Once we know that God's intent is love, God moves off our backs and into our hearts. The gospel becomes our blessing and not our burden. Instead of cowering in fear, we stand confident in his promise and know that because God sent his Son, we will never again be the same persons.

Thanks to Neil Babcox for inspiring the direction of this sermon.

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