Dec. 22, 2024

For God So Loved the World…

Introduction - I’m telling you about something I’m learning to do myself, at my present age (75).    I envy you who know about this and I want to catch up to where you are.  Please have patience with me and the others around you who are catching up to you as you follow God.  This Christmas service was an opportune morning for me to share this, as you are expecting an endearing, warm message today.  I want to therefore seize the opportunity to talk about loving God.

God has always loved mankind and the world He made for us to live in.  Even the fall of Adam and Eve into sin did not deter Him from loving the people He had created.  A major evidence of His love for us was that He preserved 8 people in the flood of Noah’s time, even when people were so bad that He knew, with omniscience, that they would never turn to Him.  He found a way to declare Noah’s family  righteous through the future sacrifice of Jesus, even though Noah himself later was found drunk and naked in his tent. This love was emotional, spiritual, and physical.  It was the fullest type of good will and endearment that we can conceive of.  It is called, in the Greek, agape.

Genesis 1:27, 31: 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  31 Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.  NLT

God never gave up on the world (which included us people). He saw that it was good.  Before he made us, he had a continuous progressive plan to honorably restore us to the position in His family which we had forfeited. This was broken down into identifiable periods called dispensations.  

1.  Innocence – From creation to the Fall in Genesis 3
2.  Conscience – From the Fall to the Flood in Genesis 6-8
3. Human Government – From the Flood to the dispersion at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11
4. Promise – From Abraham to Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law in Exodus 19
5. Law – From Mount Sinai to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
6. Grace – From Pentecost in Acts 2 to the rapture of the church
7. Millennial Kingdom – The 1000 year reign of Christ on earth after His second coming

    We are in the dispensation of Grace at present, with our main responsibility being to make disciples.              Here’s how God demonstrated His love for us during this period of grace: 

John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.  NLT

He gave His only Son.  Jesus and God are One, and so they both had knowledge of what LOVE would dictate for both of them in order to provide the absolute solution for the whole race of humans to be kept from extermination. They both knew what this entailed: Jesus humbling Himself, leaving heaven, taking on the weaknesses of the fallen creation living under a curse (things rust, fall apart, wonder why…) Putting himself at the mercy of the fallen creatures he had created, knowing that most of mankind, even after the sacrifice of his son, Jesus, would still refuse the offer of salvation and reconciliation and eventually abuse and kill him.  It demanded that He must give up special intelligence (omniscience) and control of His destiny (omnipotence) and be dependent on His Father.  He would wear the Hebrew equivalent of a diaper and have to learn to walk and talk as we all have done.  The Father knew that He would have to eventually place the punishment of all the sin of the world upon His son, all by Himself.  He would have to afflict His own son in front of every being in the universe to satisfy the highest form of justice in the highest standard in the universe: God’s own purity, demanding the life of the only perfect being in the universe, Jesus.  This necessitated that God would have to be born as a man, just as we came into the world, that He might in all ways live a life as we have to.  This was all so that He would eventually die and save us through His death, burial and resurrection.  

Luke 2:11-12 : 11The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”  

The main thing God has always wanted from us is love directed to Him.  He made this very clear from the earliest times.  He is less interested in our service, abilities, and production than He is with the capture of our hearts.  

Exodus 20:2-3: 2 I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. 3 “You must not have any other god but me.

Mark 12:29-30: 29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ NLT

There are few humans we ever have this strong a love for.  This is hard with people we already are acquainted with, let alone someone whom we have never seen and that we don’t know! We make friends over a period of time, always involving some our 5 senses.  To some degree, we must use some combination of these to arrive at friendship with any human.  How can we do this with God who we can’t see, hear, touch, taste, or smell? 

There is a progression through which most of us come to know God.  We come to God first, usually, because of some need for immediate help.  We graduate from that level to coming to God to get stuff (income, necessities of life, a mate, etc.)  We may then graduate to repentance for some particular sin that we are convicted about if that be the case, then we graduate to dedication to some form of service, like a ministry of some type.  We may then graduate to some form of occasional appreciation for the things He has done, and perhaps occasional thanksgiving at holidays or in church.  This eventually grows into an appreciation for private and corporate worship.  We become convinced that God is our friend, and actually loves us. We express these feelings toward Him and He keeps revealing more of Himself to us: How He does things, what He wants to involve us in concerning His Kingdom.  We think about Him from the time we get up until the time we go to bed.  In this process we are being drawn to Him.  Eventually, we will live in this intense friendship in ways we cannot understand now. Some people who have had near death experiences NDE’s report that the worship of God is the ultimate thing in heaven.  It is unending, consuming love for Him where He fills all our interests and we only want to be with Him.  Some describe a worship temple filled with untold masses of people connected by life-giving music which permeates every fiber of their bodies.  Nobody ever wants to leave the completeness of the love they experience.  There’s a good reason to learn this principle right now, down here on earth:

Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. NLT

Conclusion - For God so loved us, he became a baby!   Loving Him will affect many of the challenges we face while we’re here on earth.  Notice the oft-overlooked phrase “for the good of those who love God”. Why not start giving him the personal attention and admiration He hungers for!, and love him everything:  above your job, your interests, your things, even your life!