Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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I was reading an article a few weeks ago that had some advice for preachers who would be preaching a Christmas sermon on the Sunday closest to Christmas this year.
They gave a lot of tips, some advice, but nothing quite as interesting to me as this: “Mix it up.
Don’t preach from Matthew 1-2 or Luke 2 again this year.
If people come to church on Christmas and hear, every year, the same sermon from the same passage in the Bible, you will bore them even more than normal.”
This, I thought was probably very true.
And I can’t afford to bore you any more than normal, so I listened.
I thought I would take the advice and “mix it up” a bit.
Probably good to go with something a little less familiar so as to keep the attention of those listening.
The problem is, the theme for the 4th Week of Advent is “love”.
Nothing is any more familiar than love.
It’s been said if you don’t know the answer in Sunday School, just guess “Jesus,” “God,” “Love,” or “the Bible” and you’re probably safe.
One of those is probably the answer.
“Love” as a topic isn’t very unique.
Less unique still is my selection of a Bible passage.
Even knowing that they are among the most familiar verses in the entire Bible, I couldn’t get these verses out of my head.
As I prayerfully prepared for this sermon, I couldn’t shake these incredibly familiar words:
This is the most famous summary of the gospel in the entire Bible.
You could ask most anyone what John 3:16 says and they’d get pretty close to telling you what it says (or at least the gist of it).
It’s referred to as “the best-known and most often preached verse in the Bible”, which is probably true, but can you believe I’ve never preached this verse before?
Now, I’ve quoted it and referenced it and included it in a sermon, but I’ve yet to preach it.
So here goes...
The sermon this morning isn’t going to be ground-breaking or earth-shattering, but let’s not forget that this passage of Scripture is gloriously, wondrously, amazingly Good News.
And, what’s more, I believe John 3 is a perfect text for Christmas.
There are hundreds of passages I could have chosen to preach this morning; there are hundreds of passages on love.
But there’s something about...
Think about how this verse is commentary on the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.
Zechariah and Elizabeth were promised a son—John the Baptist—and were told that their son would prepare the way for the Lord.
Upon the birth of his son, Zechariah praised the Lord in song, singing that God was going to come to His people, to redeem them.
In other words: that God was giving His one and only Son to bring eternal life.
Mary and Joseph were told that Mary would conceive and give birth to a son, that they were to give Him the name Jesus for He would save His people from their sins.
In other words: God was giving His one and only Son to bring eternal life.
The shepherds watching their flocks by night were greeted by an angel bringing them good news of great, mega joy for all the people; this, that a Savior had been born that day, a Savior who was the Messiah and Lord.
In other words: God had given His one and only Son to bring eternal life.
A few days after the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple, they encountered two people there, Simeon and Anna.
When he saw the baby Jesus, Simeon grabbed the baby, taking the newborn King in his arms, and proclaimed that, in Jesus, he had seen the salvation of God.
Likewise Anna was pleased to see the baby and gave thanks to God for this child who would bring redemption.
In other words: that God had given His and only Son to bring eternal life.
I could go on and on (and maybe I should), but it’s beyond clear to me: just like Die Hard is a Christmas movie, John 3:16 is perfectly suited for Christmas.
What’s even more clear is that this verse is perfect for the 4th Week of Advent.
“Love” features here prominently.
God so loved the world...
Don’t we tend to gloss over certain phrases?
When we know something as well as we know this verse, we just rattle it off unthinkingly.
I had this verse memorized when I was in early elementary school, but that was probably to win some memory verse contest or something, so I’m sure I didn’t pay real close attention to those words: God so loved the world...
We are so familiar with this verse, we’re likely unfamiliar.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” they say.
And so it is.
So let’s focus on God’s love here in John 3:16.
The Tense
The tense of God’s love stands out: God loved.
God loves us, this is true.
But that He loved us before the foundation of the world, before we were, before we had the capacity to believe or had been given the grace to believe, God loved us.
God loved.
Twas a definitive act of God’s will.
God chose to love us—while we were still sinners.
God loved us from eternity past.
He didn’t love us with condition.
He didn’t love us because we already loved Him.
He loved us while we were unlovely, undeserving.
Period.
That’s it.
God so loved the world...
The Magnitude
Let us grasp the magnitude of His love.
God so loved.
No one can adequately define or measure that little word.
How high, how deep, how wide, how wondrous His love for us!
So loved.
That’s a loaded phrase.
There might not be any phrase like it in the whole Bible.
It’s not just loved (ἠγάπησεν, ēgapēsen), but so loved (Οὕτως ἠγάπησεν, Houtōs ēgapēsen).
The unfathomable depth of the love of God is stressed here.
God so loved.
It would be enough if it said God loved the world, but it’s more than that.
God so loved the world.
“I love you so much,” we often tell our kids because “I love you”—while it’s not wrong—just isn’t quite enough.
Like you with yours, we loved our kids before we ever met them.
We love them so much.
Such is the magnitude of our love.
And still our love is dwarfed compared to God’s great love for us, for the world.
The Scope
It extends to the world; that’s the scope of God’s love.
God’s love is not limited to the people living in Israel or Galilee or Palestine, but it extends to the Gentiles, too.
To every single kind of person: from shepherds to wise men, peasants and paupers, kings and world leaders, orphans and widows, young and old, red and yellow, black and white.
We must see the all-inclusive scope of God’s love.
John’s readers would have been very familiar with the thought of God’s special love for Israel.
But, in truth, His love is (and always was) indiscriminate, embracing every man, woman, and child.
What’s incredible—truly incredible—is that the world is fallen and wicked and in open rebellion against God; it was, it is, it always has been, and always will be.
In the person of Jesus, Light has come into the world.
And yet people still loved the darkness.
They missed Jesus.
They didn’t believe in Jesus.
They would mock and insult, torture and kill Jesus.
And still, He loves.
It’s against the background of this wickedness that God’s love shines out most gloriously.
God’s love is to be admired not because the world is so big and includes so many people, but because the world is so bad.
The scope of His love is truly breathtaking, like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, one can’t begin to take it in; it’s far too vast.
There are no out-liers to God’s love.
No one, no person, no group of people is on the outside looking in.
No one is outside the reach or beyond the invitation of God’s love.
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