God's Merciful & Miraculous Love
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Christmas Morning Love
Christmas Morning Love
Christmas Day is one of my favorite days of the year. More specifically, the morning of Christmas is the time I most enjoy. From the day after Thanksgiving until that morning, the whole family waited in expectation of what will be revealed on Christmas morning. We begin advent by setting up Christmas decorations and baking cookies with love, as Abigail says. We watch the Polar Express, and just before the scene where they have hot chocolate and cookies, I make the kids the “best homemade hot chocolate ever” and serve it with the cookies as they watch that scene and the rest of the movie. Every night we do our advent devotion. This year we have special envelopes that gives scripture to read, and Bubby hangs them up on the door mantle. One envelope for everyday of advent until Christmas Day arrives. As the days pass, presents begin to appear under the tree building more anticipation of Christmas morning. For my children, their anticipation is satisfied with the celebration of the gifts. As a parent, it is different.
As a parent, it is a day where my enjoyment is not so much in receiving a gift, but being able to lavish on my children gifts and watch their enjoyment as they receive them. Christmas is a time when I get to express toward my children my love by giving them something they desire or need. And when they receive those gifts with joy, my heart is glad for them. In this small way, Christmas serves as springboard that launches me into the realm of God’s heart for the world during the Christmas season.
Advent is a time of waiting with expectation. God made a promsie a long time ago to fix the world. He promised to reverse the curse, restore creation, and redeem mankind. He set in His heart to rescue sinners, and he told the world how He was going to do it. One day He would send His Messiah into the world to undue all that sin had done. The world waited and waited and waited for Him to come. And on Christmas Day, the child arrived. And like many of us who are excited to lavish our love on our children with gifts, God lavished His love on the world by giving it His best loved gift; His Son.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
The love given and received on Christmas morning is meant to be a parable to teach us how God loves us though his best loved gift. Our gifts do not compare in significance and magnificence. My gifts to my children cost me a few dollars in my bank account. Life and death are not considered with my gifts. God’s gift has significant consequences on your life now and for all entirety. God’s gift has a magnificent value to him and to us, and it was over the top costly to Him.
This morning we are going to mediate on John 3:16. We are going to consider God’s merciful and miraculous love lavished on the world through His unique and best loved Son.
God’s Love Came To the World
God’s Love Came To the World
John opens His Gospel announcing God has come to earth (John 1:18).
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
and
The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John testified concerning Him and exclaimed, “This was the One of whom I said, ‘The One coming after me has surpassed me, because He existed before me.’ ”)
No one has ever seen God. The One and Only Son — the One who is at the Father’s side — He has revealed Him.
In verses 1:19-51, John reveals that the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth, the Lamb who has come to take away the sins of the world. Jesus calls men to be his disciples. Philip is one of them, and he compels Nathaniel to come see the one Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also wrote! Nathaniel says, “Wait, What? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathaniel soon becomes convinced of Philip’s assessment of Jesus when Jesus said he knew Nathaniel and saw him sitting under fig tree. Nathaniel then says, “ You are the Son of God, the King of Israel.”
Jesus responded to him, “Do you believe only because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.”
Then He said, “I assure you: You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Jesus’s response to Nathaniel is refers to Jacobs dream in Genesis 28:12-17 In Jacobs dream, he saw angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. God made a covenant with Jacob in that dream that signaled that Jacob’s offspring would bless the nations.
Jacob says when he awakes from the dream
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.”
Jesus alluding to Jacob’s dream, is telling his disciples that he is the offspring who will bless the nations. Jesus is the “house of God” or the “gate of heaven” figuratively speaking. He is the way into the kingdom of God.
John 2:1-25, presents the arrival of the Messiah’s kingdom. Jesus demonstrates this by turning water into wine and cleansing the temple. Now, two questions appear from chapter 2. First, how does one enter the kingdom of God? Secondly, who gets in? John 2:23-3:36, answers both of those questions with the dialogue betwen Nicodemus and Jesus.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night. He is curious as to how one enters the kingdom of God. Jesus anticipates his curiosity by saying to him,
Jesus replied, “I assure you: Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus is stumped. How in the world does this happen? How can someone be born again? Jesus explains that being born again is essential for entry into God kingdom (John 2:23-3:3). Furthermore, the new birth is spiritual and solely God’s doing by the regeneration work of His Holy Spirit (John 3:4-8). Finally, one’s rebirth is only possible through God’s Son, i.e. Jesus. You must believe in Him to have eternal life (John 3:9-15). Everyone (who) who believes (how) in Jesus will enter God’s kingdom. Jesus is God’s messiah who came to save the world, and John 3:16 demonstrates that Jesus is a gift of God’s merciful and miraculous love.
Merciful & Miraculous Love: God’s solution to our problem.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
The “for” connects verses 16-17 to verses 9-15. It explains the why. Why is faith necessary to enter the kingdom of God. Faith is necessary to enter God’s kingdom because it is God’s solution to our problem. Our problem is that we are rebellious. We run from God and want to remain on the run from God.
The whole world is rebellious.
“This, then, is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.
For everyone who practices wicked things hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed.
Jesus says four chapters later
The world cannot hate you, but it does hate Me because I testify about it—that its deeds are evil.
Paul describes humanity
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins
in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler who exercises authority over the lower heavens, the spirit now working in the disobedient.
We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.
Rebellion is not just a Jewish problem. It’s not a white problem or a black problem. Its not a liberal problem or a conservative problem.
It’s not a generational problem. It is a worldwide problem. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). I like the way one commentator put it,
“Rejection of the gospel, is not a matter of belonging to the wrong race or culture. It is a matter of not wanting God to rule over our lives.”
Because of our sinful rebellion, we are children of wrath and therefore we perish, says Jesus.
What does it mean to “perish”?
What does it mean to “perish”?
The bible says there are two ways to live after you die. One of those ways to live is to perish. Perishing is not a popular topic in the church, or our culture. But Jesus says that those who believe in him will to perish. Well, that implies that those who do not believe will perish. We need to know the consequences of rejecting Jesu if we want to understand and experienced God’s merciful and miraculous love. Let’s consider five ways you perish by rejecting God’s solution to your sin problem.
Perish under God’s Wrath
Perish under God’s Wrath
Wrath is God’s holy anger at those who reject his ways and His salvation that leads to destruction. For example, in Exodus, God had just delivered Israel from Egypt. Moses was summoned to the mountain to receive God’s law. While he was gone, Israel convinced Aaron to create golden calf to worship, which is idolatry. God sees this and
The Lord also said to Moses: “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.
Now leave Me alone, so that My anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
The Lord says in
Look, the day of the Lord is coming— cruel, with rage and burning anger— to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners on it.
The writer of Hebrews says something similar
For if we deliberately sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries.
If anyone disregards Moses’ law, he dies without mercy, based on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
For we know the One who has said, Vengeance belongs to Me, I will repay, and again, The Lord will judge His people.
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God!
Those who perish are destroyed under the wrath of God. What I mean by destroyed is not annihilated, but forever ruined in hell. There is no grace, no mercy, no salvation. You are very much alive and you experience the anger of God for all eternity.
Can anger be an expression of God’s love?
Many in our culture and unfortunately in the church have adopted this idea that God does not get angry. They assume that anger is inconsistent with his love. That is nonsense. You can be loving and angry at the same time. How many parents have had their love for their child express anger at the foolish decisions the child makes? How does a mother feel when her child chooses to indulge in sexual immorality or rebel against their authority or give themselves over to drugs and alcohol? She knows these tings will kill her son or daughter. It angers her because she knows her child is pursing death! Does she ever stop loving her wayward child? If you being evil can be angry and loving at the same time, how much more can a Holy righteous God who loves perfectly express his anger and love at the same time?
Perish under God’s Condemnation
Perish under God’s Condemnation
Jesus says in
Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.
Condemnation is to be declared guilty. It is a punitive judgement. There is nothing that will excuse you or justify your innocence. There’s no new DNA evidence. There is no whistle blower who will come to your defense. There will be no mediator stand stand in between you and God’s justice. Every sinful thought, word, and deed will be judged by God. You will be condemned to hell by your own life and you will agree with God’s verdict.
Perish By God’s Holy Fire
Perish By God’s Holy Fire
God’s fury is often expressed in fire. When God judged Sodom and Gomorrah, he rained down fire on both cities. Those who reject God’s salvation, they will be tormented by fire in hell. Those who take the mark and worship the beast, says John in Revelation 14:10
he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, which is mixed full strength in the cup of His anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb,
Hell is physically painful. The word torment is what the demons feared when they asked Jesus not to throw them in the abyss (Matthew 8:29). It is what the devil and the false prophet will receive when they are finally thrown in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). The lake of fire is where everyone who rejects Jesus will live forever. And they will be tormented day and night with fire.
Perish Separated From God’s Presence and Glory
Perish Separated From God’s Presence and Glory
Right now, everyone on earth enjoys some degree of God’s common grace. Blues skies. Apples Pies. 72 degrees with a slight breeze at Wriggly with the bases loaded. We are easy like Sunday mornings. That is God’s common grace. He’s a good God who gives good gifts to his image bearers. All of that stops when you perish separated from God’s presence and Glory.
These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord’s presence and from His glorious strength
In the Lord's presence and glory is joy and rest (Psalm 16:11). Jesus, who sits at God’s right hand, can be your joy and rest now and forever if you accept him by faith. But for those who perish apart from Him, they will never enter His rest and their joy will be forever lost. There is no such thing as happy, pleasant, fun, exciting, pleasure in hell. It’s not party, it is a judgement and a commendation.
Perish For All Eternity
Perish For All Eternity
Jesus warns us
“Then He will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me either.’
“And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Luke says there is a great chasm that no one can cross between heaven and hell in Luke 16:26. No one is able to escape the confines of hell. Hell is irreversible.
If you are sitting here today in the darkness of the world, you will perish. You will experience God’s anger and condemnation in hell where you will be tormented by fire forever separated from His rest. This is what Jesus means when he says the word “perish.”
If you believe hell is a place where sin exist and sinners get to indulge in pleasures of the flesh, you are painfully mistaken. If you are thinking you’ve got your sin covered because your a good person or you are counting on your family name or church affiliation or giving, you are mistaken as well. If you don’t believe God is love and can judge you to hell, you are mistaken.
You have a problem. By nature you are child of wrath. You are exiled, outside the kingdom of God. You cannot enter God’s kingdom on your own. If God does not mercifully intervene in a miraculous way, you will remain dead in your sins and will perish forever. You need to be rescued today!
Today is the day of your salvation! It is Christmas! Christmas is the merciful and miraculous intervention you desperately need.
Christmas demonstrates to what extent God’s love will go to rescue sinners from His wrath. John 3:16 says to you
God’s love compelled Him to rescue you from His wrath by sending His unique Son into the world to atone for your rebellion.
God’s love compelled Him to rescue you from His wrath by sending His unique Son into the world to atone for your rebellion.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
God’s Love is Miraculous
God’s Love is Miraculous
Love is God! The apostle John says,
The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Love might be is the most central attribute of God. John tells us that love exists because God exists. It is God’s nature to love and He expresses His love toward his creation and those whom he favors by working for their good. Even more miraculous is God’s love is free standing.
God’s love is unconditional. It does not need anything or anyone to for it to work or exist. God cannot love the world because the world is lovely and worth loving. That would mean that God is deficient and the world adds something that compels God to love it. We’ve already made it clear that the world is in rebellion to God. It is dark and darkness hates light. Furthermore, Paul states clearly in Acts 17:25 that God is not served by human hands as if he needs anything. So his love is not dependent on something good in creation or in us. His love is perfect and stands all by itself. There is nothing you can do to earn more of his love and their is nothing you have done that can hinder God’s love for you. God is love. Christmas is the expression of God’s miraculous free standing love for you.
George Whitfield captures the free standing love of God when he says.
300 Quotations and Prayers for Christmas Love Brought Jesus into Our World
God could not, nor can, receive any additional good by our salvation. But it was love, mere love; it was free love that brought the Lord Jesus Christ into our world.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD (1714–1770)
God’s Love is Merciful.
God’s Love is Merciful.
God loves the world in a special way. Many of you learned John 3:16 with the phrase, “God so loved the word.” This is well and good, however, in translating it that way the word “so” brings our focus so much on the intensity of God’s love (God’s love is intense) verses the manner by which he loves the world. The “manner” is the point the Greek makes, which is what I think John is stressing as well. How did God love the world?
Again, many of you learned John 3:16 as “He gave his only begotten Son.” There has been some dispute about the word “begotten” because it sounds like God made Jesus or Jesus was born in heaven. The word used here is derived from two words mono (one or only) and gennao is begotten. But begotten here is not in the sense of being made or a point of origin. Monogenh carries the idea of uniqueness. Jesus is God’s unique Son. How is Jesus unique? The writer of Hebrews helps you understand Jesus’s uniqueness.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises and he was offering his unique son,
Isaac was not Abraham's one and only son. Ishmael was his first born son and would have had the right to the inheritance culturally speaking.. Isaac, however, was unique in that he served as God’s chosen covenantal son whose family line would eventually bring the Messiah. Isaac was unique not only in his proximity ( the older will serve the younger) but his role (chosen son).
Jesus is God’s unique Son. That is God’s only Son, and his best Son. John says in John 1:14 that the world observed Gods glory in His one and only Son. D.A. Carson notes
“The glory displayed in the incarnate Word is the kind of glory a father grants to his one and only, best-loved Son—and this ‘father’ is God himself.” D.A. Carson
Jesus is the supreme Son. You can feel the weight of Jesus’ uniqueness in
He did not even spare His own Son but offered Him up for us all; how will He not also with Him grant us everything?
Do you see supremacy of Jesus and the depth of God’s love? how Paul says, “If God did not spare his best Son, His supreme Son, how will he not also in His son grant us everything?” There is nothing more valuable than Jesus, and God’s merciful love gave Him for the world.
What does it mean that God “gave” his best-loved son?
What does it mean that God “gave” his best-loved son?
There are three points to consider about God giving His Son to the world.
God gave His Son to take on flesh
The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus had to leave heaven and become human. He left perfection to come to imperfection. He left righteousness to come to unrighteousness. He left justice to come to injustice. He left the most powerful to become the weakest. He left adoration to come to rejection.
God gave His Son to Be rejected
He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.
The light came into the dark and the darkness rejected Him. What did his rejection look like? I can’t help but think of
He grew up before Him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at Him, no appearance that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; He was despised, and we didn’t value Him.
Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.
God gave His Son to Atone for sin
For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
He took on flesh in order to be a sacrifice for our sin. Because life is in the blood, the shedding of blood is what is needed to atone for sin. In the Old Covenant, animals were sacrificed on an alter as a sin offering. Their blood was not able to cover the sins of humanity. The only sacrifice that would be able to cover our sin is a Holy sacrifice from heaven. It had to be God himself. So, God lavished his love on the world by giving his best loved Son, who was perfectly holy like himself, to take on flesh, be rejected by sinners, and die on a cross to atone for our sin.
Merciful & Miraculous
Merciful & Miraculous
God’s love is merciful in that instead of judging all of humanity to perish in hell, God exercised his merciful love at great cost to himself by sending his best loved Son into the world to take on flesh, be rejected, and dies on a cross. God poured out the wrath that humanity deserved on His best loved Son so that we would not perish but have His best love forever. He did not do this because we are worthy. He did it because His love is merciful.
God’s love is miraculous in that it is free standing and unconditional. It is not derived from anything you and I can give God. The world does not know love like this apart from God. It miraculous in the manner by which God chose to express his love. No king would ever leave his throne and become one of his subjects, let alone surrender himself to them to die on a cross for their redemption. And yet, the One true God of heaven did that very thing. Heaven and earth had to have stood in awe on Christmas morning!
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
The Merciful & Miraculous Love of God is Experienced By Faith
The Merciful & Miraculous Love of God is Experienced By Faith
God’s salvation love has a stipulation. Jesus says that “whoever believes in Him.” The whoever refers to whoever. Both Jew and Gentile are welcome to hear the good news and believe in Jesus. It is only by faith you can receive God’s salvation love. Jesus
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in Him will have eternal life.
Jesus is referencing Numbers 21:6-9. God’s people had complained in their heart against God. He judged them by sending poisonous snakes that bit them. God’s people were Pershing and cried out to Moses to be saved. God said in order to be saved they must look upon a bronze snake that Moses lifted up on a pole. As one commentator put it
“Deliverance from God’s wrath was brought about through faith in God’s miraculous and merciful intervention.”
Jesus is God’s merciful and miraculous intervention for sinners. You must put your faith in Him to deliver you from God’s wrath and experience is merciful and miraculous love.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
Christmas is about God lavishing his love on the world by giving his best loved Son as a sacrifice to atone for your sin so that you can experience his merciful and miraculous love now and forever. Let that reality overwhelm you this Christmas. When you get up on Christmas morning and revel in the joy of gift giving and receiving, let that moment lift your heart up to God in thanks for His merciful and miraculous love given to you in His best loved Son, Jesus the Christ.