Sunday, May 1, 1994

John 3:16  For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

	To many of us, this was one of the very first scriptures that meant something. It is spoken as the Word of God to sinners, in order to show them the great Love of God to usward. It is an anthem of the very love of God in order to save creatures, such as we, unto Himself. We use it over and over again as a means of expressing what the Bible would have to say to all sinners in need of salvation. Then, after our conversion experience, it serves to comfort in those times of depression, when we feel that we have no friend in the world.
	Following a period of time, however, many of us begin to look at this precious scripture as merely the beginning point of our spiritual walk with God. We tend to feel that it is necessary for us to graduate from it into a deeper understanding of what God would have for our lives. This verse becomes relegated to the aspect of a conversion scripture, and then left alone as we seek after more spiritual growth in our beings.
	It is very true that there should be a spiritual growth and development in our lives as we learn to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ on a daily basis. There is no arguing that fact. It is also true, as the beloved Apostle tells us, that we are to put away childish things. The scripture is the sustenance of all Christians at every age of their spiritual and physical walk on this earth. The Holy Spirit reveals truths of spiritual import to each one of us through a variety of scriptures which all serve to point to Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. The youngest Christians are shown Christ in a manner in which they can learn to come into a greater relationship with Him. Adolescent Christians are shown the facts of life through the Christ who suffered all that we endure, and overcame everything that does so easily beset us. Middle-aged Christians find the ways of the Lord in the times of stressful responsibilities and duties. Advancing Christians are shown the joy of Christ in His victory in a daily walk with Him in friendship and comfort. Every verse, at any time, can speak to any Christian at any age through the working revelation of the Holy Spirit. He makes the Bible to be the Book of Life, livingly manifested in the lives of those who come to Him. This fact serves to remind us that a particular scripture cannot be classified simply for a specific purpose and for no other. What one person receives from the Word is determined by the working of the Holy Spirit, as that individual takes the Word into his or her heart and asks for guidance and leading in the Word. 
	This does not mean that studying the Word together, as a fellowship is unnecessary or of little worth. Rather, the study of the Word of God allows the Holy Spirit to speak to the hearts of many as they are before Him in a prayerful yearning after Him to make the written word to be the Living Word in each and every heart. As we gather together, we are opening our hearts for Him to speak life into our beings. Some may find that life in the introduction of a study, to met a pressing need of that day. Others may find that the Word is stored up for a future time of need, and others may simply feast on the lavished goodness of God as Christ is preached, the sustenance of each one gathered to hear the Word, the Bread of Life.
	As well, involved in the study of the Word of God is the spiritual exercise that the study entails. It is a matter of learning to judge what is said. It is not a judgment in terms of how it was delivered and did it appeal to the masses, or to my specific need of this day. It is a judgment founded in taking the message before the Holy Spirit for Him to say aye or nay in our beings. Does the testimony of the Holy Spirit correspond with what is being shared? This is an exercise that all Christians needs to have in the hearing of the Word of God. 
	Please hear this very clearly, We are NOT talking in terms of whether we agree with what is shared. We have each had those times, when we have heard the Word that knocks against our preconceived notions of what is or isn't true. The Holy Spirit buffets against our concepts and our ideas until they crumble under the weight of the revealed love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Sometimes, in our selfish disobedience, we refuse to listen to what the Word of God is speaking to our hearts because we just do not want to give in. This is when the Word of God so effectively convicts in order to bring about a change of heart on our part. We may not agree with the Word at the time, or we may try to argue against it with any manner of psychological contentions, but it will never change the truth of Christ in the Word. 
	Again, we are not advocating any judgment in terms of something that we don't like, but instead, a rightful judging of whether what is being presented as the Word of God is fully in line with the Word as revealed by the Holy Spirit. This requires a constant time before the Lord in taking the presented message to the scriptures and allowing the Holy Spirit the freedom to validate or blow against that spoken message. Any minister of God, who truly seeks after the Lord to speak to the church through each given message, will not be afraid of this scrutiny of the prepared messages, but would beseech the hearers to take every message, every word of the lesson to the scriptures and, by the Holy Spirit, spend time in exercising that judgment of is this in line with Christ or not. If it is not in line with Christ, then refuse to ingest it. If the Holy Spirit substantiates the message, even if it goes against our prior ideas of what we thought was true, then embrace it and give ourselves to the Holy Spirit to make it life in us.	
	This is a faculty that the Holy Spirit seeks to make a part of every Christian. Not an ability to discern on our own, but rather the ability to take everything to Him and to listen to Him, to the Holy Spirit, as He validates the Word of God. This requires, not only an open heart before Him, but a knowledge, a growing knowledge of the very Word of God in order to be able to put the scriptures before the Lord for Him to open them into our beings.
	This brings us back to the scripture before us this evening. What many Christians regard as merely the beginning of God's work, and, unfortunately for some, the fulfillment of their lives through salvation alone, has been classified in this verse. They limit the work of the Holy Spirit to simply settle for a basic knowledge of this passage in the terms of salvation and what a great salvation that alone presents.
	But, to consider this verse before the Holy Spirit, is to see far more than just the being saved from Hell to an eternity in Heaven. Please be mindful of the fact that we are not diminishing that great aspect of God's love to usward in any measure. A just contemplation of what God has accomplished in His great outpouring of Love to us will take the entire eternal ages to come, a reason for the eternal life that we now have by virtue of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This tremendous aspect and character of God is firmly rooted in this passage, as has been told and re-told for generations of Christian believers. But please, do not stop your consideration of this precious passage at that point alone, as if to button-hole it simply in the salvation message. There is more, far more if we will but open our hearts to the Holy Spirit.
	Consider the truth that this passage contains the difference between light and darkness within its promise of eternal life. In today's realm of so-called enlightened thinkers, the premise that is being hurled at each of us wherever we are or go is that all religions are basically the same. They all serve to provide a means whereby men and women can soothe their needs for some sort of spiritual guidance and activity. The idea pushed at schools, upon our young people, is that all religions are to be tolerated because they are helping human beings fulfill the same essence of attending to the basic emotional compulsions of finding themselves and ways of becoming better human beings. According to the world, whether the individual follows the teachings of Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha, Hinduism, or Jesus doesn't matter because they were all good men who were trying to establish a better path for humanity. The key, according to the world, is the human effort to make it to a better place, whether through reincarnation, or to Nirvana or to Heaven. This is the lie of humanity apart from Christ, apart from John 3:16. The effort and the results are placed in the hands of man and man's abilities to make things, including oneself better.  All these other religions are based on what human beings are capable of doing through meditation, rituals, self-discovery, and following religious laws. 
	John 3:16 sets the difference of Christ plainly before the eyes of those who try to accommodate any other system of belief. For God so loved the world that He gave... There is no avenue of human effort involved in the life that we are called unto in Christ Jesus. The effort was a divinely ordered path followed by the very begotten Son of God for the eternal benefit of those who would but believe in Him. That is it! We are not asked to live by a code of ethics, or by rituals or any other such decree of human ability. We are not required to die a thousand deaths in striving for some type of increasingly elevated relief through this world order. There is nothing that we did, neither can do to earn our salvation. There are none of us who deserve it in any manner. It is as simple as the fact that God so loved us that He gave His very Son to redeem us unto Himself. The action was never from our inner self to some higher being, but from God to usward. He is active and we are the recipients of His great love.
	This truth sets Christianity far apart from all the manipulative religions that man's deceptive desire after godhood has created. No other religion is based on the simple truth of the Living God redeeming us, as sinful creation unto Himself through the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
	In a perversely pursuant realm that desires to snare anyone who is apart from God, this verse holds forth a reality that we need to have settled in our hearts. Human efforts are but camouflage for desiring to be as gods unto ourselves. Set that false sense of having to earn our salvation aside and open our beings to the Love of God in Christ Jesus, the only begotten of the Father. This is the truth, not just unto salvation of our souls, but each and every day of our lives. As we face the regular onslaughts of this realms attacks on those who belong to Christ, where does our salvation rest? Is it on our shoulders, to remain committed to the bitter end? Are we called to fight the good fight and hold on until that day of judgment, by the very skin of our teeth? Are we so insecure that we are afraid that we might not make it to the end, that we might succumb to the pressures of this realm and fall away from the outstretched hand of God? There are those who feel that, even as Christians, God expects us to do our part. That He has reached out His hand to usward, and expects us to reach our hands to Himward, and that we will meet somewhere in the middle, through His grace and our effort. Then, once the connection is made, we are always in danger of falling if we loosen our grip on the Hand of God. What a miserable and unBibical existence that creates for these souls who would put any trust in themselves whatsoever. More willingly, He expects our cooperation and our obedience which derives its power and strength from the Holy Spirit to carry us through to His glory. As this verse proclaims, in the very voice of God FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE... THAT HE... Nothing of us, just Christ in an infinite expression of love and grace and mercy. Christ, by the desire and the will of the eternal Godhead chose to make a way for us to know God in all His fullness, and for eternity.
	  The next voice of the Holy Spirit seen in the passage is that we are loved of God, not because of anything we have done, or will do, or should do. We are loved of God because He loves us and for no other reason. For God so loved the world... Why should God give any consideration to those who have deliberately sought after their own way in this defiled realm,? That is a mystery of the fact that God is love and can do nothing but give expression to the reality of Himself. Everything about Him proclaims Love in everything that He does, and in every manner in which He expresses Himself to those who respond and to those who refuse Him. He so loved the world that He made a way for anyone, from the lowest socioeconomic strata of society to the wealthiest of individuals to receive Him in Christ. From the depths of the prisons to the heights of the moral watchdogs, all are free to receive the Lord Jesus Christ, if they will but receive the perfect Gift of Love, given by God, and expressing the very being of God in perfection. 
	This expression of God in giving is not limited to the glorious expression of love in Christ at the cross. Our daily lives are now part of the manner in which God makes known the blessing of Himself through Christ. As we live, so Christ in us is expressed to others in manners which will cause them to seek after God. They will want to receive what we have received and they will inquire after God because He continues to live and to give through us. Again, this is not a matter in which we are in control by any means. Wherever we think we are able to do anything of our own abilities, there God will work to show that it is no longer we that live, as stated so elegantly in Gal. 2:20, but Christ Who lives in us. Each expression of love is His expression through us, His body on earth. This means that we are now living evidence of the verity of John 3:16. God is giving today as He gave almost 2000 years ago. Christ is as actively manifesting God's love through His church as He did on the cross of Calvary. What was evidenced then is livingly declared today as He lives His life in us.
	Not only this, but we are daily recipients of the love of God through Christ as we seek after Him to continue to live His life in us. It isn't just others who benefit from the grace of God given in Christ to usward, but the entire church receives life as we draw from the well spring of the water of Christ's life. As we have evidenced over and over again, we are no longer able to survive apart from Christ in this realm. We are dependent upon Him to be our very sustenance as we face each new day's challenge to the expression of Christ. Sure, we are living in this realm, but our every aspect is in line with the life of Christ as He leads our steps. There are those who feel that this requires an extraordinary amount of human endeavor, but that is absolutely not the case. Rather, we are simply to be obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, as He makes known in our hearts, moment-by-moment, the way in which we should go.
	As a matter of fact, we are removed from any requirement of our self effort through the giving of the Love of God. Even as we live on this earth, with all the assaults of the enemy, we are secure in Christ Jesus. We are covered in His complete Victory over death and over all the elements of this world which so fully besiege us. There is nothing that is required on our part except to live in the assurance of the very Son of God Who loved us to the uttermost. This, too, is held within the quickening context of our present text.
	As well, we are not only receiving the Love of God as the course of our daily walk on this earth through Christ, but we are also receiving the sent love of God in our hearts as a relationship which transcends the understanding of those about us. We are being raised into the relationship that supersedes the idea of Creator with His creation, and even God with His people, as wonderful as that truth entails. God, out of the rich graces of His mercy in Christ Jesus, has delighted to send His only begotten Son to make us alive unto Himself for all of eternity. You see, this life could have taken the course, and it would have been a righteous course, of creation in service unto God for all the eternal ages to come. There would have been validity in God bringing the saved of His creation to the throne of grace and granting them the mercy to be servants in His house, removed from the filth of this realm to work as the least of His servants in the courts of the Lord. That condescension would have entailed far more grace than any of us deserve. But with a Love far transcending even that glorius idea, God chose rather to redeem us, not into servitude, but into His very family, as fellow heirs of His eternal riches, through the obedience of His only begotten Son. This is eternal life, that we come into a living relationship with our Heavenly Father through the sacrifice, through the service of His only begotten Son to usward. Consider this aspect of the Word before us. God so loved the world that He gave His Son, not to enslave the world through His Holiness and Justice, but to love the world into His very family. We are removed from the filth of this sphere, and set before the throne of Holiness, clothed in the robes of Christ's righteousness, with an inheritance of an eternity in the presence of God our Heavenly Father. In His presence, we are lavished with all the treasures of the Godhead through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
	To consider this verse with any less significance than the very heart of the Triune Godhead set in motion to bring us into the relationship of life in Christ is to overlook the majesty of God. This verse contains the basis of defining the purpose of God in sending His Love into a corrupt world in order to redeem His creation and to transform that which is unworthy into His very family. It holds the truth that we are to live in utter reliance upon Him to be our life, now and evermore. Relegating this truth to anything less, is to miss the Heart of God to usward by the Holy Spirit, in sending His only Begotten Son.
	For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
 in our lives as we learn to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ on a daily basis.