LIFE – JOHN 3:16

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We’ve been looking at Scriptures that tell us very clearly what God wants us to do.
This morning we look at a Scripture that tells us very clearly what God has done, what he is doing, and why. And then of course it sets a clear path for us.

John 3:16 – The Book Chapter and Verse is probably better known that the Scripture itself.

• Wrestlers and Athletes have used some version of it to make a statement – or they write it on their glare strips
• Rainbow head at the sports match
• You can see it on road signs – (you really shouldn’t look up Bible references while driving).

Stand and read it together ...

John 3:17, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him."

1. God’s love leads to life –
   1. Because God loves us, we have life. We have abundant eternal life.
   2. God’s love through us and being shared among us means life.
   3. Christianity thrived despite persecution and suspicion because the believers lived out God’s love. They cared for the poor, they adopted children that were abandoned, they cared for the sick.
   4. Even in our modern times, things change when God’s people live out the love of God – a courageous love that takes risks to demonstrate just how much God cares about saving life!
      1. Heart to Heart Pregnancy Support Center – It really isn’t about the materials and supplies – things that you can list on a spreadsheet – It is about people who are willing to live out God’s love ... and that leads to life.

2. Why should anyone perish?
   1. Whoever believes in Christ shall not perish, but have eternal life
   2. Believing in Christ means more than accepting that he is real.
   3. It does mean accepting who he says that he is – but if you accept that, then your life cannot stay the same.
   4. Believing means “faithing” – a better English thought might be trusting
   5. We perish when we fail to trust Christ.
   6. We can do that through rejection.
   7. Or we can do it through fear - “Can being saved really be as easy as just accepting God’s love?”
      1. The Orlando church that exploded an anonymous gift
         May 08, 2010, by Susan Jacobson, Orlando Sentinel
         
         Here's how suspicious we've become in the post- 9/11 world.
         A cardboard box left at a church near Lake Mary caused the closure of Markham Woods Road while a bomb squad X-rayed it and then blew it up. The note on the 40-pound bundle said, simply, "For Pastor Nick." In the old days, someone would have taken it inside and opened it. But a church member who found the package on the doorstep about 11 a.m. today thought the corrugated box secured with duct tape might be dangerous. He drove it from Master's Touch International Church, 555 Markham Woods Road, to a nearby fire station to have it checked out. The Seminole County Sheriff's Office bomb squad couldn't figure out what was inside even after the box was X-rayed. So, deputies blew it up. "It didn't look normal," sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Cannaday said. "That's all we knew." The result: More than $2,500 in paper money was turned into confetti. Four hundred ninety-eight rolled silver dollars remained intact, Cannaday said.
      2. They drove it to authorities, they X-Rayed it, and they still didn’t trust it.
      3. Why? FEAR. (I don’t know that we wouldn’t do the same)

3. Our mission is to save, not to condemn.
   1. God did not send his son to give his life just so he could wag a finger at us and cluck his tongue.
   2. If God wanted to destroy us, if God was our enemy, we wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t stand a chance
   3. It was not Christ’s mission to destroy – he came to save.
   4. How then does the church ever assume that it is our mission to condemn, when Christ would not?
   5. When we spoke to the director of Heart to Heart we asked if their clients had church support and could we offer it. What they all want to know is – “Will I be judged?”
      1. I said “Absolutely Not.”
      2. Let us love as courageously as our Lord did.

Chris Benjamin

West-Ark Church of Christ, Fort Smith, AR
Morning Sermon, 9 May 2010

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