Well, good morning once again. You’re in the right place at the right time.
And, you know, Jesus is here and anything can happen.
Amen. That’s why we gather. We’re not here to provide you just a place to go on Sunday morning.
Amen. We’re here to have an encounter with God.
And, you know, I just appreciate you guys coming out this morning, the last Sunday of 07,
getting ready for the beginning of 08 and looking forward to all the great things that God’s doing.
Hope you guys had a great holiday. Still some more holiday left.
Hope you got a good time just making memories with your family, relaxing, resting some,
and just getting ready for this great year that lays ahead.
I want to invite everybody out next week.
We’re going to kind of kick off the year with just going to cast a little bit of vision,
give you some direction as a church, some things that God’s put on my heart for the upcoming year.
Going to touch on it just a little bit next week.
And I want you to come on out and experience that and see that and be a part of that next week as well.
We’re excited about today. We have a very special guest with us.
And by now, most of you are pretty familiar with him.
Dr. Hunt’s going to be bringing the word here in just a minute.
And so, you know, amen.
In anticipation of that, I’ve got to set him up a little bit.
He needs no introduction, but I know.
But, you know, during the holidays, he has family in San Antonio.
And so during the holidays, as he comes down and I find out about it,
because we keep up pretty good and I appreciate my friendship with him.
And so when he’s here on the holidays, I’m like, hey, what are you doing on the 30th?
I don’t want to take up all his family time, but I asked him during Thanksgiving,
I said, hey, can you preach when you’re here over Thanksgiving?
And he graciously accepted.
And I said, you know what, I don’t want to cut in.
I want you to rest and relax.
And he said, you know,
this is what really refreshes me, preaching and bringing the word.
And so, really, I’m doing this for him this morning,
just because of my great love for him.
I want him to be refreshed and refilled before he has to head back to icy,
cold Joplin, Missouri here in a few weeks and back to Messenger College.
But we’re really blessed this morning.
A great friend of Tree of Life and part of the family here, actually.
And so he’s going to bring the word this morning on love.
It was 9 o’clock.
It was just fantastic.
And so, you guys, I really want to encourage you guys as a church.
Let me coach you as a pastor for a second.
Man, really open up your heart.
And really pull on the gift in Dr. Hunt.
And get your pen and your notebook out.
And if you can’t keep up with the scriptures on the screens or whatever,
you know, make sure you’re writing down notes for you,
because it’s so rich and so good this morning.
It’s really going to bless you and minister to you.
And so, really pull on the gift.
But I don’t want to take up any more time,
but let’s give a big Tree of Life welcome to Dr. Hunt as he comes to preach the
word this morning.
Amen.
Amen.
Oh, you’re very kind.
We just don’t know which kind.
Oh, boy.
It’s good to be back here again.
And have my grandson, Ethan, with me here as well.
And my new grandson, who was born December 9.
Yes.
Yes.
He is.
He is in the back somewhere.
But I saw him.
I lost my place.
Isn’t that so?
Here we go.
It’s good to be again with you and with Brother Don and his good family.
And we came across each other back in the year 2000, it was.
And God knit our hearts together.
And we’re thankful.
Thank you for that, and staff, and whatnot.
I want to teach, preach this morning again on John chapter 3, verses 16 through 21.
John 3, 16, we know very well.
We can all probably cite it.
And we yank that right out of a context, you know, and don’t consider anything else that’s
in the paragraph.
But the paragraph starts with verse 16 and goes to the end of verse 21.
So I want to fuss with that.
But before I get straight into that, at least,
at least half of what I want to deal with is outside of that, is setting it up.
And I want to go to 1 Corinthians 12 and the last verse there.
Actually, that verse, well, just the last verse there.
I want to fuss with that a little bit.
And then we need to set up John 3, 16 and place it in a larger context of everything.
Is that okay with y’all?
We try to do that.
Father, we’re thanking you for this opportunity to break forth.
Your word.
And I’m asking for an anointing for this service, not for the last service, but for
this service, Lord, a good one for this one, and that your will will be done and that you
would anoint me to pull out of this passage again, that which you would have these people
to have, anointing on these people to receive it.
And Father, we’re asking that you change us as a result of having been in this place
today.
Everybody says together, amen.
Now, if I recall.
Well, and I do recall correctly, last time here, I was bragging about how Ohio State
beat Michigan.
Yeah, sure.
Let’s hear it.
Well, January 7, there’s a showdown between LSU and Ohio State.
And our two kids, Tracy, our son, and Heidi, our daughter, are alumni from LSU.
And my loyalties have to go with Ohio State, of course.
So it ought to be an interesting night that night.
Let’s see what happens.
But I just hope and pray Ohio State doesn’t lose so I don’t have to be embarrassed.
But if I have to be embarrassed, it’s good to be embarrassed with family, those who love
you, correct?
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, in that last verse, that I show you a more excellent way.
I have been doing some digging lately.
The last several.
The last several months into love, God’s love.
And I’ve consulted a number of passages in the Bible that deal with that.
Paul deals with it very well, as you know.
1 Corinthians chapter 13, of course, he sets it up out of chapter 12.
John deals with it out of John 3, 16 of verses 21.
And he deals with it in different places in his gospel, but especially in his epistles.
He deals with God’s love.
He says, God is love.
He said, love is not that we love God, but that he loved us.
That’s love.
That’s an interesting thought right there that we have to leave for some other time.
But Paul says, I want to show you a more excellent way.
There is a more excellent way to live, just life in general.
And there is a more excellent way to live a good Christian life.
And that is love.
And we want to define some of those words as we get into it.
But when Paul says, I want to show you a more excellent way,
it would probably be good to understand just what he’s getting at,
and then we’ll fuss with that some.
Is that okay with y’all?
You’re good.
To show somebody is to point out or declare.
So we’re declaring this way as a more excellent way.
But a more excellent way is like a hyper way.
It’s to overthrow somebody.
Something to overdo it.
To extend beyond a boundary.
A theological term for that could be to transcend.
God is a transcendent being.
So what he does is, he does it like that.
It’s to overkill or to overthrow.
I use as an illustration in the first service this.
I’ll use it again.
That when I was a little critter back in Ohio,
we used to like to go to the Cleveland Indian baseball games back in the early,
the mid, early 60s probably, when I was in a little league back then.
And we used to sit out in center field, left center field, right center field for the cheap seats.
They were 50 cents in those days.
We went to a Cleveland Indians game for 50 cents.
That was in the days I remember watching some interesting critters back then.
One of them was Rocky Calavito.
Anybody remember that name at all?
Yeah, yes.
They traded him to the Detroit Tigers.
I remember that, and I was very disappointed.
When they did that.
But I remember there was a fly ball, a line drive hit to him in the outfield.
Nobody thought that he would ever throw the base runner out at home plate.
But he did.
He picked that ball up from the ground, reared back and heaved that probably as hard as he could.
It would be certainly overextending my boundary.
Fired that sucker in all the way from deep outfield into home plate,
and the catcher caught it and tagged that critter out at the plate.
That’s like it is for an overthrow.
Are you with me?
This way of living is an overthrow way of living is what we’re talking about.
In other words, it can’t be outdone.
There’s no way to outdo the way that Paul is going to talk about, all right?
And that way, the word way means a means of access.
Now, we’re talking about love as the higher way, as the overthrown way, if you will,
as a means.
Love is the entry point or the means of access into all that God has Himself
and what He has for us too, and relationship with one another, by the way.
Love is the means of access.
The way can be referred to a direction of a journey.
There is only one way to journey through this Christian life,
and that way is the way of love.
It can refer to a systematic course of pursuit or action or doctrine or whatnot.
But I show you a more better, a more excellent way, Paul says.
And then he goes on into chapter 13 and delineates the concept of love.
But I’m going to jump out of there and go to John 3.16 and put,
this is the more excellent way, that God so loved the world as a more excellent way.
In fact, God saw that as a more excellent way.
Way back in eternity.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
so that each person who would believe into Him,
and I’m going to talk about that in a little while,
believe into Him should not perish but have eternal life
at the very moment they accept the Lord as their Savior.
It’s a powerful statement.
That is a more excellent way to live.
Would you not agree?
God’s focus is sending Jesus to this world to redeem it.
But underneath all of that and juxtapositioned beside that
is also another concept that I refer to as bad news.
We’re going to have a lot of good news today,
but we’re going to deal with some bad news first.
And that bad news has to do with evil.
The reason why Jesus,
Jesus came is to defeat evil.
Evil existed in this world.
It existed in humanity.
It existed all through its structures.
It is still in the world.
On 9-11 of 2001,
we experienced some of that evil in this country,
in New York City and in Washington, D.C.
Yes, that was an expression of evil, that action was.
And there are a number of expressions.
It’s not limited to just that, though.
We have a tendency sometimes to think that that’s a great evil
done to this country, and it was.
But God help us if we just think of it like that
and think of it like it’s us against them or it’s they and us.
Evil goes a whole lot further than just that.
That is an evil, but I would suggest to you
that not only is there a universal evil,
there is also an evil in God’s own people.
For example, when we look at the Old Testament,
how the Old Testament deals
with evil, it deals with it in terms of universals,
first of all, and that is the universal fall of humanity.
Humanity was born, of course, perfected
in a perfect relationship with the Lord.
It fell, and evil entered into life,
entered into this world.
And that’s a universal fall of humanity,
so we have a universal evil.
Not only that, but the Bible talks about a Satan
who is the purveyor of this evil.
They talk about a Satan who is the purveyor of this evil.
It talks about him as an entity, a spiritual entity.
And it’s hard to get our fingers really on precisely what that is,
but we know he is an entity, a force, if you will,
I hesitate to use that word,
but a power of evil in this universe.
He is the ruler of darkness is where he resides.
The prince of the power of the air is described in some other places.
But there is an evil.
There is a universal evil.
Not only that, but to remedy that,
to begin to remedy this evil,
God calls out Abraham to establish a people
through whom God would bring a deliverer
to redeem his people.
Israel was to be that channel
through whom God would win the world to himself.
But in that channel through whom God would win the world,
in his own people, there is a line of evil as well.
I would suggest that in the church world today,
there is also a line of evil.
But it doesn’t stop there.
It reaches out to every human being as well.
I would suggest that there is a line of evil
to some degree or another in every individual that exists.
What about the line of evil that sometimes runs through us,
given the right occasion for that to be expressed?
We need to deal with that.
The church as well needs,
needs to learn to say something like this.
Lord, have mercy on us, a sinner.
That’s the right approach to God.
Do we not agree with that?
The gospel deals with evil too.
When we get to the gospels and the world situation then,
remember that the Bible says,
Jesus came at the fullness of time.
When the cup of iniquity was full to overflowing,
Jesus came.
When evil was at its greatest,
Jesus came.
And we could talk quite a bit about that in different ways,
but there’s not enough time to pull everything out of there.
But to say this,
when Jesus came,
political powers of the world were at a full height of arrogance.
Rome was very arrogant.
In fact, the political potentates in Israel were very arrogant.
The Israeli zealots were very arrogant.
Politically speaking, it was very arrogant.
Ecclesiastical power,
political powers were at a height of arrogance too.
The Sadducees on one side and the Pharisees on the other side,
and then we have the Essenes and the zealots,
this, that, and the other.
That was at a height of arrogance as well.
Ecclesiastical arrogance is not dead.
It’s still alive in the world today.
There was demonic power that Jesus faced in his day.
And so that line of good and evil existed and even existed,
even in his disciples when they began bantering about
who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom,
who was going to sit at Jesus’ right hand,
and all of this kind of stuff.
Jesus, they’re not doing church the way we would church.
Should we go over and ask God to send fire down on them?
That is real love.
That’s real love.
So the Gospels deal with that downward spiral of evil.
And that is bad news.
So in the Gospels,
evil is portrayed as anti-creation.
And it is.
Evil is anti-creation.
Evil is anti-life.
It is against life.
But God is for life.
Who do you think is going to win?
God is going to win.
He has already won.
But evil is the force that opposes God.
Evil is the force that tries to destroy humanity
who was created in the image of God.
The image and likeness of God.
And evil results in death.
And death is the last enemy of humanity.
But Paul says that has been taken care of.
John says it too.
I show you a better way, says Paul.
John says,
For God so loved the world
that He sent His only begotten Son
so that each person who would believe into Him
should not be deceived.
Not perish, but have eternal life.
That’s good news, is it not?
Now we need to fuss with this love just a little bit.
Is that all right?
What does it mean that God loved the world?
Now when we use the word love,
it could mean any number of things
because we only have one word for love.
We need to get a little more specific
when we’re talking about
what do we mean that God loved the world?
Which Greek word would He have used for that?
And there are four.
So let me share them with you.
Is that all right?
Boy, that was a little more weaker.
But we could go to lunch early.
It’d be all right.
First there is eros.
Eros is the name of a god.
A Greek god.
He was the god of compulsion.
So this Greek word for love
talks about being compelled,
compulsion-driven and all that.
Something out of control.
And this word refers to an erotic intoxication.
It’s used to describe all the
temple priestesses and the temple hookers
essentially back in the Greek world.
They were intoxicated with this kind of thing.
So it’s talking about erotic sexual desire and passion.
And this love is very selfish,
very self-centered.
We see a lot of this in the world today.
Most of what is labeled as love is this.
It’s erotic.
It’s erotic.
Then we come to the word storge.
This is the word that we would use around the family.
This is called a family kind of love.
A love that we’d have for relatives.
A love that a parent would have for a child
when a parent snatches that child out of danger.
And this is transactional kind of love.
And then there is philas
or the verb would be phileo.
This is a friendship.
A love that is between friends.
A love that would be between spouses
or kids and parents and relatives and what not.
Employers and things like that.
It is based on common interests.
So we tend to have a phileo love
with those who have some of the same kind of things
they like that we like.
Is that not true?
That we sort of hang out with those people
who have shared interests.
And that’s what this is talking about.
That’s a transactional love too.
It involves somewhat of an obligation.
None of those are the words that Paul uses
or that John is using in his text
or any text that they use.
The word that is used is phileo.
Used of course is the word agape.
And we all have heard that word.
This is, refers to a divine love.
And what is interesting about this love
is that it’s not a passion.
It’s not a desire.
It’s not a lust.
It’s a decision.
Did you know that this love, real love
is a decision that we make?
Back in eternity, God made a decision to love you.
And you know that’s an eternal love.
It’s an eternal decision that will never be changed.
God can’t change it because that’s what He is.
John said, God is love.
Love is not an adjective describing a quality of God.
He has the quality of love.
No, He doesn’t have that at all.
He is love.
Are you listening to me?
He made a decision to love you, to love me,
to love this church, to love this body,
you understand.
So much so did He love you that He gave us His Son
so that whoever would believe into Him
would not perish the way of evil
but have eternal life and live, bless God.
God made a decision to love us.
That decision is irrevocable.
It’s an eternal decision that was made
before anything was ever created.
well knowing humanity would fall, full well knowing all of your faults and defects and mine too,
still God loves us and He is determined to love us. There is nothing can sever us from the love
of God, Paul says. There is nothing can stop God from loving us. There is nothing you can do that
is so bad that God will not love you. He cannot help but love you. That’s what He is. Hallelujah!
That doesn’t mean He likes everything you do.
In fact, He loves us so much He won’t let us get away with it.
So He disciplines us, as the Bible says, a parent who does not love its child will never discipline
that child.
But a parent who loves it will discipline that child. That’s how God brings us along. Hallelujah!
Well, let’s get cooking here some more. It’s a divine love. God has chosen us. This love is very
active towards us, but this love does not seek its own. It gives preference to the person who
is loved. You know that God prefers you? God prefers you. He gives in, in a sense. He gives
preference to that.
He gives preference to that which is loved. You are the one who is loved. He gives preference to
you. How has He done that? He loves us so much. He has given preference to you to such a degree
He gave you His Son. He’s given us all that He has. He prefers us. Isn’t that interesting?
He prefers us. God is good. Hallelujah! And nobody can remove us from God.
Nobody can remove God’s people from His love. That means then this, that God’s love
is the foundation of this world. This world was created out of His love. His love is the foundation
for it. God’s love is the sum total of all that He is towards us. That’s His law. Jesus said the
greatest of all these laws when He was asked that is to love the Lord your God with all your heart
and your neighbor as yourself. That’s the sum total. That’s the sum total. That’s the sum total.
That’s the sum total of everything. It’s the foundation of this world. Now, catch this if we can.
There’s a lot cooking in my head. And sometimes I can get it in sequence. And sometimes if I don’t
deal with it right now, I forget it. And I’m trying, so forgive me. But my mind is just really
askew. But think of this. God’s eternal love as the foundation of the world. God so loved this world.
He gave His Son. That love is the foundation upon which the world is created. It’s like this.
That love is eternal. When John wrote this, for God so loved the world that He sent His Son,
he’s not saying God began loving the world when Jesus was born. He’s not saying that God began
loving the world when He created it or when humanity fell. No. It’s in God’s nature that
is what He is. You get in this deal. When God loved the world as the foundation of the world,
that is an eternal concept. There never was a time, a second, an eon of a moment that this world did
not exist in God’s mind. He eternally knew that creation would fall. Eternally knew it would need
a Savior. Eternally knew that before anything was created. And yet, it’s the love of God that
forced, if you could put it that way, the creation of all things. Hallelujah. His love is the
foundation. Man, we cannot lose. God is involved in this thing, eternally involved in this thing.
Hallelujah. Glory to God. His love is the foundation of our being, the foundation of
this church. Hallelujah. Thank Him for that. And what happens here is when we step over
into the kingdom, if you will, when we accept the Lord as our Savior, when we invest ourselves
into Him, God then puts that love in us, or at least tries to. It may be a whole lifetime
working on it, but He’s working on it. Yes? He’s working on it. He’s working on it.
So we are to be, then, in that we are Him, a new humanity characterized with God’s
love. And this love is transformational. God’s love is transformational. It transforms
us. Now the good news after all this. The good news is this relative to evil and the
love of God. The death of Jesus on the cross has condemned sin and evil. We’ve got to know
that. Evil is condemned. Do we believe that? Every kind of evil is condemned.
God is dealing with evil. He has already the final remedy for evil in the person of Jesus Christ.
When Jesus died on the cross, evil exhausted all its strength that it really had.
Are you with me here? Evil exhausted itself. Jesus took all the evil that could be mustered.
He took it on His body and in Himself. He bared it.
He died. It was buried. But God resurrected it. And that resurrected life defeated that
evil and defeated death. Are you with me here? Evil is doomed. Hallelujah! Evil is
defeated. Sin is doomed. God is the victor here, bless God. And He has given us that
victory. Hallelujah! His love has done it. God so loved the world, He gave His Son to
redeem us, back to Himself, to restore us, and to inject that spirit of love in us that is in Him.
Hallelujah! We are to epitomize that on this earth, bless God. And through that resurrection
out of the dead, we are forgiven. And forgiveness of sins means we are released from death.
Jesus identified evil. We need to identify it wherever it is. We need to name that evil
as Jesus named that evil. He confronted evil face to face. We need to confront it
in the spirit of love. We need to defeat it in that spirit of love. The truth is it’s already
defeated. We have Jesus. It is defeated. And Jesus forgave it. We need to learn to forgive it
too. In forgiving it is our freedom. Forgiveness is a central part of deliverance from evil.
Deliver us from evil, the Lord’s prayer says. Do you know that the key to you being delivered
from evil is to forgiving anybody and everybody that has done anything, said anything, or
whatever it is against you? Do you realize that? The key to us being delivered from evil
is forgiveness. A story comes to mind just now that is not planned for me to insert that
here. And I see that it is a quarter after 12 and now I’m faced with a dilemma. But it’s
a good one. When I was doing graduate work, doctoral work at Nazarene Theological Seminary,
Kansas City, Missouri. There was about 12 of us in a whole, what you call,
two-week module that we spent all day long for two straight weeks in there. Oh boy, that really
was good. But we had on one of these seminars, we had three individuals come in and talk to us.
One was a Jewish rabbi, a liberal Jewish rabbi. Another one was a Buddhist. Oh boy, there’s nothing
more dead end than Buddhism. To hear that, my God, have mercy, what a mess. And then there was the
head of Islamic, the Islamic world in Kansas City. He was in, he was, he came in. Started talking
about Islam and all that. And something began to rise up in me. You know, when you’re sitting in a
situation and something begins to rise up in you, you know it’s God and you don’t want it to be God.
But it is God. Say, God, I don’t want to do this. So you don’t have to, but man, this is what you
need to do. And, uh,
and this, this, this, this, this Islamic guy, and I don’t want to bring division. That’s not my
purpose, but I’m just laying out what it is. Began to talk about this, that, and the other.
And so I felt, and it was really anointed and God came into the place. So I just had to do this. I
said, sir, uh, I, I, I need to fuss with a little bit of something here. You know,
I said, you know, your people are killing my people. And it got real quiet because that’s
not politically correct to say even there. It was not, especially with this guest, but I was,
I wasn’t nasty. I was very calm. Your people are killing my people. You know, he was very surprised.
I said, yes, in Mindanao, Philippines, are, are my brothers there whom some of them I’ve
ministered with here and there are, have been killed by Islamic extremists over there or
whatever, but your people are killing my people over there and burning churches and destroying
our homes, not only in Mindanao, but in Indonesia as well. Many of our pastors,
Pentecostal pastors have been murdered in churches burned by that. I said, and that causes me a
dilemma here. I said, but, but in the process of some of our people being killed in our churches
and homes being burned, some of your mosques were burned and destroyed as well. So I want to tell
you what my people did.
In the United States here, we raised money for X number of months to send over to Mindanao,
Philippines to rebuild. And you know that the first building we rebuilt was a mosque.
When I first heard that news, I had trouble with it. I confess that. I don’t know if I’m
really comfortable with it even now, to be honest with you. But the result was this.
So the first building they built was a mosque. And now your people,
our people, are becoming my people. That’s happened. That’s true. You’re getting the picture
here. Oh, my mercy. That’s a great revival. Muslims are being saved by the thousands over
there. That’s a fact. I ended it up like this. I said, you see, we believe Jesus came and died
for evil. He received all the evil into himself, buried it. God resurrected him. And he did that
because of love.
And when we accept that as our basis of salvation, he injects that love into us,
not only for himself, but for the world. That’s why we rebuilt that mosque first. Do you understand?
Now, my final point is this, my friend. Christianity, this Bible, Jesus, is something
for which we are willing to die, but it’s not something for which we are willing to kill.
Are you with me here? Therein is the…
Therein is the power of love. Yes. It works. Are you getting the picture here? Love is
more powerful. Hallelujah. What we need is a pure demonstration of it, bless God, anointed
by the Spirit. Do you not agree? Hallelujah. That only took five minutes.
Now, verse 16, for God so loved the world that he gave. People who love by the word of God,
by the way, are givers. That’s the expression of love, is to give. The expression of agape is not
to take. It is to give. It’s not to take. It is to give. Blessed are those who give. More blessed.
Do you understand? It’s more blessed to give than to receive. Love, people who love give. They are
givers. So God so loved that. I got to fuss with that. I got to just tell you something about that.
Shoot in there. But the particular word translated this way speaks of eternal design.
And that’s what I want to try and get into your mind today, that this whole thing is an
eternal design. It wasn’t birthed out of time. Are you catching this at all? It’s not a temporal
thing. It’s eternal design. It was eternally designed from the very innards of God, if you
will, that he will love the world. And as a result of that, it is designed that his son would be
given in behalf of the world. Are you catching that at all? It is by eternal design. It’s by
eternal design that we are here today. It’s by eternal design that this church exists.
Hallelujah. It’s by eternal design that Jesus was born and he lived and he died, was buried,
was resurrected and ascended, is alive now at the right hand of the Father and has sent the Holy
Spirit, the Spirit of love, to generate that love within us. Hallelujah.
God has given us a spirit that generates love and not hate. Glory to God. By love will the world
know that you are mine. Bless God. It’s a powerful thing. I show you a more excellent way.
Are you catching it at all? So God loved to such a degree that he gave his only one of a kind son
that whoever would believe into him would not perish but have eternal life.
Oh, the love of Jesus. Glad you sang that. We’ll sing that at the end again, eh?
Oh, the love of Jesus. Oh, the love of Jesus. It sets me free to live.
Not bad word on that end there. Just came just like that. Or just like this. I don’t know.
Powerful. It sets us free to live. It sets us free to live. It sets us free to live.
Now, here’s what we got to do, though. We got to take everything that we are,
everything we have. I’m not talking necessarily material possessions,
but throw that in there, too. That’s nothing compared to you. You understand? God couldn’t
give a hoot.
Less about all that. What he wants is whatever is you. That’s what he wants.
That’s what we’re talking. If he’s got you, he’s got all that anyhow. He’s got you.
Is to take everything we have and come over here and deposit it on the inside of Jesus.
That’s what it means to believe in him. Have you got that? To take everything we are,
everything, all of our hopes, all our desires, all of our faults, all of our failures, everything.
Take it all. Doesn’t matter to him about that. Doesn’t matter to him. His love has already fixed
it. For God so loved the world, he gave a remedy. Here’s what we have to do to get that remedy.
Take all that we are and deposit it right on the inside of Jesus and leave it there.
Bless the Lord. Those people who do that have eternal life. Have you done that?
You’ve got eternal life. Look what else he says in verse 17.
For God did not send his son to bring judgment, condemn, or bring a lawsuit to the world,
but he sent his son that the world might be saved through his son.
God so loved the world before it was ever made. Even in its deformity, before it was ever made,
he loved it. That love made him make it. Are you getting it? Yes. So that he says here,
he didn’t send Jesus then into the world to condemn it. God has no pleasure in bringing
a lawsuit or condemnation, but he sent his son to establish his kingdom here,
a beachhead of love and grace and mercy and reconciliation. Hallelujah. Are you getting the
picture? He says this in verse 18, that the one who believes into him, the one, every person
who takes all that they have and puts it and deposits it inside of Jesus, that person does
not have a lawsuit waiting on him when we get to the end of the age. But he says, every person who
does not do that has a lawsuit. He says, the one, every person who does not do that has a lawsuit
waiting for them already. That lawsuit has already been on them, always will be on them,
he is saying. Now think if you had a heavy lawsuit waiting on you. You wouldn’t live too peaceably
today, would you? I mean a heavy lawsuit where you’re going to lose everything in your life too,
and all your kids and family, they were all going to be destroyed. How would that make you feel?
Couldn’t live too much at peace. That’s a picture of the world. The world is not at peace. You know,
if any place where there ought to be peace, it should be the church.
Is that not where God’s love really should come through?
Oh, I won’t even fuss with what I’m thinking about. But it should be the epitome of love and
peace, is it not? The world is out there. So many times today, you can’t hardly tell the church from
the world. There’s just as much trouble when the church is out. And that’s that line of evil that
we were talking about. The church is out there. The church is out there. The church is out there.
Are you with me here? What overcomes that is the love of God. For God so loved
that he gave. We ought to start giving maybe more. Anyway, let me get back into this.
I’ll get convoluted if I don’t watch myself here. Has a lawsuit already. And here’s why that lawsuit
is there. It’s because they did not take everything they have,
and deposited in the only one of a kind Son of God. Because they don’t do that,
there is a lawsuit waiting. And there’s a heaviness, a heaviness in this world.
He said in verse 19, and this is that lawsuit or the judgment, that light has come into the world.
Emphasis on into. Light does not just come in the world. It’s not just manifested. It gets on the
world. That’s the emphasis of into here. It’s a very important emphasis. God just didn’t put a
flashlight out there and turn it off. No, no. Light came into the world. It penetrated the
world. And the world will never be the same because light came into the world. Read John,
the first chapter of John. So this lawsuit is this, that light came into the world and exposed it.
But men loved, and the word here for love is agape. Interesting.
Interesting. That the writer would choose that word. You know what it tells me is this,
that humanity expresses that kind of love for darkness, but not for God. Think of that.
We express a love that doesn’t expect anything in return, that freely gives and all that towards
darkness and towards our selfish wants, but not that kind of love toward God or toward humanity.
Interesting thought there. I’m not done flushing that out. I got some more, but that’s the beginning
of it. But humanity loved darkness rather than light because the result of humanity living in
this world was evil, intrinsically evil. And then he says this in verse 20,
for everyone who habitually practices, gleefully so, evil. This evil is a different word.
Then the other word for evil. This is a worse word for evil. It is absolutely nothing worth anything
in it. I don’t know how quite to describe it. It’s as bad as what you can think. Who practices that
kind of thing hates the light. It’s either a love-hate thing in a sense. It’s just the opposite.
They hate the light. How can you practice that kind of evil and be children of light? We can’t
do that. Light has nothing to do with darkness. Darkness has nothing to do with light. It’s either
one or the other. So those who habitually practice that, who go after that, hate the light and they
don’t come to the light. They don’t approach the light. They don’t even begin to approach the light.
Now this is a picture really of the world before Jesus came. They weren’t coming to the light.
Everything was a mess. There was no word from God for over 400 years. The church, if we put it in
that sense, the Pharisees, Sadducees, all the, it was, there was nothing. It was darkness until light
came. When Jesus was born, that shook Herod up. Herod, a child of darkness, got shook up when
light was in Bethlehem. To such a degree did he get shook up, he ordered the slaughter of all the
children under two years old. Remember that? Darkness, evil, but light exposed that.
So he says here, don’t approach the light because if they did, that which they have
produced in their life would be laid bare and shown for what it was. But, he says, those who
sign their name or ratify truth the way things really are. That’s what I want to sign my name to.
I don’t want to be deceived. How about you? I want to sign my name to the way things really are,
the truth. Jesus is that truth, by the way. Let your will be done on earth, God, as it is in heaven. Father, that’s the
way. In other words, this, let things be done on earth the way they really are done in heaven.
We need to be practicing that all the time. Don’t you think so? So those who ratify truth
gladly come to the light. They approach the light. They are not afraid of the light.
And they come so that that which they have done will be manifest. A few musicians would come back.
Brian, if you could bring your good crew back here. I appreciate them. They come to the light so that to be
manifested, here’s what will be manifested, that what they do is done in God. What we do needs to be
done in God and not outside of God. Are you with me here? That which this church does, done from within God,
inside of God. You can get the concept there. If it’s done in God, it won’t be destroyed. Nobody can get to it and loosen it.
To do it in God, not outside of God. So we come to the light. Is this all making sense to you?
This Christmas season, God so loved the world. He loves you. Remember, He decided to love you.
And that decision is eternally irrevocable. It came from that side of eternity.
It’s coming through time in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the personification
of God’s love towards us, the expression of it. And it’s taken us on into eternity out there.
It’s the foundation of the world. Hallelujah. So what to do? What are we to do? Look at this last
slide. Belief. Take everything we have and deposit it in the name of His Son, who is Jesus. Yes. So do
that today. It’s love light.
Instead of darkness, instead of evil, ratify the truth, sign our name to the truth, and begin to approach light, which is Jesus.
Learn to love, learn to forgive, to wind this year up like this. Stand with me, if you will. Lead us in that, Brian.
Oh, the love.
Oh, the love.
Sing it with us.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Sets me free.
That line works well. Sing it again. Sing it again.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Oh, the love of Jesus.
Jesus, it sets me free.
Has that love set you free?
If there’s anyone here that hasn’t been set free from that love,
you can be set free this morning.
We’ll pray in a second.
God will set you free.
That love will set you free.
Hallelujah!
For God so loved the world
He sent Jesus to set it free, bless God.
And there’ll be people around the front to pray with you
and to lead you on into that love.
If you need to renew that love,
it’ll be renewed today. Amen.
If you need that love to touch your body,
it’ll touch your body today.
It’ll touch your spirit.
It’ll touch your family.
It’ll change our life.
It’ll change your life all the way through.
Bless God.
Let’s sing that song again as Pastor Darren comes.
Bless the Lord.
Sing it, come on.
Oh, the love of Jesus
Oh, the love of Jesus
Oh, the love of Jesus
It sets me free to live
Sing, there’s power in the love there
There is power in the love of Jesus
Power in the love of Jesus
Power in the love of Jesus
It sets me free to live
I’m going to read the scripture out of Romans for you.
This is what it says in Romans 8.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, shall distress,
shall persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword?
And then verse 38 says,
For I am persuaded, say,
I am persuaded that neither death,
nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth,
nor any other created thing
shall be able to separate us
from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen?
Amen.
We serve a good God.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Father God, we just thank you for your love
that came to this earth, Father God.
We thank you for your love
that was from the beginning of time, Lord, with you
and has always been there
because you were there for us.
You are love, and we thank you
that love cannot be taken from us, Father God.
We cannot be separated from that.
It is impossible.
There is no force or power able to separate us
from your great love, Father God,
because that is who you are.
We thank you, Father God,
that it’s been extended to all of mankind,
that it has come, it has penetrated this world,
it has penetrated our hearts,
and Lord, it has come to bring life, Father God,
and in that life, we find the things
that are fulfilling and that we desire,
which is you.
We thank you, Father God, that you continue,
Lord, to pour out your love
in ways that we have yet to experience
because there is no height or depth
or width to you, Father God,
that there’s always more to be discovered in you,
Father God, because love is greater
than we could ever imagine.
There is more love than we have yet to experience,
Father God, wrapped up in you and your Son.
We thank you, Father God.
It is more than enough,
and even at times, Father God,
it seems like it’s the long, hard way around,
but love never, ever fails.
It never fails, Father God,
because you fail not.
It is impossible, and Lord,
we thank you for the words
that have been spoken and ministered this day.
We believe from you.
We thank you, Father God,
that you seal those on our hearts.
Lord, we take this love
and not keep it to ourselves
or hide that light under a bushel,
but we share it, Father God,
with this lost and hurting world,
that we love them into the kingdom, Father God,
and let them experience their love.
We thank you, Father God, for you
and all you’ve done,
all you’re continuing to do,
and we give you glory and we give you honor.
In Jesus’ name we pray, amen and amen.
Amen, God’s a good God, amen.
Amen, good word this morning, amen.
That was awesome.
If you need prayer,
we want to invite you down.
The elders, staff, and prayer team
will be down here to minister to you.
If you need that, come on down.
If not, man, we love you.
We’ll see you this week.
Have a great New Year’s,
and we’ll see you this coming Sunday, Wednesday night.
Don’t miss it.
It’s going to be great.
We love you, and God bless you.