03/11/2018 - The Heart of the Gospel

To donate to Concord UMC, click HERE.

 

“The Heart of the Gospel”

John 3:14-21

 

• Those very special verses...
  • The Golden Rule
  • The Great Commission
  • John 3:16
    • Our focus: "For God so loved the world..."
      
  • The Context:
    • Jesus has been speaking to Nicodemus
    • Jesus recalls the story of the Israelites, judged for idolatry and bitten by serpents, who only had to look to the bronze serpent Moses placed on a pole to be healed (Numbers 21)
    • In coming to see Jesus at night, Nicodemus had moved from darkness into the light
      
  • The Heart of the Gospel
    • For God so LOVED...           
      • For God IS..
      • Love stretches back through eternity past, BUT God chose to share that love by creating others with the capacity to love each other and to love Him
    • For God so loved THE WORLD...
      • NOT "worldliness!"
      • God so loved every fallen, broken person that has ever been or ever will be; though He hates the evil that we do, he loves each and every person He created so much that He bore our sins in Christ on the cross.
        
    • Are we sharing God's Love?
      • Are we sharing and living the message that God loves everyone He created?
        • Or do we send the message that God only loves some?
        • We are all human. We have our "comfort zones."
        • Christians have a reputation for being a clique. Is that fair? 
      • Are we sharing God's love within our fellowship?
        • John 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you..." How well are we doing this?
        • Christians have a reputation as divisive and combative, with churches splitting even over little things. Is that fair? 
      • Are we sharing the kind of love God has?
        • God's kind of love is not content with those that already share in it.
        • God's kind of love is explicitly self-sacrificing. How many times have we placed our wants before others' needs?
        • Jesus said, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) Many Christians, including Methodists, understand that to mean "perfected in love," so that every decision, every action, has love of God and love of others as its motivation. 
        • Example: In 1st-century Rome they practiced sex-selective infanticide.  Imagine living in a world so callous that the cries of abandoned infants are ignored as an accepted, necessary part of a "modern society."  Then imagine this one, crazy group of people who start to say, "we will take them!  Don't kill them!"  That was a shock to the Roman world that left an impression of God's kind of love.  And such extravagant love went on to transform the world...
        • That is the kind of love that can fill our hearts, our minds, our very lives... if we let it.