[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning everybody You're new here.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're visiting with us today My name is Mike and I'm really glad that you're here with us If you're someone who calls Citizens Church home And welcome back.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's great to see you guys too I go and grab your Bible If you've got it
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be in the Gospel of John, the third chapter, starting in verse 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're taking a look at what is pretty much undisputed as the most famous verse, the most memorized verse in the whole Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God, so love the world that He gives only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: little sentence, so many 24 words in the ESV, but the reason why it's so famous, the reason why it's so well known, why it's so memorizes that this little short verse
[SPEAKER_00]: contains a summary of the doctrine of the whole Bible, in a sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: It describes realities that are both incredibly deep and incredibly wide and incredibly vast described as the motivations of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why God does what He does, the nature of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the destiny of the whole world, the mechanism of salvation, the reason behind the virgin birth, the cross, the resurrection, and even the aim of all of human history.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this all there is?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the point of all of this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anyone out there and if there is, do they care at all?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's gonna happen to me, all in just 24 little words?
[SPEAKER_00]: This verse begins with God's love and ends with eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: These two ideas, God's love and eternal life are central themes for John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both of them,
[SPEAKER_00]: are introduced for the first time in this verse.
[SPEAKER_00]: He connects them together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what does it mean in the God so loved the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're going to take a look at today.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it word love mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I love sushi, I love good board game, I love a good long nap, and I'll get a lot of those nowadays.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this God loved the world like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: If not, then
[SPEAKER_00]: How does he love the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to break this down by looking at a couple of different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the nature of God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: What does God's love actually like?
[SPEAKER_00]: How's it different from the world's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are the recipients of God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: The targets of God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what does it mean for those who receive God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so.
[SPEAKER_00]: This verse says that God gave his one and only son because of something because God so loved the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's motivated by love.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean that God's a love the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: So first, let me just, for those of you guys who are like history nerds or word nerds like, let me walk through what it doesn't really mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a word here that's a little misleading to our modern ears as the words so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now, in 2026, we use the word so as primarily as an intensifier, I'm so hungry, I'm so late.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're so cooked, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's really easy, it's natural to read that God, so love the world means God, love the world so much that He gave us only Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God does love the world so much, that's not wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's absolutely true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what exactly does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, I love, I have a little girl all her names, Talfa, I love her so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's about two and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, but when she was one, I think she was at her most cute because she was super chubby.
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked like she was inflated, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Her arms look like little dinner rolls.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to pinch her little cheeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you're around, like, let's say you've been around a little kitten or a puppy or whatever, it's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, the cuter, something is, like, a more violent than makes you feel, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'll just squeeze.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I could eat you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, whoa, I got to calm down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to hurt her, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is that what's happening?
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to, it's like, so filled.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I don't want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, Jesus, get down there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So overwhelmed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what's happening here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back when the Bible was first being translated in English,
[SPEAKER_00]: weekly if in Tindale and those brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They correctly chose the word so, because the word so in that time meant in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't using so primarily as an intensifier, like Valley Girl speech.
[SPEAKER_00]: They meant in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, like, how do you take your tea?
[SPEAKER_00]: One number, two lumps, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I take it just so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the word so is kept here in John 360,
[SPEAKER_00]: Modern translations in the other places where the King James version uses the word so have have replaced it with what it really means, which is in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me read a couple of King James verses and then show you like how that.
[SPEAKER_00]: is real.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Matthew 512, this is part of the Beatitudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is talking about persecution coming on upon believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: King James says, rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great issue of awarding heaven for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What Jesus saying here isn't man A so persecuted them, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why modern translations, I'll read from the CSB, it says, for that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word so means they persecuted them just like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when that happens to you, don't be shocked, because that same thing happened to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's another place, just a few verses after that, Matthew 5, 16, this is where Jesus is talking about, how no one puts a lamp, you've got to light, you don't hide it under a bucket, under a bushel, you put it up on the lamps and you put it up high.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it says Matthew 5-16, King James Version, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not saying, let your light shine intensely, although that is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, just like the lamp, don't hide your light in the same way that you don't put a light under needs something and raise it up high, let your light shine like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, CSB.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, so where the word so is meant in that way, in an proverbial way, modern translations pretty consistently use in this way or in this manner, or like this or such as, except in John 316.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, pretty much every modern translation keeps God so loved the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's primarily because for literary and heritage and historical reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: The King James is not just a religious book that's important to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is actually one of the things that builds the English language.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much of English phraseology.
[SPEAKER_00]: and constructs come from the King James.
[SPEAKER_00]: And John 360, being the most famous verse, it has a familiar ring for God's sake of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't really want to mess with that because then you get to the Bible your way, and this is not the way I learned it as a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons why this is one of the reasons why I really admire the translators of the CSB, which is a Christian standard Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: For having the courage to take this really important key anchor verse and update it
[SPEAKER_00]: what it means directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The CSB renders John 3, 16 this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God, love the world in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life in this way, he loved the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really important because when it says that God's soul of the world, yes, God love the world so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love is infinite, unbounded.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we read in other scriptures that God's love is great and overflowing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in this verse, it's not primarily talking about the quantity of God's love, but the quality of God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, how much God loves the world, although, of course, it is so much in so infinite.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's telling us what God's love looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the nature of God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the manner of God's love?
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves the world, not by pinching our little fat cheeks or blowing us a kiss.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gives us his only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: The giving of God's one and only son is the manner.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the shape, it is the definition of God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves the world, the whole world, in a specific way, and in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves the world through the incarnation, the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ is only Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way he loves the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is very important because this is totally different than the way the world loves, totally different.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole bunch of different ways and we can talk about love, that's the whole other thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just want to focus in on two ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two main ways that the world loves that is different from the way they got loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can love with a love that cancels and we can love with a love that coddles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll explain like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I have a little daughter, Talitha.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's two and a half years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love her so much and she's in,
[SPEAKER_00]: the thick of the terrible twos.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a pretty obedient and sweet daughter, but man, she just, she is becoming quite a handful, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: She's testing her autonomy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says no to everything even when she wants it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, you want some milk?
[SPEAKER_00]: She goes, no, she'll throw it across the room and she's like, I want milk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what is going on, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the things that I deeply deeply want to do for my daughter is I want to love her well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want her lover with a gospel love.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two ways I can mess that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could love her with a love that cancels.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, a love that costs me nothing and costs her everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or I could love her with a love that coddles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I love that costs her nothing and offers no transformation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me explain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first way, a love that cancels.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could love her in a way where I withhold my love from her, unless she performs exactly the way I want her to perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: and hangs up with only the friends that I choose for her.
[SPEAKER_00]: That she, her behaviors are exactly in line with what I demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: She never strays from anything that I tell her to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, I would hold my love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would hold my approval, I would hold my affection when she has to come crawling back and earning her way back into my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of love cost me nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It costs her everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It demands everything of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not a biblical kind of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the way that Satan loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the way that Satan offered to love Jesus in his third temptation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, bow down to me and serve me, and I will give you the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: You in this room may have experienced that kind of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who said they loved you could have been a parent or a teacher, a spouse, demanding everything of you that you must earn your way into love.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other way, I get to the other opposite stream, a love that coddles.
[SPEAKER_00]: This love would cost my daughter nothing, but also would not change her at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, Talfa, you are just the perfect little angel, perfect princess.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a school called and said you slapped your teacher in the face, but I'm sure she deserved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, teachers, I don't want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're perfect just the way you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't hurt me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is a kind of unconditional love that is so poisonous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a healthy biblical love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I doesn't love this this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Loving my daughter with the first kind of love, a canceling love that demands everything from her would teacher to be an insecure teacher to be unhealthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: When things start to go wrong, she would learn to hate herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would be unable to relate to herself in a life-giving healthy, godly way.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would experience with this verse called perishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, loving my daughter with a coddling sort of love, would teach my daughter to become arrogant.
[SPEAKER_00]: teacher to become immature.
[SPEAKER_00]: When things go wrong, she would learn to hate not herself, but everyone else around her, blame them, and be unable to relate to other people in a life-giving way.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would again experience perishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unable to understand why she can't have any healthy relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perishing, but of a different sort.
[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't love like that either.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does God love?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at the verse again, John 3 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God, love the world in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: he gave his one and only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was studying this verse, I came across a fact in one of the commentaries that honestly took me back, took me back and I was like, is this legit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I had to like, you know, it's like a check it and then I checked it again and I checked it like a fourth time because I'm like, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: This verse, it claimed, is the only verse in the entire Bible that says that God loves the world, and I search a surgeon, and that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that this verse says that God loves the world at all is surprising for two reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to keep in mind the context of this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's happening in John 3?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is having a conversation at night with a Pharisee, Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, a rabbi, a teacher
[SPEAKER_00]: What Nicodemus knows is that God loves the righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's Psalm 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: That God loves Jewish people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He loves His people Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you run me seven in many other places?
[SPEAKER_00]: But Nicodemus would have been shocked by the statement that God so loved the world, the nations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Non-Jews.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves non-Jews people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like God loves the Romans who are pressing us.
[SPEAKER_00]: God loves Korean people, Palestinian people, Brazilian people, Iranian people, even Americans, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Nicodemus is like, I don't know who all those people are.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, John would be like, I don't know any of those people groups, but yes, God loves the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, it would be shocking to Nicodemus, the Jewish man, that God's love extends beyond ethnic Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though it's replete in the Old Testament that God loves the world in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you remember, in John 3, Nicodemus is continually shocked by Jesus's teachings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus has to gently hide him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're the teacher of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is just the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our God is not a local deity.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not a tribal God.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is the God of the whole earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole world.
[SPEAKER_00]: All people are made in God's image.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so John 316 is the only place where God has said to love the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's checking for a second reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the world here doesn't just mean the nations or the globe, the world world can mean a lot of different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't just mean the created or it's specifically talking about people, people without distinction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And specifically, people who hate God.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have your Bible open, look at verse 19, just a few verses later.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the judgment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Light has come into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works revolve.
[SPEAKER_00]: The light is coming to the world and people.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people are the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: The world is these people who love darkness and hate God and their works are evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their loves are evil and their actions are evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the world that God loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's shocking because this world includes Jewish people.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 1111, he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's own religious people did not recognize God's love when he came to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let that sink in, both religious and irreligious people need the saving of of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The target of God's love is a hostile world that only ever he'd seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God was like the world and he would have either canceled us or caught with us, but that's not the way the God loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, John 3, 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God loved the world in this way, in this way he gave his one and only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What John 3, 16, tells us about the nature of God's love is that God's love is not
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love costs us nothing but costs him everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: It costs him the one who is the most dear, the most precious, his only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that God's love is cross-shaped and that hardship means several things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, it means this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one.
[SPEAKER_00]: comes to God, deserving of God's cross-shaped love.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you remember the very first people who were told, they needed to turn away from the wicked ways and repent, were the very religious people of God, the observant Jews, the gospel is to the Jew, first-fentured Gentile.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one comes to the cross, deserving God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's people are called to repent, to rely on Jesus alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see this in Romans 3, 9, through 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: What then are we Jews?
[SPEAKER_00]: Any better off?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we have already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin as it's written, none is righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not one.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one understands.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one seeks for God.
[SPEAKER_00]: All have turned away together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have become worthless.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one does good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even one.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it means,
[SPEAKER_00]: is that you are a criminal because the cross is a place where criminals are punished to admit that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But secondly, it means that no one is disqualified from receiving God's cross-shaped love.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love is extended to the world, both religious and religious.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see this just a few verses later in Romans chapter 3, verse 28, and following.
[SPEAKER_00]: For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law, or is God the God that you
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't he the God of the Gentiles also?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, of the Gentiles also.
[SPEAKER_00]: For there's no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: What this means is that God is not waiting for you to clean up your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's offering to clean it up for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God isn't asking you to be righteous for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's offering to become a you're righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: With this means that God's love is cross shaped.
[SPEAKER_00]: is two things that everyone who comes to the cross is a criminal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone who comes to the cross is called his child.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love costs him completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave his one and only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: And our calling is to receive God's cross-shaped love.
[SPEAKER_00]: To prepare for his Tim Keller.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cross-shaped love of God means that you are more sinful and more wicked and more selfish than you ever
[SPEAKER_00]: And it means that you are more loved and more accepted and more secure, more safe than you ever dared to hope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because love does more than just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's love caused him completely, but it also changes us completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go from pear-shing to having eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks ago Scott Zeller preached on eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You reminded us it's not just floating in the clouds, like bugs, monies, strumming harps forever and ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds really boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, the eternal life taught in the Bible is a totally renewed transformed world, transformed humanity, made right, made whole, made healthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a harmony with God, ourselves, others, everything brought into peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shall we?
[SPEAKER_00]: But also what's being taught in John 3 16 and what John begins unpacked through the rest of his gospel and his letters is that eternal life is not just pie in the sky, a future promise.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, you know, right now is horrible, but one day, it'll be all worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, eternal life is not just a quantity of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, you will live for a really long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a quality of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will have the kind of life that can only be had when Jesus returns in the kingdom of God right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the name of our churches, citizens' church.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are citizens of the kingdom right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in that kingdom right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not one day, we're not holding on to green cars, holding one day will be naturalized.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are citizens now, and no one can steal that from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cross-shaped love of God means that we receive the eternal love and the eternal life
[SPEAKER_00]: is found only in Christ, and that is done through believing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, whoever believes.
[SPEAKER_00]: This has, again, a double meaning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever believes, in the Greek, it just means all believers, all who believe, all the believers, everyone who believes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is only through believing in Jesus, in receiving His name, in receiving who He is,
[SPEAKER_00]: experience love of God in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me be very clear before I move forward about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to misunderstand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why when I first got into ministry, there was a mentor of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, do you know John 316?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and then I recited it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, right now recited John 317.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was probably like 40 pastors in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of us could do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, you better memorize John 317.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 3 says, if God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him, no one is condemned for not believing in Jesus, not for that alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at, if you got your Bible, look at verse 18, whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe His condemned already because He has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The world, it's not that everything was going fine, and then God's like, let me send Jesus down there, and He's like, surprise, pop quiz, who do you believe in now?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to determine where you go, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The entire world is perishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love in a way that is evil, that is toxic, that kills us and each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God, in His love, He interrupts that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He makes it way.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only one way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so God comes and He sends His son.
[SPEAKER_00]: to reveal himself in the very cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that means is everyone who approaches God can only do so through the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: But secondly, it means that no one is prevented from coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think about the ministry of Jesus, how many times were people prevented from coming to Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that he is a tax collector?
[SPEAKER_00]: That guy's a traitor, don't let him get everybody crowd amount, don't let him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he has to climb a tree, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the paralytic, he can't get in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have to carve a hole through the roof and he gets in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kids don't let them come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're disruptive, and Jesus like, come on, bring them in.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all these people that keep being prevented.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus is like, I'm looking for those people.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people that you don't want are the people that I'm here for.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not coming for the well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I came for the sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who ever believes?
[SPEAKER_00]: No one in this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: You do not need to clean up your life, prepare your heart, and get ready if you believe in the name of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you perceive Jesus, the love of God in the cross of God, you can have eternal life right now, right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a double.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means you received the love of God by perceiving Him, by believing in Jesus, by seeing the love of God on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: the exclusive and unique level God on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: But secondly, what it means to be in Christ in this way is the second thing, is that not only did it cost him everything in our sins are paid for, but secondly, it transforms everything that we brought from death to life, from perishing to eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: What that means is not only do we receive the cross of love of God, we reflect the cross shape of love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You practice the very love that you've received.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not like the world, or you say, I'll love you if you do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You practice the love shape, the cross shape love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, if you practice it correctly, will feel like you're dying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says you're dying to yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: What this looks like in my life is,
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate admitting when I'm wrong and it feels like I'm dying and so I do it anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I admit that I'm wrong to my wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do that with my daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do it extra because I don't want to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel like dying.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not my culture, Korean culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dad's doing not apologize to the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad has never apologized to me in my entire life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the culture of Korea, that's not the culture of the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a citizen of heaven, not Korea.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I am going to practice that culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to practice Krasheil, I love God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to say sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be excruciating, pun intended.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word excruciating means of the cross, pain of the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel like you're on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also going to kill me to forgive my wife when I feel like she doesn't deserve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I feel like she's not really that sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she didn't say sorry the right way, when she's being stubborn about it, it's gonna kill me to forgive her and accept her back.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that is the kind of love that I've received.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to practice that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to grow in those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what we were just talking about with the becoming like Jesus series, to think like Jesus and to love like Jesus, and to act like Jesus, to feel the way that Jesus feels.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I do that, it's not gonna be because I'm a righteous person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna be because I've received that exact kind of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what it's like.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only do that if I know what it's like to be forgiven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only do that if I know what it's like to be accepted.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it's like to be chased when I was running away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I die, like Christ, I will rise, like Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day in the future, but even today, when I go into the value of shadow death,
[SPEAKER_00]: of humiliation, and I have to say, sorry, you need crow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus walks down into that valley with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: His rod and his staff, they comfort me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he walks right out the other side with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't leave me in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The eternal life that is promised to us is not just one day, it's now and forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my desire is to live the resurrected life of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, to understand that God's grace from His future kingdom, which will never end, is available now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's available now to live there now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of God is in your midst, Jesus said, that I might reflect the cross-shaped level of God to my wife and to my daughter, to my friends, and especially my enemies.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much
[SPEAKER_00]: with the reputation of Christians of the church be different if we practiced love, less like the world, cancelling our enemies and cobbling our allies, and more like Christ, living sacrificially.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a major point that we're gonna see in first John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I'm gonna read a passage from first round chapter four, listen to the parallels.
[SPEAKER_00]: with John 3-16.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is first John 49 through 11.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this, the love of God was made manifest, revealed, realized among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That God sent His only son into the world, so that we might live through Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something exactly like John 3-16.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the way God's love looks.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we didn't love God, he loved us first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 10, again, in this is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the definition of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the contour, the silhouette of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice, the wrath, turning, redeeming, penalty pain, death for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: That we admit before we are children of God that we're criminals and enemies of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, if God so loved us, if God loves us in this way, the same words, in construction.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this way, not just, hey, you look at us nice today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee?
[SPEAKER_00]: Loving people that are hard to love, that are expensive to love, that's costly to love, that sometimes don't deserve our love,
[SPEAKER_00]: Only that kind of love doesn't cancel, it doesn't cuddle, but transforms the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the love that changes our lives and the kind of love that God is calling us to be transformative for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The love of God is not heart-shaped.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is crushed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is so important because I'm gonna keep hammering this.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Bible says that God loves a world,
[SPEAKER_00]: and loves the world that hates him, and he loves it in a particular way, the giving of his only son, the giving of Jesus to the world, that God freely gives Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't tricked into it, he wasn't forced into it, he wasn't contractually obligated to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's grace can never be marinated or owed, no one can demand it, no one can deserve it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that Jesus gave himself, said, I lay my life down, no one takes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I laid down my own accord.
[SPEAKER_00]: that that is the contour, that very definition, the container of God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever rejects that rejects God's love, that's why it says in First John, anyone who says, who says, I love the Father, I love God, but rejects the Son, does not have the love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that is the love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't say, I want God's love, but I don't want the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want God's love, but I don't want Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like Scott told us, it turned a life, John 173, this is it turned a life to no God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't say, I want it turned a life, but I don't want Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is it turned a life, that is God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever does not receive the Crochet Love of God does not have God's love at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: But secondly, it's going to say in first John that whoever does not reflect God's Crochet Love also does has never received it.
[SPEAKER_00]: First John, two, nine, three, eleven, whoever says he's in the light and hates his brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still in darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever loves his brother, abides in the light and in him there's no cross-restumbling, but whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not nobody's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the only kinds of people who reflect God's cross-shake love of the people who've experienced it, who received it, who perceived Jesus's beauty, his majesty, on the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a few minutes, we're gonna practice communion like we always do every week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just wanna encourage you to meditate and to perceive Christ in the elements today in a particular way.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you take that little dry dusty cracker, you know, that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're putting him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you crush it and grind down on it, I want you to think about and experience the fact that Christ gave his body for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my body broken for you, that no one stole it from him, no one forced him to give it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He freely gave it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you crush that little piece of bread, as you crush as Christ was crushed and pierced and bruised for our transgressions, you're not the one being crushed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He took your crushing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to feel like, man, I can't, I can't swallow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're going to drink the cup, and it's going to refresh you and renew you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is the bread of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the water of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He rejuvenates and renews us, and in the elements you're to perceive Christ, it's only those who perceive Christ and the elements we're supposed to take the elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because
[SPEAKER_00]: That means you see the love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You perceive the glory of God in the cross, in His Son, in the elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these things are meant to lens and focus us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying we're gonna have a mystical experience and there's a bunch of you you can happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to use your mind and use your corporeal body.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're tongue, your taste, your illness, and then focus your heart to understand what it means that God gave Himself for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't need to do that, and as you crush, and you swallow these elements, let it focus your mind and understand what it means that God's love is not heart shaped, but heart shaped.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't just love you from afar with affection.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got up and did something about what it looked like if we practiced that kind of heart shaped love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that says in church, we'll be a people who receive God's heart shaped love, that we will be a people that reflect that kind of love to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: to a lost and dying and watching world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to encourage you, as we practice this, as we try, you know those of you who have been believe it for a long time, as you try to do this, you know, you know, you're gonna fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: The longer and closer you walk with Jesus, the more you're aware of your hypocrisy, the more you see how much I believe how my unbelief becomes your cry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to remind you that God loves the world,
[SPEAKER_00]: means in this way, and also means so much, that what this means is the sacrificial costly dying to self-godding, resulting Christ magnifying love is for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why Paul says in Romans 832, if God did not spare his own son, if God did not spare his own son, did not hold him back, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
[SPEAKER_00]: When you were at your worst,
[SPEAKER_00]: going with the world, hating God, making yourself the own ruler of your heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a toddler saying, you're not the boss of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what happened in the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not the boss of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you said that, when you're at your worst, at your lowest, that's when God loved you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is when God sent his son.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is when he saw you, and with eyes of love, sent his son, gave his son for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's when he loved you,
[SPEAKER_00]: What makes you think that he's going to later figure find something else out about you that's going to shock him and want to take his love back?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's seen you at your worst, and that's when he gave you his best.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the cross-shaped love of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's good news that it's not heart shaped, because our hearts are fickle.
[SPEAKER_00]: They change every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heart is the seatful of all things who can know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mood is always different, but God's love is not like my heart, but God's love is the cross which is the objective statement of God's love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a historical event.
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will never move, so once and for all sacrifice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sacrificial infinite overflowing love of God stands open for you today right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will you receive it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Will you reflect it?
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh Lord, now there's a little verse is too holy for my lips.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, I feel like J. Minoffin says the messenger feels far from this message.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, how poorly I reflect your love, a patient you would have been with me and how impatient I've been with the people that I love the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, kind of know that I don't look to myself for assurance, but I look to you, I look to your cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the finished work of Christ, the perfect person of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember, I'm reminded that when you look at me, you see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you say, well done, good and faithful servant.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my son.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my daughter who I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, I pray that you would help us to lay down all the burdens that we have and come to the level foot of the cross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we might receive your love and then reflect that very same love to the world God would help us to be solved in light, to become like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: all these things I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.