Sermon
For God So Loved...
December 5, 2004
Pastor Donald Sheley

When I was a young lad we had a chorus that we used to sing - a chorus that said let's talk about Jesus, the King of kings is He, the great I AM, the Lord supreme throughout all of eternity. A hymn chorus that exalts the wonderful Christ. It's been going through my mind and for the next number of weeks, actually for the next 12 for 14 weeks, we're going to talk about Jesus. It's going to be an in-depth study in Christology, that is, I want our congregation to have a biblical understanding of who Jesus is, was, His mission and His ministry because there is great confusion in the world today.

Frequently I am confronted with the question: What do people think or what do they teach about Jesus Christ? And you see, when it comes to Christology or the teachings of Christ or the person of Christ, here is where the enemies attack most severely. If they can distort, if they can change, if they can twist the biblical teachings of Christ and they'll do it, and so for the next number of weeks we're going to talk about Jesus. We're going to get to understand Him and love Him, I think, more deeply than ever.

We start that series this morning and I trust that you have your notes with you because I'm going to stick very closely to my notes today. I have been asked frequently, they say, Pastor, you prepare all these notes and then you kind of wander around and would you stick with your notes once in a while, so I'm going to do that.

It's hard. I explained it to my early congregation. I usually have my notes all prepared by the earlier part of the week so that we can get them to the press and so forth. Then I have the rest of the week to keep studying and keep adding thoughts, and by the time I get to Saturday morning I've found something new and exciting and that oft times becomes my message. So you understand why sometimes the preacher doesn't stick with his notes. Today we are, and I trust that you all have them, because also as an educator I know that you retain much, much more when you hear it and you see it. So let's follow along as we study together today our theme 'For God so Loved...'

John 3:16-17 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

And then Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ."

And Paul gives Timothy, the young preacher, these instructions. He says, "These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly; but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

Thus we have a number of verses speaking of the coming of Christ to our world. Let's follow our notes in our lesson.

It would be difficult to think of a single person who has affected human history more profoundly than Jesus of Nazareth. The modern spirit of historical inquiry could not ignore the history of Jesus. His footprints are all over the Western literary, moral, and social landscape, and on every continent. He has been worshiped as Lord through a hundred generations.

Historical inquiry into Jesus cannot avoid at some point overhearing the question Jesus asked to Peter: "Who do you say that I am?" And here is Peter's confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." It remains the concise pattern for subsequent Christian liturgy and confession even to this day.

The meaning of Jesus' life and death has never been a permanently dead issue to any generation since His appearance. It remains even today a matter of intense debate as to who Jesus was and what His life and death mean. Deeper even than the mystery of His astonishing historical influence is the simpler, starker question that rings through Christian reflection: "Why did God become human?"

Here are the facts briefly stated:
Date of birth: between 5 B.C. and A.D. 4.
Place: Palestine.
Ethnic origin: Jewish.
Vocation: probably first a carpenter, and then a traveling preacher of the coming rule of God.
Length of ministry: three Passovers, which imply a little over three years.
Date of death: Friday, 14 Nisan (the first month of the Jewish year), probably, by our calendar, April 7 A.D. 30 (or by some calculations, 3 April, A.D. 33).
Place of death: Jerusalem.
Manner of death: crucifixion.
Roman procurator: Pontius Pilate who ruled or reigned in Palestine between the years of 27 and 33 A.D.
Roman emperor back in Rome: Tiberius.

Now Christology focuses not simply upon bare facts, but upon what this life meant and how these events have been interpreted--especially as they come down finally to a single, pivotal question: whether Jesus is rightly understood as the expected Messiah of Israel, Son of God, Lord--or none of these.

This is the startling question that His life constantly asks. The nearer one comes to Him, the more clearly He requires that decision. It is the unavoidable issue that the observer of Christ's life must finally come up against, for Jesus Himself presses and requires that decision, and that decision is whether Jesus is the Messiah.

To avoid that issue is to avoid Him, and to avoid Him is to avoid Christianity altogether.

Paul tells us in the Galatian passage that this historical event of the coming of Jesus into this world, came about in the fullness of time. Search the pages of history up and down, and in all the tale of the centuries you will not find any generation in which Christ could better have come than just the generation in which He did come.

"There is a tide," says Shakespeare, "in the affairs of men." We go beyond that and we suggest there is a tide in the affairs of God; and it is when that tide reaches the flood, when all the preparatory work is done and world conditions are clamoring for it and human souls are open, it is then, at the flood-tide hour of history, that God launches His new adventure.

It was the fullness of the time, said Paul. It was the hour fore-ordained in the divine wisdom when God sent forth His Son. Jesus came at the very point in history at which all the conditions were ripe for His coming. When Jesus came, it was the fullness of time politically. What was the dominating feature of the political situation of the generation to which Christ came?

Answer - It was the unification of the world. That was Caesar's achievement. The day of closed frontiers was over. All the way from the Atlantic to the Caspian, from Britain to the Nile, from Hadrian's Wall to the Euphrates the Roman standards could be seen.

Pause - When you lay out the maps of the ancient world and that of the Roman Empire, it was a massive piece of real estate that was owned and controlled by Rome. All the way from northern England in which you can still find remains of the Roman rule; all the way down through Europe, Germany, France, down through Spain, and Italy, over in Greece, in Turkey, and clear over today to the Persian Gulf or to the land we know as Iraq. From Iraq to Britain, this massive empire was in place. It was known as the Roman Empire.

Now there were three factors about that empire that are very, very interesting. Three factors contributed to this situation into which the gospel of Christ was born. I'm at the top of the page 3.

(l) The Roman peace. If Christ had come a century earlier, His gospel would have been blocked at every turn, blocked on the land by national frontiers, blocked on the ocean by pirates who made the seas impassable. Or if He had come a few centuries later, He would have found a civilization too preoccupied with its terrible struggle against the barbarians from the North to have any ear for the gospel. But Christ came to a generation when the Roman Peace held the world, held it no doubt with an iron hand, but held it sure and far-flung and unbroken; and men could hear the Bethlehem angels sing.

(2) The second factor making for unity of the world when Jesus came was the great roads. From end to end of the Roman Empire the great highways ran, triumphs of Roman engineering.

Pause - Take some time this week to go into the Encyclopedia and study things concerning ancient roads. You'll learn some very interesting things. It was Rome that engineered those wonderful roads that they made the finding that if you hip them in the middle the water would run off, and thus the highways always were hipped in the middle. That was the creation of Rome 2300 years ago. It was Rome who decided we must have drainage ditches along the side to get rid of the water away from the highway, and it was Rome who created those. It was Rome who in their many miles of highways they had stakes which determined the amount of miles you traveled, and we still have those stakes along the highway today. That's the creation of Rome.

It's interesting... in that Roman Empire all the way from Britain all the way down to the Persian Gulf there were 50,000 miles of roads, and those roads were handmade by single blocks or stones put in place with a very solid roadbed. You can travel parts of the world today and those Roman roads still remain.

Notice back to our notes in the center of the page: And the ten thousand laborers who had toiled on the making of the roads in the sweat of their brows little thought they were preparing a way for the Son of God. But they were! All along these imperial lines of communication, built to carry Caesar's legions to every corner of his dominions, the missionaries of the gospel came preaching and the marching; and everywhere their message spread like wildfire. It was on that great system of roads throughout that empire that Paul and the early preachers hurried across from place to place and from country to country preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was Rome that prepared the highways for the spreading of the gospel.

(3) The third factor making for world unity when Jesus came was language. For while each province still had its own tongue or dialect, everywhere the people were bilingual and all knew Greek. In the heights of Galatia as much as on the streets of Athens, in Spain as in Rome, the missionaries could speak Greek knowing that they would be understood.

A single language, roads, and a single governor controlling it all. So the Roman peace, the great roads, and a common language - these were the things that had linked the world into one big neighborhood and so had prepared the way for Christ.

When Jesus came, it was the fullness of the time not only politically, but also economically. Indeed, in many quarters of Caesar's dominions the economic situation had reached the point of crisis when Christ came. You can imagine the logistics of tying together this massive piece of real estate all the way from Britain down to the Persian Gulf and trying to work out all the economics that varied in each locality. And when you study the story of the Roman Empire you'll find that one of the great problems they wrestled with was the economics. In fact, around Rome it became so awful. There was such great depression and such lack of economy. They had to create circuses to attract the attention away from their problems of the day.

Reading on in our notes: So it was in Palestine. The disastrous aftermath of war, the wild, colossal extravagance of Herod the Great, the burden of taxation, both civil and religious, the growing overpopulation which made it impossible for the land to provide food enough for its own inhabitants--these things had precipitated a period of unexampled depression among the great bulk of people. Life had grown care-ridden and full of worry. Anxiety for the morrow was written deep upon men's faces and on their hearts, and all the world seemed tangled and gone wrong.

It was then at the blackest hour that a Voice of hope rang out in Galilee; and men's hearts leapt up and listened, for the fullness of the time had come. When Jesus first came, it was the fullness of time morally. Swineburne, the godless poet, writes in one of his poems, he cries out protestingly that after Christ the world has never known the same light-heartedness again; that Jesus has taken all its natural gaiety and good spirits away, but all that is false to the facts. The idea of an ancient world that was happy and innocent and light-hearted and morally at peace is simply a myth.

We must go to the writings of Paul to find out the moral condition of the world into which Jesus came. In Romans chapter 1 Paul writes: And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful. Paul said that was the moral condition of the world into which Jesus came

Everywhere the best spirits were in despair. Everywhere to the noblest souls it seemed that the whole world was pursuing its riotous way down to disaster and oblivion and ultimate night. When Jesus first came, it was the fullness of the time religiously. The old gods of Rome were either dead or dying and to fill the gap, two expedients were tried. On the one hand, a whole new batch of gods were imported from the East, outlandish, oriental deities brought in to stir Rome's jaded senses--till among the philosophers the overcrowding of Mount Olympus, where the gods were supposed to dwell, became a standing joke.

Now think with me. If you tie together all of these nations all the way up to Britain, down through Europe, Spain, Italy and across to Turkey - if you tie all of these nations together you've got a conglomeration of gods and deities worshiped in each locality. And the great problem of the Roman Empire was to bring these all together and get some kind of a harmony. How did they resolve it? In our notes I suggest: On the other hand, the strange phenomenon of Caesar worship appeared. In other words, they said Caesar will be god and you will bow to Caesar; you'll worship Caesar as god.

The emperor himself was accorded divine honors, but all expedients failed. What was a whole Pantheon of gods worth if they had nothing to say to a man with a broken heart? What could the divinity of Caesar say to a soul stabbed with the remorse of sin? Nothing. It was a situation of religion in total chaos.

Also (I'm down at the bottom of page 4), there was a strange sense of something impending from the side of God. In many parts of the world men of deeper nature and more spiritual vision were peering into the darkness for some faint flush of dawn. And among the Jews themselves the hope of the Messiah was blazing more clearly than it had done for centuries. The great mass of Jewish literature from the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament is full of this hope.

When Luke writes for us the history of the birth of Christ, he tells us of a man whose name is Simeon. He's been there in the temple. He's been serving God for years, but he had within his breast the knowledge that he would not die until the Messiah had arrived. He looked for the Messiah. There was this passionate craving for that moment, and when Jesus' parents walked into the temple to have the rituals performed there for him as a Jewish boy, Simeon took that little lad in his hands and he realized that the fullness of the time had come for what he had dreamed, for what he had prayed for he now held in his hands.

And also in the temple Luke tells us that there was a little lady who had served for many years, serving God in prayers. Her name was Anna, and Anna had this great expectancy within her heart, and others did also. And what I am suggesting to you is in this precise moment of history, after 400 dark years, because there are 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament, dark years of history when heaven did not sound at all and there was no voice. All of a sudden there is this knowledge that God is about to do something, and here now to the temple He has come. In the fullness of time God has sent His Son.

Back to our notes: And when any new voice rang out across the land, the voice of John the Baptist, for instance, immediately upon every lip there rose the question: "Is this the Messiah now?" And the air was tense with expectation. So the Redeemer came. Somewhere in the mind and the heart of God from the very foundations of the earth the Christ had been waiting, hidden in the counsels of eternity until the great bell of the ages should strike; and when at last everything in the world and in the souls of men was ready and prepared, He came, the Word of God made flesh, not a moment early and not a moment late, but exactly on the stroke of the hour. It was the day of the Lord.

In the fullness of time God sent to His Son. John writes: "For the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

This glorious text is the hub of the Bible, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."

It's the vital center of Divine revelation. It's the very heart of the Evangel. And all the great truths of the Old Testament converge toward it, the high-roads of ancient history make for it, and the deep sea-routes of profound prophecies lead to it. The redeeming realities of the New Covenant in Jesus' blood are all enfolded in it and unfolded from it.

John 3:16, the great verse that most of us learned in Sunday school, is built around ten very important words: God, Loved, World, Gave, Son, Whosoever, Believeth, Perish, Have, Life. In these ten distinctive words, the Divine revelation, the message of the whole written word of God is comprehended in them as in no other.

When we look a little more closely at these ten words, we find, as the late Dr. A. T. Pierson pointed out, that they go together in five deeply significant pairs.

The first pair - the two words "God" and "Son". They show us the supreme Giver and the supreme Gift, God the Father and Christ the Saviour, two of the ever-blessed Trinity of the Godhead, co-operating in the effecting of our salvation.

The second pair show us two expressions of Divine benevolence - God "loved" and God "gave".

The third pair show us the two-fold direction of God's loving and giving - the "world" and "whosoever."

The fourth pair show us the two things that all human beings are privileged and invited to do, namely to "believe" and then to "have."

And the fifth pair show us the two ultimate extremes of human destiny, in one case "perish", and another, "life."

Now it's interesting that when we look deeply into these pairs of words, that we find that the second grows out of the first.

Consider - "God" and "Son". The word "God" is the comprehensive name for the Deity; but now, emerging from the mystery of Divine being, and coming to us through the miracle of the Incarnation, is One while being "very God of very God" bears the name of the "Son." It's the Incarnation. It's in that moment in eternity when God chose to take upon Himself human form in the person of Jesus Christ, and to manifest His love in Christ. The incarnation is God becoming man, taking on the form of man.

Now Paul writes it this way in Philippians: "Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus; [Let Him be your example in humility:] Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assume the guise of a servant (slave)..." That's Jesus coming to earth.

"in that He became like men and was born a human being. And after He had appeared in human form, He abased and humbled Himself [still further] and carried His obedience to the extreme of death, even the death of the cross! Therefore [because He stooped so low] God has exalted Him and has freely bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, That (at) the name of Jesus every knee (must) bow, in heaven and under the earth, and every tongue [frankly and openly] confess and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."

What a tremendous picture. God so loved that He comes to our earth, takes upon human form such as we in the person of Christ, who goes to a cross to pay the penalty for our sins and our transgressions, to become our Savior who's exalted. And Paul tells us the day will come when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess - every knee.

You know, as I thought through this lesson today, what I did, I laid theology across the time plate of history. And what you have to do is you come to a quick conclusion that the God of history precisely has everything arranged. He takes kingdoms - sets them up, takes them down. God is the God of history. And in just like that precise moment as we trace the issue of His coming in the first coming, let me assure you ladies and gentlemen, Jesus is coming again.

Now what fascinates me is when you take the historical setting over which we laid the first coming of Christ, and you take the historical setting in which you and I are living today, there are some fascinating parallels. No longer is the world held together by Roman roads, but by the communications systems, the satellites, the Internet and all. Something can happen thousands of miles away and in a moment's time we know about it here.

The world is tied together as ever, never before as an extremely close-knit neighborhood, for what happens there we know about it here almost before it happens. So we have a world that's knit together, closer than that world.

And we have a situation...I could take many of them, but I say this ladies and gentlemen, if ever there was a conflict in religions, that is becoming almost to the surface - for the battle of the ages will be fought against Christ and the Antichrist, and it is my deep conviction that the religion of Islam is the religion of the Antichrist, and that will come to a head as the Bible tells us in that land of the East, which has always been filled with tremendous, tremendous tension. And that tension today sits at a boiling point where all that's got to happen is a few things (claps hands) and we are in the great conflict, the final battle of the ages.

I'm not here to alarm you, just simply to say it fascinates me to lay history and theology on the plate, the time plate, of history and see the hour in which we live as it compares to the hour in which He came.

The story of Christmas is that God so loved that in the fullness of time He sent, and in the sending of Jesus you and I have a solution to all of sins problems, because He died to save us, to be our Savior. And you know ladies and gentlemen, the reason why I live with such tremendous confidence as to the events of the time and the happenings of history, is because I am so totally convinced when you study history and the plan of God you know God has everything in His control.

And I watch so many of recent days become so disturbed as to what would happen...I wasn't disturbed because I knew one thing, the God of history is the God that writes every page of history. And someday He'll write it again and on that page will be the word finis - it's all over and He will call us home. Amen? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, today we've reviewed the preciseness and the timing of the first coming of Christ. We realize that in the fullness of time heaven's greatest gift, our eternal Savior, was given. And we've gone a step further today to suggest You being the God of history that this world is being prepared for the second return of our wonderful Christ. And with joy we have great confidence and peace as Christians knowing that the God of history is our God, our wonderful heavenly Father, and we are a part, oh God, of Your eternal family. And in this season of the year we rejoice in Your wonderful gift, the gift of Jesus.

May it be, God, that we don't allow anything else to distract us, and there are so many distractions, but may our focus be on You dear Jesus, the glorious gift from heaven, our Savior, our Lord, our Master, and our God. And we bow our hearts and we worship You. We love you dear Jesus, and thank you for loving us. Amen. God bless you.