“One of A Kind” John
3:14-21
Intro.: John Fischer, in his book On a Hill Too Far Away, tells of a
church in
Because in it God
reveals to us…
I.
A One of A Kind Love. (v.16)
A. If you really think about it, our love is often cheap
and fleeting. We throw the word “love”
around so liberally. “I just love that
new TV show!” “I love my new
outfit!” “I love this, and I love
that!” It has become commonplace to
hear people refer to the satisfaction of their selfish animal instincts as
“making love.” The pattern of “love”
portrayed in
For every positive story of a love that
changed someone’s life, we can probably think of half-a-dozen stories of lives
that were broken and hearts shattered from a lack of love, a tainted love, or a
love relationship that went sour. In our
day people are very quick to fall in and out of love. Our love is often conditional, and we treat
it as something that can be given and taken away. Worse yet, we often think of it as something
that can be bought and sold.
Did you know that toy makers keep a close
watch on the divorce rates, because they have discovered that their sales rise
with divorce rates? According to
analysts, divorced parents and the grandparents of broken homes tend to compete
for children’s affections by buying toys.
B. God’s love is something entirely different
from ours. His is a one of a kind love. The blessed object of that love is you, and
He gives it to you freely. God’s unique
love is summed up in what is probably the most recognized verse in the Bible – John
3:16: “God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but
have eternal life.” (v.16) In
contrast to our cheap and fleeting love, God’s love is rich and everlasting.
Unlike our love, God’s love does not
depend upon how lovable something might be.
He does not wait until we come to love him, or make ourselves good
enough to be loved by Him. No, it was while
we were yet sinners that Christ died for us.
(nt.
His one-of-a-kind love is able to change
lives for eternity, because it brings to His beloved…
II. A One of A Kind Salvation. (vv.14-15, 17-18)
A. Our weak and fallen natures lead us to seek
salvation from our problems through the common things of this world. In our Old Testament reading the Israelites
thought very little about God’s blessings, the awesome way in which He had
delivered them from their slavery in
Like the Israelites we tend to overlook
God’s blessing of our daily bread, our deliverance to abundant spiritual lives,
and His promise of a glorious future in our heavenly home. We allow our thoughts to be taken captive by
the problems of our wanderings through this fallen wilderness world, and the
troubles which our sins have brought upon us.
And so we grumble against the Lord for not giving us all we want and
think we deserve. Even if we don’t blame
him outright, we fool ourselves into believing that all our problems could be
solved if we just had more or better of what this world has to offer. Our relationship with the Lord becomes like
that expressed in this love-letter:
Dearest Jimmy, No words could ever express the great
unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my
heart, so please forgive me. I love you! I love you!
I love you! Yours
forever, Marie. P.S.
Congratulations on winning the state lottery!
The only thing worse than looking to be
saved from our problems by the common things of this world, is when…
B. We look to be saved from God’s wrath by our own
common selves.
No
matter how many ways you may try to label the thousands of religious sects in
the world, when you get right down to it there are only two religions: The false religion of the law in which
adherents look to something in themselves to account for their salvation, or
the true religion of the Gospel in which believers trust solely in the grace of
God which comes through His Son, Jesus Christ, for their salvation.
Most of the people in this world, and judging
from my conversations, many who go by the name Christian and even some of the
members of our own congregation, believe that salvation in some way depends
upon them: How good they have been, or
how evil they have resisted being. The
decisions they have made, or attitudes they have adopted. The lifestyle changes they have achieved, or sacrifices they have rendered. They
believe that there is something in them, something from their common selves,
which they can offer which sets them apart and is able
to save them from God’s wrath.
Like the people of our Old Testament lesson
they pray that if God would only take away the snakes in their lives which keep
hurting them, and slowing down their spiritual journey, then they could live,
and manage just fine. But the Lord’s
way, and His true religion is different.
Our epistle explains it so well: “Because
of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ
even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved…
It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can
boast.” (Eph. 2:4-5, 8-9)
C. God offers a one-of-a-kind salvation. When the Israelites came confessing that they
had sinned, and pleaded for the snakes to be taken away from them, the Lord
answered them in a different way, didn’t He?
He did not take the snakes away, but allowed them to keep biting, and
hurting, and bringing them to the brink of death, yet He did provide a way for them
to be saved. Perhaps the Lord allowed
the snakes to continue because He wanted them to be reminded of their sin which
leads to death, and their dependence upon Him for salvation and life. The Lord
did not offer salvation in the way the people expected, but instead told Moses
to raise up a bronze snake on a pole, to raise up the image of the very curse
which had come upon them, so that anyone who was bitten could look up at it and
live.
We know through our Gospel lesson that
the way in which God provided salvation to the rebellious, cursed, bitten and
dying people in the wilderness is the same way He has provided salvation for
us. Jesus proclaimed: “Just
as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted
up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life… God did not sent His Son into the world to
condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned,
but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not
believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (vv.14-15, 17-18) God’s one-of-a-kind love and salvation is
that while we were dead in our transgression and sins He saved us by His grace,
and made us alive with Christ. (nt. Eph. 2) What we could not do for ourselves, by our
own strength or choosing, God did for us by giving His son to hang high upon a
cross for us. Every day, like the
Israelites we continue in our rebellion, and the ancient serpent keeps on
biting us; injecting his deadly venom of sin into us, and sentencing us to
death. But every time we feel that sting
we know that we can look up and be saved.
We can look up to the Holy One of God, who Himself was sinless, but was
made sin for us. We can look up to Jesus
who bore the curse of our punishment, and became the curse for us, and in
looking up we know that we will not perish, but have eternal life. That is the one-of-a-kind salvation God
offers us in His Son. Wherever you have
been bitten by sin, whatever pain has been inflicted upon you, even now as you
feel the sting of death coming upon you because of your transgressions, look up
to Jesus! Look up and live! And then you will see God’s…
III. One of A Kind Glory. (vv.19-21)
A. Many look for glory in all the wrong places. We look for it in emotional highs, and
energizing experiences. We look for it in
numbers and noise, and in thrones and crowns of gold with inlaid jewels. Sometimes we want to see the glory of the
Lord displayed in our own lives, in good feelings, success, and a sense that we
have become better than the rest of the people out there, or at least better
than our old selves. We read in the last
verse of our epistle that “we are God’s
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in
advance for us to do” and we want to measure God’s glory by how well we are
doing. But is that really fair to
God?
If the holiness of our lives were always
a reliable measure of God’s glory, then why do we find it necessary to keep on
praying that His name be kept holy among us, that we lead holy lives according
to His Word, and that we be protected from profaning His name by living
contrary to it? God’s glory is not in
the things we do, but in what Christ has done for us, and in our acknowledgement
that any good we have done has been done through God. Jesus puts it this way in our Gospel: “Light
has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their
deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil
hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will
be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth
comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has
been done through God.” (vv.19-21)
B. God offers us a one-of-a-kind glory in His
Son. By the Holy Spirit He has called us
by the Gospel to come into the light of His glory which is the light of
Christ. By faith we are not afraid to
come into that light, where our deeds of darkness are exposed, and bleached
white in Christ’s blood. We know that
when we come into the light of Christ, we will not be condemned, but saved. When we point only to the one-of-a-kind of love
and salvation God has given us in Christ, the world will see clearly what God
has done for us, in us and through us.
Then they will see the one-of-a-kind glory of God not in thrones and
crowns of gold and inlaid jewels, but in the crown of thorns, and in the rugged
cross which the Son of God took as His throne for us.
There it is
again isn’t it, that unavoidable cross upon which our Savior was raised to die,
so that He might rise again to give us the victory. Look up dear brothers and sisters! Look up to the Son of Man raised upon the
cross! Look up and see the one-of-a-kind love, the
one-of-a-kind salvation, and the one-of-a-kind glory of your God! Look up and life! Amen.