Pastor Tim Patoka
Christmas Eve December 24, 2019 God Loves the World, Including You John 3:16-18
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that when Christmas comes around every year it is newly familiar. There are things we do every year, but they seem new when we complete them every year. Take giving gifts to loved ones for example. That’s a familiar concept. But it’s new every year as you try to find the perfect gift for your loved one whether they be a growing child, someone who doesn’t need anything, or a person who buys what they want before you can get it for them. Or take decorating your Christmas tree. If you put on your own lights, can you remember how to untie the impossible knot they got themselves into while in storage? Are you going to use tinsel or garland on your tree? Did you hang all the ornaments up on the tree so they can be easily seen yet are evenly spaced around the tree? These or any number of Christmas things can be newly familiar each year. And as we look at our verses tonight from John chapter 3, we see how we get to review God’s Christmas truths in a newly familiar way. The Apostle John writes for us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned, but the one who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the onlybegotten Son of God” (John 3:16-18). Christian churches typically don’t base their Christmas Eve message on these verses. Instead they usually choose traditional passages like Luke chapter 2. Yet John chapter 3 is a newly familiar way to learn what Christmas Eve is all about – that God loves the world, including you. “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). When we talk about God’s love, we’re not equating it with the normal way we think of love. For us, love is most often a warm, fuzzy feeling that people have for each other. John describes God’s love as an agape love, an unconditional love that is based on one person and their mindset. It is a part of God’s eternal nature to have an agape love. And this love is directed to the world. When we’re talking about the world, we mean more than simply all people. There’s also the sinful connotation that John attaches to this word. Even though we and all people are born dead in our sins and undeserving of God’s love in any way, shape, or form, God still gives his agape love to us because that is who he is.
1
Pastor Tim Patoka
Christmas Eve December 24, 2019 God shows the world his agape love by sending us his Son Jesus. As John said before, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). There is no one like our Jesus. Not only because he alone has come from a virgin mother, but because of who he is. Jesus is the Son of God who became the Son of Man when he arrived in Bethlehem. He is the only-begotten Son through whom God has lovingly offered to our sinful world the promise of eternal life in heaven – that if any person believes in Jesus for salvation, they will surely receive it. This is what Christmas is all about! This is why we celebrate it in newly familiar ways every year! For here in the manger we find God’s love for the world, including you. Do you find that hard to believe? That this love is for you specifically? That this Savior is your Savior? We often can feel left out in this generic promise of God’s love. We can think that God’s love is for those who have done enough good things to stay off God’s naughty list. As social media becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, I am reminded of how often we only share those things which make us look good. As a result, we can have a distorted reality of how good other people’s lives must be and conclude how lacking ours is. We can think, “Surely there are others in this world more deserving of God’s love than me.” There are some things that define our identity which we don’t have a choice in. Things like what family we’re born into, which country we grow up in, and where we fit within society. So easily we can think, “God’s love must be for people who are different from me. And there’s nothing I can do about it!” Or maybe you have a particular instance in your mind which makes you wonder if you’re automatically disqualified from receiving God’s love. That because of that single sin, you won’t be celebrating Christmas as so many others will because you were left out of God’s love. Yet I can assure you none of those are true. God’s love is for all the world, including you with your flaws and your doubts and your sins. Again, we go back to what kind of love our God has. His love is an agape love, one that is entirely dependent on him and his unchanging mindset for you. It is for you and everyone else in this sinful world that he sent his Son to be born in Bethlehem. As that Son grew up, we see how true it is that, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17). Everything Jesus did was for the loving purpose of saving us. He obeyed his parents and those in authority so as to keep God’s law. He gave up house and home so he could travel throughout the Israelite countryside and tell people the good news that their Savior had finally come. He helped people who did not thank him or pay him back. He corrected those who were misrepresenting what God actually says. He faced 2
Pastor Tim Patoka
Christmas Eve December 24, 2019 hardship and remained silent when he went to the cross to receive our punishment for sins. Jesus didn’t do all this for someone else in this world. He did it for you. So that you can have this assurance right now, that “the one who believes in him is not condemned” (John 3:18a). Even though we sin and confess how undeserving we are of God’s love, even though we can come up with a million reasons why God can and should leave us out in this promise of salvation, that is not the case. For the one who believes in Jesus is not condemned of their sins. Instead, they have God’s own promise of eternal life because they have been saved from their sins. And that includes you. John’s well-known verses from chapter 3 allow us to look at God’s Christmas truths in a newly familiar way. Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is proof that God loves the world, including you. It is because of God’s agape love for this sinful world that he sent his only-begotten Son in order to save us from our sins and to give us the promise of eternal life. And as we read our remaining lessons and sing our remaining carols this evening, let these words ring in your heart so that you may celebrate Christmas because of God’s love for you. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Amen.
3