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John 3.16, the subject, God's greatest gift. John 3.16 is regarded as the golden text of the Bible. The key verse of all the scriptures. It is considered the gospel in a nutshell.

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It says all that needs to be said about God's love and God's action in the salvation process. God is in the gift-giving business. He gives the world the greatest gift. His gift is unique without comparison.

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There are many gifts that we cherish. Robert Burns wrote, "Oh, what some power the gift give us "to see ourselves as others see us. "It would from many a blunder free us,

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"and foolish notion." While the gift to see ourselves as others see us is a very precious gift, we need more than that We need more than to see ourselves.

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We need that gift that frees us. We need deliverance from ourselves. We need deliverance from the clutches of demonic powers. This is the gift God gives alone, the gift of freedom.

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But the gift on which I want to focus is the most significant gift of all. It is the gift of love. Love is the greatest gift. gift. It is the sumum bonum of the Christian life. It is the highest gift.

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Faith, hope, all of those are precious gifts, but love exceeds them all. It is the greatest gift. Someone has said that the greatest thing that we may ever to love and be loved in return. God's love is revealed in his letting be. That is the manifestation of his love, letting be. This may seem strange, but so often that is the

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the very thing that prevents us from being ourselves. Some parents never let children develop their potential. They don't let them be. They already have something that they want them to be,

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which is not consistent with what the child wants to be. So love, real, honest to goodness love, is letting be. And so we see the love of God in creation.

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God says, "Let there be light," and there was light. He says, "Let there be firmament," and there was the firmament. Let there be you, let there be me.

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These are the kinds of expressions that we have of the love of God. So letting be is self-giving, self-giving. Not only self-giving, but self-spending.

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so that God's creative work is a work of love and self-giving into which he has put himself. I had a friend who was complaining he was having marital difficulties

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and he said to me, Marvin, I've done all these things for my wife, I've given her a Cadillac, I've given her a fine home, I've given her a fur coat, I've given her all of these things.

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And I listened to him and I said, yes, I said, but have you given her yourself? And that was a long pause. He did not answer.

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So the love of God is self giving and self spending. Now it's a mystery, the love of God. God so loved the world. It's a mystery.

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It's related to life and light. It's related to the mystery of the new life. Through God's love, the world is formed. Through his love, God gives birth to the world.

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Through his love, God gives birth to you and me. And in the context in which this event occurs, that's related to our scripture, Nicodemus comes to God, or Jesus Christ,

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and he says to him that he knows that he's a great teacher come from God and all of that, but Jesus says to Nicodemus, "You must be born again." And this is confusing to Nicodemus.

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He says, "I've already been born once, "and how can I be born again?" Because he was thinking of carnality. He was thinking of the kind of sex relationship

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that goes into birth and all of that coming out of the mother's womb and so on. And he said, "How can this be?" Well, the kind of love that's related to God

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in this way is not lust. And so often we confuse love with lust. It's not a kind of love that has to do with cohabitation as we think of it.

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God's love does not need male or female in order to produce the new birth. He is at a higher level. God so loved the world. And when you think about it, it just blows my mind to think about God loving the world. Because you see the world is an arena of trial and tribulation. Jesus

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said in the world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world. Now it's rather confusing you you read in one part of the scripture it says God loved the world he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And then you read farther over in the scriptures where it

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says "Love not the world." Love not the world. Love not the world. And another passage, Jesus says to his disciples "You are of this world. I have called you out of this world. You see this world as we are well familiar with it is in rebellion against God. This world suffers from brokenness. Jesus says my

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kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight. So this is a world of violence. It's a world of war. It's a world of rebellion. You know I've gotten to the point where I'm afraid to look at TV before I go to sleep. There's so much violence, men beating up women and all

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that and I'm of such a sensitive nature that I take that to bed to me with me if I look at that the last thing that I see and yet this seems to be the most popular thing. There was a song we used to sing when I was a boy, "This is a mean world to have to live in until you die. The world is in rebellion against God and in

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John 2 15 we read "Love not the world neither the things of the world if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. Now how can this be? God so loves the world and then we read here love not the world. John 3 16 says that he gave himself for the world. Love for the world, love not the world, and love

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"Love not the world" refers to lust and the things of the world that would draw us away from the straight and narrow path. God reveals himself through his relationship with his world. love is revealed in that he made a perfect world. Everything was good and

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very good. The world came through God's love. God said let there be. The world came forth in perfect freedom. Now the world was created I said by God in love but along the way sin entered the world. The world rebelled against God and And people go contrary to God.

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They prefer their own way to His way. They abuse His creation and abuse themselves. God's perfect world becomes the domain of demonic powers. God's children are given the divine revelation,

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but they ignore it. They disobey the divine word. God himself walks with his children in the garden, but they transgress.

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They rebel against his will. But God continues to love his world, broken though it is, God loves the world. It's still his world separated and estranged from him,

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though it may be, it is God's world. Now, the Christian life begins with these words, so to speak, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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God because he first loved us. God takes the initiative. That's good news. God himself takes the initiative and God comes after us. As Francis Thompson puts God is like the hound of heaven tracking down the souls of men and converting them to his saving truth. God is on our trail no matter how far we go, how far we may drift from the right path, God is there.

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Though I make my bed in hell, he's there. He is on our trail. He tracks us down and he's always around and the scripture says that we love him because he first love us. You know when we were small we would call ourselves courting and you'd say to the girl do you love me and she'd answer back do you love me. You know if

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you happen to say I love you then you get the answer back possibly that I love you but first they want to know whether or not you love me and God takes the initiative and loves us even though we may not love him and we may not recognize him God takes the initiative and comes forth announcing that he loves

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us and he expresses that love through Jesus Christ the greatest gift and you know there's something special about your first love first love you can remember that first love I can remember when I went to school and I had a the first grade teacher, her name was Miss Jolly,

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and I fell in love with Miss Jolly. And that was something strange, I'd never, never forgotten her all these years. I still remember her very well.

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And I thought she was the most beautiful lady. And something really special about the first love. We are laden by a sense of guilt and we have embarrassed ourselves by the way we've acted. God takes upon himself all of our brokenness, all of our guilt, all of our

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embarrassment, God takes it upon himself and reaches out for us and opens the gate of acceptance and say you are my child. I love you. No matter what you may have done, no matter how society has turned against you, I love you. That's what God says and he does not wait even for us to make an apology. His love is

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already there. The prodigal comes back and he has his speech already made up. "Father, I have sinned against thee and against heaven. I'm no more worthy to be called your son, make me as one of the house..." He doesn't get to say all that. The father runs to meet him, embraces him, and kisses him, and says to the

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servant, "Put a ring on his finger, prepare a feast, this is my child." That's the way God's love is. He loves this world, this world with all of its faults, this world with all of its brokenness, this world with its saints and sinners. God loves this world. He loves this world so much that he gave the world its greatest gift. Greatest gift.

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You know sometimes we try to get up get around giving good gifts but God gave the greatest gift. We were given gifts in connection with our Christmas celebration we pull names you know how that goes you pull this name you're supposed to get a gift for that person and I pulled David's name and I

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sacrificed my lunch money to buy David a gift. David pulled Vera's name and Vera came from a family that was better off than all of our families and so she gave him a real good gift, but David gave me an old dirty greasy tie. That was his gift. I was so outdone, but I decided to save the tie, and I saved it. And it just so happened a year or so later I pulled David's name, and I gave David that same tie.

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Same time. Well that's the way we are about gift-giving. That's just a human reaction to gift-giving, but God, God gives the greatest gift. He makes the greatest investment, he takes the greatest risk on us. And you know, his love is unlimited. Our love has limits. Our love can be measured. We sing, "I love you a bushel and a

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pick, a bushel and a pick and a hug around the neck, that's it, no more. We measure our love. Now God so loves the world that he gives his only Son, Jesus Christ and he commands us, listen, he commands us to love. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy body, all, everything. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, thy neighbor, thy neighbor. live.

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thy neighbor as thyself. All of us fall short. We have to look at the love of God and don't measure yourself by the pastor's love, by the deacon's love, or by some sister's love but measure yourself according to God's love. So love that I'm talking about is not some mere sentiment, it's not an opinion, it's not some

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feeling. It consists in that which is definite in being sure of who you are, of being convinced that God makes the supreme sacrifice for us. He makes the supreme thing. He sends Jesus Christ down to this earth and Jesus Christ goes about doing good, setting the example so that we may know how to walk by walking

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in his steps. He goes before the Sanhedrin, he goes before Pilate, he goes through all of the trials and tribulations of this life and through it all we find him at the cross crying, "Father, why hast thou forsaken me?" God gives his best and some describe this scene as saying that God turned his back

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it was so awful that he turned his back but God gave the world the greatest gift the best heaven had came to earth God's greatest gift born in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. God's love for the world is revealed in Jesus' life, in his suffering, in his sacrifice. And you know I often wondered how my mother is

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giving me gifts. She always would give me something I really wanted. And I used to marvel at how did she know I wanted this? How did she know I really needed this? That was the gift, but God knows better than anybody else what we need and he has he has so arranged it that he he provides everything that we need. It's

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wrapped up in this package we call Jesus Christ. It's there and everything God has for us is in Him. So God gives us His love through Jesus Christ. How great it is, is His love. We sing love divine, all loves excelling. Joy of heaven to earth come down, fix in us thy humble dwelling, all thy faithful mercies crown. Well

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God gave his only begotten son to the world, to a world that after having received his revelation of himself this world rebels against him and God gives Jesus that the world may be brought back to him. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. That's the meaning of this passage. Well that's the

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love of God? How long will it last? The love life of this world doesn't last very long. But how much do we love God that has to do with our response. We see God's action. What is our response? Following the resurrection Jesus says to Peter, "Do you love me?" "Peter, do you love me?" "Oh yes Lord, I love you." "Well do you

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love me more than these fish? Yes. Do you love me more than your job? Yes. Well if you love me then be my shepherd and feed my sheep, feed my lambs. So this is the answer that we're to make our response to the love of God. Love of God reaches out to us and what is our response? The love of God is with us always. Paul looks

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at this human situation of man's sinfulness and all he said then what shall we say to these things? Then he concludes he said I am absolutely and completely convinced that neither height nor depth nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things which are things which are to come or any other creature

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shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God for his love. The one thing that I've always known more important than anything else that I was loved. If you really know that, that can shape your life. That can drive you to unparalleled heights if you really

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understand that you are loved. That's why I love that song. I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stayed within, seeking to rise no more. But, but, but, but the master of the sea heard my despairing cry and from the waters lifted me, now safe am I. That's good news. In a world of bad news, that's good news. And as we extend now the

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the invitation to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We ask you to come and unite with the people of God here at Ebenezer while we sing "Jesus loves me." This I know. Father Bible tells me. We can talk a great deal about theology and all of that, but when Karl Barth, the great theologian, came and they asked him if he

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could wrap up his theology in just a few words this is what he said Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me. We invite you to come. He knocks on the door of every heart he reaches out no matter how far you've drifted we invite you to come. The door of the church is open. You may come by letter, by Christian experience,

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A profession of faith you may come. Just rise up and just slip right through the pews and come. Goodbye, teacher. [MUSIC - "JESUS LOVES ME"]

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Jesus loves me, this I know. All the Bible tells me so. Lift your voice to him below. ♪ May our weak heart be strong ♪

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♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ Oh, my Lord, help me so ♪

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[MUSIC] ♪ He will watch how they rise in ♪ ♪ Let his little child go to him ♪ ♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪

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♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ Yes, Jesus loves me ♪ ♪ The Bible tells me so ♪

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♪ Jesus loves me, loves me still ♪ ♪ No one clearly can heal ♪ ♪ From his shining throne of life ♪ Come to watch me where I lie.

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Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. [MUSIC]

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[BLANK_AUDIO]