Making History

For Love
December 18, 2022
Chris Seidman, Lead Minister, The Branch

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world … .

Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)
“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest command. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commands.”

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus is the Ultimate Expression of God’s Love for Us…

He’s the ultimate expression of the depth of God’s love.

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son … .

Romans 5:8 (NIV)
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1 John 3:16 (NIV)
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

He’s the ultimate expression of the width of God’s love.

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world … .

The word for “world” in the original language of John’s gospel is: Kosmos.

There was another word for “world” in the Greek language; it was: Oikoumene.

Oikoumene was the word often used to mean the civilized world, the land inhabited by civilized, educated, acceptable people.

But John used the word Kosmos, the other word for world, a word that covered everybody.

That word, Kosmos, was used to send the message that no one anywhere is outside the realm of God’s love.

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Max Lucado
The word (whoever) sledgehammers racial fences and dynamites social classes. It bypasses gender borders and surpasses ancient traditions. Whoever makes it clear; God exports his grace worldwide.

Hebrews 13:12 (NIV)
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.

John 3:16 (NIV)
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:10 (NIV)
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Ephesians 2:14 (NIV)
For he himself is our peace … .

This Week …

Will you receive God’s love through Jesus?

Romans 8:37 (NIV)
… we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Will you ask for the Holy Spirit to pour a fresh awareness of His love into your heart?

Romans 5:5 (NIV)
… God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge … .

Will you be an expression of God’s love to others?