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JOHN 3:16

"THE GREATEST LOVE"

I. FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD.
        A. Who or what is God.
                1. The confusion of men's minds then.
                        a. To the Romans and Greeks many gods.
                                1. Sun-moon-thunder-planets-emotions.
                                2. "I'm Thor."
                2. The confusion of mens minds today.
                        a. An essence - a creative force.
                3. The scriptural revelation.
                        a. The conscious, all intellignet creator of the Universe and all
                           forms of life that exist therein.
                        b. The sustaining power in creation.
                                1. "By Him are all things held together."
                                2. I doubt if Paul understood what he was writing.
                                   1/454 gram of protrons at N. & S. poles exert repelling
                                   pressure of 26 tons.
                        c. God is infinate in knowledge God is infinate in power God is
                           infinate in duration God is infinate in love.

II. "FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD.
        A. Consider the object of His love - "the world."
                1. Nothing here to attract or deserve His love.
                        a. It was not as He made it.
                        b. The marks of sin were everywhere.
                        c. Man was in rebellion against Him.
                2. Much here to repel His love.
                        a. Man's fall was willful and deliberate.
                        b. The world was indifferent, years more, hated Him.
                        c. Love measured by opposing forces it over comes.
        B. I could imagine the opposite to be true. "The world so loved God."
                1. The world stood to gain the most from the re-establishment of the bridge to
                   span the chasm between God and man.
                2. After all it was man who broke fellowship.

III. "FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD."
        A. Love is measured by its gifts.
                1. What it cost the giver.
                        a. Aristotal Onnasis may give Jackie a $100,000 necklace. Doesn't
                           prove much.
                2. God could not demonstrate love by giving diamonds or gold.
                3. He gave His most prized and precious possession "His only begotten Son."
                        a. More! He gave His Son to be a sacrifice to be mocked, despised,
                           rejected, crucified by stupid, ignorant humanity.
                        b. "For if God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us
                           all, How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things."

IV. "FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT . . ."  -  THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF HIS  LOVE.
        A. To save us from greatest calamity. "Should not parish."
                1. Destruction inevitable outside of His intervention.
                        a. The law would have taken it's course.
                2. God under no obligation to interfere.
                        a. He had given to man all the essentials for happy life.
                        b. Man's ruin was of himself.
                3. God under no necessity to intervere.
                        a. Should man parish, justice served.
                        b. He did not need us.
                        c. Earth as speck of dust in universe.
        B. To give us greatest good "everlasting life" - quality not just quantity.

V. "WHO SO EVER BELIEVETH."
        A. Essential, reasonable - easy.

Conclusion Easier to be saved than lost.