Sermon Tone Analysis

I John 3:1,2

 

! Introduction

            I have a couple of cards that I have received recently from my family.

Each of these cards says “I love you.”

I have received these kind of cards for years and each year, they say, “I love you.”

I know that my wife, mother, children love me, but I still love to hear it each time I am told.

Today I would like to remind you again of something that you know.

I want to tell you again that you are loved by God.

We know that we are loved by God, but it is great to hear it once in a while.

In fact, it is more than nice to hear it, it is terribly important to know and be reminded that we are loved by God.

I have heard of research which has been done on babies.

It sounds like very cruel research.

A group of children who, I believe, were in an orphanage were treated differently.

One group was held, talked to and loved.

The other was ignored.

The results were startling.

It was evident quickly that the children who were ignored soon despaired while the other children thrived.

The research revealed just how important it is that we know that we are loved.

But we do not always feel loved.

People do not always love us.

Man’s inhumanity to man is legendary.

All over the world people are terribly cruel to each other.

We have heard of the civil wars in Congo.

Apparently, in that country, you can’t trust your neighbor.

If they are from another tribe, they may just as well kill you as help you.

But the violent places in the world are not the only places where people don’t love each other.

Even in Christian churches, there are terrible stories of people being ignored, marginalized and even hated.

I have heard of one person deliberately sitting on the other side of the church from a person that they didn’t like.

We can’t count on the love of people, even though we should be able to and need to learn to, something I want to talk about next week.

Since we can’t count on the love of people, it is important to know that we can count on the love of God.

A few years ago we heard that a friend of ours was lost.

He had gone hunting up north with his brother and a friend.

They did not return when they were expected and it took a few days before the bodies of our friend and his friend were found.

Only our friends brother survived.

When we resigned from our last position, we had no place to go for a while.

We thought that we should easily find a church, but we had to wait seven months.

It was hard to wait and we didn’t understand why it took so long.

Perhaps you are experiencing a difficulty in life that you find hard to face and perhaps you don’t understand why it is happening or even why God is letting you go through the difficulty.

Because life sometimes obscures the evidence of God’s love, we need to be reminded that we are loved by God.

Satan is an enemy who is doing all he can to destroy faith.

When intellectual challenges or physical trials or emotional defeats plague us, it is the enemy shouting into our ear - “there is no hope, all is lost, God doesn’t care about you!”

Because of the attacks of the enemy, we need to be reminded that we are loved by God.

Today, I want to assure you from the bottom of my heart, with the power of God’s truth behind me and in tune with the Spirit of God that you are loved.

God loves you deeply.

Please look at I John 3:1,2.

Are you loved?

Look at what it says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!”

The phrase, “how great” can be translated “of what sort” but actually means “of what country.”

In other words, God loves us with a love so unearthly that we have not encountered it anywhere else.

It is a love that is unknown in this world apart from God’s revelation.

That otherworldly love has been lavished on us.

I will never forget the way one preacher described lavished.

He brought to mind the image of a cream pie.

Sometimes when you get a chocolate cream pie or a banana cream pie, they will put a dollop of whipped cream on it.

On the other hand, sometimes, you get one of these pies and the whipped cream is piled on so much that it overflows the edges, is running down the sides and falling off the end.

That is what lavished means and that is how God has given his love to us, not in a stingy way, but as a generous gift.

In these verses, we also are called “beloved.”

Some translations have “dear friends,” but I prefer “beloved” because it once again communicates this blessed privilege that is ours - to know that we are loved.

This term is used 7 times in this short book of I John.

God has a great love for us!

What is the demonstration of this love?

!

I.

We Are Children Of God.

John says, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” Then in the next verse we hear the same message again, “Beloved, now we are children of God.”

We have some friends who are very generous and welcoming hosts.

There is a young fellow in their community who has a bit of a mental handicap.

This young fellow has adopted our friends as his family.

He is often at their place.

He sometimes helps with work, he shows up for meals, he goes places with them and even shows up at Christmas.

They welcome him and he is almost a part of their family.

But there are limits.

There are times when he is not welcome.

There are times when it is only their children who are there, and he is not.

That is what it means to be family.

As much as we may belong to a group or have good friends, there is a special place for family.

To be a part of a family means that you don’t have to make an appointment to come over, you are always welcome.

To be a part of family means that it is assumed that when special family events happen, you will be there.

To be a part of family means that we can say things to each other that would be unacceptable elsewhere.

It means that we are accepted even when we do stupid things.

God’s great love for us is demonstrated in that we are His children.

!! A. How Do We Become Children Of God?

We become children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

Although all people on earth are created by God and in that sense God is their Father, there is a different sense in which we are children of God.

Because of the rebellion of sin, we have all become prodigal sons, but God has invited us back.

In The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it.

I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.

When schoolmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them I'd fallen and cut it on a piece of glass.

Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different.

I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.

There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored--Mrs.

Leonard by name.

She was short, round, happy--a sparkling lady.

Annually we had a hearing test.

... Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn.

I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back--things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?"

I waited and heard words that God must have put into her mouth, seven words that changed my life.

Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, "I wish you were my little girl."

God says to every person deformed by sin, "I wish you were my son" or "I wish you were my daughter."

-- Leadership, Vol. 16, no. 1.

John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”