March 23, 2008 Easter Sunday
Sermon Title: “Extreme Love”
Series: Extreme Love: The Greatest Commandment
Text: John 3:16
Dr.
Delivered on March 23, 2008
“For God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.”
John 3:16
Extreme Love
Most of you know I pretty much love all sports, both as a participant and as a spectator. It doesn’t matter if it’s baseball, basketball, football, golf, or tennis. I even got into soccer back when the World Cup was going on. There’s really only one type of sports that I just don’t get or enjoy watching, and that’s something known as “Extreme Sports.”
Extreme sports
are different from the sports I grew up with. Extreme sports are…well, extreme.
They’re high speed, high risk, high danger activities. They involve doing things
like riding a bicycle down the side of a mountain, or parachuting off a
building, or bungee jumping off a bridge. One guy I read about jumped out of an
airplane at 33,000 feet over
Extreme sports formerly
existed at the margin of the sporting world but now they’ve gone mainstream. Millions
watch them on shows like ESPN’s X-Games and some of the sports have even made
the Olympics. As you might imagine, young adults dominate extreme sports but older people are jumping in as well.
Skydiving, hang gliding, rock climbing, mountaineering, bungee jumping,
white-water rafting, and other extreme sports have all shown huge increases in
participation.
In fact, it seems to me that everything containing
the adjective “extreme” has become popular in recent years. There’s something
fashionable about being extreme. People engage in extreme sports, listen to
extreme music, and watch “Extreme Makeover” on TV. Reality TV, that “in your
face” kind of TV; is even a spin-off of the “extreme craze.” Even church and
parachurch ministries are capitalizing on the “extreme” madness. Actor Stephen
Baldwin started a skateboard ministry reaching out to young people. Church
youth groups call themselves names like “Generation- Xtreme,” and niche
churches have popped up to the surfer culture, biker culture, and other extreme
sport groups.
I suppose that part of the craze is understandable.
One of the appeals of extreme sports is the adrenalin rush that they give -
something that’s usually totally lacking in most church activities. Let’s face
it, you won’t find the words “church” and “adrenalin rush” mentioned in the
same sentence very often.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing extreme
about Christianity though. For the past several weeks we’ve been talking about “Extreme
Love.” The kind of extreme love God calls us to in the Great Commission.
Today we’re concluding our series by talking about the greatest demonstration
of God’s love for us, the death and resurrection of Jesus. What I’d like to do
this morning is make sure we’re all on the same page about the meaning of the
word extreme, and then I’m going to give you four things to notice about God’s
extreme love. We’re going to do that by looking at the most famous verse in the
entire Bible, the “Gospel in a nutshell,” John 3:16 along with another verse
from John’s gospel.
Let’s begin with a definition. According to
the dictionary extreme is an adjective meaning “of the greatest possible
degree, extent, or intensity; far beyond the norm; to the utmost.” In modern
parlance we’d say something that is extreme is “over the top.” That phrase
itself helps us understand what we’re talking about when we say “extreme.” “Over
the top” can be traced all the way back to WWI. That war, as you probably know,
was fought mainly in trenches. That meant in order to fight the soldiers had to
climb up “over the top” of the trenches they were in and then race across open
ground to attack the enemy in their trenches. Thus to go “over the top” was to leave
the safety of your trench in order to jump up into a hail of bullets; definitely
extreme behavior!
What we’re saying here then, is that God went to these
kinds of extreme measures to demonstrate his love for us. Let’s look at a few
things to notice about this supreme illustration of God’s love as recounted in
John’s “gospel within a gospel.”
First of all notice the EXTENT of
God’s extreme love. God’s love demonstrated on the cross and by the empty tomb
is boundless. The very wording of the verse makes that plain. Notice,
God didn’t just “love” the world, God “so loved” the world. That word so
is an important one, meant to express the depth of the love God has for us. Think
of the difference in saying, “I love you” versus, “I love you sooo much.” And
notice the other “extreme” words in the verse; there are at least two more. God
loves the “world” – the Greek word there is cosmos, and it doesn’t get any
broader than that. And if that weren’t clear enough, notice he also the uses
the word “everyone.” Jesus didn’t come to earth to show God’s love to a
select few, he came to show everyone his love.
A few weeks ago in a sermon I mentioned that according to my calculations I have preached some 350 sermons at NewSong in the eight years we’ve been in existence. That equates to over a million words that took almost 140 hours (six days) to speak. Most of those sermons have been about God’s love in some form or fashion, and yet, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to the extent of his love. John Wesley, my spiritual hero, is said to have preached some 40,000 sermons and traveled 250,000 miles as he proclaimed the extreme love of God, and yet he too only scratched the surface. There are over 6.5 billion people on this planet and God so loved them all, not just Christians, but Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus. Not just good people, who stay out of trouble, not just people like you and me, but killers and rapists and murderers. Why? Because God so loved the world, the whole cosmos, says John 3:16, that he did something amazing for us… and that leads to the second thing to notice about God’s extreme love.
The EXPRESSION of God’s extreme love. John 3:16 gives us the manner
in which he loved us. It tells us he did something for us – He gave his only
son. He made the ultimate sacrifice for you and for me. In fact, what he did is
beyond the ultimate sacrifice.
I’ve thought about this many, many times. I’m no
hero, but you know…if you told me, “Steve, these ten people are going to die
if you don’t do something…if you don’t lay down your life for them…” there’s
a strong chance I’d do it. You hear about it all the time in battle where a
grenade comes into a foxhole and one guy jumps on it, sacrificing himself to
save the other guys. But listen, if you said to me, “Steve you can save
these ten people if you’ll only sacrifice your daughter” I couldn’t do that
in a million years. That’s just asking too much; I love them too much. Those of
you who are parents, could you?
Back in the depression era a drawbridge operator took his young son to work with him one day. Father and son were enjoying a typical day, raising and lowering the bridge to let the boats pass underneath. But then, without warning, a passenger train appeared in the distance, speeding toward the open drawbridge. The man and his son raced down the catwalk to pull the lever that would lower the bridge. But the son slipped and got his leg stuck in the drawbridge gears. Horrified, the man quickly realized that he could either save his son, or lower the drawbridge to keep the passenger train from plummeting into the river below. He could not do both. With what must have been tremendous anguish, he pulled the lever to lower the bridge. He cried out in agony as he watched the train pass over the body of his son, caught in the gears below.
That man
sacrificed his son's life so that 400 railway travelers, travelers who were
probably oblivious to his great sacrifice, could live. That’s what God did on a
much grander scale. And for those of you struggling with what kind of God would
sacrifice his own child, remember, that Jesus was God, so in the
ultimate twist of irony imaginable, God sacrificed God’s self so that you and I
might live. It was the most
beautiful expression of love ever; God gave his only Son that you and I might have
everlasting life with him. Now that’s extreme love.
And the manner God did it was he gave. Tune into most radio stations, listen to a few songs, and you’ll hear the word love used to describe things ranging from boy-girl love, to brotherhood, to sexual activity. We use the word so generally that it could mean almost anything, but the common denominator in all the ways we use it seems to be that it has to do with getting something. But love as God expressed it through his Son was revolutionary because it was centered in giving, not in getting.
The key to understanding God’s love is that word gave. God the Father gave His Son, and the Son freely gave His life so that we might not perish but may have eternal life. At his last meal with his disciples as Jesus was preparing to go to the cross, John tells us that Jesus then, “…showed them the full extent of his love” John 13:1. The full extent of His love meant giving His life for us on the cross and then rising from the dead to prove he was who he said he was. God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only Son…and that brings us to the third thing to notice about God’s extreme love.
How to EXPERIENCE God’s extreme love. Jesus says we must believe in Him. And it’s clear that he was talking about more than intellectual assent to the fact that God exists. James tells us that even demons believe in God in that sense of the word. Are you still with me? God loves all people – the cosmos, remember? He expressed that love by giving his Son. But for someone to truly experience God’s love they must believe in him.
What we’re talking about by “believe” here is what you might call “extreme faithfulness” in modern extremist lingo. I’m talking about the kind of confidence and assurance that a bungee jumper must have in the guy who measured how far his bungee cord will stretch relative to the distance to the ground. I’m referring to the kind of faith a sky-diver must have in the guy who packed his parachute when it comes time to back out of an airplane door at 10,000 feet. It’s the difference in saying, “I believe Joe can pack a parachute” and in throwing him YOUR parachute and saying, “Here Joe, pack my chute.”
Relating God’s
extreme love to extreme sports works well in another sense too, for instance
with the cost of that experiencing that love. When researching extreme
sports I discovered that most of these sports are very costly. They require
specialized equipment that doesn’t come cheap. And many of them require you to spend
a bundle just to get to the place to do them. I found some extreme sports
packages on the Internet like a mountaineering expedition to
Obviously God’s extreme love was expensive for him. It cost him his Son. He made a total sacrifice for us. But there is a cost on our part too. It’s the cost of daring to step out in faith to follow him. In church we call that the “cost of discipleship.” It’s the cost of commitment in terms of the obedience and faithfulness that are called for in order for us to experience the fullness of God’s extreme love. Our commitment to “grow to be like Jesus” (from our mission statement) costs us. God paid it all so we could experience his extreme love, it’s not about earning anything, but remember, obedience to God is the surest sign we believe in Him and that we love Him. God’s extreme love is boundless, it is centered on the act of giving, and we must have faith to appropriate his love.
There’s also a fourth thing I want you to notice about God’s extreme love. And for that we’re going to look a little further over in John’s gospel to the 15th chapter, and there we read about the EXPECTATION of God’s love. And that expectation is that we will lay down our life for others so that they may experience God’s extreme love. Jesus, speaking to his disciples on the last night he was with them, said this, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” John 15:13.
Laying down his life was the God’s truest expression of his extreme love for us. It’s pretty radical if you think about it. It’s over the top, it’s like standing up into a hail of bullets to storm the enemy. But he does so as an example or a pattern for the kind of love he expects us to have for one another. We are to learn from his example of “giving” love.
Thankfully few,
if any, of us will be ever be called on to literally lay down our life for
someone else. But you can be sure we will all be called to lie something
down. You may be called to sacrifice your favorite sin, or your time
to serve others, or your talents or your money to build the
It’s so counter-intuitive though, isn’t it? It’s one of the paradoxes found in the gospel. The world says you gain by gaining. Get more stuff, get a better looking body, get a better looking boy/girlfriend, get all the latest gadgets, gear, media, and friends and you will have a place in this world. People will envy you and look up to you. But Jesus tells us that we gain by losing; in his economy we get by giving. He says that sacrifice and service is the road to the top. The question is, do we believe him?
The word sacrifice itself is helpful. I learned something this week. The word sacrifice comes from the two Latin words sacri and ficio and literally means, “to make holy.” When we make sacrifices, we are sanctifying our actions. Rather than looking at sacrifice as something negative, as something we “have” to do, or “ought” to do, we should look at it as the way we get closer to God. It’s the way we become more Christ like. When we look at it that way we realize sacrifice isn’t about losing something, but gaining instead.
The Bible teaches that this expectation, laying your life down, is the key to blessing. As we give priority to God’s kingdom we will discover that we receive “all these things” besides (Matt. 6:33). Jesus went even further and said that whatever we give up for him we will receive a hundredfold times more than what we have sacrificed (Matt. 19:29).
And so, in a story that is so simple that a small child can grasp it, and yet is so complex that only God could have thought it up, Jesus conquered death and because he lives, we too shall live. It can really be summed up in just four words.
Believe – in him as your Savior
Receive – the gift of his love
Live – your life with him as your Lord, and
Give – away your life, and his love to others….
Will you risk it
all to receive God’s extreme love? In December 1999, an extreme sports fanatic
scaled the famous 120 foot statue of Christ the Redeemer outside
Hear the good news this morning. Because of Easter it’s time to stop your running, and don’t even think of jumping! Say “Yes” to the tender call of Jesus. He’s all you need….