The Festival of
the Holy Trinity, May 26th Year of Our + Lord 2013
St. John and
Trinity Lutheran Churches, Fairview and Sidney, Montana
The Context of
John 3:16 - Life in God for You
Sunday’s
Sermon was framed by the Hymn - Christ Sits at God’s Right Hand, Lutheran Service Book 564. I do not have copyright permission to post
the lyrics, I apologize for any inconvenience. This however is a great reason to do a great thing, get a copy of LSB for your home use!
Stanza
1
John 3:16.
The Gospel in a Nutshell, it is called, a good thing, I think, if along
with the book, chapter and verse come the Words. For God has loved the world, in this way: He
gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but
have everlasting life. I’m happy this
morning that we have the verses that come before, and after, to help us
remember the details of what God giving His Son means. But even without their context, the words of
John 3:16 give a lot to think about, a lot to consider. And so it is a good verse to
memorize, as so many of you have, and speak out loud, because there is a hidden
power in plainly speaking the truth of Scripture, a power that lies well beyond
our ability to explain or defend God’s Word from critics and scoffers.
That’s part of what makes this hymn so
good. Christ sits at God’s right hand,
His saving work complete. Right
now. Salvation is complete, and Jesus
reigns in heaven. The faithful declare:
“This is reality. Deal with it.” Now, this isn’t the only thing the faithful
proclaim, and confessing Christ before the world does entail a lot more than
just stating some facts. But to make a
clear declaration of truth, “Jesus Christ the Savior is, right now, sitting at
God’s right hand,” is much better than apologizing for Scripture, or not saying
anything at all. Speak God’s truth, and
you never know just exactly how He might put it to work.
For example, just the other day I somewhat
unintentionally was part of God tweaking the conscience of a friend of mine, a
friend raised to be a Christian, but who today goes out of his way to make it
clear he is above and beyond the foolishness of the Bible. My friend, let’s call him Fred, was trying to
tease me a bit. We were in a group,
talking about this and that, and the subject came up of churches who say
drinking any alcohol at all is a sin.
Fred, grinning in my direction, complained about “those Christians” who
say we can’t drink.
My reply was to agree with Fred, and to
state my confusion at anyone who claims to believe the Bible, but condemns the
proper use of alcohol, especially when you consider all the wine that Jesus
miraculously created for the wedding reception at Cana. As I am sometimes prone to do, I went on at
some length, describing the details of the six large stone jars, 20 or 30
gallons each, and all that wine that Jesus made.
At a certain point in my sermonette, I
glanced at Fred, who had a very pained look on his face, which I believe came
from the way I was speaking of Jesus and the events at Cana: as the historical
facts that Scripture says they are. He
appeared a bit miffed, and perplexed, that I was actually injecting the Bible
into our conversation, referring to the events of Jesus’ life like he might
refer to the baseball game he watched last night. I could be wrong, but I suspect Fred was both
mocking and marveling over my way of speaking about Jesus. “How can Dave be so foolish?” He quickly led the conversation in another
direction, but he couldn’t do anything about the Holy Spirit working on his
heart.
Stanzas
2 and 3
Did I mention that John 3:16 is only
rightly understood within its context?
Ultimately, the context of this verse, just like the context of every
other verse in the Bible, is the whole Bible, in which there is a lot of talk
about priests and sacrifices. Our
hymnwriter moves us very deftly from the first stanza, full of Father giving
Son, and Son willingly giving Himself, bringing us into this priestly
context. Why were Melchizedek, and
Aaron, and the Tabernacle and the Temple so important? What was the point of all those high priests
and their altars and bloody sacrifices that fill the Scripture? They point to and are fulfilled in the altar
shaped like a T, the altar of a Roman Cross outside Jerusalem in 33 A + D, the
once for all sacrifice of God’s own Son, divine blood, shed for our good, so
that He might lead us on the way behind the veil, into the eternal presence of
the Father. The central context of John
3:16, the heart of the nut within the Gospel in a nutshell, is the Crucifixion
of Jesus, Son of Mary and also Son of God.
I don’t know how often the Cross is really
in mind when people say that God loves the world. Believing there is a God is very normal, very
human, and declaring that God loves people is also as common as good wine at
the Wedding of Cana. But while we humans
naturally believe in the existence of God, or maybe gods, we prefer to shape
our gods after ourselves. And so the god
or gods mostly discussed among us always recognize the basic goodness of
humanity. The gods you can discuss
publicly without getting dirty looks always seem to overlook sin and reward
people for good works, at least, if we are really trying, and do at least as
much good as not. God loves us, warts
and all, people love to believe. We
humans quite naturally prefer such gods of our own making, and love of our own
definition.
But the context of John 3:16 is a Cross, a
Cross necessary because God hates sin, so much so that the slightest remnant of
sin in His people means they are no longer His people. You must be perfect, says Jesus. You, however, and I, are not of ourselves
perfect and sinless, even though we must be.
So the context of God’s love revealed in the giving of the Son is Jesus
Christ, the perfect, innocent one, suffering and dying in the place of the very
sinners who put Him on the Cross. True
love is found only in the God who chose to overcome human sin in the Cross of
Jesus. Any other love, any other
self-serving, self-congratulatory warm and fuzzy feeling is a fiction of our
imaginations. For this is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His only begotten Son as the
propitiation, the sacrifice that wipes away our sin. This is the heart of the Gospel, in a
nutshell or any other container.
Stanza
4
The context of John 3:16 is Baptism. We can see this in the earlier part of John
chapter 3, as Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born of water and the
Spirit, that there is a new birth, a birth from above, worked not by the will
of man, or the efforts of a mother, but worked by God, a new birth which God
works by Water and the Word, which is the same as saying water and Spirit,
because the voice of the Spirit is the Word of God.
It isn’t a contradiction to say that John
3:16 is all about the Cross, and all about love, and also to say it is all about Baptism. For Baptism is our entrance into the
Crucifixion, and the Crucifixion brings us into God, it is how we experience
His love. I might say that Baptism is
our front row seat to God’s work of loving the world, but even that is lacking,
for Paul and Peter both speak of Baptism not as observing God’s work, but as
dying and rising, as suffering with and rising with Jesus.
It certainly seems like Baptism is our
work, and many people say that is all it is.
We decide, or our parents decide for us, to be baptized. A person applies the water, and says the
words. Baptism is, by outward
appearances, strictly a work of man. But
of course, outwardly, most everything important in God’s economy is also a work
of man. Men arrested Jesus, and nailed
Him to a tree. But what men meant for
evil, God meant for good. Even though
men drove the nails, Jesus laid down His life of His own accord, no one took it
from Him.
This is how God normally works in the
world, through the outward works of human beings. Men proclaimed His Resurrection, in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends to the earth. Human beings celebrate His Supper by
re-enacting it, and by taking and eating, taking and drinking. Men believe, and so are forgiven and restored
to God’s fellowship. But in all these
things, God chooses to work through the words and actions of men, of sinners
like you, and me, to work out His salvation.
He who hears you, Jesus tells the 12, hears Me. Faith is a gift of God, created in us by the
implanted Word, which, except for a relative handful of instances recorded in
Scripture when God spoke directly from heaven, is always spoken by people. And yet the Holy Spirit speaks through the
speaking of men, and the Word of God is thus living and active, the very power
of God unto salvation. So the context of
John 3:16 is God by His Word reaching out to sinful humanity, joining us by
Baptism to the death and resurrection and eternal life of Jesus, His Son, whom
He loves. Since the Father loves Jesus,
He also loves, and declares perfect, everyone who is in Jesus, by Baptismal
faith.
Stanza
5
The context of John 3:16 is life as
Baptized Christians gathering to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus,
given for us, given into the Cross by the Father, given for the joy set before
Him by the Son, given, so that we can live in communion with the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. Communion, sharing,
close unity and fellowship with God, is created for you in the flesh and blood
of Jesus. The work of the Triune God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is to give you faith in this gift, and to deliver
this communion to you. And communion
with God changes you, for now Christ lives in you, and goes with you, and
through you takes God’s message of love into the world.
After this past week, after the
devastation in Moore, OK, after the horrible bloody broad daylight murder of
that British soldier by those angry Muslims in London, after another week of
scandals and blame shifting in Washington, after all the struggles you have
faced and haven’t even told anyone about, after all this, we need the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit to come to us. We
always need this, for this is our only hope.
God grant that we continue to be wise to receive Him, coming to us, to
give us life, and also so that living in His love and forgiveness, we can than
reflect Him to our neighbors. We want
the world to be a better place, because we can still feel and see the potential
God first created in everything. God
wants to give everyone a better world, and He has done so, through the Cross of
Jesus. The context of John 3:16 is the
new life God has for you, and all people, in and through the Crucified and
Resurrected One, Jesus Christ, who rules at God’s right hand, today, for you,
Amen.
Stanza
6
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