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In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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Golda?

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Do you love me?

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That's Tevye's question for Golda in the musical,

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A Fiddler on the Roof.

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Tevye lives in a world held together tightly by tradition.

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And one of those traditions is arranged marriages.

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But Tevye's world is being pulled apart. He's got five daughters.

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And the three eldest have their own ideas about love and marriage.

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They think they should get married for love and not just to be obedient

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and to follow the tradition and the matchmaker's wishes.

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And in the midst of such challenges, Tevye is faced with a question

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he's probably never even thought about in his ordered and traditional world.

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He's been married for 25 years and all of a sudden he's asking the question,

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Golda, do you love me?

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Do you love me?

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Meaning, do you have an emotional attachment to me?

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Golda, do you have any feelings for me at all?

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And so often when we think of love, these are the terms in which we think,

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primarily feelings and emotions, passions and attractions

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or some sort of desire.

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And we wonder if the people around us and in our lives love us.

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We expect it to look and to feel a particular way.

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In fact, we might at times wonder, does God love us?

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When we're struggling, when we're lonely,

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when we wonder why our life isn't quite going the way we've planned it

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or how we thought it might go, we might really wonder,

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does God actually love me?

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Or if we can't admit that for ourselves, we probably know somebody

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who's voiced those words, does God love me?

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And when it comes to a text like we run into today in John 3:16,

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we easily bring these thoughts of our own, our own conceptions of love.

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We bring them to the text.

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John 3:16, I think you probably know this by heart,

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so very un-Lutheran-like, I'm going to have you say it with me.

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It starts with for.

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For God so loved the world that he gave his only son,

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that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.

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For God so loved the world, by nature given the way we think about love,

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we immediately jump to thoughts like this.

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God loved the world so, so, so very much.

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God loved the world so deeply.

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God had such a strong emotional attachment to the world.

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But is that what's going on here?

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Is that what John intends for us to read and to hear?

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Probably not.

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Now, anyone who's ever given a sermon or led a Bible study or anything,

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you know that you always wish you had more time to prepare,

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no matter how early you started.

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If I had more time to prepare, here's one thing I would research.

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So the next time I preach on John 3, here's what I'm going to do.

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I'm going to study God and his love

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and how often the Scriptures speak of it in terms of quantity or quality or intensity.

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I'm pretty sure that it doesn't actually come up all that much.

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Today's text speaks of how God loves and whom God loves

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and the result of his active love.

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Now, let's step back for a moment.

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We'll come back to that in a few moments.

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But let's step back for a moment and think about what's going on here

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because as often happens as we jump into today's text at verse 14,

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we've jumped into the end of a conversation that's been going on since the beginning of the chapter.

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Jesus has been going about doing signs

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and there are people who are beginning to believe in him.

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And Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, comes to him at night

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and he knows that Jesus could not be doing these things unless God were with Him.

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Now, he doesn't ask the question directly, but he seems to be asking,

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Jesus, is God really with you? How is this all working out?

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But as Jesus often does, he turns the conversation in His own direction.

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And he speaks about being begotten and the kingdom of God.

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He tells Nicodemus, one must be begotten from above in order to see the kingdom of God.

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And Nicodemus is confused.

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And we see that in his response.

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Nicodemus is thinking, I've already been begotten.

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In fact, I've already been born.

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How is it that a person who's grown old can enter again into his mother's womb and be born again?

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That's impossible, Jesus.

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And so Jesus makes His point again, but with slightly different words.

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Nicodemus, one must be begotten of water and spirit if one wants to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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And Jesus goes on and Nicodemus ends up confused.

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How can these things come about?

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And so Jesus, as he explains, eventually comes to our verse that begins our text today.

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As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

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That whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.

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And probably at that point in our text, Jesus quits speaking and John begins his commentary on what Jesus has said.

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John the Gospel writer begins to explain and he explains these thoughts, these prior thoughts, with words that we've already spoken today together.

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Let's say them again.

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For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life.

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For God so loved the world.

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Our trouble comes with that little word, so.

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Or more precisely, how you and I read or understand that word, so.

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Like most words, it can do a variety of things, it can mean a variety of things.

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Which one does it mean here in this context?

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Why is it that when we read this, we automatically jump to so much?

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The English word so in John 3:16 is a translation of a Greek word, houtos.

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And houtos can mean degree of intensity, but only under certain circumstances.

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And those circumstances aren't really met here in John's Gospel in this instance.

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A verse doesn't meet those circumstances, so instead of inserting this common idea of so much, what does it mean?

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Houtos more naturally, more by number, more often simply correlates things, just as so also.

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We just saw it in verse 14.

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That's the easiest way to take it.

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So let's hear our verse a little differently.

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Hopefully a little more clearly.

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For God in this way loved the world.

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Which immediately begs the question, in what way?

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And it's already been answered for us.

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Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

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Here's how God loved the world.

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John points us back to the lifting of the sun and then he continues explaining, just so, just as the Son of Man must be lifted up.

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Just as all of this, God sent His Son into the world.

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Sent him to the cross.

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Put him on a pole.

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Just as the serpent hung on the pole.

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God sent him so that those who are under judgment could look to him and live.

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Not just temporal life after having been bit by a serpent.

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No, live eternal life, a much greater salvation.

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Those under judgment, the entire world may look at the Son on the cross and live.

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God's love is not portrayed here as so deep or so broad or so high or so emotional.

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God's love is portrayed as an action, an action compared to another past action in which he showed hHs love and mercy and grace.

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God's love is portrayed as the action of sending His Son, lifting His Son high upon the cross.

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That's the love of God for the world.

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And as part of the world, that's God's love for you.

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And the person sitting next to you.

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And every person you're ever going to encounter, that's God's love for the world.

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Some will refuse to look, just like some refused to look at the serpent on the pole and thus died.

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Some will refuse to believe.

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As our text goes on, John goes on to speak of the light and the darkness at the end verses of our text.

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God has sent light into the world, this same Jesus Christ.

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And yet some do everything they can to hide from the light.

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But God? God has acted.

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God has loved.

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And Tevye asks Golda if she loves him. She's completely caught by surprise.

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She doesn't know what to do with the question. This is not how she thinks. This is not part of the tradition.

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Do I what? Do you love me?

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And she has all kinds of responses to put off answering him, probably because she has no clue herself what to say.

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She refuses until she finally comes up with a rehearsal of all of the things she's ever done for him over 25 years of marriage.

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And at the end of that rehearsal, she tells herself and him, well, then I guess I love you.

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It's not a feeling. Not for her.

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It's what she's done.

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And really, the evidence was there for the past 25 years. Evidence for her, evidence for Tevye.

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Now, of course, we could argue, we could cast doubt on her love.

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We could argue that, well, as part of the tradition, she's just doing what she's supposed to do.

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She's doing what she's obligated to do.

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And so we can introduce doubt about whether her evidence even shows her love for Tevye.

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But God, God is not obligated to do anything for anyone.

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He doesn't act out of human tradition or obligation.

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His love is fully intentional.

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Consider how Paul puts it in our epistle lesson.

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Paul starts out reminding his Ephesian audience and us,

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you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

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And then he goes on to describe that condition more fully.

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There's nothing lovable about you Ephesians or you seminarians, et cetera, or you pastors.

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By nature, there's nothing lovable about you.

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Nothing to endear us to him, nothing to bring about some so wonderful emotional response.

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But in verses four and five, Paul states,

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But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us,

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even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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God's great love is Christ, the giving of His Son, the crucifixion of Christ,

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or in John's terms, the lamb of God, but now the lamb of God on a pole.

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This is God's love, undeserved, unmerited, gift, grace, love.

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So when you find yourself wondering, does God love me?

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Or you find yourself working with someone who's struggling with that question about God's love

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for them, look no further than Christ on the cross.

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Point them to Christ on the cross.

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Here is God's love for the world.

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Here is God's love for you.

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Christ on the cross is God's love, God's love in action.

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So look and believe and rest assured.

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And in that love, live.

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In the name of Jesus, amen.