Sermon: I'd Die For You

The Power of Love, sermon #4
God So Loved the World Cynthia O’Brien
1 Thessalonians 5:4-18 John 3:16 October 2, 2005

1 Thessalonians

9 For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. 10 He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.


John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Romans 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.


Continuing our series on Love…

We are exploring examples of love found in scripture, and for these first few weeks we have learned about God’s love, beginning with the love that existed within God, in the Trinity, before the creation of the world. There is also God’s love for his chosen people, a love that was so strong that when the people turned away from God, God felt like the longsuffering husband of an unfaithful wife.

Today we consider John 3:16, God’s love for the world. God’s sacrificial and all-encompassing love for the world.

We are fascinated by sacrificial love. The more scandalous or strange, the more we like it.

People who follow celebrity culture will recall the strange public face of the marriage of Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton five years ago. The public was fascinated by their matching tattoos, and how they wore vials of each other’s blood around their necks. If they were looking for exposure, they certainly got it.

We love stories of what people sacrifice for love. Many of you know the story of the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor. It was 1936 when King Edward VIII spoke on the radio the words that would end his reign:
“You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.”

He had fallen in love with Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice divorced American, and he had no choice but to abdicate the throne if he were to marry her. They married in 1937, and for the next 35 years of their marriage they were ostracized by the royal family.

Despite the scandal that surrounded the couple, millions of people in Britain and around the world were moved by the King’s sacrifice for love.

This is what makes the sacrament of communion so meaningful and even strange to us: That God, in Christ, would make the greatest sacrifice, giving his life for us. We accept it, but even with our interest in sacrificial love, we really don’t understand it.

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Nicodemus took a great risk the night he went to meet Jesus. He didn’t want to be seen, but he had encountered something – someone that he wanted to know more.

He was one of the best theological minds, and even he could not understand what Jesus was trying to tell him, about being born again, about being born of the spirit, about eternal life.

Jesus tried to explain this eternal life to a very smart man who was open to learning but who still didn’t understand. It is in this context that Jesus said the words that every Christian child memorizes, words that give perhaps the broadest declaration of God’s love:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

We say it as if it’s obvious, but a man with a high theological intelligence and an open heart couldn’t grasp it.

God loved the world.
If you ask average Americans who follow celebrity news what Angelina Jolie has been doing this year, they’d probably say, “Having an affair with Brad Pitt… or denying it.” But Jolie, who is just 30 years old, has been very, very busy with another love affair that doesn’t make Entertainment Tonight. I might call it a love affair with the world.

In March she was in Washington, D.C to launch a new organization she helped fund, the National Center For Refugee And Immigrant Children, which will provide free legal aid to the thousands of children who arrive alone to the United States each year as refugees and immigrants.

As a United Nations goodwill ambassador, she went to Pakistan in May to tour refugee camps on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. She was calling attention to approximately 3 million Afghan refugees who are still in Pakistan, despite the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

This is not a new thing. Her first big action movie, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” was filmed in Cambodia, and she was moved by the poverty and need there. She adopted a Cambodian baby and looked for other ways to help. Since then, she has taken regular trips to places of the greatest need to raise awareness, including Kosovo, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Chechnya. You can read her journals online at www.unrefugees.org

And this summer she went to Ethiopia and adopted a sickly, malnourished 6-month old girl, who reportedly is now gaining weight and improving. These are just some of her charity efforts this year.

She is in love with the world, specifically with the displaced people of the world.

Do you love the world? You don’t have to be a famous actress to show love on an international scale. In fact, you would be surprised at how many people are sacrificing to help the world, many right here in our church. There’s a good chance that a person occupying the next pew delivered Meals on Wheels last week, or sent a check to Mercy Corps, or wrote a letter to a child they sponsor in Indonesia.

There isn’t enough newsprint to report all the great things that people are doing to love the world.

This is the world that God loves, that God loved enough that he gave his only son. We are called also to have the same great vision – to love the world as God does.