5/3/09 - Easter 4 - 1 John 3:1-2

HOW GREAT THE LOVE OF THE FATHER!
- He loved us even as his enemies
- He loves us now as his children

There in the middle of the Garden, Adam and Eve did the one thing that they were told not to do. The blatantly and defiantly went against God’s clear command so that they could do what they wanted to do. But instead of immediately destroying them along with the world which they also subjected to sin, the Lord prolonged their life and promised them a Savior to deliver them from their self-inflicted punishment. How great the love of the Father! Adam and Eve’s firstborn son, Cain, killed his brother Abel out of jealousy and hate. But instead of repaying Cain for the evil that he had done, the Lord spared his life as well, protected him from others, and gave him multiple chances to repent. How great the love of the Father! Centuries later the human race became so bad and so evil that there were only eight people left who believed in the Lord. And so the Lord decided to save those eight believers inside an ark as he wiped the earth clean with a flood and started all over again. How great the love of the Father! As the earth re-populated, the Lord chose Abraham to fulfill his promise to the world. But this famous man Abraham was actually born of an unbelieving father who worshiped false gods. But the Lord chose Abraham anyway and made him the father of his very own people in his very own land for a very specific purpose. How great the love of the Father!
But Abraham had his faults as well. He lost trust in the Lord and passed his wife off as his sister on two separate occasions in order to spare his own life. And Abraham’s son Isaac wasn’t much better. Not only did he do the same thing his father had done, but Isaac also tried to thwart God’s plan and promise by attempting to give the blessing to the son whom the Lord didn’t choose. And Jacob, the son of Isaac who did end up receiving the rightful blessing, was deceitful and cunning and conniving in his own right. And these were the three great patriarchs of God’s own people! But despite these sinful actions of these sinful men, the Lord never went back on his promise to these patriarchs. He blessed them, he talked to them personally, and he protected them from the evils of this world. How great the love of the Father!
And as the years went by when Jacob’s people, the Israelites, constantly rebelled against the Lord, complained to the Lord, turned their backs on the Lord, and even refused to believe in the Lord, God stayed right there by their side - guarding them, protecting them, leading them, and loving them. How great the love of the Father! And throughout the entire Old Testament era, the Lord continued to preserve the line of the Savior through wicked and defiant generations, until one day he sent an angel named Gabriel to a virgin named Mary. And to this unsuspecting and unassuming Israelite girl, the announcement was made that she would give birth to the Son of God himself. How great the love of the Father! And this Son, God’s one and only Son, was to be born into a world that would hate him. God’s one and only Son was to be raised in a city that would refuse to believe in him. God’s one and only Son was to be harassed and abused and even crucified by a people that God had at one time called his own. God’s one and only Son was to be sacrificed for the sake of the enemy. But God sent his Son anyway! God handed over his Son anyway for that very purpose! God rejected his own dear Son on the cross anyway! How great the love of the Father! How great the love the Father had for a world as sinful as this. And how great the love the Father has for a people as sinful as we are.
We too have received that same everlasting kind of love of the Father. In fact, we receive that same kind of love every day. And if I could, I would like to read for you some words that describe the scope of the Father’s daily love. Words that most of you probably remember well. Words that many of you had to memorize as students in catechism instruction and that a couple of you are memorizing right now. They are the words of the explanation to the 1st article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
The explanation of that first part of the confession reads, “I believe that God made me and every creature and that he gave me my body and soul, eyes, ears and all my members, my mind and all my abilities. And I believe that God still preserves me by richly and daily providing clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, cattle and all I own, and all that I need to keep my body and life, and by defending me against all danger and guarding and protecting me from all evil. All this God does only because he is my good and merciful Father in heaven, and not because I have earned or deserved it. For all this I ought to thank and praise, to serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.” From these words, which are really words that summarize what Scripture says, we know and believe that God has given us every good thing. God has supplied us with everything we need. God has protected and guarded us from all evil. And all of these things he does for us every day only because he is our good and merciful Father. And if he is our Father, that means we must be his children. And that is exactly what we are.
Think of how amazing that is. The love of the Father is so great that we are actually called his children! We are called his children! Out of all the people in this world we are privileged enough to be labeled with that incredibly endearing and astounding title: “children.” Not just friends, not just acquaintances or coworkers or even people that he kind of cares about, but actual children of God! The Almighty calls us children! We who are sometimes just as heartless as Christ’s crucifiers. We who are sometimes just as ignorant as Jesus’ accusers. We who are just as rebellious as the Israelites, just as deceitful as the patriarchs, just as selfish as Cain, and just as disobedient as Adam and Eve! And we are called God’s children? We don’t deserve that honor! We haven’t done anything to gain that title. We are God’s creatures and his servants at the very best. And we are God’s vehement opponents at the very worst. We were actually all born in direct opposition to God because we were conceived with the sin that Adam and Even passed down from generation to generation. Sin that is all too real. Sin that God hates. Sin that separated us from his love. We were not born good. We weren’t even born neutral. We were born bad. “We were God’s enemies” (Romans 5:10) Paul tells us in the book of Romans. “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of God’s wrath” and “we were dead in our sins” (Ephesians 2:3,5) he says in Ephesians. We were not automatically God’s children just because of who we are. In fact, we were just the opposite! We were sin-saturated creatures who hated the Creator and he was a Creator who hated those creatures that sinned against him.
And so how great the love of the Father! Before we were even born his enemies, before we were even conceived as objects of his wrath, before we were even in the state of spiritual death because of our sins, he sent his Son to pay for our sins. He sent his Son to carry our sins and to bear the punishment for our sins and to experience the sentence of hell for our sins. The Father sent his Son to die - for the enemy! The Father sent his Son to die for us.
And let’s try to put that in some sort of perspective. You hear every week that God sent his Son to die for sinners, but we sometimes forget how big of a sacrifice that really was. I have a son, of course, whom I love with a father’s kind of love. I would do anything for him and I will always do whatever it takes to keep him safe. I have another son on the way and a daughter that you also know well. And I don’t plan on giving any of them up anytime soon! I don’t intend to offer any of my children up as some kind of ransom price for anyone in this world, especially for someone I don’t like! Especially for someone who doesn’t like me! Especially for a non-Christian! Especially for someone who is vehemently opposed to the gospel! I do not love others as much as I love my children. And I will certainly never love those opposed to God as much as those children I call my own. But that’s just it: the Lord does. The Lord loved you and me and all of his enemies just as much as he loved his only Son. He had to love us that much if he actually went through with the sacrifice and the offering of his Son on the cross! He cared for your salvation that much so as to give up his Son to the grave. And I would not imagine for a second that it was easy for the Father to give up his Son. I would not imagine that the Father was in some way heartless or calloused to rejecting his own Son and sending him to suffer the punishment of sinners. The Father loved his Son and still loves his Son with a perfect kind of fatherly love. And if that is the love he has for his Son whom he sacrificed, you can be sure that it is the same kind of love he has for the ones he sacrificed his Son for.
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” We have finally come to the portion of Scripture that is our sermon text for today. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” God’s love that he lavished on us is a love that sacrificed his own Son for us. It is a love that laid our sins and our guilt and our punishment on Jesus’ shoulders so we could live guilt-free. It is a love that raised his Son from the dead so that we could be raised as well. It is a love that brought us into his family through the water and Word of baptism. It is a love that preserved this world, his chosen people, the Savior’s line, and his holy Scriptures throughout the millennia and still preserves us today. It is a love that never faltered. A love that never let up. A love that never let down. And a love that will never leave. It is a love that adopts us, cares for us, and calls us his “children.”
Doesn’t that make you proud? You are God’s own children! You are able to call the Maker of the Universe your Father! That is a dear relationship. That is an intimately close and unbreakable bond. And so don’t be afraid to brag about your Father to others! Think about the way little children talk to their friends about their fathers. “My dad knows everything.” “My dad is the best fixer ever!” “My dad is stronger than your dad.” “My dad isn’t scared of anything…” Young children talk about their fathers that way because they do not yet recognize the faults of the one they love. And so they do not hesitate to brag about who he is or what he can do. They enjoy telling stories about him to all who will listen. They are proud to be their father’s child.
My brothers and sisters of our heavenly Father, we have a Father who has loved us with a love that results in salvation. We have a Father who sacrificed his only Son for our sakes. We have a Father who is on constant watch for our protection and continually provides us with all that we need in this life and even more. Be proud to be your Father’s child! Do not hesitate to brag about who he is and what he has done. Take joy in telling stories about him to anyone who will listen. Because your Father does not only want to be your Father, he wants to be the Father of every person in this world. He wants to adopt them through faith in his Son. He wants to bring them into his family through the washing with water and the Word in baptism. He wants to solidify them in the faith by the precious promises of Scripture. And so invite them in. Encourage them to see and hear and believe. Tell them about how great the love of the Father is and that his love extends even to them. Because it has even extended to us - the worst of sinners.
Tell them what John tells us in 1 John 3: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” That is what we are. And that is what we’ll always be until we see our Father face to face in the glories of his heaven. That day will be the best day of your life as children of God. And it will be the only day for the rest of your life in eternity because that glorious day will never end. But until you do one day see your Father face to face in Paradise, know that he sees you here. And he cares for you and he watches out for your and he supplies and provides for you. And, most importantly, he loves you. Your Father loves you with a love that… a love that I cannot describe because it’s a love that I cannot comprehend. But although we can never fully understand the depth of our Father’s love, we can say this: his love is so powerful and so merciful and so compassionate that even we - even we! - are called his children. How great the love of the Father must be!
Amen.

“May the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.” - 2 Thess. 2:16-17