Joined in the Spirit
Keith McFarren
March 1, 2026
John 3:1-17
   Bill Gaither, the
great Christian song writer wrote a children’s song titled “I am a
Promise.  The first stanza goes like
this:
I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital “P”
I can be anything, anything God wants me to be…
    What a great thought
to have instilled into the heart and mind of a young child.  Not only does it teach a child that they have
God given abilities in their lives, but it also helps them to believe that with
God’s help and blessings, they too can be a blessing to the world around them.
    God’s original
covenant with Abraham, which became the basis for future covenants with Israel
and with Christians as well, was a promise to bless Abraham so that Abraham and
all his descendants might be a blessing the world.  
    Because Abraham kept
his covenant with God, he went on to become the father of descendants as
numerous as the stars in the sky while at the same time becoming the source of
three great world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  All future covenants between God and his
chosen people carried this same purpose.
God blesses other people so that they might be a blessing to others.
    From the very beginning
a homeland was promised to Abraham and his descendants.  But because of the time it took Israel to get
there, Abraham never made it to the Promised Land, although one of his
descendants, Joshua, led them there many many years later.  
    Likewise, we have the
promise of a home waiting for us in the future.
Our home here on earth is provided for us by God but our ultimate home,
the home that we are all striving to get to someday, our Promise Land, is the
home that God has prepared for us in heaven.
    True to his promise
God went on to protect Abraham and his son Isaac as well as his grandson Jacob
from their enemies time and time again…including God delivering Israel from
slavery in Egypt, and then staying with them night and day as he protected and
provided for them in the wilderness and eventually led them to the Promised
Land.
    Throughout the bible,
including periods of the judges and the reigns of Saul and David and Solomon,
God always protected and always provided security for his people as long as
they remained loyal to the covenant they had made with him.
    Likewise, as
Christians we are given the security of eternal life that comes to us through
Jesus.  Jesus, in John 10:27-28, promises
to keep us in his hand.  Plus, we have
the God given promise that God’s goodness will always conquer evil and that the
darkness of the world will never overcome the light of God.
    Because of the
overwhelming love he has for the world, God blesses his people according to his
promises so that they, like the words of the song we talked about earlier, can
be anything and do anything he wants them to do.  He always has and according to his promise,
he always will.  
    “For God so loved the
world” is a declarative.  It is a
given.  God’s love is for all
creation.  That in itself is hard for
many people to believe because there are so many people out there who can’t
believe that God loves them.  
    “For God so loved the
world,” is a phrase often spoken with a great deal of doubt deep down inside…a
phrase spoken as if there has to be some conditions attached somewhere.  It’s a phrase that is spoken as if there has
to be a catch in there somewhere, as if God will only love us if we meet all of
his conditions.  We have to walk the
straight and narrow path of Christianity…we have to be sin free…we have to be
perfect…we have to follow all of his rules and regulations before he’ll love
us.  If you go to church…then God will
love you.  If you are a United Methodist
or if you are a Baptist, then you are a shoo in.  
    This phrase, “For God
so loved the world” is not meant to be some type of abstract emotion.  It’s a phrase meant to tell us that our God
isn’t a distant God nor is God in any way disconnected from us at any point in
time.  It’s a phrase meant to tell us
that   God still loves the world he
created and because of the love he has for us today he is still creating and
still working to make it a better place.
God loves and acts and is involved in all aspects of time, space,
energy, matter and his unconditional love will continue to be sustained
forever.  
    “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” (John3:16).
You’ve seen that same verse on TV, scrawled on cardboard and held it up
in the end zone of a football game.
People carry the same sign in the streets during parades and
protests.  And now, with tattoo’s being
so prominent in our society I’m sure people even have the message tattooed on
their bodies.
    Let’s go one step
further and quantify all of this.  Most
of us here this morning have children.
Let me ask you…would you be willing to sacrifice your child for the well
being of someone else?  Would you be
willing to let your son or daughter be beaten and tortured and crucified, all
while you watched, so that the guy down the street, the guy that you can’t
stand to be around, could have eternal life with God?  
    Would you be willing
to let your child die so that the homeless guy sleeping over here at the old
Miles building, the guy who drinks too much and smokes too much dope, might
have the opportunity to go to heaven after he drinks himself to death or
overdoses?  How about our neighbors just
outside the doors of this church.   The
hispanics or the gay people.  What about
the guy who abuses his wife and his children or the guy who has an addiction to
child pornography.   Would you be willing
to let your child die so that these people could have their soul saved and
spend eternity with God?  
    I wouldn’t…but God
did.  God did and he never even gave it a
second thought.  “For God so loved the
world…” that he was willing to go over and above and beyond every thing else
that he has ever done and allow his son to be beaten and tortured and crucified
for the salvation of all people.  
    And there are no
catches to it.  No conditions have to be
met.  God loves all of us unconditionally
and God wants nothing more than for all of us to spend eternity in heaven with
him.  And the only thing you have, the
only thing any of us have to do is believe in Jesus.  
    That was the problem
Nicodemus had.  That’s the part that
didn’t make any sense to the teacher who wanted to crawl into a womb and be
born a second time.  He wanted to order
the Spirit.  He wanted the scientific
formula for eternal life.  How much does
it cost?  He wanted to know what hoops he
had to go through to get all this eternal life stuff that Jesus was talking
about.  
    Therein lies the
other problem.  Like Nicodemus, a lot of
people don’t get it.  We want to work our
way into the kingdom of God.  We want to
impress our way into the kingdom of God.
We want to do this or we want to do that to earn our way into the
kingdom of God.  And like I tell so many
people at the funeral of people who have no home church…you can’t earn your way
in, you can’t buy your way in, you can’t talk your way in, you can’t bully your
way in.  
    The only way into
heaven is to trust in the promises of God and “believe” your way in.  You have to believe in Jesus Christ to get
into heaven and spend eternity with God.
    “For God so loved the
world…”  And to think it all started with
one believer.  “Go,” Abraham heard God
say to him.  “Go to a land that I will
show you.”  He didn’t know where he was
going.  There was no destination
determined, no road map on how to get where God wanted him to go…nor did God
make any type of reservations for him and Sarah to stay along the way.  
    All that Abraham did
was trust in God and go where God told him to go…to a place that would be
revealed to him at a later time.  “Go,”
God said.  And Abraham trusting fully in
the word of God, went and he never looked back.
In doing so, Abraham became the ancestor of of us all.  
    God made some
wonderful promises to Abraham and his descendants.  Promises that were contingent on Abrahams
faith…not just on his works.  Those same
promises and those same blessings of long ago are ours today because of our
belief and our trust in what Jesus did on the cross for us.  
    “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life.”   This is
what we base our faith on.  Through what
Jesus did for us on the cross, we continue to receive every blessing that God
promised Abraham…plus the promise of eternal life.  All this, and the only basis we have to
inherit these promises is our faith in God’s word.
    The tremendous thing
about our scripture reading is that it shows us that God is not acting for his
own sake, but for ours.  He’s acting not
to satisfy his desire for control and for power, but to satisfy his love for
the world and he won’t be happy until all of his wondering children have
finally come home.
    It’s the world that
God loves.  Not just a certain nation;
not just certain people; not just those who love him back.  The entire world.  The lovable and unloveable, the good, the bad
and the ugly.  The ones who truly love
him…and the ones who never even think about him.  All are included in the vast, all inclusive,
unconditional love of God.
    Maybe St. Augustine
said it best, “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to
love.”