John Hagee - God's Greatest Gift
Turn to John 3:16, as we talk today about "God's Greatest Gift". As we approach the Christmas season, we are all making a list and checking it twice to determine who's been naughty and who's been nice. A small girl crawled up on Santa's lap at a department store. And she looked Santa Claus straight in the eye and asked him this question: she said, "Are you a politician"? Santa Claus looked back at the little girl, and said, "No, why do you ask"? She said, "Because you always promise a lot more than you deliver". Amen.
In the economy of Almighty God, the greatest gift that you will ever receive, that you can ever give to your spouse, to your children, to your brothers and sisters in Christ is the love of God. Who do you love? When is the last time you told them that you love them? Why don't you look at the person next to you, preferably your wife or husband, and say, "I love you. I truly love you," not "I'm trying to love you". Read John 3:16. You can quote it from heart if you know it. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved".
Father God, today we thank you for God's greatest gift, the love of God that made it possible through the blood of Jesus Christ that our name should be written down in the lamb's book of life: that we would have eternal life: that beyond this veil of tears, there is a dimension of joy unspeakable that the minds of men cannot grasp, and it's stored for the righteous. We thank you for your greatest gift, the gift of your son in Bethlehem's manger. In Jesus' name, we pray. And all of God's children said, praise the Lord.
You may be seated. The sweetest music that reaches to the highest heaven is the beating of two hearts that truly love each other. Love is the fire of life. It consumes you. It purifies you. It is the key to the universe, which unlocks all doors. To love abundantly is to live abundantly. Love is the doorway through which the human soul passes from selfishness to service. Get those two words in your mind: selfishness to service. For instance, when you get married, your vocabulary changes, because all you've looked after is yourself. But your language goes from "Me, me, me" to "We". And it goes from "Mine" to "Our". And then it goes from "I do" to "You had better". It changes. The three most profound words in human speech is, "God is love". Say that with me.
Love is more than the characteristic of God. God simply is love. God does not try to love you. He cannot help but love you, because that's his very nature. Faults, failures and all, he loves you. That is a staggering thought in my mind. Love is more than the characteristic of God. That's his nature. My favorite verse in the Bible is, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son: that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life". There are four great sermons in that one sentence. So let's just stay with the first phrase, "God so loved that he gave". It is a concept that surpasses knowledge. No man can adequately describe it. Some things just can't be done. Who do you love? How much do you love them? What are you doing to demonstrate that love on a regular basis?
Love is not what you say. Love is what you do. "God so loved the world that he gave". Listen. You will experience this in your life: to be tender and loving with the young, to be compassionate with the aged, to be tolerant of the weak, and to be helpful to those in trouble. Why? Because sometime in your life, you're going to live all four of those dimensions of time. Matthew 22:37 says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and body. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself". You hear that last phrase? "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself". Our lives are shaped by those who love us and by those who refuse to love us. The golden key to understanding the love of God is in that verse, "God so loved the world that he gave his own begotten son".
When God looked over the balconies of heaven, he saw you and me, and he said, "I'll pay the price, whatever it takes to make their life heaven on earth". Whatever you have been through, whatever you're going through, however rejected you may feel, God is looking at you right now through eyes of love. And he's saying, "I'll take that one. I'll redeem that one. I'll bless that one. I'll bring prosperity to that one". If you're a prodigal son and daughter, get up out of the mud and go back to your father's house. Your past ended last night. Your future is beginning today. If you failed, get over it. If you failed, get over it. "God so loved the world" includes you! And let's get over this racial issue right now. God loves all of us, or he loves none of us.
There are three kinds of love. It's the "If" kind of love. "If you do this, I'll love you". "If you succeed, I'll love you". "If you come up to my expectations, I'll love you". What kind of love is that? Then there's a second kind of love, the "Because" kind of love. "I love you because you're my intellectual and you're my social equal". Translation: you're both educated snobs. You deserve each other. "I love you because you have money". That's a pathetic reason to love somebody. "I love you because you are beautiful".
Let me tell you something, young people. Take lots of pictures right now. Yeah, take lots of pictures. Because everything that's flat and firm right now, in about 30 years, is going to flop and fly. The third kind of love is the "In spite of" kind of love. This is God's love. "I love you in spite of your failure. I love you in spite of what's happened to you in the past. I love you in spite of your weaknesses. I love you in spite of your faults". That kind of love is the kind of love that God has for you. What kind of love are you showing for your husband, for your wife, for your children, for the members of your family, for the body of Christ? Why can't Christians love each other? The last prayer that Jesus prayed on the earth is, "Father, that they may be one, even as you and I are one".
God's purpose was for us to work together to love each other. That means, you see someone's needs, you do your best to meet it. Don't pray about it, do something about it! Think about it. If 70 million Christians in America loved each other, they were unified around the cross of Christ and around the scripture, and they went to the voting booth and they voted only for righteous people to go to Washington or to go to state or rule the city, abortions in America would never have happened to start with. Marriage would be between a man and a wife. That would be the only combination possible.
Public schools would still have Ten Commandments on the wall, instead of the communist message of the critical race theory in the classroom. Policemen would not be murdered in the streets of America. They deserve to be honored and treated with great respect. Criminals would still be in jail, not released to rob and to murder innocent citizens in the streets and in the homes of this nation. The economy would be booming because of people who work for a living, not deadbeats sitting at home waiting for the Gods of socialism to send them a check. In the Bible, you deserve nothing until you work for it! Saint Paul said, "Those who do not work should not eat". That ought to be over the doorpost of health, education and welfare in Washington, D.C.
God's love is a divine flood. St. Paul says in Romans 5:5, "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us". Focus on those two words, "Shed abroad". "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts". "Shed abroad" literally means poured out, baptized in until it's splashing over. The love of God is poured into you until it literally runs over the edges, and it gets on everybody around you. People are glad to see you coming, because you're such a loving person. Do you know people that when they start walking your way you find a way to walk the other way? How many of you know people like that? Don't look at the person next to you, but you do know someone like that.
Paul is not describing shallow emotions, the little-dab-will-do-you kind of faith and religion, but passionate love, overwhelming love flooded by the love of God until it spills over you and gets all over everybody else. Notice the tense of this verb, "The love of God having flooded thy heart fills us now". There is no reason ever that you should not feel the love of God. Paul felt it in the Roman prison, and he sang songs in the midnight hour. When the flood fills a valley, a water remains in the valley, and that water brings life. That water brings vitality. Water in a dry valley brings prosperity. A dry valley is worthless, absolutely worthless. But bring water to it, and it becomes a resort. You have a lake. A lake means there's waterfront property. That's very expensive. That brings boats. That brings fishing. That brings golf courses. That brings mansions.
You turn a mud hole into lake Tahoe because of water. That's how important that is. When the love of God floods your life, your potential explodes. That's what I want you to get here. When the love of God floods your life, your potential explodes. Let's say that this is your potential. And it's bone dry like some of you are right now. You haven't really received the love of God, nor given it in all of your life. You live for self, which is a very pathetic life choice. And then you come in contact with the Word of God. And God's Holy Spirit begins to pour into you. And if you shut God off right there with this little-dab-will-do-you kind of faith, that's all you will ever be, a drip.
I'll just let that sit there for a while. But if you keep pursuing the purposes of God, passionately asking God to use you, God will give you just as much as you want, and he'll keep pouring it in and keep pouring it in, and keep pouring it in until it overflows. It will run all over everybody around you. It will run over everybody in your family. It will flow over everybody in your church. Your church will overflow everybody in town. Everybody in town will affect everybody in the state. The state will affect the next state. And the next thing you know, America is a loving nation again because of the power of the love of God. Give him praise in this house.
"God is love" is misunderstood by many, many people. When you say "God is love," there are people who worship an attribute of God rather than worship God. Think about that just a minute. They will say, "Well, God is love, and everything that I do in the name of God is from God. Therefore, you have to accept it". And let me take that theological fog and reduce it to something you really understand. People in our society live together without the benefit of marriage. Street language, "You're shacking up with someone". Bible language, "That's adultery". And it's wrong. You say, "This is an act of love. God is love, therefore this adulterous relationship is right". Wrong! Wrong! It's not right. God's love has discipline. "God is love" means to the many that God is a good-natured, kind, benevolent, doting grandfather looking over the balconies of heaven smiling good-naturedly at our misconduct. That is so wrong!
The God in this text says, "He sent the flood to Noah's generation because they disobeyed the Word of God". He knowingly opened the fountains of the deep and drowned every man, woman, boy, and girl, and animal on the face of the earth because they defied the law of God. You cannot defy the law of God and experience the love of God. He is the loving God who sent Israel into captivity because they sent their children into the fire. If he did that to Israel, he will do that to America. God's cold-blooded hatred for sin can be seen at Calvary where his precious son is hanging on the cross. Look at him there. He's bleeding from his brow, from his hands, from his back, from his feet. Blood soaks down that cross and falls in the sands of Calvary.
And the Bible says, "It pleased the father to bruise his son like that". Why did it please him? Because God's disgust with sin does not compromise, and that boy had my sin, and your sin, and your sin on his brow. He took my sin and yours, and when he died, those sins died. And when he arose, we arose victorious over death, hell and the grave for eternal life because God so loved the world! Solomon says in 8:6, "His love is as strong as death". The love of God is as strong as death. St. Paul says in Romans 8:35, "What can separate us from the love of God? Not tribulation, not distress, not famine, not death, not persecution". Nothing can separate you from the love of the Lord. God will not stop loving you. Husbands will abandon wives, and wives will abandon husbands. Parents will abandon innocent children.
The point is, man's love will fail you, but the love of God will never fail you. Some of you in this audience, and some of you watching by television have been rejected. You've been betrayed. You've been abandoned by husbands or wives, a mother or father or dearest of friends. But I'm here to tell you that there is a God that's found in this text that will never leave you nor forsake you. He will give his angels charge over you to protect you in all of your ways. He knows your faults and your failures, and yet he loves you. He never gets tired of hearing your voice. In the desert of your days, you will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way: walk in it". In the darkest hour of Gethsemane, when your Judas is lurking in the shadows, you will hear his voice saying, "Be bold. Be strong. I'm with you. I am with you". "God is love"! Give him praise in the house.
Consider the width of God's love. It embraces every person on this planet who has been to the cross and has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Again, God loves us all or he loves none of us, and he loves us equally. Having raised five children, I can tell you that children crave parental love more than they crave things. I'm saying this at Christmastime, because I think sometimes the things under the tree are substitutes for the lack of love given for the rest of the year.
When Matt was about five years of age, he loved for me to read to him a storybook that I had read night after night, the same book, the same story, over and over. I'm kind of a one-and-done kind of a guy. I read it one time, I've got it. On to the next thing. I tried on one occasion as he's sitting on my lap to turn two pages at once to speed up this literary process. He put his hand in the middle of the book, and said, "Stop". He said, "Start over". I go back to the front of the book. I said, "Matt, look: I can put this on a tape recorder. And you can push this button, and you can listen to it over and over and over and over again". And he looked me right in the face and said, "But then I wouldn't be able to sit on your lap".
Oh. Back to page one. I saw a father and son in the hospital. The father was tall, handsome. He had black curly hair that was beautiful. He and his son came to the hospital regularly to get treatments. The son had cancer, and his hair had fallen out. But the next time I saw the father and son, I was shocked, because the father's head was as smooth as a billiard ball. He had shaved his head. The son looked at me and said, "Pastor, my dad cut his hair off so that we could look alike". And he was so proud.
That's love. Do you have that? Are you willing to give that to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to your family? Love is not what you say. Love is not love until you give it away. And that's the secret of Christianity being successful in America: that the church learns how to love each other. And when the love of God envelopes this church, it will impact the city, and the city will change the state. And a loving state can change the rest of the states. And we can do more with the love of God than congress can do passing legislation. Can we stand? Pray this prayer with me:
Heavenly Father, may the love of Jesus Christ flood my soul until it splashes over and blesses everyone around me. May the love of God bless my marriage. May it bless my home. May it bless this church. May this church bless this city. May this city bless this state. May this state bless this nation, because love is of God. And those who have love are overcomers in all things. May the peace of God rule our hearts and homes, because of the love of Jesus Christ. In your name, we pray and ask it. Amen.