Louie Giglio - God Gave His Only Son for You
Wouldn't that be enough that the creator of the universe, the God of the heavens, the alpha and the omega with no beginning and no end, that God loves us, that God loves you? Wouldn't that be enough? God loves you. But no, Crowder gives us, God really loves us. Lots of reallys in that song to which you say, "Really"? But where did Crowder get inspired? He got inspired from the most well-known verse in all of scripture. An eyewitness account of the life and teachings of Jesus by one of His followers named John.
And John was recording for us a conversation that Jesus had with another person in which Jesus says the greatest thing that you and I can ever hear. And John records it this way in John 3:16, watch for the adverb. "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". God so loved the world. I think sometimes we just blaze right past that powerful little word, "So". Why do we need it? Wouldn't that verse stand on its own be powerful, miraculous and transformational if it just simply said, "God loved the world?"
We'd say, "Amen". You mean, that's crazy people, that's foolish people, that's people who said, "We could do it better our way". That's people who said, "Hey, thanks for the advice, but we have some other ideas". Those people, He loved those people that would be powerful in and of itself. "God loved the world". But God inspiring John by the Holy spirit said, "No, I want an adverb in there. I want that little word, 'So' in there. I want people to understand how I loved the world, so put it in there this way, 'God,'" say it with me, "So, loved the world". He really loved the world, and he so loves you.
I think if you strip everything away today, all of humanity simply wants to know, "Does anybody truly think I'm worth loving"? And God is saying, "I want you to leave this gathering and I want you to say Merry Christmas to people on the way, but I want you to go out of this place saying, 'I am so loved.'" When Shelley and I were dating she was living in Waco, Texas, a student at Baylor University. Sic' em, bears. That's a zero. War eagle. Okay, yeah. Okay, great. Awesome. You guys follow us at our ball game. It's gonna be spectacular. But we'll be back.
I was a grad student in Fort Worth, Texas and I had this crazy thought one night. I'm in the library and I'm studying church history, but I'm thinking about Shelley. And I know exactly how far it is from where I'm sitting in the library to her dorm. I mean, to the tenth of a mile. And I'm like, "Wow". Looking at the time and it's getting close to 9 o' clock and I'm thinking, "Woo, if I hustle right now, I can be there in about an hour and a half and wow, I would have to finish this assignment and turn it in in the morning".
I know she has a big test in the morning, so this isn't really the proper time for a sprint to Waco. It's a Tuesday night, not planned. This is pre-digital age, so I can't even text to say, "Are you around"? It's a, it's a total shot in the dark. Talking about taking your shot, this is me taking my shot. Now, I'd finally looked, you know, at the clock and I'm like, "Okay, church history, Shelley. Okay, I'm gonna give it a shot". I'm in my car, in my Toyota Corolla. I'm flying down the freeway. I've got my plan. I exit in Waco. I stopped at the convenience store. Some of you heard me tell this story. I picked up two cans of Hawaiian punch 'cause was out thing. I go to her dorm, memorial dorm and I walked in and the lady sitting there at the reception desk get the door and I say, "Could you call up to Shelley Graves room and tell her someone left something for her at the desk"?
And so, I set the two cans there. I go around the corner. I hide behind the plant, and I see the lady through the glass. She's talking on the phone and a few minutes later here comes Shelly down the stairs like, "Yes". I was so glad she wasn't out with another boy on the campus somewhere. That was a real risk I took. And she sees the cans and she's like, "Aww". And then, I come out from behind the plant and it's amazing. True story. She's right here. It's a Baptist school so we shook hands and we went out and sat on the steps at the front of the dorm. We drank the Hawaiian punches. We talk for 15 minutes maybe, and it was like, "I gotta get back. I got this church history thing I gotta finish for in the morning. I know you have a big test that you're studying for. So, I love you. Goodnight".
Maybe a little kiss goodnight. She goes back in the dorm. I get my car and start driving back to Fort Worth, and it's starting to mist outside. And I go to the stoplight just down the road from campus and I'm like, "I need something else. I mean, that was good, but I need something else". You guys had ever been there? Ladies, you ever been there? You ever done anything crazy like that, by the way, where it wasn't advised, you couldn't afford it, you didn't have time for it, wasn't budgeted in the economy, maybe your parents didn't fully support it, but you're like, "I wanna make my mark"? And I think, "I gotta do something else".
I Pull in the grocery stores, right here, and I kind of check my pockets. I've got, maybe $11. No debit cards. We're talking prehistoric age. The big dinosaurs came through right about that time and I waited 'til it's on the other side of the parking lot and I ran into the store really fast, and I got my supplies. I bought a piece of posterboard. Back in the day, you could get that for 39 cents. I got a red marker and a black marker. I got some of the plastic warp and I bought a little package of nails. And I thought, "I've got my plan". I took all my supplies back. And across the street from her dorm was this quadrangle, the classrooms. It's kind of open air, but it was covered, so I could get out of the rain. And I get all my supplies down on the sidewalk and I started working on my poster.
And I was like, "Okay". Ahh. Take my shot one more time. And I was just thinking about all the guys at Baylor that wanted to date Shelley. And all the cute Sigma Chi's. And I'm like, "I may be a seminary student studying church history, but I got something". And so, I started going on my project. Well, these are like industrial strength markers. Look at that. You could paint a house with that. But I had one of those little skinnier ones you know. And I started going and I realize, "It's gonna be midnight before I get this poster done". And it might be midnight before I get this done, so I might need some help. Are there any good marker people here, a couple kids? Some people stirring over here. Oh, like, we have people queued up. Oh, my goodness. Look at these guys, would you?
Hey there. Merry Christmas. Here you go. No, ladies first. There you go. Okay. Could you guys help me? Don't let anybody see this 'cause I don't want them to know what we got going on, but can you guys color that in for me? Yeah? Awesome, thank you so much. We'll work out something later. Maybe another cookie. So, I start working on my poster. My poster was my adverb. "I'm here. I want you to know that I love you. But I wanna add something to the equation so that, you know how I love you". And that's what God did. He said, "I want you to know how I love you, not just that I love you. I want you to know how I love you". That's what the, "So," word means in Greek. In the original language. This is how God loved you.
Few quick things I want you to know about how God loved you. Number one, God loved you before. He didn't size you up and then decide whether He was gonna love you or not. He didn't give you five years and see how you'd turn out to see if He wanted to love you. The Bible says in Ephesians 1, that, "He chose us," God did, "In Christ before the foundation of the world". And predetermined in that moment that He was gonna love us. In other words, I want you to think with me. Before there was a world for you to be born on. Before you even knew there was a God in heaven who created it.
Before you even had one thought about whether or not you wanted to love God, God had already decided to love you. That's part of the, "So loved," that you were loved before. And the beauty of that is, it leads into the second way that it tells us that Hew loves us. He loves us even knowing that we could never earn that love and we don't deserve that love. What you and I deserve from God is what everybody on earth is gonna get, and that is the just reward for a heart that says, "I'm gonna do it my own way". The scripture calls that sin. It's you and I just in our actions and our thoughts saying to God, "I appreciate that you've laid out a plan, but I'm gonna go this way".
We do that because we were born into sinful humanity. We were born with a tendency to tilt away from God, not towards Him. We were born with a tendency to tear things apart, not to put them together. We were born with a tendency to do it our own way. But yet, there is this holy God, this righteous God, this beautiful, perfect, glorious God. And so, what do we do? Well, religion says, "Here's what you do, you gotta work your way up to the throne of God". But the beauty of Christmas is, is that Christmas is showing us how God in heaven worked His way down to a manger in Bethlehem. Religion is saying, "Here's what you've gotta do," and Christmas says, "Here's what God has already done".
He knew you couldn't earn it and He obviously knew we didn't deserve it, but that didn't slow down the love of God. He said, "No, I so love you that even though you couldn't stack up enough good deeds to be confident that you're gonna go to heaven at the end of the story. I'm gonna do one powerful deed to assure you that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life". And no, you don't deserve it. That's why it's called good news and that's why it's called grace. Another part of that, "How did He love us"? You guys are looking good. That is powerful.
You know, have you ever made a poster and you start out and everything looks really solid like the yellow is really strong, and then by the time you kind of get the end it's like, "I think it's yellow". Man, these guys are killing it though. Beautiful. Thank you guys so much. Let's give these guys a hand. Beautiful. Amazing. Merry Christmas. Great job. Thank you so much. Great job. Thank you. Another way that we know how God Loved us is that God loved us even knowing that some of us would reject His love. There is a story of this rich, young ruler, that's all we know about him in the Bible, and he wanted the kingdom. And he had a face-to-face meeting with Jesus.
Now, think about this, the same Jesus who is the love of God in human flesh. The same Jesus who is the, "God so loved the world". He has a face-to-face with Him and He says, "I want the kingdom. I want heaven". And Jesus says, "Absolutely. Here's the way you need to do it. You're so linked into earth and so tied up in all the things of earth, you need to get rid of all that and give all that to people who really need it and you come follow me". And the guy was like, "Ooh, that one's tough, 'cause I got a lot of stuff". And at the end of the day, this guy walks away from Jesus.
The same Jesus who so loved him that He was willing to give His life for him watched him walk away. And I wonder if in His heart or maybe He even say that to him, "I still love you". That's how He loves you. You may be walking away from the Almighty right this moment, and he's telling you, "I really love you. And if you walk away, that's your choice. But every step you walk, you gotta know that I really love you". That is how He loved us. And He loved us the last way knowing that His love for us was gonna cost Him and it was gonna cost Him everything.
This little show of force on my part, keeping me up a little late at night might not had done that as great on my church history project. It was less than $11 worth of stuff and an hour worth of effort, but it was the heart that counted. The rain was starting to get a little more intense and so, I got the plastic wrap out. I don't know if I can do this or not. I'm gonna give it a shot. This stuff makes me get in the flesh real fast. Yeah. I think whoever invented this, you know, really just sits around in our kitchens and goes, "Good luck with that". So, what I did. I'll just show you what I did, and you'll get the idea. I thought, "I got to keep this thing from getting wet".
So, I wrapped it completely this way with the plastic wrap, and then I wrapped it completely this way with the plastic wrap and I got all the stuff stuck to each other, so it was gonna stay on there. And then, I took the poster, and I went across the street and Shelley's dorm had a courtyard in the center, so it kind of wrapped around like this. And on one side, you could drive under the second story and get into the back. That's kind of where the back of the cafeteria was. I'm sure it's where the trash came out. And that road went around that little courtyard on the inside, and in the middle of it was grass and this giant tree. And I'd been in Shelley's room and that dorm one time I think on a Saturday.
On a game day they would let family and guys come into the girl's dorm and see the rooms. And so, I'd been in there one time. Took a lot of snapshots of everything in there. And I knew there were two twin beds, one over there. Hers was by the window. And I thought, "Here's my plan". So, I took my poster. I went into that little courtyard. All wrapped up to protect it from the rain. Stood up on somebody's moped seat. I thank you for that, whoever that was. Held it up and high as I could. Took one of my nails that I had in my little packet. Couldn't afford a hammer, so I just looked around for a rock. I know it sounds like we're in the prehistoric you know, ages, but I nailed my poster on and it look like it's gonna hold.
And I was just like, "Lord, please". Got in my car, drove home, finished my project, set my alarm. Woke up really early the next morning, reached over, grabbed the phone, called Shelley super early and I said, "Babe, That's not", that's no knock on Shelley 'cause it was super early and she's like and I don't normally call early either because I'm not early. And she's like, "Hey, what"? And I said, "Babe, Babe, Babe are you awake"? "Ahh". "Look out your window". Hung up and I'm like, "Please". Phone rang... "Aww, you're so sweet". I was like, "Thank you, Lord. The poster survived". All she had to do, this was my plan, was look. I knew right where her window was.
And so, I positioned my poster, so she didn't have to get out of bed, didn't have to take a shower or put a robe on, didn't have to get her best day started. All she had to do was look. And hanging on that tree was my, "I love you". My adverb for the night. My, "I really love you". And what we're celebrating is the birth of Jesus, God in human flesh, born in Bethlehem. But 33 years later, that same God in human flesh was nailed to a Roman cross. Why? Because He was insurrectionist? No. Because it was God's plan to put all the sin of the world on the innocent life of His Son and to offer Him as a sacrifice for all the sin and all the wrong of humanity.
"For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believed in Him, in Jesus, would not perish but have everlasting life". And I'm telling you, that decision today is so critical because right now we are perishing. And if you want to perish eternally, you don't have to do one thing or make one decision 'cause we are all already on that road. Jesus said in the next sentence, "We all are already condemned because of our sin". So, for you today, for any person today, to walk away from the love of God forever, you don't have to do a thing.
But the option today is, that you could hear the words of Jesus and believe in Him and in a moment be changed. Sin forgiven, death gone, heart alive, new future with Him, not only in this life, but forever. Heaven is on the table today, brand-new life is on the table today, forgiveness is on the table today. And how do you get it? You get it by believing, not believing like, this is plastic wrap. Not believing like, these are markers. Not believing like this is a poster. But believing like, if I put all my weight on this wooden table, I am not gonna collapse on the floor. No, I have not done this backstage, so I don't know this table.
I have never met this table. But believing in Him is me putting all my weight on the table believing that if I fully put my weight on the table, it will hold me. Believing today that if I put all my weight on the worth and work of Jesus, He will hold me for eternity. If I trust in who He is and what He has done, this God man, this perfect Son of God, this one and only begotten Son. Born into humanity, so that He could give His life for me. Raised from the dead, seated on a throne. I believe in Jesus.
And here's the beauty of it. Everyone in this gathering, everyone at Trilith right now, everyone at Cumberland right now, everyone in this building right now, if you look from where you're sitting, you can see the cross of Christ. It is standing in history. It is not a church story. It is history's story that a few miles from where He was born, Christ stretched out His arms for you and me. And if you look you can see hanging on that tree God's great, "I love you". His adverb for the world, "I really love you". You're like, "Louie, I don't even really love me".
That's somebody's story today. "I don't even like me, Louie. It's amazing I can't even get along with me. Other people have told me repeatedly, and recently, that they don't really love me. And I have fallen so far off from what I hoped to be for my life. My standards, one time they were here, but I don't even know where they are anymore. Don't you worry, Louie, there's no God in heaven who's interested in me". Or maybe you're just so preoccupied with all your stuff you haven't realized that that's not really working at the level of your heart.
I want you to know today, you can't fall too far or have too much to talk God out of how much He already loves you. And if you need forgiveness, and a new start, and a new life... it's hanging on the tree. All she had to do was look. It wasn't Monet. But she could see it from where she was. If you don't get it, they are the Baylor bears. So, the little bear went into the heart, and he came out trekking love. God's I love you it's in view right now, Can you see it? Can you see Jesus saying, "God really loves you"?
I'd love to give anyone in this gathering an opportunity today to say, "Yes," to that love. Nothing would make heaven happier than for someone in this gathering to say, "I get it. I don't deserve it, I know I couldn't earn it, but I want it. I thought maybe I'd lost my chance, but if there's still a chance for me, I want it. Yes, I've got a pile of stuff in this world, but I've already figured it out that doesn't work. I want a relationship with God". And if you can be forgiven and have a brand-new start, I want that today. If you can answer Jesus' words and say:
I wanna believe in you, and I wanna not perish, and I wanna have eternal life. I wanna make a choice today to get off the road to destruction and on to a relationship with you.