THE GREAT LAKE

The great lake, God's love. Once it was a new and almost incredible message, that 'God loves'; but we have grown accustomed to it, and it is not strange any more to us.

But if we would try to think of what it means, the whole truth would flash up into fresh newness, and all the miseries and sorrows and perplexities of our lives would drift away and we should be no more troubled with them. 'God loves' is the greatest thing that can be said by lips. 'God . . . loved the world.' Now when we speak of loving a number of individuals-the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not?

When we think or feel anything about a great multitude of people, it is like looking at a forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole forest.

But that is not how God loves the world.

Suppose I said that I loved the people in India; I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed them all together; or made what people call a generalisation of them.

But that is not the way in which God loves. He loves all because He loves each.

And when we say, 'God so loved the world,' we must break up the mass into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an object of His love. We all stand out in God's love just as we should do to one another's eyes. We all stand out, every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of God as if there was not another creature in the whole universe but God and ourselves.

Have you ever realised that when we say, 'He loved the world,' that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, He loves me? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of God pours down, not upon a multitude, a community, but upon every single soul that makes up that community.

He loves us all because He loves us each. We shall never get all the good of that thought until we translate it and lay it upon our hearts. It is all very well to say, 'Ah yes! God is love,' and it is all very well to say He loves 'the world.' But I will tell you what is a great deal better-to say: what Paul said-'Who loved me and gave Himself for me.'

The river.

Now, to go back to my metaphor, the lake makes a river. 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' So then, it was not Christ's death that turned God from hating and being angry, but it was God's love that appointed Christ's death.

The pitcher. I come to what I called the pitcher, with which we draw the water for our own use: 'that whosoever believeth.'

The draught. Finally, we have here the draught of living water. 'shall not perish but have everlasting life'.

Did you ever think why our text puts 'should not perish' first? Is it not because, unless we put our trust in Him, we shall certainly perish, and because, therefore, that certainty of perishing must be averted before we can have 'everlasting life'?

Hillsong Worship | God So Loved | Lyrics 

https://youtu.be/NsMW6QKY-DY?t=3