21st December 2025

Advent 2024 – 4th Sunday – 21/12/25

Readings: John 3:1-21

Today is the 4th Sunday in Advent. 3 weeks ago we talked about Hope, two weeks ago about Peace, last week I briefly mentioned Joy, and today I’m going to tell you a Love story.   

Everybody loves a love story.  Novelists make their livings from them. Film companies make fortunes from them. They’re irresistible.

But there’s one that isn’t, so it seems, quite so irresistible to lots of people, and that’s the one I want to tell you today.

Do you like guessing games? 

This is completely irrelevant, but when Charlotte and I had a wine and delicatessen shop in Milton Keynes in the early 1980s, we had a competition once.  We put a whole cheddar cheese on the end of the cold counter, and asked people to pick it up and guess it’s weight.  The answer was 56 pounds, about 25 kilos, but surprisingly nobody got anywhere near the right answer.

When I was in Grand Frais, in Carcassonne just recently, I saw a whole parmesan on the cheese counter, and it reminded me of that, so, out of interest, I asked the sales person how much it weighed, expecting him to know the answer.  But he said that he didn’t have a clue and that if I wanted to, I could lift it up to see.  Expecting it to weigh even more than 25 kilos, and I’ve since discovered that they weigh about 37 kilos, I put my hands round it and lifted with all my might.  It few into the air, in the middle of a shop full of people, and landed in the isle several yards away.  It was a plastic fake, but very realistic.  We both laughed, the salesman and I.

So today’s guessing game is “how many times is the word love mentioned in the NIV version of the Bible?”   …..   

686.  Of the 66 books in the Bible, 60 of them mention it at least once.

So which book do you think mentions it most often?  Psalms, with a whacking score of 157, that’s over 22%.  In second place is John’s gospel with a score of 39.

Last week I said, and not for the first time I know, that John’s gospel is more about the why of Jesus’ ministry than it is about the events of it.  

He also wrote 3 epistles, and in those he uses the word another 34 times.  That’s a total of 73, which is very nearly half as many as the whole of the 150 chapters of psalms, and over 10% of the 686 in the whole Bible.  That’s staggering.

Would it be reasonable to assume, therefore, do you think, that John had come to the conclusion that “love” was at least part of the “why” of Jesus ministry?

We heard a beautiful story read to us by Brigit and Philip earlier. I’m sure that you’ve heard it many times.  

Nicodemus asked Jesus whether he could meet with him, but strangely, under the cover of darkness. This was because he was both a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish legislative and judicial assembly, so he couldn’t risk his colleagues finding out. Had that happened, he would probably have been dismissed, or worse.

But the thing was, despite all his years of training and ministry, and despite his elevated position in the Jewish hierarchy, Nicodemus knew that something was missing, and he was desperate to find out what it was. So he took the risk. Charlotte and I had an experience a bit similar to that once, so I can understand how he felt.

Jesus agreed to meet with him and they had a long and deep theological conversation, in the course of which Jesus uttered one of, if not THE single most famous sentences he ever spoke.  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 created the universe, and he created the world, maybe not in a literal week, but in the exact order that Moses described in Genesis.  Even atheistic scientists acknowledges that order. 

And God loved it.  If you had created the world, you would love it too.

In fact, he loved it so much, he loved the men, the women and the children on it, all of them, so much, that he didn’t want a single one of them to perish. 

But there was a problem.  There so often is in love stories.  We heard about it last week in that passage that Tess read and that was printed on the last page of the service booklet.  Let me paraphrase. 

“Although the world and everyone in it were made by him, they didn’t recognise him.  He even came to his own people, his own tribe, but even they didn’t receive him.” 

They had a book full of prophecies about him, most notably the part written by Isaiah, prophecies that we hear again and again during Advent. But they were too blinkered, too arrogant, too self-interested.

So they missed it.  Such a tragedy.

But all was not lost.  “Yet to all who did receive him, John goes on, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Can you think of anything better in the whole world than being “born of God”?   Can you?  I can’t. 

Why?  Because God IS love.

I’m going to finish today by asking Matthew to come and read the passage in John’s first epistle which makes that so crystal clear.

God’s Love and Ours (1 John 4:7-19. NIV)

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.