For God so loved the world …

Years ago as I was training to drive those big yellow buses that carry Mat-Su Borough children to their schools and then home again, I met a woman who told me that she could not believe in a God who would send people to hell. Believe me, she is not alone. I have met many people through the years with the false impression that God sends people to hell.

True, there is a place called hell that the Bible tells us is buried far beneath the surface of the earth and science validates that is a place of intense heat, but God’s word plainly tells us that that God prepared it for the devil and his angels — man simply goes there because of his transgressions. The truth is that God has done everything in his power to keep man out of hell, and he did this by sending his only begotten son into this world to die for you and for me. In effect, the greatest Valentine that has ever been sent.

In the book of Revelation, chapter 21, we are told that after God is done with creation as we now know it, that God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth. In this new universe, his crowning creation will be a city created for the express purpose so that the Creator can dwell with his creation. Such love that Almighty God has for mankind that the Bible in verse three records, “Behold, the tabernacle with God is with men.”

When I think of God tabernacling with man, I think of the Garden of Eden when God first created the world. Though many believe it to be a fairy tale, and do lie, it is God’s account of how God so loved his crowning creation, man, that he placed him in a garden, created for him a “help meet for him,” woman, and how he would walk with him in the cool of the evening. God loved mankind so much, that he spent time with them every day.

But on that fateful day when Adam ate of the fruit that his wife gave him, death came to the earth. God had told him that if he ate of that particular tree that he would surely die, and though the first death would not be that of their physical bodies, though this process was surely set in motion, their first death came in the form of separation from their Creator. God no longer was able to walk with them on a daily basis.

But God also on that day left them a promise that someday he would send one who would take away their sin and provide a way for man once again to walk with their Creator. He even showed them how this would be done. Rather than the fig leaves that Adam and his wife had sewn together to make aprons for themselves, God shed the blood of an animal there in the garden and made for them coats of skin, thus explaining that the forgiveness of their sin would require the death of an innocent.

But God did not stop with the garden. Many years later he demonstrated how he loved his creation so much that he tabernacled with Ancient Israel after bringing them out of the bondage of Egypt.

The Bible tells us of how God brought them out with a mighty hand, and led them into the wilderness with a fiery pillar by night, and a cloudy one by day, to build for him a tabernacle. God so loved his people that he would live with them. He even ordered their camp such that this tabernacle would be the very center of it, speaking to us of today how God wants to be the very center of our lives, as well.

You see, God created mankind for his pleasure, and it is God’s pleasure to spend time with him. I loved my wife so much that I wanted to spend time with her, so I married her nearly 23 years ago.

But the sad truth is that God cannot tabernacle with man anymore because of sin. Yet sadder than this, many don’t want to tabernacle with him. I have met many who mockingly speak of going to hell to be with their friends, yet when they do they will sorely disappointed: It will be a place of fiery torment.

For this God’s word declares how much he loves us. In what is the most familiar verse to all of professing Christianity, the Bible says, “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.”

Isn’t giving how mankind demonstrates their love one for another? Yet who loved another so much as to shed the blood of their child?

Friend, God so loved you and me that that is exactly what he did.

Ron Hamman is pastor for Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla. Contact him at 357-4229.

Ron Hamman is pastor for Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla. Contact him at 357-4229.