(This is the fourth sermon in our Lenten series, "Recipe for Repentance". Previous sermons can be found here, here, and here, and the Ash Wednesday message can be found here.)
I remember the first time I saw someone holding a “John 3:16” sign at a sporting event. I was probably in middle school or thereabouts. I asked my parents why, out of all the verses in the Bible, someone would choose to hold up that one, and they said something like, “Because that verse is a summary of the whole gospel message.” After I looked it up (I wasn’t yet the biblical prodigy you see standing before you today), I was puzzled. I mean, yes, John 3:16 by itself is technically a spoiler for the rest of the story, but as far as I could tell with my limited preteen theological prowess, it wasn’t really communicating anything new, insightful, or uniquely compelling. Why, I wondered, would someone attempting to evangelize to a (presumably) non-Christian audience choose THIS verse to represent the Good News?