It was in the springtime and I was speaking at a church in a small town in southeastern Oklahoma. We had a large crowd of people in that small church when the thunder began to roll in the distance. Once the service was over, there was a reception in the fellowship hall.

It was one of those occasions when I was in a hurry to get my car and start home before the thunderstorm dropped its rivers of water. However, since the reception was in my honor, I could not slip out early.

After a short while, the claps of thunder were no longer in the distance. They seemed like they were right over the church, because that little church seemed to rattle and quiver with each thunder roll. One look out the door and we knew that no one was going home in that downpour.

While we were waiting, a woman about 75 years old came up to me and asked if I had ever seen a miniature Bible. Not really understanding what she meant when she spoke of the miniature Bible, I asked if she had one. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small Bible. It was only about one inch in size and the cover said, "The Miniature Gospel." Opening up the Bible, I saw that the print was so small that it could not be read without a magnifying glass. This lady must have been a Girl Scout, because she was prepared. She handed me a magnifying glass and I was able to make out the words in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke which were printed on those small pages. I had to agree with that woman, it was the smallest Bible I had ever seen. It was indeed, a miniature Bible.

However, if you want to condense the Bible, it could probably be distilled to that one verse in John 3:16. In the whole Bible, there is not another verse which has so concisely outlined God’s relationship with all of humanity.

Everybody has their favorite Scripture passages, yet this passage has been called "Everybody’s text." This one verse contains the very essence of the Gospel. Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, called this particular verse, "The Gospel In Miniature."

This is a verse which rings with clarity as it so simply outlines the main themes of the Bible. This is one verse which we all ought to know, which we all ought to memorize, which should be treasured in all our hearts:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I can understand why Luther called it "The Gospel In Miniature." It may not tell us everything that is contained within the pages of the Bible, but it does lift up the great themes of the Bible. I want us to look at these themes which are so clearly presented in this beloved passage.

I. The first theme presented is the love of God. I have never been able to understand or agree with those preachers who continually dwell on the wrath of God. They seem to take some kind of sadistic delight in proclaiming the wrath and punishment of God when the whole message of the Bible is condensed into the first six words of John 3:16: "For God so loved the world...."

This is the key to understanding God - the fact that he loves. He loves more than one nation. He loves more than one group of people. He loves more than those who love him. He loves the world - all the people of the world. He loves the unlovable and the unlovely. He loves the lonely who have no one else to love them. He loves the man who loves God and the man who never thinks of God. He loves the woman who rests in the love of God and he loves the woman who rejects the love of God. All are encompassed in his vast inclusive love. It was Augustine, one of the great patron saints of the early church who said, "God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love."

It is easy to think of God as looking at us and waiting for us to make a mistake. It is easy for us to believe that God is some kind of vengeful God who is going to punish us when we step out of line. But the tremendous thing about this Gospel in miniature is that it affirms that God loves us simply because we are his children.

More years ago than I like to remember, I volunteered to deliver the morning paper for a friend of mine. He was going to be gone during the Christmas recess from school and he needed someone to take care of his paper route.

I realize that Benjamin Franklin thought everyone should be an early riser, but getting up at 4:30 a.m. is almost an impossible task for me. Sometimes, the alarm would go off in my ear and I would almost sleep through its buzzing.

One morning during the Christmas holidays, a blue northerner moved through. The wind was blowing and there was a cold drizzle. Do you know how cold and wet and miserable one can get riding on a bicycle? Even though I was bundled up with extra layers of clothes, I can still remember being so cold that my teeth were chattering.

Once I got the papers folded and loaded on my bicycle, my father pulled up in our ‘57 Chevrolet. He said, "Son, it is too cold and wet for you to ride your bicycle on the route this morning. Put the papers in the car and I will drive you."

I can still remember that morning, as if it were yesterday. My father had to go to his job. It certainly wasn’t his responsibility to see that another boy’s paper route was taken care of that day. Yet, he was there because he loved me.

Somehow, when I am trying to define what the love of God means for each person in this world, I think of that cold morning when my father and I threw newspapers from a ‘57 Chevrolet. He didn’t have to be there, but he was because I was his child and he loved me.

God’s judgment upon us is not punishment ... and wrath ... and destruction. God’s judgment upon us is love. We are loved because we are his children. All of us are his children, like the little song says,

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.

God loves each of us because we are his children and we are precious in his sight.

II. The second theme presented is the gift of God. Sometimes, as Christians, we act as though God’s presence in this world all began with the Christmas event. God has always been in the world, and God has always been the same, but we didn’t know it or understand it until he presented us with his gift at Bethlehem. Electricity has been in existence since the creation of the world, but we didn’t know it or comprehend it until someone harnessed it. So it is with God! God has always been precisely as he is. The fact that Jesus came into this world and lived among us is God’s gift to us.

God’s gift is his presence in this world through Jesus Christ. Emmanuel is God’s gift in a nutshell. Emmanuel is Hebrew for "God with us." In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, there is a phrase which says:

"The World became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

God’s gift is that we are not alone - he is with us because of Christ.

There was a story in the paper some time ago about an elderly man who was dying in a hospital. He had no relatives or family in the community. However, he kept asking for his son and some people at the hospital did some checking and discovered that he had a son who was a Marine in boot camp in South Carolina.

Word was sent to the boot camp and a young Marine made a lonely pilgrimage to the hospital where the old man lay. A nurse took the Marine to the dying man’s room. The young man sat down beside the bed and took the old man’s shriveled hand. Not a single word passed between them. Finally, just before dawn, the old man quietly slipped through the valley of the shadow of death.

At the nurses’ station, when it was all over, the Marine asked, "Who was that old man?"

Startled, the nurse looked up and asked, "Wasn’t he your father?"

"No, he wasn’t," said the Marine. "I never saw him before last night."

"If he wasn’t your father," asked the nurse, "why did you stay?"

"Well," the young Marine said, "When I walked into the room, I knew there had been a mistake and the wrong Marine had been dispatched. But, I also knew that he was dying and needed his son, so I stayed."

We all need someone. Everybody needs someone and God’s gift to this world is his presence in Jesus Christ.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote a love sonnet to her husband, Robert. One morning at breakfast she slipped it into his pocket and ran upstairs. He opened it and read:

The face of all the world

has changed for me,

Since first I heard

the footsteps of thy soul.

This is what the Incarnation means! Footsteps on the shore of Galilee and we know that we are not alone. We know that God’s presence is with us through Jesus Christ.

III. The third theme presented is the promise of God. The promise of God is contained in that one phrase which closed out that verse like a mighty crescendo, "that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." That is quite a promise - everlasting life.

Too often we think of eternal life as something that is confered upon us when we are dead and buried and pushing up daisies. But eternal life is something we have right now and it continues through the experience we call death. We are on the road to eternal life if we dare to walk with God today. I love that phrase by the Apostle Paul in Romans 14:8 where he says, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s." That is a beautiful passage which affirms God’s promise to us.

Not too long, one of the funeral homes phoned to tell me that a woman died who was not a member of a local church. She had been listening to our worship services every Sunday on television and her husband and family wanted to know if I could conduct the service.

I checked my calendar and saw that I did not have any appointments, so I said that I would be happy to conduct the service. I asked the family about a convenient time to meet with them and they offered to come by the church. About ten members of the family came by and one of the secretaries put them in the church parlor, then buzzed me to let me know they were there.

The husband told me they had been married for 47 years when his wife had a heart attack and was gone. Of course, he was heart-broken at her sudden death and he wanted to know if God could love her even though she never joined a church.

I took his hand and said, "Our God is a loving God. I can’t believe that he would create a life and then allow it to be destroyed. I believe that God can be trusted to care for her life. Remember, Jesus said not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God’s notice. The promise of God is everlasting life, and I believe that we can trust his promise."

This is the Christian faith! This is the Gospel in miniature!

For God so loved the world, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.