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Steve Tandy, Pulpit Minister

Mark Yeakley, Involvement Minister

Toby Levering, Youth Minister
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January 29, 20012
John, God’s 43rd Love Letter to You
In his book, 66 Love Letters, Dr. Larry
Crabb explores each book of the Bible as a letter written from the
Creator to you, presented as a dialogue between one man and God. As our
adult classes begin a study of John on Sunday mornings, think
about this imagined message from God, taken from the book’s chapter on
John.
There are not four gospels. There is one fourfold gospel. My forty-third
love letter completes (for now) the portrait I am painting of My Son, a
portrait that makes it clear what it means to be fully alive as a human
being.
No single artist could capture the beauty of life
as it was meant to be lived. I commissioned four specially chosen
artists–each selected for his temperament and because of his
circumstances–to paint four portraits of the only Person who every fully
lived. Together they sketched a beauty that is not in the eye of the
beholder but is in the person of My Son, a beauty that a thousand
portraits could never capture, a glory that though dimly visible now
will one day fill the heavens and the earth. You will catch a glimpse of
the compelling beauty of His life if you linger before each portrait as
a preview of heaven’s soon coming attraction:
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My Son, the Sovereign King of a
kingdom long promised, whose citizens are instructed by the King
Himself to live in a way that makes no sense to citizens of this
world’s kingdom. Matthew, the tax collector turned
saint, painted that picture.
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My Son, the Suffering Servant, who by
His unexpected example led His followers to sacrifice every comfort
that gets in the way of serving others. Mark, that
man who once failed to serve when things got rough, highlighted that
facet of My Son’s beauty.
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My Son, the Perfect Person, whose
brothers and sisters are learning to wish forward as He did, the
only Person whose ruling passion was never to suffer less or feel
good but was always to advance My plan to get My people to the
party. I enjoyed watching Him live as I’ve enjoyed watching no one
else. The Greek physician Luke, who longed to see
the human ideal and who found Him in My son, sketched the perfection
he saw.
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My Son, the Divine Life itself. Now
John, the dreamer, the poet, a man to whom I
revealed the deepest truth about My Son, a truth that no one without
My Spirit’s prompting could imagine–I chose this man to present the
One who fully revealed what it means to live as I live, who revealed
My heart, My nature, My love.
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