We are starting a new series this weekend at our church, and it is different than anything I have ever tried before.

Typically, I prefer to preach expositorily, where we take a passage and examine what it has to say, digging out the nuggets of truth in what God is saying through that particular passage. And how I typically like to do that is by working through a book completely, which is what I have done several times in the past, with books like Hebrews or Colossians, or the Gospel of John.

When I do preach a topical series, I preach on one topic, and then I preach expository sermons on each of the passages we look at that talk about that topic. I did this with our Marriage Matters series, for example, and a couple of financial series.

But this series is kind of different. It’s different in the fact that we will be looking at a completely different topic each week, and no two are the same. We will still take a deep, expository look at each passage, but the only common denominator in this series is where each of those passages are located in the Bible.

Each one of them is found at the chapter and verse marker of 3:16. Now you and I both know that all Scripture is inspired by God, and in fact, that is one of the 3:16s we will be looking at in this series, 2 Timothy 3:16. But while all Scripture is inspired, the chapter and verse designators are not. Those came later, in order to make it easier to find a particular passage, especially when people were trying to manipulate a bulky, awkward scroll instead of a book. But, even though the verse numbers aren’t inspired, I kind of wonder why so many weighty passages are found at the 3:16 mile marker. Maybe God knew that we needed some things to be easy to remember.

So we will be looking at several different passages that are found at 3:16, in different books of the Bible through this series. Some of them, we may only look at the verse or maybe two or three. Others, we may need a good portion of the chapter in order to understand it completely. But all of them are found at the 3:16 point.

Here are the specific books of the Bible that we will include in this series: John, Genesis, Jeremiah, 1 Corinthians, Proverbs, Colossians, Daniel, Galatians, Leviticus, 1 John, Ephesians, 1 Peter, Malachi, 2 Timothy, and Revelation. And this weekend, we are starting off with perhaps the most famous of them all, John 3:16.

As I mentioned, some of those will need surrounding verses in order to see the full context, but that’s my list. And by the way, that’s not all the 3:16s; these are just the ones I chose for this series. I would encourage you to take a look through the Bible and find all the 3:16s and read them. You might be surprised at just how encouraging they are.

Question: Did you look them up? Which one is your favorite? Why? You can leave a comment by clicking here.