Well, it's good to be back with you after having been away for a couple of Lord's days, and I thank you for your prayers. Tina's brother's funeral and for the other aspects of ministry that have been going on with being at Roanoke and then in Bluefield. And I bring you greetings from your sister churches and certainly think that the Lord met with us on those Lord's days and gave help and that we had good interaction with the people. So I think there's much to be encouraged about, and I'm glad you had the opportunity to hear their pastors speak to you. Well, for the past few months when we have come to the Lord's Table, at the beginning of the month we've been looking at John chapter 3. So let me ask, if you will, to turn to John 3 once again. for what I think will be our final installment, at least at this time on the passage. We've been considering verses 1 to 21, and we really come now to focus on the latter part. We'll take up the reading in verse 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. that whoever believes may in him have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. that he who practices the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. Let us again pray and ask for the Lord's help as we seek to open up His Word. Father, we bow before you now, and we do give you thanks for the inscripturated Word, but we thank you more for, indeed, Christ come in the flesh, the incarnate Word of God. We pray as the Scriptures now teach us of Him, that you would illumine our hearts and our minds, and that we may be able to understand your Word, and that we might take away from it the truth and the right principles, and that we may not merely be hearers of your Word, but that we may be doers of it as well. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, as already noted, we've been looking at John 3 in conjunction with the Lord's Table for the past several months. And the first thing that we considered was that we're looking at a conversation between the Lord Jesus Christ and a man named Nicodemus. And we're told about Nicodemus. He was Jewish. and he was a leader, a ruler of the Jewish nation. He was also a Pharisee of those who were very zealous to keep the law and the traditions of Israel. There's a lot of bad things said about them, but Nicodemus seems to be very sincere in his coming to the Lord Jesus Christ and asking Him these questions. And we noted that our Lord Jesus refers to Nicodemus in verse 10 as the teacher of Israel, probably indicating that he was the most significant teacher or the head scholar, and thus he was a man who was well acquainted with the Old Testament, a man who was able to teach the Old Testament, a man who was very zealous for the law of God and the traditions, And yet, for all of that learning, and for all that he had been born and raised into and studied, etc., he seems to be sadly ignorant of what it means to be saved. That he seems to not understand the most elementary thing with regard to knowing God, that one must indeed be born again. And so our Lord Jesus seems to anticipate here that the question is, what must I do to receive eternal life? And our Lord begins to answer that question by telling Nicodemus that he must be born again from above, or he must receive a new birth. And so we noted then that our Lord teaches Nicodemus and us of the necessity of a spiritual regeneration. that to become a Christian, to be saved, is not merely about head knowledge, it's not merely agreeing with the facts as they are presented in the Gospels, but to be a Christian is to receive a work of God upon our very souls, whereby we are radically changed, so much so that it is likened to being born again. that there is a transformation that takes place. And our Lord underscores this with Nicodemus, that if one is going to see the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, that he must be born again, that it is non-negotiable, that it is an absolute necessity that it is not merely embracing the facts as they are laid out, it is having a work of God done within our hearts that fundamentally changes us and makes us oriented to God. Nicodemus, of course, asks, how can that possibly happen? We can't enter in the second time into our mother's womb and be remade and refashioned, so how can that possibly take place? And our Lord tells him, of course, that it is by the Spirit of God, which works when and how He chooses, just as the wind blows, we see the evidence of it, the leaves on the trees move, The papers fly and we see the evidence and we can see the evidence of the Spirit of God when He regenerates the soul because of what is produced, because of the effects that it causes us to forsake our sin and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. As our Lord further then explains this, He explains that this is possible because of the literal incarnation, and He speaks about Himself coming down out of heaven as the one who can address these things, speak to these things, and that this is all possible because Jesus Christ has come, because God has sent His Son into the world. And so it is based upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and upon the teaching and words of the Lord Jesus Christ, verses 9 to 13. When we come to verse 14 of the chapter, we noted not only the necessity of being born again or receiving a spiritual regeneration and the reality of the literal incarnation of the Son of God, Immanuel, God with us, coming into the world, but in verse 14 our Lord points out the necessity of a substitutional crucifixion. It is only as the Son of God is lifted up or the Son of Man is lifted up that the sins of the world can be dealt with and makes it possible then for men to be born again and to be reconciled to God. And thus we have again that necessity and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up and so we looked at the fact of how God had cured the poison and that which was killing Israel as part of his judgment for their disobedience and our Lord Jesus Christ says that this is typical of him that he is to be lifted up on the cross of Calvary so that men may be delivered from the poison of sin and from the judgment of God and of death but now we come to our fourth and final aspect of our Lord's teaching here and that is the necessity of a real conversion. Again, Nicodemus' question is how can these things be? And our Lord explains that it comes about by spiritual regeneration, made possible by His literal incarnation and coming to die upon the cross, the substitutional crucifixion. But, all of those things being true, still is not enough to have eternal life. One must be truly, genuinely, really converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the necessity of a real conversion. Notice now verses 15 to 17. That whoever, the son of man being lifted up as the serpent was, that whoever believes may in him have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world would be saved through Him. And so in those three verses we have eternal life mentioned in verse 15, eternal life mentioned in verse 16, and in verse 17 that the world should be And so we're in that realm of salvation, of soteriology, of God saving men. And what our Lord Jesus tells us is that it is Christ being sent that is the way to eternal life. And thus the necessity of a real conversion is being dealt with here because receiving Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life or to be saved. And in verse 16, probably the most well-known of all Bible verses, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. We have a number of truths laid out. First of all, with regard to our receiving eternal life, we find where the initiative comes from, the divine initiative. For God has just said that If the sun is lifted up, everyone who believes in Him may receive eternal life. And now there's the explanation. You see, verse 16 begins with 4, so that it's the explanatory. Here's why. If the sun's lifted up for God, And so God is the one who takes the initiative in His divine initiation. It doesn't say but man, it doesn't say but we, but God is the one who takes the initiative in saving men. It is God's work. And then we have what I've called the profound motivation for God so loved. What is it that motivates God to bring about this eternal life, this salvation for fallen men? It is God's love that motivates, that compels Him to do so. It's nothing good in us, but everything good in God. It's not that we love God, but that He loved us. We love, John says in his epistle, because He first loved us. Our love is the result of and the response to God's love for us. And so we have the divine initiative and the profound motivation that it is because God set His love upon us that He determined to send His Son into the world, to do the work of living according to the law that we could not do, and to die the death, as someone has said, that we dare not die, that Jesus Christ has been sent into the world by the love of God. And, then we have this unthinkable action, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. that God sent His own Son into the world. The third person of the Trinity, the Eternal Son, God of very God, sent into the world and vehicle into the world through the womb of the Virgin Mary where He takes a true human body and a true human soul and He forever becomes the God-Man. He didn't give up what He was, He's still God, but He became something that He never was. He became part of His creation. He becomes a part of the creature. He becomes man, taking all that is upon Him, or taking all to Himself, that makes a true man apart from the fallen nature. God gave His Son to this. The Father gives His Son over, and He's motivated by love. with all the wickedness and all the rebellion in man's heart, of whom God could say the thoughts and the intents of man's hearts are evil continually, and in which the great deluge, the flood, wiped out all but one family to show what God thinks of mankind, and yet God is moved with love and from all eternity has set His love upon His people and He has given His Son to the end that He might live for us and that He might die for us, that He might govern and rule over us having saved us and that He might come again for us. And to this there is attached this universal invitation that whoever believes in Him should not perish. That whoever will believe, not of Jew only, but of Gentile, not of those who might consider themselves righteous, but even of those who know themselves indeed to be sinners. That there is this invitation that whosoever believes in Him But you see, here is our point. You must really believe. You must be genuinely converted. You can't just know about Him, nor can you simply believe the facts. But you must truly believe as the Bible lays forth and sets forth belief. And for everyone who will truly believe, There is the promise that they will not perish, that they will escape the judgment of God and rather come into the blessings of God. And of course the result of that believing has given us they should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. So God sent His Son into the world and He sent His Son not to come and to destroy the world. He sent His Son in the first coming that He might come and that He might offer Himself to the world. That through the preaching of the gospel His work might be declared and whoever believes in Him might be saved. That they might know eternal life. That there is this wonderful salvation that is offered to us in the Son of God. and that God is offering a time of mercy. The Son did not come to judge. He came to speak the truth and to tell us how we might be delivered, that how we might escape the judgment of God, how we might escape the curse of God, and how we might know the blessing of God, and that we might have eternal life. And so our Lord now is dealing and dealing with Nicodemus to this reality that Nicodemus, the way of being born again, the way of your coming to receive eternal life of being saved is by way of a real conversion that you must believe in the one that God has sent. Nicodemus came and said, we know you're a teacher sent from God. No man can do the works that you do except God is with him. But Jesus is saying it's far more than that, Nicodemus. I'm not just a prophet. I'm something far beyond that. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the way to eternal life. It is as you come to believe in Me that you will have eternal life. This is what our Lord is setting forth before Nicodemus, that you must not merely know the Old Testament Scriptures. You must not merely be a Jew, and you must be more than simply one who knows the truth. You must come to believe this is the way of eternal life. Now our Lord speaks to this issue and that is there must be a real conversion because not receiving Jesus Christ is to be condemned already. It is to stand under the judgment and the wrath of God already. Notice now verse 18. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already. because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And so you see, not receiving the Lord Jesus is to be judged already. You don't have to wait for the judgment day to know where you stand. The Scriptures, the Lord Jesus Christ tells us exactly where we stand. Believe in the Son of God, eternal life. Don't believe in the Son of God already condemned. under the condemnation and the wrath of God. The Judgment Day will declare it. It will be formalized and the sentence will be handed out. But what that sentence will be and the fact that we are already under the judgment of God, if we're apart from Christ, is crystal clear. There is here this unequivocal assertion that those apart from Christ are condemned already. So you see, Nicodemus might have been a fairly moral man in the judgment of the world. Certainly as a Pharisee, outwardly he would have tried certainly to be a man who kept the law of God. But being moral is not enough. Being a pretty good person is not enough. Being better than your neighbor is not enough. Dare I say, even being better than the Christians that you can name is not enough. What separates the people of this world is this. They either believe in the Son of God or they do not believe in the Son of God. That is the dividing line. And it's not a line, it's a chasm. That's the Grand Canyon. And you're on one side of that or the other. This is what our Lord is making clear to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, all your learning, you're the teacher. You're a Pharisee. You were born a Jew. All of those things are not enough to get you to heaven. They're not enough for eternal life. You must believe, and if you don't believe, you're judged already. You're already under the condemnation because you have rejected the One in whom salvation is sent, Jesus Christ. In Him alone is there any salvation. In Him alone is eternal life. You must believe in Him. And if you haven't believed in Him, then you're under the judgment of God as a fallen sinner, as a fallen son of Adam. And now, he explains it further, beginning in verse 19. And this is the judgment. He just said, unequivocally, you are standing under the judgment of God. Now, he says, and this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. And so the first thing that's pointed out is that men's deeds, apart from Christ, are evil. Now you may say, but wait a minute, I know people who give lots of money to the Cancer Foundation and the Heart Foundation, and I know people who've done all manner of things, and my neighbor is not a Christian, but I would trust him with my house key to come over and check on things. He's not evil. See, that's where we misunderstand what evil is. Evil is just doing your own thing apart from God. The Bible says even the prayers of the wicked are an abomination. Why? Because they have not yet come to give themselves to the Son of God. They have not embraced the Messiah. They have not embraced the Christ. And it is only in Christ that we are made acceptable. Everything else is our doing our own thing. Our way. Great Sinatra popularized that, and maybe others, I did it my way. But the Christians say, I did it the Lord's way. I gave up my way. I surrendered my way. I became a bondservant, a slave to Jesus Christ. I did it His way. Did I do it perfectly? No. But I did it because I am loyal to, committed to Jesus Christ. That's what separates the believer from the unbeliever, those under the judgment of God and those under the blessing of God, whether or not they have come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason men stand condemned is that their evil is manifested because they won't come to the light. You see what he says? They love darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil. Their evilness is manifested in that they won't come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Men will come to religion. Men like religion. Men will even come to morality. But neither of those result in eternal life. Now if you're a Christian, you'll be moral. If you're a Christian, you'll be religious. But you can be religious and not be a Christian. And you can be moral and not be a Christian. The issue is, have you come to Jesus Christ? You must be genuinely, really converted to Jesus Christ. Nicodemus was religious, he was moral, he was lost. Now in verses 20 and 21 you have then the reality of man's hatred For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. And so the explanation for the fact that men stand condemned apart from Jesus is this, that they're not coming Manifest the fact that they hate Jesus Christ He is the light of the world John says that in John chapter 1 right the light came into the world and So he's just following up from chapter 1, still the same thing. Jesus is the one who comes and sheds light. He is the one who causes us to see. He is the one who reveals the kingdom of God, our sin and the means by which God has remedied it through His Son. This is what the Lord Jesus is addressing. And He says that men already stand condemned, that they are already judged. that they are already headed for hell because their evilness is manifested and their hatred is manifested in this that they will not come to the Son of God. But he who practices the truth comes to the light. Now what does that mean? Here's what I think Jesus is saying. Men had, of course, for some 4,000 years, had already had the truth, right? Beginning in Genesis 3, God says He's going to send the seed of the woman into the world, He's going to crush the serpent's head, and the serpent's going to bruise his heel. So He gets our sin, the poison that would kill us, God accounts Him a sinner, Christ is judged upon the cross, but in doing so, He destroys the works of the devil. And so, going back all the way, to the very beginning in the fall, God had made a way by their looking forward to the coming of Messiah, to the coming of Christ, that they could look to Christ and that they could be saved by faith in that work that he was going to do. And so little by little this is revealed. So when Jesus comes on the scene as born into the world, there were many in the Bible in the New Testament that were called God-fearers. There were those who were waiting on Messiah. There were those who were true believers. They believed in a coming Messiah. They had repented. And by God's Spirit, they had been born again. And they were waiting upon Messiah. And now Jesus is here. And what does He say? Everyone who practices the truth comes to the light. Those whom God has converted, they come to Me. Those whom God has given a new birth, they see me for what I am. Their eyes are opened, the scales have fallen off, and they flee to me. And those who do not, don't want to have any part of me because my truth, my light exposes their sin. And they want no part of that. So you see, if you're born again, what do you do? You flee to Jesus Christ. You see that in the verse? Let me read it again. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. What's the proof that one has been born again? They come to Jesus Christ. That it may be manifested How is it revealed that one has come to know God and been born again? They come to the light. They come to Jesus Christ. They embrace Christ. They believe in Christ. They become the disciples of Christ. This is how one knows that they've been born again. How is it manifested that one's not born again? They don't come to the light. They reject. Jesus Christ. And so what is our Lord doing? He's telling Nicodemus, I've told you, you have to be born again. I've told you that this possibility of eternal life comes about through my being coming in the flesh of the incarnation. And that indeed, through that crucifixion of my being lifted up, I'm dealing with the judgment and the curse and the poison. But it's not enough for you to know these things. You must really be converted. You must believe. in the Son of Man. And if you don't believe, you're condemned already. Because I'm the only way to eternal life, because not believing in me shows and reveals and manifests that you're a part of the darkness and that you've not been born again, that you're condemned already. But thirdly, because believing in Jesus Christ is more than merely believing about Him. Multitudes believe about Jesus. And in the next few weeks, multitudes are going to be turning on the radio all Christmas, all the time. And they're going to be singing along, and the world's going to celebrate Jesus. But you see, being really converted is different from merely believing about Jesus. When we come to believe, savingly, the thing that happens is this. There is a change in our orientation. Now once upon a time in our homeschooling thing I think John at least we planned it I don't know if it ever happened but John was going to do a orienteering class and he was going to mark certain things on a map and the kids were going to meet and they were going to get their compasses and they were going to have to go and locate these various landmarks to teach them how to work their way and so To be oriented or to do orienteering is to have a starting point and then from there work. You see for the Christian, Jesus is the starting point for everything. Everything is oriented according to our relationship to Jesus Christ. It's where we take our directive. It's where we begin. It's where we indeed seek to orient everything. Or to put it differently, He is the sun around which we orbit. That when you become a Christian, when you become one who has been converted, it changes your life because you are no longer the object of your admiration and love, at least not the greatest. Jesus becomes the greatest object of your affection. of your love, of your desire to please. That's what it means to come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not merely believing about Him, it is coming to entrust ourselves to Him. That's why the Bible likens it to marriage, that we are wed to the Lord Jesus, that we are His bride, that He is our head, that we are oriented to Him And so if we are truly those who have come to believe, the orientation of our life will be this. What does my master, my head, my husband say? And what would he have me do? How may I please him? And how may I serve him? And how may I learn more of him? How can I love him better? How can I enjoy him more? These are the things that have become the driving forces for the Christian So that the orientation of our life is fundamentally changed. Again, I go back to Isaiah 53, 56, 53, 6. I got it written down wrong. It's 53, 6. All we like sheep have gone astray. What have we done that's so bad? We have turned each one to his or her own way. That's the problem. Our own way. And when we come to truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it changes that so that we become oriented to Jesus Christ. His way, His will, what He wants and desires becomes the driving force of our life. Nicodemus no doubt had believed about the Messiah. He was the teacher of Israel. But it's not enough. He must not merely believe about the Messiah. He must believe in Jesus Christ, for He is the Messiah. And He must receive Him as His prophet, His priest, and His king. The prophet to teach Him, the priest to take care of His guilt and offer up sacrifice for Him, and His king to rule over Him and to defend Him, and come to rest in Him. To state it somewhat differently, it's not enough to have the conviction that Jesus is these things. There must be the commitment to rest ourselves upon him, to take him as our prophet, priest, and king. The second thing that will be changed, there will be a change in our affections. We read here that men love darkness rather than light. But when we come to the Lord Jesus, that changes. Where we used to love darkness, we used to love our sin, we now come to love righteousness and to pursue righteousness. John read it in our earlier scripture reading in the Beatitudes, the longest sermon and discourse of our Lord recorded and where our Lord sets forth. The basic attitudes of the Christian blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled or satisfied. If we've come to believe in the Lord Jesus, then there'll be a change in our orientation and a change in our affections. And what we once loved, we will now hate. What we once hated, we will now love. because we have come to love the Lord Jesus and to hate our sin. And of course there will be a change in our actions. Our Lord here says because their deeds are evil unless their deeds be exposed. But those who practice the truth they come to the light. And so There's a change in our actions from the works of darkness and of sin to the works of light, of those things that are pleasing in Christ's sight. One of the Bible dictionaries says, in some, conversion is a turning to embrace God. And then it goes on to say, on a few occasions, the concepts of repentance and turning appear together. And then a number of texts are given, Acts 319, Acts 2620. And then it says, repentance reflects the attitude one brings into conversion, while turning pictures the change of orientation and direction that comes as a part of it. And so, the idea of repentance is our attitude where we have now come to hate our sin and are seeking deliverance from it. So that we turn from it. In our hearts we no longer love sin, but we're seeking release from it. We've been convicted and we're turned away from it. And conversion is where we then lay hold of Christ. We've turned from this direction to this direction. We've been converted and changed so that where we were walking this direction doing our own thing, we are now turned toward Christ and oriented to Christ and walking towards Christ and in His light. That's what it means to be converted. And it will show up in our orientation, what's guiding and directing us in our affections and in our actions. Now I'm glad to be able to say that the Bible indicates that apparently Nicodemus heeded the words of our Lord and becomes a believer. My question is, will you? Christ offers himself to you in the gospel. God so loved the world that whosoever That's you, my friend. If you will, He will. It's that simple. If you'll have Him on His turns, He's yours. If you will take Him as Lord and Savior, He offers Himself to you. And He offers you eternal life. And that you may escape the judgment and the sentence you are now under. And the way that is accomplished is reflected here in the Lord's table, his broken body and his shed blood. That he might indeed bear the sins of his people and offer himself as a sacrifice to give himself up, that he might atone for his people, that he might make a way that we can have eternal life. Let us pray. Lord, our God, we do thank you for the great work that you have done to save needy, hell-deserving sinners such as we are. Lord, what gratitude and praise and adoration should fill our hearts. We pray, our God, that you would receive our thanks and that you would help us to rejoice in what you have done and of all people to be thankful We pray, our God, that you would help us to reflect more and more that we truly do belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray particularly for those who are sitting here who are still in darkness, that they may indeed see the light, that they may come to the light, that they may embrace Jesus Christ, flee from their sins, and that they may know what it is to have eternal life. We pray these mercies in Jesus' name. Amen. They ask me for.