As we turn once more this evening to John chapter 3 and verse 16, I say it has been my privilege to be here to expound God's Word, to rejoice in a sense of His presence in the services, and to rejoice also in a very evident willingness to hear among the people of God. It's a great thing to have a Bible. The inspired Word of God, truth without error, light without darkness, free from the deceptions of the devil that are everywhere else to be found. We're glad we have God's Word. It's been my privilege to come to perhaps the best known verse in that Word and spend this time with you as we considered it together. We're turning to it once again this evening. And with our Bibles open, let us join together now in prayer. Our eternal God and our Father in heaven, again we come to thy throne of grace in the name and through the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, We thank Thee that Thou hast said, There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. We thank Thee that He is the very Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, the eternal Word, the everlasting One. We thank Thee, our God, that He is the Word. He is the Lamb of God. He is the sacrifice for sin. He is the complete Savior. We thank Thee He is our prophet. He is our priest. He is our King. We thank Thee for the Lord Jesus Christ. Our God, we thank Thee for this gracious text of Scripture. which we have been seeking to understand. Now, Lord, as we come to it yet again, we pray that Thou wilt humble every heart in Thy presence. Humble the preacher and humble the hearer. Take from this preacher every hindering thing that would arise from flesh. Grant, O God, the anointing of God the Holy Spirit the impartation of spiritual power to the preaching of the Word that only He can give. And, O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt give to each hearer a hearing ear and a receptive and responsive heart. We remember that while He was on earth. The Lord Jesus gave the sevenfold command He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And again, from the throne of His exaltation, He has repeated that same sevenfold command. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear. Gracious God, We pray that thou wilt grant men and women and boys and girls the gracious ability, the gift of hearing with the hearing of faith. Bless thy word, sea of precious souls. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty? Thank God our Savior always succeeds. He is the mighty conqueror. Lord, take the prey tonight from the paw of the old lion who is raging for the destruction of souls. And to Thee we shall give the praise, the honor, and the glory. For what we pray, we pray in the name and through the merits of the shed blood of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. One of the brethren pointed out to me today as we were leaving the morning service that I had mentioned In the English text of our authorized version, John 316 has 25 words and I said that these are perhaps the sweetest and greatest 25 words in all of English literature. He's pointing out that the middle word is the word son. It has been my aim and my objective from the very beginning that we would focus on the centrality and all sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have not come among you to preach a man, a church, a denomination, or even a sacrament. I have not come among you in the name of any of these things. I have come here to preach Jesus Christ. and Him crucified. I trust that the Lord has attended the effort to exalt His Son in the plain preaching of the gospel. And I trust that if you have been here already, the Lord in grace has touched your heart. I was telling the men about an incident In late 19th century London, when an American traveler came to the capital to hear great preaching, he went on the Sabbath morning to hear the renowned Joseph Parker, a pulpiteer with very, very few equals in the history of the English pulpit, a man who could preach with glorious flowing oratory. And the visitor was greatly moved and came out and said to his companion, what a great preacher. That evening he went to the Metropolitan Tabernacle to hear the greatest preacher, I believe, that we have ever had in the English tongue, the renowned Baptist C. H. Spurgeon. And as he left Spurgeon's meeting that night, the visitor again was overwhelmed with awe. But this time, his word was simply, what a great Savior. I have to be honest, I really will not lose a lot of sleep over people's opinion of the preacher, be it good or bad or indifferent. I can always say that there's never a person in the congregation who criticizes the efforts of the preacher, at least in my case, half as strenuously as I criticize them myself. But it is my sincere desire that you will forget about the preacher You will get a glimpse of Christ. It was our Savior who said, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Over these past meetings, we have seen in this text the freeness of God's love, this mighty, sovereign, gracious love of God to unlovely and otherwise unlovable sinners. The freeness of God's love. We have thought somewhat upon the fullness of God's gift that He gave His only begotten Son. We have paid some attention to the firmness of God's promise that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish. We have given specific time and attention to the faith of God's people, saving faith, We have thought also of the future of God's people. They shall not perish. They shall have everlasting life. Now in the final study of this text and the subjects which it raises, we come to think upon the fate of all men who do not receive God's free gift. of His dear Son to be Saviour and Lord through faith and faith alone. This text in John 3 verse 16 introduces us to a subject of the greatest possible solemnity. The subject tonight is the hopeless destiny of death from which we are saved through faith in Christ. The Lord Jesus here teaches very plainly that God lovingly delivers believers, but only believers, from an awful fate through faith in His Son. That awful fate is summed up in one word in the text, and it is the word perish. That word, whether you read it in the Greek text or read it in the English text, has a ring of danger about it. It has a ring of death I am indeed of destruction about it. All these are actually very clearly expressed in the usage of this word in the New Testament. It is not usually a good idea for preachers to introduce foreign words into their sermons, be they Hebrew or Greek. Now and again, there are certain reasons for doing so. The reason will become clear, I trust, in a minute or two. The word that we translate here as perish is the Greek word apollo me. And it carries with it a broad range of meaning. that you will see as you go through the New Testament Scriptures. This is the word that you could use when you're speaking of losing something or describing that which you had lost. Luke 15 verse 4, what man of you having a hundred sheep, if he lose one? And this is the word. Doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which was lost. And again, a form of this word. It does mean, as we see in our text and it's translated, to perish. Which means, on the authority of Scripture, to be plucked out and cast away. You remember the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 5 verse 29, If thy right eye offend thee, then pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish. He says, pluck out and cast away. And he says, this is the perishing of the member. In Luke 11 verse 51, we discover it has the idea to die or to be put to death. Zechariah perished. He was put to death between the altar and the temple. It is a noun form of the word. It is variously rendered in our New Testament as the idea of destruction, ruin, perishing, loss. To what purpose is this waste? The disciples asked When the woman came to anoint the Lord Jesus, to what purpose is this waste? It's this word, perish. When we read, we are not of them that draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. Perdition. It's this word again. What is this perdition, this loss? The word perdition. is an English word that is taken from the Latin language. It simply means loss. But in this text, it is used specifically to be the opposite of the saving of the soul. It is the losing of the soul. When Festus said it was not the custom of the Romans to deliver to death anyone who had not been able to face as accusers. The death is this word again. Perishing has this connotation of death, being put to death. Ultimately, in the New Testament, it means destruction. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7, verse 13, broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. Many there are that go in thereat. I don't want to go on interminably citing texts. I draw them all together. I think of the words of perhaps the leading language authority for many preachers, for many scholars. looking at this destruction. They summed it up. It is not, speaking of the extinction of the physical existence of a person, it is an eternal plunge into Hades, the Greek word for hell. It is an eternal plunge into hell. and a hopeless destiny of death. I give you the Word as it appears in the New Testament, because now you will see why the book of the Revelation speaks of the king of the bottomless pit. And it gives him a title. that is taken from this word that is translated perishing. Apollyon, the destroyer, the one who procures the destruction of precious souls. I have taken this time tonight to look at these words that lie behind the term that is simply translated here perish. so that we may grasp why the Lord Jesus here employed it and why I call it such an awful fate. We want to be as simple as possible tonight. First of all, I want to make it clear that the Bible sets before us the incontrovertible truth that sinners do perish. There are many who want to deny this in a variety of ways. Some like atheists, of course, many of them are in branches of what professes to be Christianity, but many like atheists will say, men die like dogs. That's the end. Many like papists, will say there is some other chance after death. Many, like universalists, will simply say that God is a God of love and He could never allow one creature of His to perish and therefore somehow, someday, someway, someplace, we will all make it safely to glory. Now, men and women, let me put it to you very clearly tonight. My opinion matters nothing. Your opinion matters nothing. The teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith matters nothing in and of itself, though I believe it to be a true statement. What I'm getting at is this. There are certain issues upon which we cannot afford to be wrong in the slightest degree. When we come to the matters of God, His Son, His salvation, our souls and our eternity, We are dealing with things that are too important to abandon to somebody's opinion. The whole of the Bible is inspired. But many a great Bible student has pointed out that when it comes to the doctrine of hell, when it comes to the doctrine of the eternal destiny of the unbelieving, unconverted soul. It is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who speaks most frequently on that subject. It is not the prophets. It is not Paul and Peter and the rest of the apostles. It is the Son of God Himself. Now, understand me. All the words of Scripture are inspired and all the words of Scripture are authoritative. But I dare say that had it been Paul, had it been Peter, who spoke much about the eternal destiny of the lost, and had the Lord Jesus been silent on it, the doctrine is so deep and so dark and so devastating that hardly a man could dare to have taken it. But it is Him who says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. It is Him who is the everlasting Word of God. It is Him who is the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of the Father's person. It is Him who, as I pointed out from Hebrews 1 the other evening, is God's final word to man. After Christ, God has nothing to say to man. This is the message. The only message. And Jesus Christ, more than anyone, constantly perpetually, wherever he went, was preaching repentance unto life and warning of the reality of an eternal destiny in hell where the worm dieth not and where the fire is never quenched. So let me set aside the opinions of man. Let me tell you, it matters not what they say. And you will be a terrible fool to trust your soul to the opinion of any man, the teaching of any church, of any cult, of any creed. It is the Son of God who alone had power to lay down His life and power to take it up again. It is the Son of God alone who is called the Father of Eternity. He is the One who is the Eternal One. It is the Son of God alone in whose hand are the keys of hell and of death who speaks to us on this. Woe betide the man who feels to listen. Universalism and all the other isms to which I've referred tonight are rank heresies. The devils lie. Sinners perish. We have Christ's authority for that. According to the Savior, sinners are already lost. It's not just they're going to be lost, they are already lost. He came to seek and to save that which was, quite literally, that which has been and still is lost. Sinners are already ruined, fallen, depraved, corrupted, alienated from God by wicked works. Sinners are already out of the way, on the wrong track, as I've quoted the words of Christ, the broad road, that leadeth to destruction. It's a far cry from the notion of a divine spark in every man, that we're all God's children. I'm sure you've often sung from the 51st Psalm, Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. And also, that the wicked go astray from the womb. That's early enough, is it not? From the womb they go astray, speaking lies. Sinners are now lost. Sinners are now perishing. The Bible speaks of them as the perishing ones. The Lord Jesus speaks of the prodigal. And in the far country, he came to himself and he said, I am perishing. This is the state of the lost. Every day they are increasing their ruin. Every moment they are losing time and opportunity with every step They're wandering further from God and rushing headlong to destruction. Sinners, according to the Savior, will perish forever. Except ye repent, said the Lord Jesus, ye shall all likewise perish, and this way will lead to destruction. A hopeless destiny. of death, perdition, ultimate, utter, irreversible ruin, total and irreparable loss. The Lord Jesus said, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul. What shall it profit a man if he could gain the world? There's never been a man, even the great Alexander, who looked for fresh worlds to conquer, did not gain the world. The richest man in the world today has not gained the world. But could you gain the world? And in gaining it, you lost your soul. Where would be the profit? The loss of the soul is not to be deprived of its existence, but it is to be given over to utter destruction. In that destruction, according to the Savior in the 16th chapter of Luke, There is no loss of consciousness. There's no loss of feeling. There's no loss of memory. There's no loss of carnal desire. And there's no loss of the consciousness and the conviction of guilt. What there is, is the loss of all light. all hope. You have heard the words from the old medieval epic, Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Sinners perish. Let me make it clear that the Bible also emphasizes why sinners perish, and it gives three fundamental causes that I will simply have time to summarize. Some scriptures make it clear that sinners perish by their own hand. It is quite simply their own fault. James tells us in chapter 1, verse 14, Every man is tempted when he's drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Paul insists in 1 Timothy 6 verse 9 that they that will be rich fall into temptation and snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. It's the foolish and hurtful lusts, the desiring and yearning and indulging of the flesh that leads to destruction and perdition. These people perish because they waste or they cause to perish every good gift and blessing of God. I think of people. Well, let me not be too broad or general. Let me put it in the form of a question. And let me bring it right down to this congregation. Do we have people with a rich heritage? From as far back in your life as you can remember, you've had an open Bible. You've been surrounded by the influences of grace and of gospel. Perhaps you had godly parents, godly pastors, godly Sabbath school teachers, godly elders. Perhaps you have come to the house of God. You have come and gone from the place of the holy. You have sung the praises of the Lord. You have bowed in prayer. You have received the exposition of the Word of God. And yet, you have taken every gift of God. wasted it. He has given you health that you have employed in the service of sin, of self and of sin. He has given you time that you have flittered away in the inconsequential inanities of this world. Again and again, He has raised up man to stand in your pathway of life and bring you to a stop and call upon you to flee from the wrath to come, to look upon the man of the center cross, to behold the Lamb of God which taken away the sin of the world, to look and live, and yet you have wasted every gracious gift. I tell you men and women, those who waste gospel opportunity, gospel invitation, are spiritual suicides. That is true of every sinner who goes out unprepared to meet God, but particularly so of those whom the Lord Jesus calls the children of the kingdom. Those who have every advantage, every opportunity, every outward connection with the means of grace. But they finally, according to Matthew chapter 8, are cast into hell. They die as spiritual suicides. Like King Saul, they must say at the end of it all, I have played the fool, I have erred exceedingly. You remember what Paul said to the Jews in Pisidian, Antioch? He had gone there preaching the gospel. They had little interest The next week the Gentiles came longing for this same gospel. And when they showed an interest, these self-righteous Jews rose up in wrath and blasphemed Paul and his Christ. And Paul then said, Acts 13, 46, The Word of God has been spoken to you, but ye put it from you. And listen, judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life. There's a sense in which if you ever perish, you perish by your own hand. Spiritual suicides. But the Word of God also shows that Satan destroys souls. As I've said, he's called Apollyon, the great destroyer. He may employ many means. He may employ other sinners. He may employ false prophets. He may employ tempting deceptions. But whatever means he employs, his aim is always destruction. You remember how Paul warned the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 11. He said, I fear lest by any means As the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. This old beguiling serpent. The devil doesn't care what kind of a lie he tells you, as long as he gets you to swallow it. He'll reverse himself. He'll contradict himself. It doesn't matter what he does. There's no morality in Satan. There's no mercy. He aims for your destruction. Do you remember how the Scripture warns? The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not lest. I like that, lest, for it tells me what makes hell to tremble. It tells me what makes the devil scared. It's not a church gaining political clout. It's not a church growing in vast numbers. It's not the growth of our bank balance. Let me tell you, what causes hell to tremble is the gospel of Jesus Christ preached in the power of the Holy Ghost. That's what causes Him to tremble. He blinds the men and women of this world, lest the light of the glorious The gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. Men and women, I would to God that you would awake. If you are this night a dupe of sin, the world and the devil, I tell you, awake ere you slip into God's eternity, destroyed by this great Apollyon. Be careful how you proceed. Every day I see men and women, young people, blindly, blithely following Satan's steps. I think of the great preacher, Roland Hill. Going along one day, he saw pigs being led to the slaughterhouse. I don't know if we have any pig farmers here. As a young man, I worked for a while helping friends who ran a very large pig farm. The day came for the truck to arrive, and you got them out of their pens and you took them down, holding with one ear and the tail, getting the back feet off the ground so that no traction, and get them up the gangplank. Those animals knew I don't know how they knew. They were mice from the slaughterhouse. But they knew. And they fought not to get on that truck. But Roland Hill saw these pigs not forced into a truck, trotting along toward the slaughterhouse, and they seemed not to have a care in the world. And he wondered why. Then he saw in front of them there was a man dropping beans in their path and they were that busy picking up the beans. They were in the place of death before they knew it. How many a poor lost sinner is traipsing along the broad road to hell with hardly a thought in the The devil drops a bean here and a bean there. Men and women are that busy with the devil's beans. They're deceived until they're damned. Satan destroys souls. But ultimately the Bible makes it clear that God is the judge who finally condemns sinners to eternal destruction. It was the Lord, as we heard in the opening prayer tonight, it was the Lord who destroyed the old world in the days of Noah. It was the Lord who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the Lord who destroyed Tyre and Sidon. Jude 5 tells us The Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not? The Lord Jesus put it like this. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 28. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. but rather fear Him which is able to destroy, cause to perish both soul and body in hell. Fear Him. The Lord Jesus also said that the Lord will miserably destroyed those wicked sinners. What an irony! I've been preaching all week, or since we started these meetings, God so loved the world. What an irony! The God who loved the world, is the one who judges, condemns the lost to eternal perdition. There's a verse in Hebrews 10, verse 31. It's powerfully searching. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Those hands hurl the world into space. Those hands uphold all things. Those hands, in providence, have distributed to every creature's need. Those hands are the hands that were nailed to the tree. The hand that dashes the impenitent to a lost eternity is a kneel imprinted hand. It is not a harsh, unyielding, unloving, uncaring judge that sends the lost to their eternal doom. It is the God who loved this world in such a manner that He sent as His gift His only begotten Son. There's a reason why sinners perish. They're suicides. They're deluded by the devil. But they finally come under the judgment of God. Let me finish by emphasizing that the Word of God makes it clear that there is only one way of deliverance from perishing. Jesus Christ, our Savior here, makes it unmistakably plain. This is the basis of the Gospel that Peter and Paul and the other apostles spent their lives preaching. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You see, the God who has power to destroy is also able to save. James tells us in chapter 4, verse 12, there is one lawgiver who is able to save, to destroy, But salvation is God's special work. He says, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. There are no joy bells in heaven when an impenitent soul drops into the abyss and the midnight darkness and sufferings of hell. But I am told by the Lord Jesus, there is joy in the presence of God. What does that mean? Preachers have a difference of opinion here. Some think it means among the angels they are rejoicing. Some think it means among the redeemed who are already there, they are rejoicing. And no doubt that's true. I believe they are right. I think that heaven rings with choirs of angels and glorified saints magnifying God every time a sinner repents. But I think it is also true what many others insist. That in the presence of God is speaking of what is happening with God Himself God is rejoicing! This is His special work! This is the culmination of His eternal plan! This is the fulfillment of His gracious covenant! This is the fruit of the blood-shedding of His dear Son! This is His special work! He has taken poor, lost, guilty, hell-deserving sinners He has saved them. He has washed them. He has converted them. He has regenerated them. He has justified them. He has accepted them. And now, clothed in the merits of His Son, without the tinge of personal worth, work or merit, they stand complete in Christ, glorified, rejoicing, saved forevermore. Oh, He rejoices to bring lost souls to heaven, salvation is His special work. That's why He sent His Son. The Lord Jesus could have come to destroy the world. The very next verse after our text says, God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world. It was condemned already. God could have sent His Son to sweep the whole planet into oblivion. But He didn't. He sent Him that the world through Him might be saved. And I want to tell you something. The Lord Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost, and once He finds them, He never again will lose them. Let me ask you tonight as we read this great text, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Let me ask you, my friend, what has been the response of your soul to the glorious revelation of divine love? Are you a believer? Have you ever come by faith, falling at the feet of the Savior? Confessing you are the sinner, having a shred of spiritual goodness about you, depraved, corrupted from head to toe, deserving of nothing but the wrath of God. But yet before Him, O Lamb of God, I come to Thee. Thou art my only hope and plea. Thou art my only righteousness. Thou art my only Lord and Savior. It was a Scotsman who penned a beautiful little chorus. I trust tonight you'll think of these words of Seth Sykes. He said, Thank you, Lord. for saving my soul. Thank You, Lord, for making me whole. Thank You, Lord, for giving to me Thy great salvation, so rich and so free. Are you a believer? Are you saved? For if you're not a believer, my dear friend, you're lost, perishing on the edge of a lost eternity. The Bible divides all mankind into just two classes. The saved and the lost. Believers and unbelievers. Those who are in Christ. Those who are without Christ. Just two classes. Two great eternities. With Christ forever. Cut off from Christ forever. Glory or gloom. salvation for eternity? Or suffering the outer darkness of a lost eternity? Eternity. Eternity. Where will you be in God's eternity? That's the question. There's life in Christ. For whom? For every sinner who will come to him, receive him as he's freely offered in the gospel. May God enable you tonight to arise and run to Christ. Embrace him with the arms of faith, receive him as God's free gift that saves the soul from the hopeless destiny of death. Let us bow together in prayer. Our gracious God and our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee this evening for Thy gracious Word. We praise Thee for the solemn truth of the Gospel. We know, Lord, there is a word of deep and terrible warning. Blessed Lord, there is also a word of gracious heart of heart in this congregation. O God, search out the deep places of every conscience. Remove every personal prejudice. Lord, defeat every deceptive plan of the evil one. By thy gracious Holy Spirit, speak to immortal soldiers. O Lord, if there are those here struggling out of Christ and staying away from Him, Lord, draw them with the cords of love. We thank Thee that God did so love us.