We're going to be looking at John chapter 3, verses 16 through 21. The last Lord's Day I preached here, we looked at the first part of that chapter, verses 1 through 15. We're now going to be looking at that very well-known verse, John 3, 16, and the verses that follow that. You should be able to find that on page 1130 in the Pew Bible, if you would like to follow along, and I invite you to do that. Again, hear God's word. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people love darkness rather than the light because of their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God. Again, may God bless the reading of his word to each heart. Let's pray. Again, Heavenly Father, we thank you that we have your word before us today. Open our understanding that we might each receive something from you that you would desire for us to receive, that we might use it in our growth and our understanding of you and our relationship to you. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Some of you who are a little older, like me, may remember back in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, there was a controversy called the Lordship Salvation Controversy. evangelical leaders, John MacArthur, Charles Ryrie, Zane Hodges, and Michael Horton amongst them, some of the more well-known theologians of that time. The controversy was basically whether or not a Christian needs to have Jesus as both Lord and Savior. And this is really not a new issue. I mean, it was one that made a great deal of impact at that time. It's still going on today, and it's always been going on, really, in some form or another in the Christian world. As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, there is no new thing under the sun. There are different variations on this sort of controversy. In this particular one, there was an argument that said, On the one hand, a person's a Christian if, and this is the one extreme, if you've ever just for one brief time in your life believed that Jesus is your Lord, I mean is your Savior, that's all it took is that one time. Even if you went the rest of your life, many, many years from then and never thought about being a Christian, never thought about Jesus, the fact that you had that one moment of faith means that you're saved. Some people call that greasy grace, or the idea of fire insurance. say a sinner's prayer because they don't want to go to hell, so that's why they say the sinner's prayer and they think they're okay from that point. But the argument actually was trying to make the statement that because grace is totally free, you could be saved simply by having that one moment of faith in your life and never go on from any changes in your life from that point. Jesus could just be your Savior and not your Lord. And the other extreme of that argument was, well, Jesus must be both your Lord and Savior, but you must make him your Lord. In other words, you have to determine that he's going to be your Lord. The problem with that argument was it became kind of a legalistic argument, and it made it that in order to be a true Christian, you had to do thus, thus, and thus. You had to make Jesus your Lord, and in a sense, it was your works that were saving you, even though those promoting that idea would have argued against it. That's really what it boiled down to, that your works not only are part of being a Christian, but they are required in order for you to be truly saved. And the real solution to the problem was what Reformed Christianity has been teaching all along since the Reformation, and that is, if you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, He is your Lord and He is your Savior, both. You don't have to make Him that, because if you're a true believer, that's what He is to you. And your life, therefore, will be transformed, because you can't separate His Lordship from his saviorship. You can't have one without the other. Of course, he is Lord. He's King of Kings and Lord of Lords to start with. But in our individual Christian lives, as a Christian, if you are a Christian, he is your Lord and Savior. And as a result of that, you will be changed and you will do things. You will do works that demonstrate that. So, we'll take a look at that in this passage, because the passage deals with that very issue, that if you're a genuine Christian, you will truly believe in Jesus as your Savior, but you will also show deeds that demonstrate that you are. So, again, let's look at this passage. Let's actually back up a little bit. The verses prior to this, the first part of the chapter. Jesus was talking to Nicodemus who was a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed that your works did save you. They weren't even faith plus works Jews. They were believed that you could save yourself by keeping the laws of God, by keeping all the commandments and by keeping the religious rituals and so on. And so Nicodemus was one of these people. And Jesus talked to him, and he said, you're a teacher of Israel, and you don't understand the very basic things that you should know. And one of those things he said was that you must be born again. You must have a regenerated experience. In other words, God has to have made you become born again. If you haven't had that, you're not a Christian. Of course, he didn't use the word Christian, but he was saying you're not a true believer if you have not been regenerated. And therefore, your works are dead works. And he pointed out that that's the work of God. The regenerative work of God is his work. His spirit acts upon us and regenerates us, makes us born again, makes us born from above, from the spirit. That's not our doing. We respond to that in faith. And he used this, these last two verses were significant. because they refer to the passage in Numbers where Jesus makes this statement. It says, And Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. So as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. What he's talking about, again, just to repeat, the Israelite people were not happy with their wanderings in the wilderness, and they weren't happy with the manna that God was giving them, and they started griping. And God showed them that their griping was not going to go unnoticed. And he sent serpents, basically saying, look, I'm taking care of you, and you're griping against Moses, you're griping against me, you need to learn a lesson. So he sent serpents, and these venomous serpents were biting people, and people were dying because of it. So the people finally did repent, and they said to Moses, would you intervene on our behalf to God? And so Moses went to God and said, what can I do to help the people? They're being bit by the serpents. And God told him, make a serpent out of brass, put it on a pole, and hold it up. And every time the people look at that serpent, if they look and believe that that serpent will save them, if they've been bit by a serpent, they won't die. And of course, that's counterintuitive to what we think. You've seen the cowboy movies like True Grit, where somebody gets bit by a snake, and they cut the head off. place where the teeth marks are and suck the venom out. That's what people would want to do. It wouldn't have done any good. Trying to fix it themselves, just as our works don't do any good trying to fix our situation. The very counterintuitive thing of looking at that serpent when you were bit by a serpent, a live serpent, That was very unrealistic to think about. It doesn't seem like a logical solution. But that's what saved the people from death. And what Jesus was saying in these verses was, I was represented by that serpent. It was a type of me. I'm going to be lifted up on the cross. and killed, salvation will come to those who look to me, not to their works, not to their own efforts, but they will look to me, repenting of their own efforts and believing that I am the means by which they can be saved. And that's where we pick up where we are today. This next verse, verse 16, it really teaches us what the core of being a Christian is. Most of you have probably memorized this verse. It used to be the most well-known verse in the Bible. Remember when the sports events where the guy would have John 3, 16 on the card? Most people knew that. I don't know how many people know it today. Most of us learned it in Sunday school or BBS as kids. Now the most popular verses seem to be two, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and people totally misapply that verse constantly. And the other one is don't judge, which they also very much misapply. Those are two more popular verses, I think, today. But this one used to be more popular, and it should be one of the most popular verses because it's sometimes been referred to as the gospel in a nutshell. tells us exactly what it is that Jesus did and how that affects us. And so I think it's very important we look at that in that context as we go into the rest of this passage. First of all, as you look at the passage, the ESV Bible puts quotation marks for this passage from 16 to 21. I don't think quotation marks belong there. This is not Jesus speaking, I don't think. Now, that'll ruffle some feathers, because if you've got a red-letter Bible and it says it's Jesus speaking, some people think that puts more weight on it, because it's a red-letter Bible. I do not like red-letter Bibles, and I don't use red-letter Bibles, because they make it look like what Jesus said while he was here on Earth was more significant than other things in the Scripture. All 66 books of the Bible and all the words in there are the word of God, whether red letter or not. So don't make that have some sort of a, you know, people say Jesus never said something about whatever, homosexuality or whatever. Don't let them use that argument against it because Jesus spoke about it, not in red letters, but he spoke about it in his word, which is the entire Bible. So that's foolishness. I want it to be clear that this was probably not Jesus speaking here in this passage. It's probably John, the inspired holy word of God, John the apostle who is saying these, and he's expounding upon what Jesus has just said in those last couple of verses particularly. And so let's take a look, because there's a lot, I've heard entire sermons preached on John 3.16, and probably many of you have too. I'm not gonna do the entire sermon on it, but I'm gonna take a chunk of it, a time, to do some elaborating on it, because again, it's very important we understand what's being said here. First of all, it says, for God so loved the world, a better translation might be that it says, God loved the world in this way or in this manner. In other words, God didn't love the world's fallen condition. He didn't love the wickedness. As we read earlier in Ephesians where it talks of the spirit of Satan that runs the the world system today. It doesn't refer to love for that. But God had a love for his people, those who were trapped here in this world, those that he wanted to save, that he determined to have a means by which he would save them. And so in this manner he shows his love for the lost people of this world that he desires to save. And again, the love that is there is agape love. It's a self-sacrificing love of God, a willingness to sacrifice what is necessary to have this done. For God so loved the world, and this way he loved the world, that he gave his only son. The giving, again, is the idea of presenting him as a sacrifice, as putting him down and basically behind enemy lines. Think of a general who is in charge of an entire army, and he has a son who is the only person qualified to do this. The son, he can put him behind enemy lines, drop him down on a parachute or whatever. The son could go behind enemy lines and he has the training and the qualifications that he's the only one that can go and find the head of the enemies, the guy that's the dictator of the enemies or whatever. He's the only one that can find him and kill him and thus, put an end to the war and free both peoples that he comes from as well as the people that are under the imprisonment of this terrible dictator. He's dropped behind enemy lines knowing and agreeing to the fact that it's going to be a suicide mission. That's what God did with Jesus. He dropped him, his son, and they agreed before they even created the foundations of the earth that this was going to be what they were going to do. That God was going to send his son and his son would willingly go behind enemy lines and die there. for the sake of freeing his people. And that's what it says that God loved the world that much and he was willing, he loved us while we were still his enemies enough that he was willing to sacrifice his own son to die for us. And of course, It goes on that whoever believes, and again, it's not just I believe Jesus is a great guy, great teacher, great leader, whatever. It's believing in Him as the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the eternal God, believing Him as that and believing Him as the one to die for our sins. The word is pisteia, which means faith, when it says believe. That word is putting your total trust in Him. to believe. Another illustration, when you get on an airplane, most of us don't fly planes. We may have somebody listening from home that is an airplane pilot, I think. But most of us don't know how to fly a plane. When you get on an airplane to go somewhere, you're putting your total trust in the pilot. You can't do anything. You just sit there and you're letting him take you to your destination. That is our trust in Jesus. He is our pilot. I'm not talking about God as my co-pilot sort of thing. He's our pilot. He's the one that's gonna take us to our destination of eternal life. And so again, continuing along with that verse, Those who trust in him, or have faith in him, will not perish. And again, the word perish there doesn't mean that they're going to cease to exist. Some of the cults teach that when you die, that's the end of it. That you cease to exist, your spirit dies, and that's the end of you. It means that we will not spend eternity in damnation, in the punishment that the rest of the world has. They will, however, spend eternity in that situation. They will be eternally in a perishing state. They will be resurrected, but they will be put in eternal damnation for all eternity. We'll get more to that in a little bit. But it says that you will have eternal life if you believe in Him. And so those of us who believe in Jesus Christ, we put our faith in Him, we have not only the prospect of eternal life, that we're going to live with Him forever and ever, but that it begins now. That change of your life begins now. And that's very key to the rest of this passage because it's part of the reason why, or it is the reason why, we do things that show that we're believers. It's not just that we have put faith in him, and that's the end of it. Now we have eternal life that affects us in our daily living. So, the core of being a Christian then is believing in the Son of God, believing in Jesus Christ for your salvation, what he did for you. Going on from there, we see in the next verse that Jesus came to save his people. He didn't come to bring condemnation. He came to save. Take a look at 17. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. That means those of us who he called will be saved. He could have saved everyone. His death was sufficient to save everyone. His punishment that he took for his sins was sufficient for every sin ever committed that anyone ever committed, but it was only applied to those that he came to save. He came to save his sheep, he came looking for his lost sheep. If you're a believer today, you are one of those lost sheep that he came to save. If you're not a believer today, I pray that today is the day that you do become one of those believers who was once one of his lost sheep and are no longer there. The verse says, he didn't come to condemn the world. The world was already condemned, we'll see that as we go down the next verses. The world stands condemned before him. We read earlier in Ephesians that we were with the rest of the world, that we deserve that. Let me see if I can find that passage very quickly to get the verse. It says, and you were dead in trespasses and sin. in which you once walked following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work, and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. That's what we were. We deserved Condemnation. We were born children of Adam and Eve. The only one that was born without sin was Jesus Christ. Every last one of you and me, we were born sinners. We were born part of the rebellion against God. And Jesus didn't come to condemn us. We were already stood in a condemned state. We already followed our original parents. People say, well, that doesn't seem right. Babies are innocent. Anybody who's had a child knows that you don't have to teach a baby to sin. When they get to a certain age, say what we call the terrible twos, You tell them, don't eat that cookie on the table. You leave the room and come back later, and not only have they, as the cookie disappeared, and you ask them if they ate the cookie, they will say no. It's natural for them to be rebellious against their parents, and it's natural for them to lie. It's just, they don't have to be taught. We are by nature sinners. We're born that way. And that's what this verse is really saying. It's the world is condemned already. We need to be rescued from the world. We need to be saved from the world. Whoever, verse 18 goes on. To show how that is, whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Again, they started out condemned. They started out as part of the rebel faction, the enemies of God, and they've carried that out into their lives. and continued to be part of that rebellion. And again, anybody who's come to faith, you should be able to realize that you too were in that group at one time before you came to know Christ. Enemies of God. In Romans chapter 3, 11, it says that no one seeks God. We are his enemies. We don't look for him. We don't want to have anything to do with God in our natural state. Continuing on in those verses, in 19 and 20, again it points out that not only do we start that way, we naturally want to stay that way. We want to remain on our own, rebellious against God, because no one does seek God on his own. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people love darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. They hid from the light. If you've ever gone into an old building that's been deserted for a while, or maybe a really cheap hotel, and gone into a dark room and flicked the light switch on, you've probably seen this event, cockroaches scattering everywhere, trying to get out of the light. Now cockroaches are just doing what they do, they're just being cockroaches, but they don't want to be seen, they don't want to be in the light. And that's how you and I naturally are. We naturally rebel against the light of Jesus Christ who came into the world. We saw that, you see that in the first chapter of John. He came into the world, he's the light of the world. Light exposes darkness. We don't want our darkness exposed. Think of the things that people do that are evil. They do in darkness. Think of how many people murder people right out, no, they do sometimes, right out in the street, but most of the time, murders take place in dark places. Robberies take place in dark places, and burglaries, they break into your house at nighttime when it's dark, because people know that what they're doing is wrong. They don't want their deeds exposed. And though every one of us is like that, we don't want to admit it. Of course, some of us will say, I'm not that bad. Well, your sins you do because they're natural for you. You sin and you're an unsaved person because that's what you are. You're a sinner. A dog barks because it's a dog. And a cat meows because it's a cat. And you sin naturally because you are a sinner by nature. And so you rebel against God. You want to stay that way. For everyone who does wicked deeds hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds be exposed. Another thing we need to understand about that is the reason why people are like that, why they don't want their deeds exposed is natural. They're also heading again, as we said earlier, for eternal damnation with God. That particular aspect of it is something that when they get there, they're gonna know they belong there. We worry about people that are not saved, and we should. because we should worry about the fact that they're going to be in the eternal wrath of God if they don't turn to Christ. Think about people that you know and love, and I'm including myself in this group, that we don't do enough, okay? I'm not standing here judging you all, saying you're not witnessing to your neighbors and friends and children and parents and whatever enough, because I'm just as bad as mostly everybody else, I'm sure. But we need to think of how serious this is. They're gonna spend eternity Under the wrath of God, they're not gonna be, some people think they're gonna go to hell and they're gonna be playing cards with their buddies and drinking beer and having good old fun. I've heard people say stuff like, that's absurd. It's not gonna be, you're not gonna have any friends in hell. There's no such thing as friends in hell. Your family members are gonna be your enemies. Nobody's gonna be on your side. They're gonna be completely hostile. And the thing about it, and R.C. Sproul's pointed this out, God is gonna be there. Think about that. People say, God in hell? How can he be in hell? Because God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. He can't not be in hell. The difference between God in hell and God in heaven is we who have God with us in heaven have him in his gracious and merciful state. Those who have God in hell where they can't get away from him have their worst enemy, the one they've been rebelling against in this life, their worst enemy is their present all the time, all the time. Imagine if you ever had anybody that you truly hated, imagine having to spend all eternity with that person. This is going to be far, far, far worse, spending eternity with the ultimate enemy. Another R.C. Sproul thing is God only saves us God not only saves us from our sins, but He also saves us from Him. Because if you are continuing to rebel against God in your eternal situation, you will be in His wrath eternally. not able to escape the presence of God. So that's my fire and brimstone, but it's true, and it's sometimes, I think, very much ignored in the Christian world today. Think of, again, think of how many people we know and love that are heading that way, or that we're not sure where they're heading, how important it is that we get this message to them. And think of yourself today if you're someone who's never put your faith in Christ, because unfortunately, that's where you will be heading too if you don't change your situation if you don't trust God for your salvation. Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed. But that last verse is the one that ties the whole thing together. Whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God. That's what being a Christian is. The deeds that we do as Christians, the good deeds that we do are because we're doing them in God, because he is doing them in us and through us. I think, again, another thing that Christians miss out on very often today, is that the Christian life is the life of Christ living His life in and through you. As Paul says, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Christ living His life through you is what being a Christian is. It's not your own efforts. It's Him guiding you through His Holy Spirit to be responsive to His Spirit and doing what He desires for you to do in this life. And so we need to understand that the works that we're doing as Christians are part of our growth. We don't all grow at the same rate. And you know, Christians, that they may seem to be very slow in their development. And you might feel that way about yourself. And other Christians seem to be very, they catch fire. And again, each of us grows at our own rate. we need to recognize that that's how it is as Christians. We're not running a race against one another. We're each running our own race. But the race is being given to us through Christ as he works in and through us to take us on that track to get to the final destiny, which is with him. But in the meantime, the works that you do are works that demonstrate that he is in your life. Think about this. Do you think about God regularly? Because if he's not a regular part of your life, he should be the most important person in your life. And if you only think about God when you come to church on Sunday morning, let me tell you, you've got a problem. You've got a big problem. He should be foremost in your life. That's what your desire should be. Your thoughts shouldn't be able to wander too far away without coming back to God. That's what being a Christian is. And with that in mind, yes, you'll sin, unfortunately, but you'll be seeking to do what he wants you to do more and more as you grow in grace. We read this verse again from Ephesians 2. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God determined those works that He's doing in you, as we saw in our verse, carried out in God, that He's doing in you. It's a natural thing for a Christian to be doing the things God has desired for him to do because He's working in you. In our catechism, we have a question on what a sanctification is. A sanctification is the work of God's free grace whereby we are renewed. in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and we unto righteousness. Live unto righteousness, excuse me, my bad writing. As believers, God is changing us. making us more and more Christ-like. Again, you may not feel that. Some of you are reading the book Pilgrim's Regress. I started reading it. It's a great book. If you're doing that, if you're going to study, stay with Matt. It's a good study. And it deals with that issue because we sometimes see Christians and may ourselves backslide. So there are times when we don't necessarily seem very much like Christians to ourselves and to others. But a true believer, God's work, sanctification is a process that's not stopping. He's making you more Christ-like all the time and will, till he comes back and perfects you completely. We're not gonna get there in this life. Each and every one of us is gonna still have a lot of garbage in our system when we leave this life. A lot of things that haven't been dealt with. But we're becoming more and more Christ-like all the time because he's working in us. So, finally then, if you are a genuine believer, You will truly believe in Jesus as your Savior, but your deeds will show it. He'll be working in and through you to make you more and more like his Son. Shall we pray? Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have provided salvation through your Son, Jesus Christ, that you haven't just left us there at that point. that we don't need to make you our Lord because you are our Lord and therefore you are indeed working in each and every one of your children's hearts to make us more like Jesus. And that work is a reminder to us indeed that you are with us and in us and working in our hearts and lives. The desire to be more and more Christ-like is the desire that you put there for us. Help us, Lord, to become more submissive to the work that You're doing in our lives, knowing that it is You indeed that is doing it, but help us, Lord, to indeed to recognize Your work in our lives, that we are saved by Christ, but we are carrying out the works that You do in and through us as we walk with Him. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.