We say that it's a pleasure to be with you here in the church in Stornoway. I've been asked if I have been to the islands before. The answer is no, but it is good to be here at this time to fellowship around the open word of the living God. I appreciate the minister's request I would join you for this Bible conference. It has been bathed in much prayer. I know both sides of the Atlantic, and I trust that the Lord himself will come and meet with us in a very real and a very powerful way. I spent quite a while before I agreed to make known to Mr. Murray what the theme of the conference would be. I must confess that the theme seems a little strange for a Bible conference. I am embarking on something that every preacher knows is peculiarly difficult in that when one announces a text that people think they know, there is a tendency to switch off and say, I already know that. I trust that as we spend time with the greatest 25 words in the English language that we will learn much of God and be greatly touched as we think on Him and on His blessed Son. John chapter 3 verse 16, with God's Word open before us, may I invite you to join with me in a word of prayer. Let us all pray. Eternal God and Father in Heaven, we thank Thee for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We praise Thee for the finished work of the Lamb of God. We thank Thee that there is nothing to be added either to the work of Christ or the word of revelation. We pray now that as we open this blessed, inspired volume, and turn to this glorious text of Scripture, that thou wilt humble our hearts, open our hearts to receive thy truth. O Lord, speak to me. O God our Father, speak to every individual here. Save us from an empty ritual, even a ritual cloaked in orthodoxy, grant us a vital encounter with God's truth tonight. And, O Lord, we pray that the Word of the Lord may have free course, that it may run, that like a mighty Niagara it will flow with power irresistible, and it will reach with saving and with sanctifying and edifying grace to every soul. Hide this preacher behind the cross. Let none be seen save Christ Jesus only. We would see Jesus. Our Father, as we come to Thee, We pray as our Savior Himself commanded us to pray, that thou wilt hallow thy name, advance thy kingdom, and accomplish thy will in and through these meetings. And if thou wilt do these three things, we will be well satisfied with the result. Fill this preacher now with the blessed Holy Spirit and grant the anointing of His power for the preaching of the gospel. We plead the merits of the name and shed blood of our blessed Savior. Purify the vessel. Purify the hearer. Grant a mighty answer to prayer. For what we pray, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. John chapter 3, verse 16. I hope a verse that all of us can quote without even having to read. 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. The famous Welsh preacher who ministered in Westminster Chapel for many years, G. Campbell Morgan, said of John 3.16, and I quote, This is a text I never attempted to preach on. Though I have gone round it and around it, it is too big. In contrast to that, you have the Irish preacher who went to preach for D. L. Moody in Moody's absence. and astonished the famous evangelist with the report from Mrs. Moody that in the first service he preached in John 3.16, the second service he preached John 3.16, and every succeeding service in the series he preached in John 3.16. I read of a preacher who said that he had 600 sermon outlines on this single text. So there you've got the two great extremes. Even the great Baptist C.H. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, in my searching of his sermon remains, I think, preached but one sermon on John 3, 16, while these others preached multiple times upon it. I must say that I can sympathize with both views. I come to this text and I freely confess it is too big. The minister was praying something very profound, and for this preacher not a little scary, that in coming to the text I would know for myself something of the reality of which it speaks. I trust you will join in that prayer day by day, as I do, but it is a little scary because the text is so vast. The greatest words that I can muster and the greatest exposition of which I am capable will always fall far short of what such a glorious portion of God's Word deserves. So I can sympathize with those who preached seldom if ever upon it. And yet I can sympathize with Morehouse and others who were so enraptured with the thought that God loved the world that they felt they could not keep this message to themselves, but set out on a crusade from place to place, from culture to culture, among men who were high in estate and low in estate, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, prisoners incarcerated for their crimes, men walking, as they thought, free upon the streets to bring them all the message that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish. have everlasting life. It is estimated that more people have been brought to a saving knowledge of Christ through the preaching of this text than any other single verse of Scripture. And so tonight and in the meetings to follow, I want to preach upon it. As we have read, the words were first spoken by the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews. I'd better be careful what I say. I am in the pulpit of an exegete and someone who teaches how to interpret scripture. I'm used to that in Greenville, for my pulpit is shared by one of the foremost Old Testament scholars in America. Any such exegete will tell you that it is usually right. Some of them make the mistake of saying it is always and necessarily right. that you must deal with the text in its strict context. I agree that that is usually right. But there are texts of Scripture that are like great mountain peaks. They stand as Everests. And the truth is, they are so universally great, so magnificently vast, that the very context is colored by the text. John 3.16 is such a text. I believe I could prove from the context, I'm not going to take the time to try to do it tonight, but I think I could prove from the context that in speaking these words, the Lord Jesus Christ consciously gave us a statement that was intended for a much wider audience, either considering Nicodemus and the conversation or completely ignoring Nicodemus and the conversation. I believe the Lord Jesus here deliberately set out to speak a wonderful truth to every generation and to every nation. His words are as amazing today as they were when he first spoke them. It is said that Martin Luther called this text the gospel in miniature. I think you could even say it's the Bible in miniature. There is, if you care to look at it, a very fascinating parallel with how Scripture starts and Scripture develops and how this text commences and how it develops. To me, this is the gospel of Christ in a nutshell. And I simply want to call our study tonight, as Mr. Murray has said, the simple gospel. Simple not in the sense of something trite or easy, not needing great thought. Simple in the sense of unpolluted by the philosophies, the theological systems and impositions of man. The simple gospel because this is a text that tells us in the most straightforward terms what God in love did to save sinners. You will be able to follow the outline of the sermon tonight very simply. I use the word sermon with divided feelings. It is usual that I pray in my pulpit, God save us from sermons and give us a message. I use the word sermon in its original meaning of simply a word, the Latin word sermo, the word John Calvin used in translating John chapter 1 in the beginning was the word, it was the sermo, the sermon, the word that brought the message of God. Tonight I want us to think of three things. First, God's love. God so loved the world. Second, God's gift. He gave His only begotten Son. And finally, God's purpose. He did so in order that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God's love. God's gift. God's purpose. God's love. God so loved the world. Before I go a step further, let me ask you in all simplicity and yet all sincerity just to stop in your own heart and your own mind, and whether you are saved or unsaved, Just now, stop. Let those words penetrate your consciousness. Ask the Lord in mercy to take them and make them more than little ink marks on a page and write them upon the fleshy tables of your heart that they may become a vital reality. God so loved The Word. The message of the Gospel is the message of love. The greatest Word that God has ever spoken to humanity was not the Word in creation. Let there be light, and there was light. Marvelous as it was. The greatest word that God ever spoke to humanity was not on that occasion when he did something unique in the history of the world. And from Mount Sinai, he himself enunciated in the hearing of millions of people the very words of the Ten Commandments. What a day that was when God spoke to man, not merely writing with His finger upon tables of stone, but speaking from the mouth of the Eternal in the ears of fallen man. But that was not the greatest Word, the greatest Word that God ever spoke to man. We are told very clearly in Hebrews chapter 1, was the word that He spoke in our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by or in His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and of holding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down in the right hand of the Majesty on high. God's last word to men. I don't want to get off on a tangent. I have a habit of doing that, I confess, and we would be here too long if I did. That text spells out that Islam is a lie. Jesus Christ is God's last word, not Muhammad. It spells out that Mormonism is a lie. Joseph Smith is not God's last word. Jesus Christ is all that God has to say to a lost world. This is His greatest Word. And what, in a nutshell, is the message of God in Christ? God so loved the world. Notice it very carefully. It is not that the world loved God. It didn't. Every imagination of the heart of man was only evil continually. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, despite every divine revelation, every divine invitation, every divine chastisement, whether God provided bountifully or whether God withdrew the provision, whatever happened left to himself ungodly, depraved man was still a mass of bruises infected with a sin, totally depraved, polluted and corrupted, without heart or mind or will for God, totally and absolutely set in His determined opposition to His Creator. Haters of God. Man by nature. The world did not love God. just as the world does not love God. We read in 1 John 4, verse 10, herein is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. I am very tempted to expatiate a little on that exposition of the message, you will see clearly this alone is worthy of the name of love. There's a great tenderness in this love. Can you read those words without seeing the tenderness? And yet there is none of the sloppy, meaningless, sentimentality of the world about it. Because in talking about love, God still talks about sin. By implication, He talks about wrath and judgment. That's all included in the word propitiation. Modern translations of the Bible tend to leave words like that out and put in foolish little paraphrases for the most part. A propitiation is a sacrifice to appease the wrath of a sin-hating God. The just wrath of God. All that is included. The love of God does not, as the Unitarians tell us, simply wink at sin and say, on your way, I will forgive you. That is unworthy of God. That is a denial of the God of the Bible. That is the devil's counterfeit of the Gospel. The love of God. is not sloppy sentimentality. It is a tender love, but it deals with the reality, the lost condition of hell-deserving sinners. The message to sinners, here's the miracle, is a message of love. It could, and we would have no reason to complain, had it been, it could have been a message of swift judgment. Which of us had God dropped us into the abyss of eternal suffering? Which of us would not have to cry from the depths of that awful place, My God, Thou art righteous. but God so loved." That's the message at the very heart of the gospel of Christ. The meaning of God's love is clear. The order of the words in the Greek text is very important. In that text, the word loved precedes the word God. And that is for emphasis, if I could put it this way. The message is not so much that God loved the world. Obviously, that is a glorious truth. But the message of the text is that God loved. That's where the emphasis lies. God loved the world. Let that sink in. He loved it. Now, the word that is used in the New Testament for love is a peculiarly New Testament and biblical word. You search the ancient Greek writers in me and really for any use of this word. This is a word that God has. And I want you to understand the meaning of it. It is not that God liked the world or esteemed the world. What was there in this world for God to like? Stop and think of it again. Sinners in their inveterate hatred of God were beyond divine liking and being esteemed by the Lord. If you and I were able to create things that became monsters, that rose up in their hatred to seek to kill us, we would say we have little reason to like them. And yet we would have infinitely more reason to like them than the Almighty and Holy God would have to like. corrupted individuals of Adam's fallen race. This is not what theologians call the love of complacency. Do not stumble over the term. The word complacent simply comes from two Latin words and they mean with and to be pleased. The love of complacency is the love that God has for His Son. When He looks upon His eternally begotten and beloved Son, He looks on Him with love, a love that finds in its object everything to delight Him. When the Father looks upon His Son, He is pleased. He said during Christ's earthly ministry, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. There was nothing in God's Son unincarnate and then incarnate. There was nothing in Him but that thoroughly, totally pleased His Father. And He loved Him with the love of complacency. But a holy God could not bear such a love to fallen, guilty, rebellious sinners. And this is important. Because this tells us that this love of God is a sovereign love. There was nothing in us that could call it forth. There was nothing in us that could lay claim to deserving God's love. But yet, in His sovereign grace, He chose to bestow it. This love of God is not a mere feeling of benevolence. How often Arminian preachers take John 3.16 and they present it in such a fashion as to paint a picture of a God who has this infinite benevolence that He wants to do so much, only almighty men won't allow Him, and so He fails of His purpose. I want to tell you that is not the case. This love of God, in the words of John Owen, the Prince of Puritan Divines, is the most eminent love God ever showed or bore to any creature. It is a peculiar love. It is a love for His own. It is a transcendent love an unchangeable purpose, an exercise. I've referred to John Owen. Many of my theology students groaned at having to go through his volume 10, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. taxing indeed to the intellect, but my worthy of every moment's consideration, at least in most of its parts." John Owen spoke of this love there. He said, God loved the world with such an earnest, intense affection consisting of an eternal, unchangeable act and purpose of His will. And He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish. He did it to recover and save His beloved ones. That's the message of God's love. The object of this love is amazing. He so loved the world. The world in all its wickedness. When you turn to the book of Romans, chapter 1 describes the Gentile nations in all the vileness of their corruption. Chapter 2 displays to you the vileness of the Jewish nation in all their corruption and their vile self-righteousness. Chapter 3 brings them both together, and you have this list of statements that plumb the depths of human corruption, ending in the statement that God concluded the whole world under sin. He concluded the whole world guilty before Him. That's the whole world. Yet we read this world in all its wickedness. We heard a little of that wickedness in the opening prayer tonight. You think of this world and the scenes that it has witnessed. You think of this world and the scenes that it is witnessing at this very moment as we sit in God's house. Depravity beyond description, wickedness that we can hardly conceive. Yet, looking at the world, knowing it from A to Z, knowing it in the fullness of its filth, God loved the world. That's why I said, let these words sink in. We are dealing with that unspeakably holy one who inhabited eternity. We are talking about the triune God. in all the majesty and glory of His being, before whom angels kneel their face and cover their feet and cry, Holy, Holy, Holy. He looks down upon a world that would repulse you and me, and we would expect it so to revolt Him that He would cast it out of His sight. And yet, looking at this world in all its wickedness, He announces from the lips of His own dear Son, God loved the world. Amazing grace indeed. And in all its width, the world has a variety of meanings. I will not seek to list them and go through them tonight. But here the word is used to give the theological, or the theologian's favorite kind of term, distributively. That simply means that it is given to convey to us he's speaking of every tribe and nation. He was speaking to a Jew. The Jews believed that they were, as God's peculiar chosen people, the objects of his love. They'd forgotten Deuteronomy chapter 7 and Deuteronomy chapter 9. They'd forgotten that the Lord had said, I didn't love you because you were many or great. I loved you because I loved you. And they became pompous, self-satisfied, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory. Some of us make the mistake of thinking the Jews had no interest in missionary work. I've heard preachers blast the Pharisees as these self-centered people who had no vision for people outside. That is, to contradict what the Savior himself said. He said something of the Pharisees, and I'm not wishing to be obnoxious tonight, but if this barb goes home, hallelujah, I trust it does. He said something to the Pharisees that not many ministers could say to their congregation of Christians. He said, you would compass heaven and earth to make a proselyte. You would compass heaven and earth to make one convert to Judaism. And our churches are filled with Christians who have never once given out a gospel tract Some Christians have never spoken a word of personal testimony, never done that much to seek to win one lost soul for Christ. Other Pharisees did not lack missionary zeal, but they thought in order for any man to become the object of the love of God and the salvation of God, he had to become a Jew. The Lord Jesus was teaching Nicodemus and teaching us that God's love could not be bottled up and simply held within the limits of Jewry. God loved the Jews but not merely the Jews. He looked across this world. We read in Revelation chapter 7 the scope of his converting grace. man and women of every tribe and tongue and kindred and nation, saved by grace and washed in the precious blood of his dear Son." Some people look at this, God so loved the world in all its wickedness and all its width, And they respond to it in a strange way. I've spoken of the Arminian, who takes this text, mangles it into presenting an ineffectual love that feels of its purpose. I've heard many a Calvinist come to it, and he really wants to make sure that nobody gets the impression that God loves too many people. The Lord held their tiny little wits. They wonder, is there not here an implied contradiction between this wide love and the distinguishing electing love and grace of God? Stop and think for a moment. You never need apologize for anything the Savior says. You never need fear anything the Savior teaches. Where are God's elect to be found? Where are those who are His believing people, or those who are to become part of His believing people? Where are they to be found? They are scattered throughout the world. I believe, as much as I can in studying Scripture, I am a literalist. It's not to say there are no figures of speech, far from it. But it is to say that where the Bible may be taken literally, that's usually the way to take it. And when it says every tribe and every kindred and every nation, I believe that. It's the world in all its width. This is a glorious thing, you know. As the Church of Christ, we can go anywhere with the Gospel. This is one of the unique marks of the Gospel. It is not limited to one culture, or one language, or one period in history. It is not something that was peculiar to one time or place. It is the message for every age, in every place. Under every circumstance, the gospel is never out of place. You can go to the house of the mourning, give them the gospel. You can go to a hospital and give them the gospel. You can go to a marriage feast and give them the gospel. You can go where there's a newborn babe, give them the gospel. You can go to where there's a little white coffin and God has taken a babe and give them the gospel. It's always right. It's the message. Always the message for this world in all its need. So, the message of the gospel is love. The meaning of that love is clear. It is God's gracious, eminent, peculiar and unchangeable purpose. By He sets Himself with all the strength of His will to procure the salvation of those whom He loves. The object of this love is amazing, it is the world. The measure of this love passes comprehension. He so, so loved the world. The word so may mean He thus loved it. He loved it to such a degree Or, as the Spanish Bible, for example, translates it, he loved it in such a manner. The word so is just a little two-letter adverb. And yet, it's not too much to say that tonight, if I could muster all the learning of all the theologians who have ever lived, if I could to that learning, and all the eloquence of the greatest preachers who have ever lived. If on top of that I could bring all the might of an archangel and infuse what I have to say with all that that angel could bring to it, I could never, never in the history of the world if I could live to the end of the age, I could never tell you the meaning of that one two-letter word, God, so loved. This love may be measured by its action. He gave His only begotten Son. The word only begotten, again, grievously mistreated by most modern translations of Scripture. It introduces us to one of the greatest depths in all of theology. It brings us into the eternal Holy Trinity. It does not define, but it describes for us the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is a word that says the Son is not a creature, He is essentially and eternally God, equal in substance, of the same substance and equal in power and glory with the Father and the Spirit. God gave His Son. Now measure that love. Can you? He's so loved. And let me back off for a moment here and just invite you to look at this from a slightly different angle. When angels fell and came under condemnation, what did God give to save them? What did God do to save them? And the answer is nothing. No sinner, angelic or human, could say that God owes him salvation, for He doesn't. He just sinned, and God damned them righteously for their sin. Man sinned. And God so loved the world, so loved them, that He gave His all We could use Paul's words to the Corinthians to say this is God's unspeakable gift, indescribable. It beggars human language and even human conception that God should so love the world measured by its action. This love may be measured by its aim. What was that aim? To save all believers from hell and to save them for heaven. That was the aim. Again, I emphasize this is no fuzzy sentimentality. This is no ineffectual feeling of benevolence. There was a preacher who came from England to Northern Ireland many years ago when I was still ministering there. I have no doubt the evangelist was very sincere and I don't want to be overcritical. But carried away with all that he was saying God wanted to do, this mighty benevolence that was flowing from God and it was being frustrated by the world and by men. He ended up standing on the platform throwing back his hands to heaven and crying, poor God, poor God, poor God. I want to tell you joyously tonight, I do not serve any poor God and I do not preach any poor, ineffectual, defeated Savior. I'm here to tell you that God's love may be measured by its aim. He aimed to save every believer from hell and bring every believer to heaven. And you can measure that love as accomplishment, and you will find, and by the way, this is the real way to look at the doctrine of particular redemption, what some people love to miscall limited atonement. The only people who limit the atonement are people who say Jesus died to do something and failed to do it. This is the real way to understand particular redemption. God set a purpose in Christ and He absolutely accomplished what He set out to accomplish. There is no failure in God's purpose or in Christ's atonement. Let us get that once and for all. Measure it by His accomplishment. He did what He set out to do. Thus all believers both in heaven and in earth, conjoined in the song of Revelation 1, verses 5 and 6, unto Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests to our God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. A great Savior. Measure this love by its accomplishment. I want you to think with me tonight. Mr. Murray was saying that there may be a question and answer time and I may be asked to give my testimony briefly after the last meeting. Well, if that's so, I'm glad I have a testimony I can give. But on that occasion, I will say I was saved in the Salvation Army in Belfast as a little boy. Of course, the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth. I don't like William Booth's theology, but I must say, I would to God that we had one-tenth of his passion for souls. He told the English king, when brought before him, he said, some people's ambition is wealth. My ambition, what I live for, is the salvation of the perishing souls. And Booth, it is said, used to challenge the young Salvation Army officers with the idea that he could lift the trapdoor of hell. And he would say to them, if you could just look into hell, you would burn for God forever with a gospel passion. Actually, I believe the better way to gain a gospel passion is to get a vision of Christ. But leave that for a moment. Could we lift the lid off hell tonight? Now, I'm going to be very personal here. Not again to be obnoxious, but to be very, very frank. Could we lift the lid off hell? You would find Muslims there, Hindus there, Roman Catholics there, Protestants there, Baptists there, Plymouth Brethren there, Church of Scotland there, Presbyterians from Ireland there, Free Church of Scotland there, Free Presbyterians from Ulster there. I am grieved that it is so, but it is. And you know it. People who have sat under the sound of the gospel hardened their heart and their neck, and suddenly they've been cut off without remedy, without ransom, lost for all eternity. You see, there's no name, be it Presbyterian, Baptist, or other ways. under heaven, given among men, whereby we must receive, save the name of Christ. As Martin Lloyd-Jones preached in Acts 4.12, no second name. Add no name to the saviors. But could you look into hell tonight, let me tell you what you will never find. Though the devil has strained every muscle to bring it about, you will not find one believer. Not one. Not one, however weak, however tempted, on God's earth. Not one believer in hell. Now can you understand something of the vastness of God so loved? Measure it by its action and giving. Measure it by its aim and measure it by its accomplishment. This is a glorious love. My time is gone, and I cannot really expound the gift, should I need to tell Scottish Presbyterians that the giving is a New Testament link, a deliberate reference back to such texts as Isaiah 42 and 6. 49 and 8 and 55 and 4 where the Lord the Father is speaking of His Son and talking about giving Him, giving Him as a witness, giving Him as a covenant, giving Him as a commander. This is a messianic expression, God giving Him. When He gave His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus was saying He was given by the Father as the fulfillment of every Old Testament prophecy. He is the fulfillment of all the hopes from that first promise in Genesis 3.15 right through the Old Testament. He gave Him to be the one mediator between God and man. the recoverer of lost souls, the prophet who uniquely not only brings the message but is the message. He gave him to be the priest to represent us to God, the sacrifice, who being also priest and victor, could offer himself without spot on to God to be the King to subdue his enemies and our sins. I love how John Calvin in the only reference in all his writings to his personal testimony says how he was converted to Christ and he spoke in these terms, he subdued me to himself. He subdued my heart. Beautiful way to put it. He's the King and head over all things to the church. What a gift. What a gift. A gift is free, and yet it may cost everything. This gift is free to me. I couldn't pay for it. I couldn't work for it. No prayer could call it down. No worship of mine could bring it from heaven. It had to be freely given. And yet, could I humbly and reverently say, it cost the Father so much that even Almighty God could not give more. When God gave His only begotten Son, He gave everything. When God created the world, he did it with a word. With a word. Scientists are now talking about parallel universes. Poor, innocent, little fools who know nothing about what they're speaking. Had God wanted, and did he want, with a word, without a cost to himself, without taxing his wisdom or his power, he could create a million universes. But he could not give his son without costing him everything. What a gift. This is what makes Christ's rejection such a vain thing. This is what should make you tremble if you are out of Christ, that one day soon you are going to stand before God and you will stand a Christ projector. How can a creature ever face his maker with any semblance of a reason or even an excuse To say the gift of God I treated as an unworthy, an unclean, an undesirable thing. What a gift. God's purpose in it all. That no believer should perish. And that every believer should have everlasting life. I will leave you with a very simple three-point summation of that purpose to have everlasting life for every believer. Everlasting life is a personal possession. Let me warn you, Presbyterians are particularly, and I am a Presbyterian, But Presbyterians are particularly open to the heresy, and it is a damning heresy that because you are born into the covenant community, the church, That you are, Abraham Kuyper used to preach this to the corruption of the church in Holland and around the world. Great man though he was. You are presumptively regenerate and to be treated as such, I tell you, I presume nothing of you but that you are lost until you get to personal faith in Jesus Christ. Let's learn that. This is a personal possession. It is not enough to be in the church. It is not enough to be in quotes the covenant community. It is to be in union with Jesus Christ. That's the vital reality that you and I must experience. It's a present possession. People are forever putting off. Some make the excuse they're waiting until they're convinced they're elected. And it is an excuse. It is an excuse. Can any man dare to make... Can any man dare to make God's decree an excuse to disobey the plain command of Jesus Christ, come unto me? Can he? Not at all. When should a man come to Christ? What is the only moment you are certain of? It's this moment. One heartbeat from eternity. That's where we all stand. One moment from eternity. A present possession. Thank God. As we'll see before we finish the series, a permanent possession. Jesus saves. Tell the news in every land. Jesus saves. For how long? What life is it that the Savior gives? I give to my sheep eternal life. And they shall sometimes perish? Doesn't the Bible tell me that? Not at all. The devil is a liar when he tells a believer, believer in Christ, you may yet perish. He's a liar. I'm the father of the lie. For he who said, I am the truth, he said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son with this purpose, that believers in his son should not perish, but have everlasting, eternal life. Do you possess that life? Are you tonight in personal possession of eternal life in Jesus Christ? Man or woman or young person, as you have heard of the love of God in Christ, the unspeakable gift of God, dear son, humble yourself before God. Repent and believe the gospel. Get on your knees before him and do not leave his presence until you can honestly say, My God, thank you for your unspeakable gift. I no longer despise or reject it. but by thy grace embrace it with simple saving faith, casting myself entirely upon a life I did not live and a death I did not die. Upon Jesus' life and Jesus' death I stake my soul's eternity." Let us bow our heads in prayer. Gracious Father in Heaven, receive our thanks for the unspeakable love of God and gift of God and the glorious saving purpose of God revealed in the Gospel. Stir every believer's heart fully to follow such a Savior give us a love for sinners and speak to every unbelieving heart and bring such lost ones the irresistible cords of grace and love to personal faith in Jesus Christ. We ask these things in His name through the merits of His blood and giving Thee our thanks. Amen.