Turn in your Bibles now to John, Chapter 3. And if you're using the Pew Bible, it appears that's on page 940. John, Chapter 3. The scripture reading is verses 1 through 21, but the actual scripture, the text, that we'll be focusing on is verses 16 through 18. So John chapter 3, starting at verse 1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the spirit. Nicodemus answered and said to him, how can these things be? Jesus answered and said to him, are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen. and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen that they have been born or been done in God. Let us pray. Our God and our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you for your word. We thank you for these words in particular at this time. It is a special privilege to read your word in our own language. And we ask that you would exposit it to our hearts, that you would soften us, that we would be receptive to your word, and that you would use it to bear much fruit in our hearts, that your name would be glorified, and that we, your people, would be edified. Help us to that end, O God, we ask, in the name of Christ. Amen. Well, this is something that I wasn't thinking about when I wrote the sermon. But some of you are aware that there's a kind of a big game going on tonight. The Super Bowl. And I'm sure some of you have watched it, you're obviously not watching it now, but watched it in times past, or you've watched other sporting events, or you've gone to a sporting event, and you know, there's all these people, hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, And the stadium is littered with people holding these signs. There's different kinds of signs. There's a sign that gives homage to their favorite team. A sign that talks about their favorite player. There's a sign that gives attention to the TV station that's televising the game, so that maybe they'll be on the TV. But there's another sign that we see at just about every game, or we hear about it all the time. It's just a big sign, big cardboard sign, nothing special, nothing impressive. It's just a big sign with three numbers on it. 3-1-6. 3-1-6. You'll see these numbers in a lot of different places. You're driving on the highway and you see on the car's bumper sticker ahead of you the numbers 3-1-6. Now, what is this talking about? What is this referring to? I'm sure most of us, if not all of us, know that this is talking about John 3, 16. It's a very central and important verse in the Bible. But there's other good verses in the Bible, you know, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. You can take your pick from any verse in Isaiah 53, and we could make a big list of wonderful verses. John 3.16 gets a lot of attention. It gets a lot of focus. Why is that? Because John 3.16 is what's called the acorn of Scripture. Now, what do I mean by that? An acorn is just something that all of you, even the smallest of children, can take and put in your hand, and you hold it right there. It's just a small nut. It's a small seed. Within that small acorn is what? A giant oak tree. An oak tree that is taller than even your house. That's what John 3.16 is. John 3.16 contains within these few words the message of the Bible. And it's for that reason that it gets a lot of focus, it gets a lot of attention. So why of all verses, of all passages that I can preach from, do I choose this text? Why do we come to this chapter in this verse? Well, it's been my experience and my observation, as I have watched others, that we in the Christian life, we tend to look at ourselves and we look at the issues that exist within our hearts, and we want to fix them. We want to get rid of those issues, and if we're in Christ, our desire is to conform to His image and to change and to be better, and we want to deal with those things. And so oftentimes we try to come up with some sort of plan, some sort of strategy, some sort of way to fix it ourselves. And there's a place for that. There's a place for trying to figure out and be practical and to deal with those issues. But if we start there, we're starting in the wrong place. The central message of the Bible is resting in Christ, seeing what he has done, seeing the love of God for his people, realizing these things, and then out of that truth, living a life of gratitude. And so this is one of those, men, this is a football sort of sermons, back to the basics, because we so often forget this. We forget the love of God. We forget the compassion of Christ. We forget about resting in Him. And that's what I just want us to do this evening. To consider the love of God. To consider the compassion of God. And there's just two points to the sermon. God loves and God sends. God loves and God sends. So first, God loves. Again, verse 16. For God so loved the world. In this verse, in verse 16, we're going to see who God loves, we're going to see how he loves, and we're going to see why he loves. But before we can even do that, what is this love? What is it exactly? It's a deep question. You know, I remember when I was a kid, a teenager, I'd go around asking questions. Not to get an answer out of people, but just to get a rise out of people. You know, what is life? And what is nothing? How do you picture nothing? How can you describe nothing if it's nothing? Well, to those questions we could add, what is love? Because it is such a profound and deep question, and it has so many different answers. Some people say that love is all these warm, fuzzy feelings. Some people say that love is something that they deserve, even from God. There was a song a couple years ago that said that we need to remember that, you know, we or I am someone worth dying for. I merited that. I merited, I deserve that love. There's different opinions on this. And there's different types of love, too. I mean, the way that God loves Himself is going to be different than how He loves us. I mean, it's natural for God to love Himself, because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they're all perfect, they're all righteous, they're all just exactly as they should be. And so it's natural for the Father to love the Son. It's natural for the Son to love the Holy Spirit. It's natural for the Holy Spirit to love the Father, and so on it goes. That makes sense. But God's love for the world here, the love that Jesus is talking about here in chapter 3, that's a different love. It's not a natural love. It's a benevolent love. It's a gracious love. To borrow an example from Clement of Alexandria, he said that fire is naturally hot. You can't have fire unless it's hot. I mean, there's no such thing as cold fire. It doesn't exist. If you're going to have fire, there's going to be heat. It's natural. That's the sort of love that God has for himself. But that's not the sort of love that God has for the world. It's voluntary. It's something that he chooses. And that, in and of itself, is profound. It takes us back, saying he chose to love the world in spite of the world. Now, who is the world? What is the world? What exactly does this mean when Jesus says that he loves the world? Is it every single person that is and was and ever shall be? Does God love his people in the exact same way that he loves those that aren't his people? Well, obviously not. Well, then why does Jesus say that God loves the world. Now, don't get me wrong, God has this gracious love for all of mankind. You know, God sends rain upon the earth and he gives food and shelter and so on and so forth, but the love that Jesus is talking about here isn't that kind of love. It's a special, redemptive love. So what does Jesus mean when it says that he loves the world, since not all the world is going to be saved? The idea is that God loves not without exception, but without distinction. And when we grasp this, oh, this is something so encouraging and so wonderful. See, God loves without exception, or not without exception, but without distinction. You see, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. He's a Jew. And what did the Jews expect? They expected a Messiah to come and to save them from the Romans, and that God loves the Jews, and He doesn't really have much to do with the Gentiles. And Jesus, the Messiah, comes and he says, no, God so loves not the Jews, but the world. God has this love that is without boundaries. It isn't confined to one ethnicity or culture or nation. It isn't bound to the Jews, or it isn't bound to the Americans, it isn't bound to the Dutch, it isn't bound... God loves people that are in every single nation. And God's love extends to both men and to women. It extends both to the young and to the old. It extends to those that are of every societal strata, whether they're rich or they're poor. God's love is without distinction. And it's for that reason that the Scriptures say that he has people of every tongue and every tribe and every nation. And this is wonderful news. You can think back maybe to your time when you were in elementary school in recess, and you wanted to play a game with the kids there on the blacktop. And they wouldn't let you play because maybe you were too short or too tall, too fast, too slow. Maybe they considered you to be a nerd or a geek. Maybe they considered you to just be someone that they didn't want to play with. There's something about you that made them impartial or partial to not wanting to let you in on the fun. That's not what God's love is like. His love is without distinction. And it extends even to those that the world calls untouchables. And that, brothers and sisters, is a wonderful truth. Because the fact is that in God's eyes, all of us, every single one of us, ought to be untouchables. Every single one of us. None of us have merited God's love. None of us have earned His favor or His grace. Not a single one of us. And yet he does it anyway. You say to me, well, hold on a second. That doesn't really do much good for my self-esteem. That doesn't help my self-image. Let me tell you something. When you are in Christ, when your joy and your happiness is in Christ, and when you behold the unconditional love that he has for his people, all of a sudden, your security isn't in yourself. You don't need self-esteem because you see that Christ esteems you apart from what you merit, apart from what you deserve. What gracious and wonderful love. So God loves the world. God has people of every tongue and every tribe and every nation. So whether you are poor, whether you are rich, whether you are old, whether you are young, whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're of this ethnicity or that ethnicity, it doesn't matter. God's love extends to every people group. So that's who God loves. He loves the world. But the question now rises, okay, he loves the world. Now, how does he love? What does this love look like? Well, Jesus answers that, doesn't he? Looking at verse 16 again. For God so loved the world that, or in this way, he gave his only begotten Son. That's how he loves. He loves and he makes it clear that he loves in sending his Son in these. These words, these are sweet words. These are sweeter than honey, sweeter than chocolate, sweeter than your favorite treat. He sends his Son. This love that God has, it's not a feeling. It's not some sort of warm fuzzy. It's an action. Love is a verb. It's something that causes God to act for us. And he acts in giving, or we could say gifting, his Son, Jesus Christ. That is real love. Not some sort of idea of some sort of fuzzy feeling. I remember I had a friend when I was in high school. He was a pretty smart guy. I mean, we didn't agree on a lot of things, but we always had these interesting conversations. You know, most high schoolers, they're not interested in talking about, you know, where we came from, where we're going, God, and so on and so forth. But he did, and we had these very, very enlightening conversations. But I remember this one conversation, it just took me aback. I didn't know how to respond, because I was just surprised that he even said it. We were talking about love and what love is. And he said this. He said that love is the most selfish of emotions. The most selfish. And what he meant by that was that love is this thing, this feeling within you that causes you to do things so that that person that you love will do things for you. That's what his understanding of love was. And sadly, that's the understanding of a lot of people. It's something that I do to manipulate someone to doing something for me. It's selfish. It's self-serving. Needless to say, that's not what love is. First of all, again, love is not just some sort of feeling. It is an action. But it's done for the other person's benefit. It's not manipulation. For example, if I want to show my wife that I love her, then I'm going to spend quality time with her. As many women do spend or delight and enjoy and value quality time, she does. And if I'm going to do it out of love, I'm going to do it for her benefit. To get her to see that she's cherished and valued. Not so that she'll do something for me later on. But I do it for her. And this love that God has, it's for our benefit. It's a gracious love. It's a love that spares no expense for us, his people. And what is that gift? What is that love? It's the only begotten Son. And when we see the gift of the Son, when we see Jesus Christ and the gift that he really is, we will see what an ocean of love that God has for the world, his people. We will see it because Paul said in Romans, if God did not spare his own son for us, how will he not also with him give us all things? Grasp the gravity and the implications of that statement. Think about that. Think about all that you see on this earth. Think about all the priceless gems. Think about all the gold. Think about whatever it is that you value. Think about all the worlds and all the stars, the many universes that are out there. All of them made and owned by God. And Paul says, that if God has given to us Jesus Christ, how will he not also give us all those things? The point is, is that Jesus is worth more than all these things that we see and we behold. That's the point. He's showing us how valuable Jesus is. How could there be a greater love? How could there be a greater gift than Jesus Christ? What great love this is. And how is it that Jesus is this great gift? What is it about him that is so wonderful and so valuable? First of all, John calls him the Word of God. He is the one that reveals. who God is in a more fully clear way. Now don't get me wrong. The Old Testament was perfect. There was nothing defective about the Old Testament. There's no errors in what the Old Testament teaches. There's nothing there. The Old Testament is as it should be. But it's like this. You're in a room and it's a dark room. And you can't really see what's going on. It's so dark. And then just a little light comes in through the crack of the door. And you can start to make your way around the room. You're not tripping over really anything at this point. But, you know, not very much is clear. That's the Old Testament. That's the Old Testament in describing who God is and what it is that he has willed and planned for his people. But then Jesus Christ comes. Jesus Christ comes and all the shutters and all the blinds are blown open and light floods the room and everything is clearly revealed. That is what Jesus Christ is. He reveals to us more fully who God is and his plan of redemption. He reveals to us God fully insofar as our limited minds are able to understand. That is one reason why Jesus is so precious. and so valuable. But there's a second reason, the reason which I'm sure a lot of you have already thought about. Jesus, he dies, doesn't he? He hints at that here in this very chapter in verse 14, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That can't be anything other than his crucifixion. See, Jesus suffered on this earth. Jesus endured so much, not just on the cross, but throughout the entirety of his life, the Heidelberg tells us. He dealt with hunger, and he dealt with tired, being tired all the time, and he dealt with poverty, and he suffered a cruel, gruesome death on the cross. Why is that? Why did that happen? He perfectly kept every point of the law. He obeyed every single commandment that God gave him. He rightly would have merited eternal life, but instead he dies this gruesome death on the cross, taking on the wrath of God, being forsaken by God. He does this because God had sent him to do it. Because God loves the world. He did it to save, and that's the why of God's love. We saw who it is that God loves in the world. We saw how God loves by sending his Son, and why he loves to save. That's the purpose. That's what it says right there in the text. That is the purpose. That we would not perish. And trust me, brothers and sisters, this is something that we are indeed in need of. We're born into a perishable state. We're born in danger of ruin. And if you don't think so, then you don't look at sin in the way that God sees sin. When you consider that God sees every crooked act, he sees even every crooked motive within our hearts, he sees it all, then all of a sudden you find that all of us indeed are in danger of perishing in and of ourselves. But God sent His Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish. See, God loves and He sends for our benefit that they would have everlasting life. This is the whole message of the Scriptures in one verse. God loves, He gives His Son so that we would have eternal life. What greater love, what greater message could there be? And we do God a disservice. We do so much wrong when we misrepresent God, when we don't think of Him in this way. When we think of God as this stern father with his arms always crossed, just watching, waiting for us to trip up and do something wrong so He can say, aha, I see what you did there, now I can hold that against you. We do God a disservice when we think of him in that way. The scriptures are clear. He takes no delight, no joy in the death of the wicked. Micah says that he delights in mercy. He is righteous. He is holy. Don't mistake me. But he also is love. He is compassionate. He is gracious. And there are different churches in the world, and the churches of the world deal with different issues, and there are a lot of churches in this country especially that overemphasize this, and they minimize God's righteousness. But my experience in talking with Reformed churches and Reformed believers is that we, at least subconsciously, We overemphasize the righteousness and holiness of God to the point where we minimize the love of God. We have to properly balance it. But the question now arises, okay, God is this God who loves. He loves the world, and He loves by sending His Son, and He loves to save. But how can I be sure? How can I know that this is indeed the truth? How can I be sure that this is what the Word of God is saying? Well, let's read on and see if maybe there is something that confirms what we have been looking at here. Let's look again at the text. Verse 17. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. God loves. God sends. God sends his Son, and this is something that if we were to understand this and grasp this, we would be in awe. And there's a reason why Jesus says this after he's just spoken what he has spoken in verse 16. He's confirming what he just said. Because what he said in verse 16 is so amazing that it would catch us and we would wonder if that is really what is meant by that. Think about it. You have, for example, some military personnel on the radio. And you have one military gentleman speaking on the radio and he's communicating with another. And so often he will repeat what he says. Why is that? Why does he repeat what he had just said? Does he think that the man that was listening forgot what he said? The purpose is to really get the man that's listening to really understand that he did say what he thought he just said. Because if what he said was so surprising, the one that's listening might think to himself, did I really just hear that? Did he really just say what I think he said? But if the man repeats what he said, then all of a sudden the man that's listening can't say that anymore. He can't second-guess it. And now Nicodemus can't second-guess it either. And we can't second-guess it. What Jesus said, that God sent his Son, and God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, we can't second-guess it. We can't miss it. We can't misrepresent it. We can't twist it or turn it. God sent his Son out of love for salvation, not condemnation. He sends him into the world not to condemn the world. Again, another thing that he repeats. Another thing that is brought up. So that no man may think to himself, oh, God can't love me. because I'm of this ethnicity, or I'm of this age, or I deal with this, that, or the other thing, or I'm a man that deals with this, or I'm a woman that deals with homosexual urges, or I'm a gentleman that deals with alcoholism. God loves the world. No man may exclude himself on account of who he is or what he struggles with. That's a lie that Satan so often loves to tempt us with. God loves everyone except me. This verse contradicts it. And the rest of the scriptures do as well. John 12 says that he came not to judge the world, but to save. Luke 19 says that he came to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke chapter 5 says that he has come to call sinners to repentance. He's come not to condemn, but to save. That is His mission. That is His focus. And if you are in Christ, I would tell you to let these verses seep into the deepest recesses of your heart. That you would soak the truth up here like a dry sponge thirsting for water. Drink in this wonderful love of God. And so, when you are tempted by Satan, when sin presses you, remember these verses. God loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. What a gracious and compassionate God! How could I give in to that temptation? How could I sin? I will not, because of the great love that he has for me. But there is a pesky little question then, isn't there? I prefaced it with an if clause. If you are in Christ, then remember these things. Well, how can I know that I am in Christ? How can I be sure that these words apply to me? How can I be sure that this is speaking to me? Look again at the text. Verse 18. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Like in verse 16, verse 18 tells us that the mark is belief or unbelief. That is what tells us if we are in Christ or not, if this love that Jesus speaks of is given to us or not. And so the thing that we need to do is to look at ourselves and ask ourselves, is there belief? Do I believe in Jesus Christ? Now undoubtedly, there are some here that maybe do not believe. They don't believe in Jesus Christ. Maybe that is you. And you go, day by day, thinking to yourself, well, if I'm meant to believe, if I'm meant to be saved, then God will work his magic whenever he wants, and in the meantime, I'll live however I please. This text goes against that thinking. This text says that you won't be condemned because of your lack of election, but for your lack of belief. And so, if you have any concern for your own soul, I would implore you to come to Christ in prayer, asking that He would apply the redemption in Christ to your heart. Because it is your lack of belief that does currently condemn you. There's also undoubtedly some that come to church week after week, month after month, year after year, and after every sermon, after every service, they think to themselves, that was interesting, or that was good, that was an interesting thought, I never thought about that before, but this whole thing about Jesus, trusting in Jesus, believing in Him, I think I'm going to put that off a little bit longer yet. I'm not going to believe in Jesus quite yet. I'm not ready there. Give me salvation, Lord, but not yet. People that procrastinate on this, again, your lack of belief condemns you already. You stand before God condemned. And the sad thing is, is that the more you put off trusting in Christ, the more you procrastinate, the harder your heart becomes. I work at Lowe's Home Improvement, and whenever I go to the flooring department, I've picked up an interesting quirk, I could say. I just like to walk past all the carpet displays, and I like to just feel and scratch it. Because it's so plush, it's so fuzzy, it's comfortable, it's soft. You put that carpet down, you put it on a floor, and you put it down there, and you let six months go by, and you let a year go by, you let two years go by, all of a sudden that carpet isn't as soft as it was, was it? Why is that? The more you walk on it, the harder it becomes. That's what our hearts are like. Oftentimes, when we put this off, when we say, oh, I'll think about Jesus later, You're letting the Word of God not penetrate your heart, but walk over it, and your heart gets hardened. I don't say these things to put your face in the mud. I say these things so that we could break through that hard heart, and that the Holy Spirit would draw you to Christ, and that you would come to know Him. Today is the day of salvation. Come to Him. But more often than not, I feel that I am speaking to believers that are so easily discouraged. Believers that sit in the pew and they quietly think to themselves, I don't know if the faith I have is real faith. Is this the real thing? Am I really elect? Because, you know, we are a Reformed church and we do believe that we are chosen from before the foundations of the earth to salvation. We believe that, yes. And so often we are tempted and fall into the trap of saying to ourselves, am I elect? Am I part of the people of God? Calvin said something very wise about this. He said people that look to find their own salvation, to see if they're elect, it's like they're going to wander through a labyrinth or a maze endlessly. And they end up being discouraged and depressed. What was the answer? The answer was to look to Christ. You don't have faith in your election. You have faith in Christ. You trust in Christ because when you trust in Christ, that's the means whereby he saves you. So don't look at your election. Don't look at things that you can't possibly hope to see, but look to Christ. And when you look at Christ, that is where you find election. That is where you find assurance. And so, do you have this faith in Christ? Do you have this assurance, this trust, this rest in Christ? Do you have a mind that says that, yes, this book is the Word of God, this is truth right here, and I need to shape my life to conform to everything it says? Do you have a heart that loves Christ? Do you have a heart that loves your brother and sister in Christ? Do you have a life that desires to honor Christ? To live a life of gratitude to Christ? Those are marks of true faith. And if you see that in your life, if you see that, then you can say, God sent his Son into the world not to condemn me, but that through him I might be saved. And as a result, see the great love that he has for you. I want to give one final illustration, and then I'll close. John Stott, the late John Stott, went to give a sermon at a conference. And there were a lot of people that were just packed into this. He was a well-known speaker. Some of you might not have heard of him. But he was a well-known theologian and speaker. A very good man in a lot of ways. And he had this for his sermon. These three points. Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Those were his three points. And when he revealed that, I was reading this reflection of a man that was there for that. When he said that, the gentleman that was listening said he was disappointed. He felt like he was let down because he came to hear the great John Stott talk about something deep, something profound, something that would just turn his life upside down. And instead he got a children's song? Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, For the Bible Tells Me So? Isn't that like first grade, kindergarten? Isn't that something that's, you know, we've grown past? And then he took some time and he thought about it. And he realized that he neglected to really dig into that truth. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so." And it ended up being one of the most profound speeches or sermons—it was a conference, so it's hard to say it's a sermon—that ever he listened to. And I hope that we have that attitude when we talk about the love of God. That we wouldn't look at it as something trite, and something juvenile, and something that we're way beyond, but something that is the most profound truth of our Christian faith. That we would hang on to it, and grasp it. That we would see the love that he has for us, and as a result, as a result, live a life of gratitude to him. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this time that we've had to look at it and to see how you love your people. And we ask, O God, that we would be diligent to digest it and to think on it, that we would see how you so deeply love us and so love one another and grow in love for you. and want, above all else, to love Christ and to please Christ by living this life that is like Christ's. Lord, we confess that we so often forget this truth. Oh, help us. Help us to see what this wonderful love is, that this is far better than anything we could have ever hoped. Help us to share this love with our spouse, our children, our family, our friends, our coworkers. That as a result, more would be drawn to you and that your name, O God, would be glorified and lifted up. It's in the most holy and precious name of Christ that we ask all these things. Amen.