If you will now turn to John's Gospel, John chapter 3. This will be our next reading of God's Word from the New Testament and also our sermon text as we continue to make our way through this Gospel. John chapter 3, if you don't have a Bible with you and you'd like to use the one provided there in the pew, it should be on page 888. John chapter 3. Left off last week with Nicodemus and Jesus, that conversation. We'll pick up today in verse number 16, one that is well known, likely to all of us here this morning. John chapter three, beginning with verse 16. If you will, and you're able, please stand for the reading of God's word. This is the word of the Lord. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send 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 loved the darkness rather than the light. Because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light. Lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light. so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. The word of the Lord. You can be seated. The man was waiting patiently in a doctor's office, anticipating what the doctor would come in and tell him. The doctor arrived and said, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is you have 24 hours to live. And of course, patient wanted to know how could this be good news? The doctor said, well, the bad news is I've been trying to call you since yesterday. Good news, bad news. When someone says to you, I have both good news and bad news, what do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news? For me, it's always, give me the bad news first. Just by nature, a pessimist. And I immediately imagine the worst thing you could possibly tell me, so the bad news is not going to disappoint me any further. And I don't want to hear the good news first because I don't want to have my hopes high and deflated by the bad news. So I figure, hey, give me the bad news. I'm expecting the worst. Then when you give me the good news, I can only go up from here, right? What do you want to hear? And someone says, I've got good news, bad news. Well, the text before us is a good news and bad news text. There is both here. The good news is really, really good. It couldn't be better. It's the truth of the gospel. But the bad news is really, really bad. In fact, it couldn't be worse. We need the bad news and the good news. Because men can't receive the good news unless they understand the bad news. They won't see their need for a savior unless they know they need to be saved. The bad news must be understood for the good news to be truly good. We have both here, the good news and the bad news. As some have said, put it this way, the bad news is that we as sinners, are worse off than we ever dared to imagine. But the good news is that God's love for sinners is far greater than we ever dared to dream. That's what this text is about. Good news and bad news. As this passage lays out the good news and the bad news for us, it does so with a number of stark contrasts. If you look at verse 16, there is the contrast between life and death. One who believes in the Son should not perish but have eternal life. In verse 17, there is the contrast between salvation and condemnation. Jesus says he didn't come to condemn the world but to save it. In verse 18, the contrast of belief and unbelief. And then in verses 19 and following, the contrast is expressed in the metaphors of light and darkness, good works and wicked things. And there is the desire for those who do good, who love the light to be exposed by the light and the desire for those who hate the light and who love darkness to be hidden by the darkness. Stark contrasts. And so in all of this, we see that the good news of salvation is set in opposing contrast to the bad news of man's sinful condition. The good news of salvation is set in opposing contrast to the bad news of man's sinful condition. And so as we have these stark contrasts, good news and bad news, we'll see it in just two points then. The good news first and then the bad news. The good news is, we'll see in verses 16 through the first part of verse 18, the good news is that God loves the world and there could not be better news. But the bad news, as we'll see from the rest of verse 18 through verse 21, is that the world loves darkness. The good news is that God loves the world, but the bad news is that the world loves darkness. Well, like the man from the joke a moment ago, we're going to be given the good news first. Verse 16. As I said before the reading of the text, it is needless to say, but this is one of, if not the most well-known Bible verse in all of Scripture. If you were raised in a Christian home, you likely committed it to memory at a very early age. I can still remember the very accent the pronunciation and even the cadence by which my oldest son used to recite this verse. And I'll save both him and myself the embarrassment of doing an impression this morning. But it's etched upon my memory. Martin Luther called this verse the Gospel in Miniature. And truly, if you only had one verse to explain the Gospel to someone, would you not choose John 3.16? 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, eternal life. This verse centers on the giving of the Son. But it also tells us the cause of the giving of the Son and the effect of the giving of the Son. We'll see it in that way, this good news that God loves the world, the cause and the effect of the giving of the Son here. The cause is, as we've seen, the love of God, for God so loved the world. You remember last week we listened in on the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. And there's a debate as to whether this conversation is still taking place in verse 16 or whether these are John's comments. I won't go into that this morning, but if you want to talk about it at the door, we can. But last week, we saw in verses 13 and 14, Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man. And then in 14 and 15, he said that just as that serpent, the bronze serpent, was lifted up in the wilderness by Moses, that everyone who was bitten by that plague of venomous snakes could merely look to and they would be cured, they would live, that all who look to the lifted up Son of Man will have eternal life, be cured of the sickness of sin and death. Here we see the source of that lifting up of the Son of Man. In verse 16, it's grounded in the love of God. That God so loved the world. The world, in John's writings, refers not so much to nature as in rivers and streams and mountains and trees. But it's like the OS of the world. The operating system. That system that is opposed to God. The system that we're told not to love in John's first letter, John chapter 2 verse 15, he says, don't love the world, right? Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, and it's characterized in this way, by the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. And so when God says He loves the world here, it's not inherent goodness. that we're speaking of. Though God loves His creation, He's proclaimed it all as good. This construction in Greek emphasizes the intensity of God's love here. That's why we translated that He so loved the world. But it's not in the sense that His love is so great that He so loved the world in this way, that His love is so great that He loved the vastness of the world, the bigness of the world. No. It's not saying, look how great the love of God is because of how big the world is. It's saying, look how great the love of God because of how bad the world is. For God so loved the world and not just Israel. Not just Jews, but Gentiles as well. For God so loved the world, the inhabited world. So the cause of His love, or the cause of the giving of the Son is not the loveliness of the world, but it's in the God who is love. This is what caused Him to give His Son. Neither is it caused by what Jesus did. It doesn't say he so loved the world because he gave his son. No, he loved the world that he gave his son. It was the consequence of his love. So don't think, Christian, that Jesus is in heaven twisting the arm of the father so that he tolerates you. No, the giving of the son was the expression of the father's love for sinners. The undivided love of God, the undivided will of God is what caused God to send his son for our redemption. And this love is so great that we read, He gave not a prophet, not an angel, but the only begotten of the Father. The cause of sending the Son is the love of God. And the result of sending the Son is this, that whoever would believe on the Son would have eternal life, would be saved. Now it was said of Christ, who was to come, that He would rule with a rod of iron. He'll rule the nations. But here in His first advent, Jesus reveals that He didn't come to judge the world. Rather, He came to save the world. The Son, 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. And He saves whom? As many as believe. Believe. The gospel is to be offered to all. That whoever, whosoever believes, it's to go forth to be offered to all. But it's offered to all only on the condition of faith. It's whosoever believes will not perish, but have eternal life. So in the lifting up of the sun, as we read, as we saw last week, if you would be cured from sin, you must look to Christ. If you would be saved from the wrath to come, you must look to Christ. If you struggle, you wonder, you struggle with assurance, you wonder if God loves you. Again, look to Christ. It matters not how strong the faith is, how weak the faith is, it matters not what you have been even up until now. There's no class or distinction here other than the qualification of belief. That promise is unchanging. It remains the same for all, that whoever would look to Christ in belief, in faith, would be saved. J.C. Ryle said it this way, nothing whatever beside faith is necessary to our complete justification, but nothing whatever except faith will give us an interest in Christ. Nothing besides faith is required, but nothing except faith will give you an interest in Christ. Of course, There is a distinguishing love of God in the scriptures as we think about God's love for the world. We might wonder how do we reconcile this with other passages of scripture? What does this love of God for the world mean? The love of God in the scriptures is generally held up, the love of God for the world in general is held up beside the love of God for the elect, his elect people, his chosen people in the world. John Davenant said it this way, God hateth nothing which himself created. So we look at Genesis 1, we see God proclaim that everything he made was good. We see Psalm 145.9 that says the Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made. We see Ezekiel 33.11 that the Lord says he's not pleased with the death of the wicked that they should perish but rather his desire is that they would turn and repent. He says in 2 Peter 3, 9 that he's not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance. So David says, God hateth nothing which himself created. And then he follows it up with this, and yet it is most true that he hateth sin in any creature and he hateth the creature infected with sin. How do we reconcile these things? Because Psalm 5 says that God abhors the wicked, not just the sin, but the wicked. God said in Genesis and repeated it in Malachi. Paul repeats it in Romans, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. How do we hold these things in tension? Both of these truths are taught and upheld in Scripture. And it's true for us as well, isn't it? We're commanded to love our enemies. Just as our Father causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall, and the just and the unjust alike, they all, wicked and righteous, enjoy His blessing. And Jesus commands us to love our enemies, yet the righteous in Psalm 139 hates the wicked with a perfect hatred. We often say this, don't we? Hate the sin, love the sinner. I think the biblical terminology would be something like this. Love the man, hate the sinner. How do we reconcile this? Does God not love sinners? Of course. Of course, all there is to love is sinners in the world. Perhaps the best way for us to understand this is to think of ourselves, to look within. There is a proper love for self. But at the same time, when you were born again, as we saw last week, it didn't eradicate the entire old man. There's a new principle, a new birth, but the old man remains. And what are you to do with that old man? You're to hate him. You're to put him to death. that there is no reconciliation of that sin nature with God. The only thing Scripture tells us to do is to kill it, to mortify it, to put it to death. And so we hate the sinner within. Though there is a proper self-love, there is a nature that cannot be tamed or redeemed, but must be killed. So perhaps that's a way for us to think of our own approach to the world, the inhabited world, perhaps as a way for us to consider, to balance these scriptures that sometimes perplex our minds. How do we get our minds around this? But the truth presented to us here, I say all that I said just a moment ago because I know there would be objections, but the truth presented us here is not the wrath of God, but the love of God in this verse. The love of God for sinners. And what love that God would give his son for a world of sinners. It was not for the righteous that Christ died, but for the ungodly. John Calvin says, Christ brought life because the Heavenly Father loves the human race and wishes that they should not perish. He invites all men without exception to come to Christ. God loves all the world, but He will save none in the world who refuse to believe in His only beloved Son, His only begotten Son. In other words, this is the only way. through the Son to come to the Father. There is no other way. And R.C. Sproul asks a question or says rather the question is not, why is there only one way? But why is there even one way? And the answer to that question is not in us, but it is in the love of God. The love of God for sinners. The good news is that God loves the world. His love is greater than we ever dared to dream. But it's set in opposing contrast now in the rest of these verses with the bad news, which has to do with our desperate and awful condition. Again, Sproul. was out walking, I think, across a college campus deep in thought because he was startled by the question. A man approached him and said, Sir, are you saved? Surprised, Sproul turned to him and said, Saved from what? These next verses tell us exactly what we need to be saved from. We've considered the good news. Now it's time to see the bad. The good news is that God loves the world. The bad news is that the world loves darkness. There's a sentence that we find ourselves all under in verse 18. Whoever believes in Him, that is Jesus, the Son, whoever believes in Him is not condemned. But whoever does not believe is condemned already. So whoever believes is not condemned. Good, good news here. The one who believes does not perish but has eternal life. But the remaining portion of the verse says the one who does not believe is already condemned. Already. Jesus didn't come to condemn the world, but to save it. And we find here that the world was already under a sentence of condemnation. Already under the sentence of death, we have this by virtue of our inherited guilt and corruption from our first parents. This is truly bad news. I may have told you this before, but when I was a boy, my father warned me over and over and over again that I not get mixed in with the wrong crowd. It was his big concern. And he thought that if If I only had good influences and I could be steered away from bad influences, then everything would be all right. And certainly his desire was noble. This was his way of looking out for me. And parents certainly should be concerned with the friends that their children choose. I share the same concern as my father did for me as I do for my own children. But I think what my father failed to realize was the corruption was not just out there. With the wrong crowd, the corruption was within. And so I was at school, sitting around the lunch table, trying to spot the bad crowd, the wrong crowd. So I steered clearly away from them, and not realizing that I was surrounded by them. Kind of like the old Elmer Fudd Bugs Bunny cartoons, when Elmer is hunting the rabbits, and Bugs Bunny comes and asks, what's up, Doc? And Elmer Fudd is not going to be distracted by this rabbit. He's so focused on trying to find rabbits, he doesn't realize who's talking to him. A little later on in my adult life, reflecting on my teenage life in a conversation with my father, thinking back on my rebellion as a teenager, he laid the blame on the fact that I actually I did, after all, get mixed in with the wrong crowd. And that had something to do with it, but I had to say, Dad, I was the wrong crowd. It wasn't just them, it was me. It was me. There's a country song that says, don't go riding on that long black train. Some of you listen to country, right? Talks about the devil being the engineer, the train is on its way to hell. The problem is we're already on it, is what John is telling us here. The one who does not believe is condemned already. It's not that we need to be aware of not getting on it. We need to find out how to get off of it once we realize the bad news is we're already on it. There's a sentence that we're all under. Sentence of guilt and death. Every unbeliever is under the sentence of God's law. The verdict is guilty. All have sinned and fallen short of his glory. And apart from the remedy that God has provided in his son, we all stand condemned. I said a moment ago that the wrong crowd was within my own heart. My friends didn't put those wicked desires there. A wrong crowd, ungodly influences certainly could have an effect on stirring that up and bringing it out. Kind of like if dogs run together, they bring out the wolf within of an otherwise domesticated beast. We always had several dogs growing up. We had hunting dogs, we had yard dogs. Hunting dogs weren't really thought of as pets. Probably seems cruel to some of you, but they lived in a kennel, a small cage. We fed them, we watered them, and the only time they got out was when it was time to hunt. And if you let them out at any other time, they were gone. But the yard dogs, unless they were a hound and had to go hunting, they wouldn't really run off. They would learn their boundaries pretty well. unless they began to run with another dog. Another dog, a stray for instance, came along. A lone dog that knows its boundaries as a pet can be a good dog, but two dogs together can get into a lot of trouble. And it's not that their nature changes, it's always been there, but they bring it out of each other. Even of a typically well-behaved dog. We think of what John is telling us here. And the one who is under this sentence, the one who does not believe is condemned already. He follows it up with this because he is not believed in the name of the only son of God. He's condemned already, but there's an added element here. Kind of like what's already within that dog but gets brought out by others or what's already within the heart of a teenage boy that gets stirred up by the wrong crowd, so to speak. The word our confession uses is aggravation. Aggravation, it's in this way. With reference to sin, there are things, there are circumstances that bring it out and make it worse. Every sin is deserving of the wrath and judgment of God, no matter how small it is. Every sin is deserving of the wrath and judgment of God, but not all sins are alike. There are certain circumstances that make, and there are certain sins that are more heinous in the sight of God than others. Part of the reason is because of certain circumstances that aggravate those sins, that make them worse. For instance, committing adultery is more heinous than lust, although both are deserving of God's wrath. Homosexuality as an unnatural passion is more heinous than heterosexual sin, although both deserve the wrath and judgment of God. And these things heighten our condemnation. Whether it's the sin itself or the circumstances that aggravate it, that make it more heinous. And what we find here is the greatest of all condemnation here. Or in other words, the greatest of the sins that heightens man's condemnation is found here, and it's this. that he is not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Jesus gives this as a reason as to the condemnation here. Condemned already, yes, but for Jews like Nicodemus or for people who have had the gospel of Christ proclaimed in their hearing and yet do not believe, They are condemned already, yes, under the sentence of God, but their condemnation is heightened because they have not believed in the name of the Son of God, the hope of the Gospel proclaimed to them. The greatest of all the sins that can condemn us is this, that we refuse the help that we resist the cure, that we reject the hand of rescue, that we sin against the very remedy that God has provided in His Son. Paul asks in Romans 2, do you suppose that you will escape the judgment of God? He goes on to say, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but if you presume on His kindness, And what is more kind of God than the giving of his son and that we are able to hear the proclamation of the gospel for our salvation. If you presume on his kindness, Paul says, if you do so with a hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself. What did Jesus say of those Galilean cities? where he did so many of his mighty works and despite this they rejected him in Matthew chapter 11 verses 20 to 24 we find what he said to them for the sake of time I won't read it but but he said of Bethsaida of Capernaum and the surrounding cities of Galilee he said it would be more tolerable on the day of judgment for places like Tyre and Sidon, those wicked cities of old. It would be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom that the Lord overthrew with fire and brimstone from heaven. It would be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Sodom than it will be for you, Capernaum. Why? Because light had come into the world. and they rejected it. Will it not be the same for us who have received so much light if we do not believe in the name of the only Son of God? Please heed this warning, friends. If having heard the good news of the gospel of Christ and you close your eyes to the light of truth, it will be worse on the day of judgment for you than for the wicked cities that God overthrew in Sodom and Gomorrah. You will have closed your eyes to the light of truth. You will have barred shut the door that was your way of escape. The loving hand of God is outstretched to save you in the offer of His Son. Will you not believe? Will you not take hold Will you not come to Christ? Will you not believe in the name of the only Son of God? We might ask, why would men reject such grace in this free offer of the gospel? Well, we're given the reason here. Pardon the overused analogy. It seems like I said this just a few weeks ago. You've ever watched those old Scooby-Doo cartoons? There's always a mystery of what's taking place, what's going on. There's some paranormal activity and then at the end you find out it was actually someone who had a grievance or a grudge that you had met earlier in the show. And they always pull the mask off to see what's behind it. Here in verse 19 we see what's under the mask of mankind's rejection of Christ. Look there at verse 19, and this is the judgment. that light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. The reason men will not come to Christ is because they love their sin. There may be intellectual hurdles. We've seen with Nathanael, we saw with Nicodemus how the Lord may bring people along slowly, but ultimately rejecting Christ boils down to this. Not an intellectual argument, not those hurdles, but it boils down to a moral reality. Men love their sin. We've seen great contrast thus far between life and death, salvation and condemnation, belief and unbelief. And now, good and evil are contrasted starkly in these metaphorical terms of light and darkness. He says, men reject Christ because they love darkness. They will not come to the light. Why? Because in verse 20, everyone who does wicked things hates the light. and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. They hate the light because the light exposes their wickedness. And when you think of what this comes on the heels of, when did Nicodemus come to Jesus? At night. And now these themes of light and darkness are being portrayed here. And when someone like Nicodemus, I do as we said last week, I do believe he actually eventually came to faith from the evidence we have from the rest of the scriptures. Someone who is an academic, an intellectual comes to Jesus, we ask how could someone so intelligent reject the truth? Paul says in Ephesians 4, the minds of the unbelieving are blinded. Why? Namely because of the hardness of their hearts. Again, it's not necessarily the intellectual hurdles. The main obstacle, though sin does affect our intellect, the main obstacle is moral. Verse 19, they love darkness. Verse 20, they hate the light. And why? Verse 19, because their works are evil and coming to the light would expose them. This is why if someone has ever said to you, hey, I got to talk to you about something later. Do you ever immediately think, oh, what have I done? Do you search for what? Does that guilt come? What is it? What has been exposed? Or maybe if someone says, hey, I've got something important to talk to you about, immediately you think of every bad thing you've ever done in your life. What could it be? Mark Twain said he once sent a telegram to 12 personal friends with these simple words that said, flee at once. All is discovered. No reply, no question. He said all 12 of them left town. It's in the nature of unbelieving man to seek the cover of darkness, just as our first parents fled from God in the Garden of Eden to hide themselves. As we open this gospel, John spoke of the light shining in the darkness, and we saw here in verse 19, again, that light has come into the world. Typically, when we think of the light of the gospel coming, we think of it in the sense of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4, like light shining in the darkness of creation. There being a recreation, a new creation in our souls. The God who said, let there be light at the beginning has now shined the light of the gospel of His Son in our hearts. He said, let there be light in our own lives so that through the new birth we have been made to see. The light has come on and we believe. We can't help but take hold of Christ by faith because we once were blind but now we see. And that's true. But there is another aspect of light. And it's what we find in this text here. This aspect of light is the light that shines so that it exposes It searches, it discovers, so that we see who we really are under God's all-searching and all-knowing eye. You see how the believing and the unbelieving are contrasted here, the godly and the ungodly. The one who does truth, as he says in verse 21, and the one who does wicked things in verse 20. It's a test for us. And nothing exposes like a test. An examination to see if we pass or fail. To see what is true from what is false. As you think of these verses here, what more accurately describes you? Is it those who do evil and flee from the light lest they be discovered? Or is it by the characterization of a doer of the truth? That is to say, one who has been born again and believed the Son, one who comes to the light of truth, because you want to know. If your works are true, you want that examination, you want that trial. When I worked at a pizza joint as a teenager, we had these little markers for marking off counterfeit bills, so we mark them to see if they're true. Another way you hold up some of those bills, you know, they've got that vertical strip in it. This passage is like holding us, our works, holding us up to the light to see if we are true or counterfeit. The unbelieving do what is wicked, but the believer lives in sincerity. He says he does truth. That is to say he's not deceptive, but he wants to be honorable and faithful. The godly is aware of the possibility of self-deception. He knows that his own heart can deceive him. He knows that Satan is subtle and can deceive him. And so in order to continue in sincerity and in truth, he wants the light of God's word to shine so that he can test himself and test his deeds by it. And because he's interested in doing what is true and coming to the true light, he's not satisfied with comparing himself to others and saying, at least I'm not as bad as this person. At least I've got it together more than he or she does. At least in the pharisaical prayer of Luke 18, at least I thank you God that I'm not like other men. No, it's God's bar. It's God's standard that the godly is concerned with. his word that he measures himself by because he's interested in coming to the true light. The good news is that God loves the world. The bad news is that the world loves darkness. And here we've seen the good news of salvation is set in opposing contrast to the bad news of man's sinful condition. We would be horrified, wouldn't we, if all of our sins were put on a screen this morning for all of us to see. We need to remember that they're no less exposed before the eyes of the Lord and His searching light. That thought should terrify us more than men seeing our wicked deeds and thoughts. But find comfort in this. The God before whom we are exposed is the same God who has loved us, sinners, in spite of our sins. And that while we were still sinners, looking upon us in that condition, in all of our thoughts and words and deeds, in the whole heap of our unrighteousness, and being a detestable thing in His sight, yet, this is the world that God loved. And Christ died for these. For the ungodly. He came not for the righteous, but for sinners. He so loved the world. The sinful world that you and me who were under the sentence of death could know Jesus as the friend of sinners. And he welcomes all who come to faith in him. Those who continue in unbelief, we've read, they're condemned already. Their status does not change. They continue on that path, though their condemnation might be heightened by their rejection of the Son. But for those who believe, those who see themselves as guilty in God's sight, those who sense their need for a Savior, and those who look to the lifted up Son of Man in the free offer of the Gospel, in the Son of God, their sentence is repealed. They are no longer under condemnation. Their status is changed. They pass from death to life, from darkness to light, from condemnation to justification, from enemies of God to his sons and heirs. Truly, truly, the bad news, the bad news is worse than we ever dared to imagine. But the good news is better than we ever dared to dream. Let's pray.