Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to John chapter 3 and reading
from our text verse 15. John chapter 3 and verse 15. That whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have eternal life. John 3 and verse 15. This chapter is no doubt a very
well-known chapter, and the verse that follows our text, a very
well-known verse, summarising really the whole of the Gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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. And it goes on, for God
sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that
the world through him might be saved. But what is upon my spirit
this morning is really the security, the safety of a believer. And may it be that those who
are not believers may look upon a believer and see their lot
as a blessed lot. And those who are believers and
yet so tossed about with their own sin, with the pull of the
world, the temptations of Satan, from feeling so far off from
the Lord, be reaffirmed again of this precious truth of our
text that whosoever believeth in him that is in the Lord Jesus
Christ should not perish but have eternal life. My child of
God doesn't know those times of temptation, those times when
they fear they will perish. David, when he was delivered
many times as he fled from King Saul, said at one time, I shall
perish one day at the hand of Saul. And many of God's children
overcome at times with their own sin and the temptations of
Satan, feel that one day they shall surely perish. Surely they
are not the people of God, or the Lord will take away his blessings
from them and they cannot receive the comforts of the Lord's work
in times past upon them because of the darkness and the temptations
that they are now in. And so it is with that thought
to bring this word before you this morning. We said in the
introduction to this chapter that this is a central theme. Sometimes we may overlook what
God is saying even when he says it more than once. The words
of our text, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but
have eternal life, are repeated word for word in the following
verse. The end of that verse, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Verse
15 is repeated in verse 16. And in the beginning of verse
16, the reason why they shall not perish, why they shall have
eternal life, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
son, that Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. This is not the last time in
this chapter, is it? Because in the very last verse,
we have this in verse 36, He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life. And he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth. on Him. Whenever God speaks a thing more
than once, reaffirming it, our attention is drawn to Him. The
law of God was given by Moses, recorded in Exodus, and then
it is also recorded in Deuteronomy. Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5. Then we have the birth of our
Lord, recorded in Matthew and recorded in Luke. Then we have
the crucifixion and death of our Lord recorded in Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John. Then we have these times when
a particular message is repeated again and again and in fact right
through the Gospel according to John is repeated some 85 times. that Jesus is the Son of God. Before we look at the actual
words in this text, I want to consider with you the reality
of the eternal soul. Our text is speaking of eternal
life, But if we don't believe that
we have an eternal soul, then surely whatever is spoken here
of eternal life is meaningless. You know, sometimes in our lives
we hear of plans that are being made that we know we shall not
be part of. Maybe At the end of our lives
we may be of an age that things are being planned and we know
that by reason of years We shall not see that. That might be in
our families, in our churches, or in a nation. And we know that
we will not live to see that actually happen and come to pass. Sometimes it might be we've been
in a place of employment and we're moving on to another place. And we know that there are plans
and things that are being done in that place of employment,
but because we are moving to somewhere else we know we will
not be part of them. We may hear the plans, we may
perhaps in a notice period even attend meetings and things are
being discussed and plans and all the time is that thought,
well, this doesn't really concern me, I'm not going to be part
of it, I'm moving on. And so when we think here of
that which is spoken of in eternal nature, do we think, well, what
does that concern me? Because one day I must die, and
then that's the end. There's nothing after death.
That is what you might be thinking. But then we have the reality
of the soul, the soul of man. that which is different than
a beast. We have in Ecclesiastes, who
knoweth the spirit of the beast that goeth downward unto the
earth, and the spirit of man that goeth upward. When we die, the spirit returns
to God that gave it. Man is different than the beast. Man has been given a soul, our
body, is but a temple, is but a house, a habitation, that our
soul, our real being lives in and so is intermeshed with it
that the windows of the soul are our eyes and our ears and
our mind and the faculties, they all speak to the soul. The soul is the real us. And we have been created in the
image of God. And God's image, firstly, is
that he is eternal. And so man, he shall never cease
to exist. The Apostle Paul is very clear
on this. He says, absent from the body,
present with the Lord. Stephen, when he was dying, looked
up and saw the Lord on the right hand of the Father waiting to
receive him. Our Lord, he says, to the Jews
who were having a conflict over himself, saying that before Abraham
was, I am, because Jesus is the eternal Son of God made manifest
in the flesh. And they said, thou art not yet
fifty years of age. Are thou older than Abraham? Are thou greater than Abraham?
Abraham is dead. The prophets are dead. They're
speaking as if they were dead and they perished and were no
longer in existence. But our Lord reminded them of
what God spoke to Moses at the burning bush. I am the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob. And our Lord said this to those
Jews, God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And there is our Lord some 1,500
years later than Abraham, and he is saying, Abraham is alive. The soul of man does not cease
to exist. He's made a living soul. And the beast, yes, the beast,
when it dies, its spirit goes downward, it ceases to exist,
it doesn't have any consciousness that follows with it at all. But man does. And we can see
the difference between man and the beast as well in the spirit
that we do have. I know we can get birds and animals
that we can teach to do many different tricks. And the animals,
the mothers, they teach their babies to hunt or whatever it
is. most things, or many things,
that they're all learned by instinct, that God has given that to them.
But beasts come nowhere near man in the ability not only to
learn, but to apply that learning, to reason through things. And when we think of how much
a child from its birth even to some 18 months old, two years
old, how much it is learning and how much it is applying.
And then that learning goes on and on right through school,
sometimes university, right through our lives. And we are applying
that learning in a reasoning way, something that no beast
or no animal can come, anything like that. We are upon the top
you might say the pinnacle of the earth. God has given man
to look after the earth and to have dominion over all of the
beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of
the sea. And the point I bring before
you is that man has an eternal soul. He shall live forever and
ever. You and I shall never cease to
have an existence. Now we said at the very beginning
that the word on my spirit is the eternal safety of a believer. Eternal safety of a believer. And yet in our text it's speaking
of perishing. What does that mean? It speaks
of condemnation. The chapter speaks of the wrath
of God. And so there are several things
that in view of our eternal soul we must look at in relation to
our text. So there are three things that
are set before us in the text. I'm not going to bring them in
the order that they come in the text, but what I think probably
is the best order to bring them. And the first is this, what it
is to perish. What it is to perish. And the
second is, what is eternal life? and the third is what it is to
believe in Him. Our text says that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life. So what is it then to perish
which by implication here those that do not believe in Jesus
that they shall perish And in verse 18, he that believeth on
him is not condemned, he that believeth not is condemned already. And we're told about what that
condemnation is, that light is coming to the world and men love
darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Everyone
that doeth evil hateth the light. Evil, how did evil come into
the world. We know that God created man
in his own image and he made him upright and he pronounced
everything perfect. But then man rebelled and disobeyed
against God. The very commandment, in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. and Adam
and Eve rebelled against God, our first parents, and we fell
in them, we are under that condemnation, under the sentence of death.
When we come forth into this world already, in Adam, we are
under the sentence of death. And we only have to look at our
parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, and look
at the graveyards, and we see the reality of death. How many
look at the reality of death and never ask, why does man die? Why does he have to die? What
is the reason for that? The word of God gives the reason
for that. That sin entered into the world. Sin is the transgression of the
law of God and death by sin. You go to the criminals that
are locked up in the prisons. Why haven't you got liberty?
Why are you in prison? Why is that? Well, he said, well,
because I did this and this. I broke the law. I transgressed
the law. And then I was brought in guilty
and condemned. And so I am in this prison. And the reason for it, why I
am in this state and condition, is because of what I have done. And not only have we sinned in
Adam, we've sinned actually. We come forth from the womb speaking
lies, serving Satan and not God. And so what it is to perish,
we are already under the sentence of death. But when we die and
this body dies, that is not the end. The soul then that returns
to God and must give an account, an after-death, a judgment, then
there is a second death. And that's not annihilation.
It's not a ceasing to exist. The Word of God is very clear
that that second death is to be cast into outer darkness,
into the fire that always burns and into that bitterness of realizing
the separation from God and the hopelessness of the case and
of the bringing back to remembrance of all what has been happened
in this world and every occasion when the Word of God has been
set before us and all of our sins, you know, the people of
God often One of the hymn writers says, and past offences pain
my eyes. The people of God, though they
feel that God has forgiven and pardoned their sin, yet often
they can't forgive themselves. Things that they've done and
said years ago come back and they pain them. The Lord overrules
it for good to make them humble and to make them realise their
need of mercy and forgiveness and grace. But what shall eternity
be when instead of those sins being blotted out, that they
keep coming back, coming back to remembrance all the time,
the worm that dieth not, unspeakable torments in hellfire. That is what the Word of God
sets before us as perishing. It is not ceasing to exist. It is not like those sad characters
who feel to try to escape from this world by taking their own
life, and yet they do not escape. They go into even worse. To perish
is the most solemn, eternal thing, as the solemn as the soul is
eternal. And may we have as a very, very real
thing what it is. Now, of course, as I speak to
you this morning, I can't speak from experience of what it is
to perish. By God's grace, I haven't perished
as yet, not even died. We can only speak of that which
the Word of God reveals to us, that which God testifies. We
have not those who come back from the grave or come back from
hell. We have the record that our Lord
gives of Lazarus and the rich man and lifting up his eyes in
torments and that account we have in the Gospel according
to Luke. But we do have that which we
can speak of by experience when we have believed and when we
realise what we were in our lost state and condition, far off
from God, alienated from God by wicked works. We know the
evilness of sin and we know how far off from God. The thoughts of being shut out
from God to a child of God, to a believer, they are painful
thoughts. One hymn writer says, but can
I bear the painful thought? What if my name should be left
out when thou for them shalt call? And there's that real desire
that we be not left out, that we be not cast out. It is a solemn thing to perish. And this life is the time of
grace. This side of the grave is the
only time when sinners are saved. And we may say, when eternal
life begins. And so I want to then look in
the second place of what is eternal life. Eternal life of the soul begins
when man is conceived, and God gives to that conceived being
a soul. But eternal life as spiritual
life, that gift of eternal life, The Lord says, I give unto them
eternal life. They shall never perish, neither
shall any man pluck them out of mine hand. That life is a
spiritual life. As we're born into this world,
though our souls are eternal, yet we are dead in trespasses
and sins. We are, as in the words of this
chapter, already under condemnation. that we are already under that
sentence. He that believeth not is condemned
already. When Paul writes to the Romans
in chapter eight, he says, there is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. The implication again is that
those that are outside of him are under condemnation. In Noah's
day, those outside of the ark were condemned to be destroyed
by the flood, and they were. Those that were inside were safe. But what then is eternal life?
This chapter, our Lord is insisting again and again to Nicodemus,
the ruler of the Jews, a religious man that should have known but
didn't know, and the Lord testifying to him the need of being born
again. He says, except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus thinks it's
a natural birth to be born again naturally. How can he be the
second time into his mother's womb and be born? But our Lord
says, verse 5, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man
be born of water, that is, of the grace of God, the life of
God, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The woman at the well of Samaria,
the very next chapter in this gospel, she came seeking living
water from our Lord. The gospel. the knowledge of
salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. The picture in the word
is those living waters that are flowing out from Jerusalem, half
toward the former sea, the Jews, and half toward the hinder sea,
the Gentiles. Those living waters, the children
of Israel, through the wilderness, they drank of that spiritual
rock that followed them. That rock was Christ. Without
water, they would have perished. Those living waters, they flow
forth from the Lord, life, life through His death. And so the
beginning of that eternal life is when the Lord passes by a
sinner and bids him live, when He through the Word of God quickens
him into life, when He brings him to believe, when he gives
him spiritual eyes and spiritual ears and a heart to perceive
and to feel and to know that he is a sinner and in need of
a saviour, and he gives him that life. It is a birth, a new birth,
a beginning, a new beginning, and that is followed and it is
confirmed by a life from then on, a life of faith, a life of
trust, A life that looks to the Lord, that has faith in the Word
of God. Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God. And so it is a life of consistency
and following the Word. In John chapter 8, the Lord says
to those that believe, those that were born again, if ye continue
in my Word, Then, i.e. my disciples indeed, ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So a confirmation
of that beginning of eternal life is a life of faith and prayer,
is a life also that knows something of the joy and peace of God. My peace I give unto you, not
as the world give I unto you, I have overcome the world, in
the world you shall have tribulation, in me you shall have peace. And that life then, here below,
is a life that lives upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord
says in John 6, except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood
of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you. The life of God
is in a child of God, and is evidenced by them feeding spiritually
upon what the Lord Jesus Christ has done at Calvary. His shed
blood, his broken body, the crucifixion of the Lord, the sacrifice offered
to take away their sin, their acceptance in an empty tomb. They live upon that. For me to
live is Christ, to die is gain, says the Apostle. The Lord says
in John 15, in the beautiful type of the vine, I am the vine,
ye are the branches, my Father is the husbandman. As the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself, neither can ye, except ye abide
in me. Without me he can do nothing. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
author of life and he is the life of his people. The man shall not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God. And so that eternal life, it
begins and is really evidenced here below. It is the life of
a pilgrim. It is the life of a stranger
here. It is the life of one who has
an eternal inheritance before them, an inheritance in heaven,
an abode that is away from this world. It is where Christ is. And so he prays in John 17, Father,
I will. that they whom thou hast given
me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. And so that eternal life is a
life that when death comes, that soul returns to God and faith
is turned to sight. We see him as he is, we see those
who have gone before us, who have died before us in the Lord,
We enter into that paradise, the Lord said to the dying thief. When the dying thief prayed,
Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And our Lord
answered him and said, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, today
shalt thou be with me in paradise. Our dear dying thief, he went
from the cross unto where Christ was in paradise. And so eternal
life is that which begins here and has its joys in the Lord
Jesus Christ here in the anticipation and walk by faith and has its
full realization in heaven. And when this earth is no more,
then the bodies of the people of God shall be raised again
Instead of the soul disembodied on its own, the soul shall be
given another body. There is an apostle, Paul describes
it in 1 Corinthians 15. There is a terrestrial body and
there is a celestial body. This mortal must put on immortality,
this corruption, incorruption. And it is then we shall be forever
with the Lord in the body that the Lord shall form for us. What a beautiful illustration
of the Resurrection. It is the likes of a daffodil.
We see it when it dies down. It is just a very crinkled up
bulb. Something that has no beauty
and has no life, it appears. But when that is buried in the
earth and springtime comes, then up comes, not a brown crinkled
bowl, but a beautiful green sprig that then comes out to a beautiful
yellow daffodil. Doesn't come up a bluebell because
it is a daffodil. And so Job, he says, though after
my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God
for myself and not another. He shall be Job, and Job shall
see the Lord. That is eternal life. That is
the prospect, the blessing before the people of God. What then is it to believe? What is it to believe in Him?
That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal
life. We've said that that life begins
in the new birth and really a believer, he has been converted, he has
been renewed, he has been born again. There are many words that
describe that, which has happened to him, that bring him from unbelief
to belief. But our text is very clear. It is not believing in anything
but it believeth in Him, in the Lord Jesus Christ. The very first
thing is absolutely vital, that we believe that Jesus of Nazareth,
as described to us in the Word of God, is the eternal Son of
God. We believe that He is God manifest
in the flesh. We believe that he is the promised
seed of the woman that should bruise the serpent's head that
was given in Genesis 3 and who was typified in all the types
and the shadows of the Old Testament. It is he that the Apostle Paul
speaks of as the children of Israel followed in the wilderness
and that they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them And that
rock was Christ. Solomon, when he dedicated the
temple, he says that the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee,
how much less this house that I have builded. But will God
in very deed dwell upon the earth? Will God in very deed has dwelt
upon the earth? The Lord Jesus Christ is God. In John chapter 10, The Jews
took up stones to stone the Lord Jesus Christ because he said
that God the Father was his Father, thus making himself equal with
God. The Lord claimed that he was
equal with God. If you've seen me, you've seen
my Father also. I am my Father and I'm one. The whole basis of salvation
is that God, as Abraham said to Isaac, God will provide himself
a lamb for a burnt offering. He is the offering. He is the
sacrifice. He is God's provision for lost
and ruined sinners. He is the firstborn among many
brethren. He is the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And so what to believe is to
believe in Him. Our Lord said, if you believe
not that I am He, you shall perish in your sins. This is why John
is so insistent upon it, that Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal
Son of God. This was what Paul, Saul of Tarsus,
rose up against and was then brought to believe as the Lord
appeared to him on the Damascus road. And those that he was persecuting
who called on the name of Jesus, he became those that were persecuted
as well because he also called upon the name of the Lord. He
believed in him. It does matter what we believe. When men, when women, they say
that Jesus is not really God, they are not believing in the
God of the Bible. This is the true God. This is
an eternal life. In John's epistle 1, 1st epistle
and chapter 5, it is clearly stated, this is the denial of
the Jehovah Witnesses. They take away from the Lord
Jesus Christ that He is the Eternal God, that He truly is God. He's not a created angel, He's
not a created being. He is indeed eternal and they
deny that. Many other so-called religions
will undermine, even those in our circles will take away the
true humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, will testify or say that
He is not really a man, but he is truly man. The scriptures
teach he is truly man and truly God. The Jews and those that
saw him all testified, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph,
whose mother and father we know and his brethren are with us?
Yes, he was born by the miraculous overshadowing of the Holy Spirit
of the Virgin Mary, and therefore called the Holy Son of God. But
a body was prepared for him, and that which he which was from
eternity was contracted to a span and dwelt here. And it was he
that then lived a perfect life of obedience. So we believe not
only in him, in his person, who he really is, the eternal son
of God. But we believe his work, his
work was to always do that which his father gave him to do. Wished ye not that I must be
about my father's business, he testified in when he was 12 years
of age. You can read it in, I think,
Luke 3. And the obedience of our Lord
Jesus Christ in all his life was a perfect obedience. No sin
ever was done by him. And then as the perfect Son of
God, then he went to Calvary and laid down his life freely
as a ransom for his people, to pay for their sins, to endure
the wrath of God in their place. His work then is what is believed. And we believe that he finished
that work that God gave him to do. We believe that it was effectual. We believe that He really did
save His people eternally. He did put away their sins. He did suffer for them, that
God was satisfied for them. And this is the message that
I want to hear this morning. This is the message I want you
to hear this morning, to believe that what the Lord Jesus did
at Calvary, He did really do. That for a believer, the reason
why they believe, the reason why God has made them a believer,
brought his word to them, given them his spirit, opened their
eyes, given them eternal life, is because at Calvary he did
bear their sins in his own body on the tree. He did put away
their sins. He did suffer in their place. that that which he had done is
effectual. Oh, how easy Satan can come in
and can contempt us and to rob Christ of his glory and say,
well, yes, you have believed, but sin shall have the mastery
over you in the end, or Satan shall take you in the end. And
what he's saying is, is that, well, the Lord has done that
at Calvary. and he's done enough to work
a wonderful miracle to open your eyes and to pluck you as a brand
from the burning and to take you from this world and cause
you to seek him and to serve him and to hear his voice and
now he's going to forsake it he's going to forsake the work
of your hands You never really bargained on such a wicked, evil
person as you are, and who's so rebellious and so hard-hearted
and so easy overcome by the world and Satan, so he's going to give
up on you, and you won't be saved. Oh, how easy can Satan undermine
that wonderful work of God. But the Lord says that that eternal
life that he gives that begins In a believer, he passes by and
he bids them live when they're in their blood, that that is
eternal life. And when we believe, we believe
that that which God has done is perfect. It is secure. It shall accomplish everything
that he came to do. What would we think of a so-called
wonderful designer? I speak in an illustration like
this being a mechanical design engineer myself, that if you
were to design a machine to do a certain thing, and that wonderful
designer then built the machine and gave it to those that use
it, and the machine didn't do what it was supposed to do, what
if it got several years down the track, and it was realized
it was just not up to the task? It needed to be redone. It was
not effectual. You wouldn't call that a good
designer. but that which the Lord has done. It shall prove to be effectual
in exactly what hell-deserving sinners need. It shall prove
to be exactly what you and I need, as feeling our sin and shame. When the Lord makes a believer,
He doesn't make him sinless here below. No, He doesn't immediately
change him so that he ceases from sin. But sin is a trouble
to him. Sin is a burden. Sin is something
he needs the Lord to save him from its power and his dominion. We read here that those that
do not come to the Lord, the reason why they do not come is
because they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil. Everyone that doeth evil hateth
the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds be reproved. But for a believer, may it be
a blessing, however painful it may be, to come to the light,
come to the light of the Word of God. And it brings us in guilty. How many times have we had to
fall before the Word of God? It's found us out. We're guilty. We're sinners. Or do we turn
away from parts of it, don't like to hear parts of it? Is
this the condemnation we are under? Because our deeds are
evil, we hate the light. It's a blessed thing to be made
honest. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. And so if we're a believer, we'll
believe in God's message. We'll believe in the gospel.
We believe in the provision. for sinners, and you think of
the context here. Verse 14, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that is, upon the cross, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have eternal life. What is the
picture in the wilderness? The children of Israel had sinned
greatly, and God sent amongst them fiery serpents that bit
them, And many were dying. And God told Moses to raise up
a brazen serpent. And whoever looked on that serpent,
instead of dying by the venom, then they lived. Those that were
near saw it clearly. Those far off, only just a glimpse. But they looked and they lived.
And so our Lord is saying here, when he is lifted up at Calvary,
when he is crucified, that we are to look upon him in all of
our bitten by sin, whenever we're bitten by sin, when we're dying
because of the poison of it, when we feel the malady, that
is the remedy. Look unto me and be ye saved,
or the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. How the Lord sets before us the
remedy, the gospel, the blessedness of a believer, to be looking
unto Christ, looking unto their God made manifest in the flesh,
made sin for them. And this beautiful word, this
word of assurance of our text, repeated in verse 16, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish. but have eternal life. May the Lord bless us and encourage
us and strengthen us in what the Lord has done for us and
what a blessing it is to have eternal life and if we do not
have it, may the Lord make us a believer, may he make us honest,
may he bless us through this word that we might see the blessedness
of God's children and that our desire might be that we might
know Christ, whom to know is life eternal and trust in him
and love him and follow him and obey him all the days of our
life and eschew and hate evil and flee from it and seek to
be with him here and with him forever in heaven. May the Lord
add his blessing. Amen.