Good morning. I am so thankful to have a Savior who is successful
in saving us, as we just sang, from the grave, from death, from
the wrath that is to come. We have one who suffered the
full penalty of God's justice for all the sins of all of his
people once and for all putting away our sin and presents himself
on our behalf as our righteousness before God. What a Savior. What hope. What hope we have. I want us to consider a verse
of scripture that is very familiar but very misunderstood. You'll
find it in the Gospel of John chapter 3. John chapter 3. While you do that, several have
asked how things went in Sarasota last Sunday night. I'm so thankful
for the group that went. We took about 20 of y'all went
over there and what a blessing that was to the to the brethren
in Sarasota and to Dennis. I was left speechless. His message
was spoken with conviction, with clarity, with compassion. And if you would have been a
stranger sitting there, you never would have thought this is a
17-year-old kid that's preaching for his very first time. That
thought never would have come into your mind. He's preaching
this morning the same message in Charlotte to his church there,
his family there. And so pray for him. I'm so encouraged and so very
hopeful. I'm going to be up there with
them next Sunday, and Michael and Hugo will be bringing the
messages here next Sunday. Last Sunday night in Sarasota,
I did the Bible study hour from this same verse of scripture
that I want us to look at this morning. A couple people said,
well, we need to have that spoken at our church. And so I hope
that the Lord will be pleased to bless it to our hearts from
the Gospel of John, chapter 3, that precious but perverted verse. that men have rested to their
own destruction. Verse 16, John 3, 16. Let's pray
together. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that
You would bless Your Word now with Your Holy Spirit to our
hearts. And that You would cause us to
know, to understand, and to believe the truth of it. that you'd be
pleased, Lord, in this hour to reveal to us the glory of your
dear Son, that we would, through faith, be found in Him, not having
our own righteousness which is of the law, but that righteousness
which is by the faith of Jesus Christ. Lord, we would not have any light
or any understanding or any conviction of the truth, apart from your
grace and your mercy. So we ask, Lord, that you would
open that which no man can shut. We pray it in Christ's name.
Amen. Unbelievers go to the scriptures
in order to prove their own preconceived ideas. And in so doing they find
in John 316 a verse from God's Word that they believe confirms
everything they've already concluded. And so rather than understanding
the Word of God As it's written, they do, as Peter said, they
rest the scriptures to their own destruction. I've shared
with you before what that word means that Peter used. It's a
word that describes putting someone on the rack, someone who refuses
to give allegiance to the king, and in order to force him to
say something that he doesn't really believe, They put him
on the rack and continue to tighten the screws until he finally hollers
out and says that, which is not really in his heart, but that's
what Peter said they do to the Word of God. They put it on the
rack and they stretch it and rest it to their own destruction. They make it to say something
that it doesn't say. John 3.16 is a precious promise. We're not interested in in cutting
it out of the scriptures. It's a precious promise. Look
at it with me. 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. Now the presupposition
that men have in their minds when they go to John 3.16 is
that God loves everybody. And so John 3.16 confirms that
presupposition to them. God so loved the world. It confirms
the presupposition that Christ died for everybody. whosoever believes on him that
the Lord's done everything he can do and he's waiting for you
to do your part and that the presupposition that men have
is that God wants everybody to be saved God loves everybody
Christ died for everybody and God wants everyone to be saved
and they take John 316 out of the context of the whole of Scripture, and
they pervert it and rest it to support that preconceived notion. In order for us to understand
John 3.16, we must understand it in the context of its immediate
context, as well as the context of all of Scripture. The truth
is that if John 3.16 says what men think that it says, then
the Bible is inconsistent, it is a contradiction, and it is
irrelevant. If John 3.16 says what men think
it says, the Bible is not a book to be relied upon. Because the
conclusion that they've come to is a contradictory conclusion
to the whole of scripture. It's a contradiction to the context
of this passage. Our Lord is talking to a man
by the name of Nicodemus. Look what he says in verse 1.
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the
Jews. Nicodemus was a very well-known
leader of Judaism. He was a Pharisee. He was a well-respected,
highly honored man in Jerusalem for his biblical knowledge, for
his spiritual demeanor. Now look at verse 2. The same
came to Jesus by night. And that's just illustrative. It just shows us the darkness
of this man's understanding. He had no true understanding
as to who the Lord Jesus Christ was and he came to him by night
and said unto him, Rabbi, the first word out of his mouth.
He didn't bow and call him Lord. He didn't acknowledge him as
the son of David as did blind Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus had more
sight than did Nicodemus and they were on two opposite ends
of the spectrum. Blind Bartimaeus was a poor beggar
who you never would have gone to for any religious understanding
whatsoever and yet he knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah,
the Son of David, and cried out to him for mercy. Nicodemus,
on the other extreme, was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, a man who
was very able in theology, and yet he came to the Lord by night
and refers to him as a teacher, a teacher, rabbi. We know that
thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these
miracles that thou doest except God be with him. So Nicodemus
acknowledged the fact that the miracles that the Lord was performing
gave evidence that the hand of God must be upon you. You wouldn't
be able to perform the supernatural things that you're doing. if
God didn't help you, so we know you're on God's side. We know
that the Lord is somehow enabling you and empowering you to perform
these things. All Nicodemus could believe is
what he could see. It's all he could believe. He
saw the miracles and couldn't deny them. And so he concluded
that God's hand must be on you. Jesus answered, verse 3, and
said to Nicodemus, Verily, verily, truly, truly, Nicodemus, pay
attention, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. Now that word see means to perceive. And if you look in the margin
of your Bible, a good translation of being born again is to be
born from above. To be born of God. To have the
new birth. The truth is that all of us are
born once. And those who die having been
born once will die twice. The scripture speaks of a second
death. In order for us to only suffer
one death, we must be born twice. Those who are born twice die
once. Those who are born once die twice. It's just that simple.
And this birth has to come from God. And the Lord told Nicodemus,
Nicodemus, you can't see. You're blind and you don't know
it. The worst kind of blindness of all is the one who thinks
he can see when he can't. The Pharisees, when the Lord
accused them of being blind, they said, are you suggesting
that we're blind? And He said, if you were blind,
then your sins would be forgiven you. But because you say you
can see, therefore your sins remain. You know, that's how
we come. We come like blind Bartimaeus,
don't we? We don't come like Nicodemus.
We don't come saying, well, we know. Has anyone ever heard of
Rabbi? We know. That's your problem. You know too much. Lord, I don't
know anything. Lord, if you're not pleased to
make yourself known to me, there's no way I can discover you. You're
past finding out. Lord, you've got to open my heart. You've got to open that which
no man can shut. You've got to shine the light
of the gospel in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ in my heart.
No effort on my part is going to discover you. You must be born from above.
You must have the new birth. And Nicodemus said unto him,
How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second
time into his mother's womb and be born? What are you talking
about? I'm a grown man. I can't be born
again. Jesus answered, Verily, verily,
I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Water is a picture of
the Word of God washed by the water. It's the sanctifying work
of grace that comes only by the power of the Spirit of God. So
we have the two means mentioned here by the Lord that He uses
in order to bring this new birth. The two means that he uses is
the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Spirit of God.
We see that in Ezekiel chapter 37 when the prophet stands to
prophesy to that valley of dry bones. And the Lord says to the
prophet, he says, Son of man, can these bones live? And what
did the prophet say? What did Ezekiel say? Lord, thou
knowest. If they're going to live, you're
going to have to do it. And so what did God say to Ezekiel?
He said, prophesy to the bones, preach the gospel to the bones. And they began to come together,
didn't they? Bone to bone. But there was yet still no life
in them. There was no life in them. They
had ears, but they didn't hear. They had eyes, but they didn't
see. They put on the outward appearance of being alive, but
they were still dead. They'd not been born from above. They'd heard the water, but the
Spirit had not yet come. And so the Lord said to the prophet,
he said, prophesy to the wind, pray to the Spirit of God that
he would come and bless his word to the hearts of God's people.
That's just, that's the means. If all you ever hear is my voice
or the words that are written on this page to your intellect,
to your understanding, they shall be all taught of God. God's got
to teach us. He has to do a work of grace
in the heart. The Lord told Nicodemus, you've
got to be born of the water and you've got to be born of the
Spirit. And if the Lord doesn't do that, then you can't enter
into the kingdom of God, you can't perceive the kingdom of
God, you can't see it, you don't know anything. Verse 6, that which is born of
the flesh is flesh and that which is of the spirit is spirit. Nicodemus,
you've got to be born by the spirit of God. All you've got
is your flesh. All you've got is your fleshly
understanding and it profits you nothing. Nothing. Do you got that? The flesh profiteth
nothing. It's the spirit that gives life. Marvel not that I say unto thee,
you must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and you hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell where it comes
or where there it goes. So is everyone that is born of
the Spirit." Nicodemus, you can't control the Spirit of God any
more than you can control the wind. It blows from where it
wills. If the Lord gives us faith to
believe what He just said, that that which is of the flesh is
flesh, that we are needful of a new birth, and that only the
Spirit of God can give it to us. And he gives it to whomsoever
he wills, so that it is not of he that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. If God gives you the faith
to believe that, you'll find yourself on your face before
the Lord begging for mercy and worshipping him in truth and
in spirit completely dependent upon him to save you you'll find
yourself confessing with Jonah in the belly of the whale salvation
is of the Lord I can't help myself Lord, you've got to do it. You've
got to do it. Nicodemus answered and said unto
him, How can these things be? I still don't understand. Ah, it's incredible to me. It
seems so simple as a believer. The gospel is so clear and so
simple. unencumbered. It's not a contradiction
at all. And yet the natural man can't
see it. He can't see it. He can't believe
it. And no difficulty in this life
will bring him to faith in Christ apart from the saving grace of
God. Did you know that if a person
was brought back out of the fires of hell and sat here in this
service, brought back from the fires of hell, they would not
come to Christ. They would not believe the gospel
unless the Lord was pleased to have mercy upon their souls.
They wouldn't do it. You think, well, your life is
such a mess, surely you would come to Christ now. They won't
come, that they might have life. The Lord's got to do it all. And you won't come, and I won't
come, and our children won't come, if the Lord doesn't have
mercy upon us. You see what a contradiction
John 3.16, as it's interpreted by most people, is to the context
of this passage of Scripture? I mean, everything the Lord's
saying is contrary to what people conclude John 3.16 means. God loves everybody. Christ died
for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved.
It's up to you. You've got to exercise your will.
That's a contradiction. If that's what John 3.16 means,
then the Bible is irrelevant, contradictory, close it up, put
it away, you can't trust any of it. It's not what it means. It's
not what it means. Verse 10, Jesus answered and
said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knoweth not these
things? Nicodemus, you've been in seminary
all your life. You walk around town with your
robe on and your little tassels, and everybody knows that you're
a master of the Scriptures, and everybody asks you questions.
And here I am explaining something as simple and basic as salvation
to you, and you don't know what I'm talking about. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
we speak that which we know, and testify that which we have
seen, and you receive not our witness. You will not come to
me." You won't come. No amount of
difficulty, no amount of trouble, no amount of education, no amount
of intellect, no amount of pressure from your parents or from your
spouse or from anybody, nothing will do it. You come back from
hell, you won't come. If I told you earthly things
and you believe not, how should you believe if I tell you heavenly
things? Nicodemus, I've illustrated the gospel with something as
basic as wind and you don't understand what I'm talking about. You don't
believe it. If I go into a deeper explanation
of these things to you. How are you going to believe
that? Nicodemus, you are dependent completely on me to open the
eyes of your understanding. You are completely dependent
upon Me to knock you off your high horse. You are dependent
upon Me to speak from heaven, to speak to your heart, to take
out your heart of stone and to put in a heart of flesh. Nicodemus,
you can't come. No man hath ascended up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is
in heaven. Nicodemus, nobody knows God but
me. And those whom I am pleased to
reveal him. The truth of God can only come
to the heart by divine revelation. Lord, would you be pleased? Would
you be pleased to speak to me? Would You be pleased to make
Yourself known to me? Would You be pleased to bid me
to come unto Thee? To open my heart? To cause me to know Thee? Lord,
would You be pleased to do that? Would You be pleased to cause
the wind of Your Spirit to blow in my direction? Lord, if You don't do it, Here's the means by which that's
going to be done. Look at verse 14. And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up. Ah, the children of Israel in
the wilderness were being bitten by venomous snakes and they were
dying, which was a picture of their rebellion and their sin
against God. We've got the same problem. We're standing in a
snake pit. You ever find yourself standing
in a snake pit? The venomous snakes all around you, you can't
get away from them. And what did the Lord say to
Moses? He said, you make a brazen serpent, you make the fashion
of a serpent out of brass and put it on a pole and hold it
up. Which was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ bearing in
His body our sins. He became God made Him who knew
no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. And what did Moses say? Look
to the serpent and you'll live. Quit trying to beat off the snakes
around your feet and look to Christ. The only power you've
got over your sin is Christ. The only power. It's not your determination.
It's not your will. It's Christ. Look, and you shall
live. And as the serpent was lifted
up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.
There's no way we're going to know God apart from the sacrificial
atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. He's the one that buried the
sword of God's justice in his own heart. He's the one that satisfied God's
divine righteousness. No man can come to the Father
but by me. That whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have eternal life now if life begins at the moment
that you most people read that and think well if you believe
then God reward your faith with eternal life now wait a minute if your eternal life began the
moment you believe that it wasn't eternal it wasn't eternal Turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter
1 verse 9. You there? 2 Timothy chapter
1 verse 9. called us and saved us. Is that what it says? Is that
what it says in your Bible? I'm twisting this for emphasis. What comes first? Your salvation
or your calling? Who has saved us and called us
with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
His grace in Christ Jesus, which he hath done when before the
world began." You see, all the calling does is reveal what's
already been accomplished. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world, and
when God is pleased to make His calling effectual to the heart,
He reveals to us what's already been accomplished. You're saved
before you're called. You're saved before you believe. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
is not the cause of your salvation. It's the result of it. It's the
revelation of your eternal life. When the Bible speaks of eternal
life, it's not talking about life that had a beginning with
no ending. It's talking about life that
never had a beginning or an ending. It's the life of God. It's eternal.
It's eternal. One brother wrote, Before the
sheep went astray, God made His Son to be our shepherd. Before we fell in Adam, we stood
in the last Adam. Before we broke God's law, Christ
was our ransom and our Redeemer. Before we were polluted, became
polluted, Christ was our cleansing fountain. Long before we incurred
the debt of sin, Christ stood as our surety to pay our debt. Before we were crushed by the
law, the Lord Jesus Christ was our redeemer. Before we died,
Christ Jesus the Lord was already our resurrection and our life. He's the lamb that was slain
before the foundation of the world. John 3.16 For God. God. God who is immutable. I am the Lord and I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. I'm the same yesterday,
today, and forever. The very essence of the nature
of God is that He alone is immutable. We're always mutating, aren't
we? We're always changing. If my salvation is dependent
upon my believing, well, you know, maybe I believe one day
and won't believe the next day. You know, maybe, maybe, I don't
know. I can't. We are the true circumcision
which worship God in the Spirit, in Christ Jesus, and have no
confidence whatsoever in the flesh. I told someone last night,
they were talking about a movie that's come out discussing the
very existence of God. Well, God's got to reveal himself
to you, but truth is that if you believe the first four words
of the Bible, the rest of it makes sense. If you believe the
first four words of the Bible, if God gives you the faith to
believe in the beginning God. God. He's God, you're not. I'm not. He's suffering. That's what God
is. I'll have mercy upon whom I'll
have mercy, and whom I will I'll harden. I have done whatsoever
I will with armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth.
The nations are nothing to me. No man can stay my hand or say
unto me, what doest thou? I'm God. I'm God. John 3.16 begins with God. He's self-existent. As we saw
last week, He's holy. His ways are not our ways. He's holy. He's other than we
are. He's separate from sinners, undefiled. He's God. He's omnipotent. He possesses
all power. He's omniscient. He possesses
all knowledge. Who's going to instruct the Lord?
No one will teach him anything. He's God. He's the Alpha and the Omega. Now those who believe John 3.16
makes salvation dependent upon you
making a decision, those same people will say, well, once saved,
always saved. And what they're saying is that
Jesus is the Omega, but He's not the Alpha. I'm the Alpha.
And then, of course, there's those who espouse sovereign grace. And they will say, oh no, election
and predestination's true. God has to save you and he's
the one that starts it. But once he saves you, he takes
you back to the law and the law becomes your rule of life. And
they are confessing the Lord Jesus Christ to be the alpha,
but not the omega. Men will have him one way or
the other, but they won't have him both. They won't have him
both. He is the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end, the first and the last. What he finishes,
he starts. He's God. He's God. God so loved. Oh, he loves righteousness. He
hates iniquity. Jacob, I've loved. Esau, I've
hated. I loved you with an everlasting love. Did God love Pharaoh? The scripture says that he was
a vessel fitted for destruction, made by God in order to send
to hell. Let me ask you one simple question.
If God loves everybody, then does that mean that he loves
those he sends to hell as much as he loves those that he takes
with him into glory? And if he does, if he does, then
pray tell me, What in the world does the love of God have to
do with anyone's salvation? What's it have to do? If God
loves everybody, then you must conclude that the love of God
has absolutely nothing to do with your salvation. And the same point could be made
of the other two as well. If God wills everybody to be
saved, then what does the will of God have to do with anyone's
salvation? If Christ died for everybody,
then what does the death of Christ on Calvary's cross have to do
with anyone's salvation? You see, it doesn't have anything
to do with it. Your salvation is determined by you. You've
set yourself up on the throne of God. You've made yourself
to be God. That's how people, they just
take this one verse don't they? They've already started out with
a presupposition and so they take John 3 16 to prove their
position and they rest the scripture and pervert it. The word world,
I hesitate to ever tell you what a word means in the Greek language,
because I never want anybody to get the impression, well,
if you don't know Greek or can't study Greek, you can't really
understand the word of God. Don't, anybody tries to put that
off on you, don't believe it. That's just, but the word here
is a word you already know. It's the word cosmos, translated
world in John 3.16. It is never, just read. Read
the Gospel of John. You'll find that John uses this
word world many, many times. And not one time is it used to
describe each and every individual person of the world. He uses it to speak of the earth, before the foundation
of the world. He said, I came into the world
and the world received me not. He's talking about this, the
word cosmos translated means the arrangement of things. or the order of things. It's used to speak of the universe.
It's used to speak of earth in contrast to heaven, whosoever
hath this world's goods. It's used to speak of worldly
possessions. What does a prophet of man if
he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What would
my band give in exchange for us? It's never... Let me show
you one verse in closing, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. I cannot tell you how many times
I've had someone say to me, well, what do you do with John 3.16? What do you do with John 3.16?
Well, here's what you do with it. You understand it in the
context of the gospel. That God loved those that were
out there in the world. And He gave His only begotten
Son. That whosoever... Now, I can
fit into that category. Whosoever believeth hath everlasting life." My believing
was a work of God's sovereign grace brought by His Spirit and
only exposed the everlasting life that the Lord Jesus Christ
had accomplished for me. You have your Bibles open to
2 Corinthians chapter 5. Look at verse 19. Twit that God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and
hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now if the word world means,
as many people believe it means, every individual person of the
world, then let's just fold up our tents and go home. Because
the world's already been reconciled to God. God was in Christ reconciling
the world to Himself. So, it's all done. In other words,
if you're going to believe that the world means every single
individual person in the world, you have to be a universalist. You have to believe. that everybody's
already saved. God was in Christ, reconciling. You see, what the Lord Jesus
Christ did on Calvary's cross was not an offer of reconciliation,
it was an accomplished reconciliation. And he did it for worldlings
like you and like me. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we ask that You would bless Your Word with Your Spirit now and give to Your people the hope
of having Christ in them. We ask it in His name. Amen.