John 3.16, what a glorious verse,
what an amazing promise. 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 once again, we need
to be reminded of the context of this, isn't it? The previous
verses. 14 and 15 are the gospel, isn't
it? Verse 14 is the gospel. As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must. The
gospel's always a must. We've just read about it, sung
about it, haven't we? It is finished. It means the price has been paid
in full and there's nothing more to pay. It means the debt is
cancelled completely. All the debt that is owed by
all of God's people to God the Father, to the law, to all The
fact that we are in love, perfect love. We owe him love and we
owe our neighbours love. And the only way we can possibly
contemplate the fact that those things are fulfilled in us is
that the Lord Jesus Christ did it completely. There's a must,
there's a must about salvation. You'll call his name Jesus because
he shall save his people from their sins, Matthew 1.21. So there's the gospel and this
is a result of the gospel, isn't it? that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have eternal life. 4. 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. It goes without saying that in
this age that we live in, the one The one characteristic of
God that is so commonly known and declared all the time is
the love of God. In fact, I have yet to hear of
a missionary in these last 25 years who's gone out into the
world to do anything other than to declare the love of God. In
fact, one of my students from India is in Africa now and he
says, we're here to declare the famous love of God for all this
world. And here is the verse that is
used again and again and again, and it's used, it is used by
the enemies of free grace to establish the fact that God loves
everyone on the basis of the fact that Jesus died for everyone
and that the Holy Spirit wants to save everyone. And I want us to be taught of
God what this verse really means because those statements which
are so commonly made are an attack on the very character of God
as it's revealed in this book. And one day all of us from here
will stand before God and we'll stand before him in his true
character. We won't stand before him as
the figment of man's imaginations. It might surprise people to know
that the love of God... is mentioned nearly 35 times
in the Scriptures. There are 35,000 verses in the
Scriptures, 35 times. It's something that's only ever
spoken of as an internal, it's a family matter to talk about
the love of God. Never once in the Scriptures
is there any mention of the love of God to encompass all the people
of this world. The Jews spoke the love of God
to the Jews and the Christians spoke of the love of God to the
Christians. In the book of Acts There is
not in all of those 30 years of ministry and in all of those
almost 20 sermons, there is not one mention ever of the love
of God. And yet these days, every evangelistic
message and every evangelistic tool that I've ever seen wants
to go almost immediately and at the beginning to lay down
the fact that God loves you. God loves you. And the proof
of God loving you is that Jesus died for you. and that salvation
is an offer, that the best that God has done is provide an offering
of salvation to people. And I want us to just briefly
look at how I believe, and I think I'm being honest with the religious
world around us, how they read John 3.16. They begin with God,
don't they? But the God that they begin with
is a God who's not a God of the scriptures. It's a God who's
a caricature of the scriptures. And they want to say God loves
you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And they quote
Jeremiah chapter 29. Jeremiah 29 is a letter written
by God to the exiles. It's written to those who were
cast out and taken by God. into Babylonia, and there God
promises to be a little sanctuary for them, to guide them, to protect
them, and to save them, and to bring them back to his people.
And Jeremiah's writing to comfort them, not to comfort the whole
wide world. So God is perceived as some sort of grandfatherly
figure, and someone in need, someone yearning for all people
to come to him. He's ever kind and he's ever
loving. And that's why missionaries these
days are going out to share the love of God with the world. They
say God so loved the world that God is continually loving everyone. This talks about the massive
quantity of the love of God. And people say, well, God loves
the sinner and hates the sin. Where do you get that from? You
don't get it out of this book at all. Five times in the first
50 psalms he says he hates the sinner. People have so distorted the
love of God that they can then say, can't they, that God understands
that I'm not perfect. But he ought to love me, because
basically I'm good and worthy of his love. So God loves in
this massive way the world, and the world is considered to be
all humanity without exception. And maybe some people might make
an exception of someone like Hitler, but all the rest of the
world, God's loving them. He's continually loving them.
that he gave, that he gave, that he continues to give his son
as an offer to all humanity. He's created a possibility that
all could be saved because he died for their sin. As I read in one of the tracks
the other day, God in his love and mercy does the only thing
that we would expect him to do. If God does what you expect him
to do, you're in very serious trouble, brothers and sisters.
God will do as he's promised, and God is going to surprise
people. And then they say when Jesus died, he took the punishment
which mankind deserves because of their sin. That God gave and
God continues to give his only begotten son that whosoever believes,
whosoever believes in the God that we've told you about, in
the Jesus we've told you about. in the person that does the believing
we've told you about, that you have free will and you have the
opportunity that whoever believes in him by the exercise of my
free will. I don't know how many times I've
heard that phrase. You have probably, dozens of
times. It's hundreds of times. God gave
man free will. Where on earth does it say that
in the scriptures? Man's will is captive to his nature. man is trapped. He's enslaved. He's in bondage to sin and he's
in bondage to Satan. What sort of freedom is that?
As one old pastor said, man is as free as a frog in a snake's
belly. That's how much freedom man has.
Where did that notion come from? It didn't come from the Word
of God. God gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believes in him should not perish. God doesn't
want anyone to perish. God's great desire for all this
world is that no one will perish at all, and he's done everything
he possibly can to cause people to perish. But have everlasting
life. By my decision, to accept the
offer that God will reward me for my accepting of Him, for
my walking in the aisle, for my walking down the Romans road,
by my saying the sinner's prayer, that I'll have everlasting life
by maintaining my good works. By my efforts of holding on to
Him, I'll be saved. None of that, brothers and sisters,
is true. The salvation of so much modern
Christianity begins with man, is maintained by man, and is
sustained, and their assurance is in what man does. How can
you be sure? I'll read Australia's most famous
recent evangelist. Even though they still sin from
time to time, This is what Christians do. They only sin from time to
time. Where on earth did you get that
from? Read Romans 7. Paul says in every single thing
he ever did, every thought he ever had, there was sin mixed
with it all the time. That's what it is to be a sinner.
Even though they still sin from time to time, they immediately
repent and resolve not to fall again. They are not like non-Christians
whose whole lives are in rebellion to Jesus. And then they say that God the
Holy Spirit helps us grow in our holiness. If you have any holiness of your
own, beloved, I pray that you find the nearest garbage bin
to put it in as quickly as possible. It belongs in the sewer, and
that's where those notions came from. As we saw last week, and
I'll remind you again, God's love is free. The motivation
for God's love is in himself. God's love is distinguishing.
God loved Jacob and hated Esau. God's love revolves around the
union of his people that he gave to his son in eternity. I've
loved you, he says. I've loved you because I've loved
you. I've loved you. People talk about unconditional
love. There's no such thing as unconditional love. God's love
is in his son. The love of God is in Christ
Jesus. The love of God is always an
active love. Every time in the scriptures
the love of God is mentioned there's always an action. I have
loved you with an everlasting love, says Jeremiah 31 3. Therefore with loving kindness,
therefore with grace, have I drawn you to myself. The love of God
is pictured as the Lord Jesus Christ is referred to in these
verses as the serpent lifted up in the desert. The love of
God is always, always in the giving of His Son. The love of
God is always loved. It's always a permanent thing. That's what everlasting love
is. That's what everlasting love is. That's what eternal life
is. God's love is always successful. It's always saving love. God
doesn't try to do anything. God always achieves his purpose. He is a God. He does as he wills
in the armies of heaven and among the heavens of the earth, and
none can say to him, what doest thou astay his hand? God's love
is always reciprocated. We love him. We love Him, we love everything
about Him, because He first loved us. God's love is always reciprocated,
God's love is eternal, God's love is everlasting, God's love
is an unchanging love. So the love of God reflects the
character of God. We do divide up and look at individual
aspects of the character of God, but whenever we divide them up
we need to put them back together again, because they are like
facets of this amazing diamond, aren't they? And they should
radiate light of the Lord Jesus Christ to us, and we turn it
a little bit and we see another facet. But they're all held together. You can't talk about the love
of God without the holiness of God. You can't talk about the
love of God with the predestination of God. You can't talk about
the love of God with the electing work of God. You can't talk about
the love of God without talking about what God did in eternity.
You can't talk in any meaningful way about the love of God without
talking about the eternal covenant of love. You can't talk about
love without talking about the character of God. see God's love
and God's grace are as one God loved in the wilderness he loved
in the wilderness and that's what the context the immediate
context of this verse is isn't it in John 3 14 and 15 as the
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son
of Man be lifted up that's the context of these verses that
I'll be this verse that is before us so let's go And I want us
to look at the word order as it was originally laid down.
I just want to look at what the words say. I just want to look
at all the words. And the word, the verse begins
with the word, so. The word so for the religious
world is a measure of the enormity of the love of God. But the word
so is the word even so. It's the same word that's used
in verse 15, 14, even as. Even so, it's in the same manner. It's in the same manner. It's
in this manner, in this one time event, pictured in what happened
in Numbers 21 when the serpent was lifted up on the pole in
the wilderness and all those who had that poison of death
coursing through their body, they looked and they lived. That's
how this verse begins, even so. So it's not signifying the extent
of the love of God, but the manner in which God loved. In this one
particular event, the word so is not a quantity word, but it's
a comparison word. So, for, or because, or indeed. So for loved. Loved. I want you to note that in the
scriptures the word love is almost invariably in the past tense. It means he loved once, on one
occasion, with this completed action. So the way the world
reads that verse is that God is now has this yearning love
for all humanity. But the verse actually says he
showed his love once. This was his love. The serpent
lifted up on this one occasion in the wilderness is the picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ being lifted up on one occasion on
Calvary's tree. For so for loved God. God. God in all of his glory. God who has been revealed in
all the previous verses. God who was revealed in the events
of Numbers 21. Both what happened prior to it
and both what happened after it. God in all of his glory. God as sovereign. God as holy. God who is the Alpha and the
Omega. God who is omnipresent. He's present everywhere. He knows
all things, doesn't he? He's omnipotent. He has all power. There is no want of power in
God. He could speak a word and a universe
comes into existence. And he speaks the word of love
and life to people, and they become a new creation. As he
commands and as his word goes out, he's omnipotent, God. He's
not frustrated, he's not wandering around in heaven wringing his
arms trying to work out how on earth does he fix these things
on earth. They are what they are exactly according to his
plans and purposes. That is God. He doesn't try to
do anything. He cannot fail. He cannot fail. He will not fail, nor will he
be discouraged. You can read it in Isaiah 42.
God is omniscient. That means that he's never learnt
anything. Ever. There is nothing that happens
in this world that surprises God in any way at all. He's omniscient. He's omnipresent, he's omnipotent,
he's all-powerful, and he's omniscient, he knows all things. In fact,
he says in Isaiah 42, he declares the end from the beginning. like
a wise master builder. He knew exactly what was going
to happen. What's the end? What's the end that he declared?
The end is to have all of his people dwelling with him as he
is revealed to them in the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ
and to be living with them in perfect union in a which is akin, but so much better
than that that the apostles had. And when they are in these company,
he revealed himself to them and he opened the scriptures to them
and he showed them who he was. And what do they say? They say,
abide, abide with us. Well, that's what heaven is,
isn't it? It's abiding with the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall be
like him. We shall be like him. Behold
what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us. earned by
us, bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore
the world knoweth us not." Don't expect the world, religious world
or any other world, to understand who you are or what you're doing.
Because it knew him not. But now, beloved, now are we
the sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what
we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall
be like him. for or because we shall see him
as he is. There is a glorious resurrection
coming, isn't it? The end is declared by God from
the beginning. There's a glorious new creation
coming. It's the home of the righteous. They're all robed
in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're all perfectly
like him. have to be created anew to be
able to enjoy and delight in the character of God. You must
be born again Nicodemus. You can't see it and you can't
enter unless you're born again. It's the Father. This Father. It's God the Father who gave. God the Father who gave his Son.
God is self-existent. God is in need of nothing. He has no wants. He has no frustrations. And God is immutable. He changes
not. Nothing changes in God. One of the problems for people
who want to make God love everyone and his love to be a failure
is that God then must change. And then you have the most awkward
situation for those who want to try and proclaim that, is
what's happening in hell. Someone that Simon was discussing
these things with some years ago will say, well God still
loves people in hell. Or you then might end up in the silly
notion that A.W. Tozer said that God actually
loves people right up until the very moment he casts them into
hell and then he turns and hates them. What does the scripture
say? Malachi 3 verse 6, I change not. I change not. What on earth would
cause him to change if he knows the end from the beginning and
declares it? I change not. Therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consumed. God's immutability, unchangeableness
is tied to all of his character. Therefore we're not consumed. The world is the world in many
ways. It is, in this context, it's
sinful men in rebellion against God. We're enemies in our mind.
We were enemies in our mind. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, they're foolishness to him. We
are captive, aren't we? We're captive to sin. Anyone
who sins is a slave to sin. We're captive to Satan. We're
captive in this world. But never once in the scriptures
is the word world a reference to every single human being in
all the world. Never once. Never once. You might
recall that there was a census taken 2,000 years ago at the
birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke 2, verse 1, the census
was, and it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree
from Caesar Augusta that all the world should be taxed. Did you pay taxes? There we have the word world
and the word all and it refers to all those within the ambit
of the Roman Empire. God, let's read it again, so
for God loved, even so in this particular way, because of this,
God loved, and he loved once, God the Father, the world, his
Son, that the Son, and he's speaking of the beloved Son, the Son of
his love, that Son that was in his bosom from all eternity,
the Son who is God himself. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was made God, and the Word was God. He was with
God in the beginning. His son, the beloved son. It's his only begotten son. See, we, brothers and sisters
in Christ, are adopted children, but the Lord Jesus Christ is
a begotten son. See, it's John's title for our
Lord, and he uses it again and again and again. It means the
one and only son, the one natural son, the one son that reveals
all the character of God is the only begotten son it didn't mean
that he had a beginning or he had a birth he had an incarnation
in this world but he's the only begotten son that he gave he
gave As I said earlier, when the religious world speaks about
his giving, it sees it as a continual giving, that he's giving and
giving and giving. But the word gave is just like
the word loved. It means once. He gave him once,
on one occasion only. Just this once. Just this once
he gave. Our God. Our God reveals his love. by the depth of what he gave. He gave. Isn't it remarkable that we are gathered here to
hear about a God who gave and a God who loved. The great transaction of the
cross is a transaction between God the Father and God the Son,
as recorded by God the Spirit and as promised by God the Holy
Spirit. We speak of the love of God. We
see that the love of God passes understanding. We have no notion
of what we're talking about when we come to contemplate the magnitude
of the love of God for his people. What extraordinary love. I'm
trying to find the poem that I wrote down. You might know
it, some of you. I've lost one of my notes, I
think. It says that speaks of if we
could write the love of God abroad. Oh, there you go. Thank you,
darling. You know what I'm missing? It's on the bottom of the page
in the corner with a pink ribbon around it. Could we with ink
the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, and
were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade,
to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor
would the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from
sky to sky. The Holy Spirit has recorded
those transactions of what it cost God the Father to give and
what it cost the Son to be given for us. And it's extraordinary,
isn't it, that the Holy Spirit recorded what no man actually
witnessed in any serious way when God the Son looked upon
the cup that God the Father had given him in Gethsemane's garden,
and his heart was broken. And on a cold night when you
needed a fire to warm yourself, great drops of blood fell from
his burst veins. It says in Psalm 40 that sin
has broken his heart. He bore all that Almighty God
could bear. with strength to bear and none
to spare. It was in the dark, wasn't it?
That transaction was in the dark that we might know from the lips
of God himself what was going on. And he said, if this cup,
if I don't drink this cup, it will not pass away. What was
in the cup? What was in the cup? The cup contained all of the
sins of all of God's people. It contained all of the sins
that you and I are committing right now, brothers and sisters
in Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ looked
into that cup and was absolutely horrified by it, even though
he knew it from all eternity. It was a cup the Father gave
him. How must God the Father have
felt that time? As those great drops of blood
fell to the ground, in the garden he could still call him, my father,
my father. And when he drank that cup and
was made a curse for us on Calvary's tree, he could no longer call
him my father. He says, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me, the son of your love, me who perfectly
obeyed you, me who had from all eternity this remarkable bond
of love between us? And it was in the dark, that
transaction. And it's not for nothing that
it's in the dark and hidden from men. That men wouldn't speculate
about it. That what happened in that transaction
was a transaction between God the Father and God the Son, as
recorded by God the Holy Spirit. He was made sin for us. he was
made sin the reason the father slew him the reason the father
became the executioner of his beloved son was because he found
sin on him and a holy and just and righteous god must punish
sin. If you want to see the extent
of sin, you can't look inside yourself and have a clue about
it. You can only see it when you look to the cross. However,
if you want to see the holiness of God and God's hatred of sin,
there is just one place to look. And that's to the cross of Calvary.
If you want to see your sins taken away, there is just one
place to look. You look to the cross of Calvary.
That's the even so of John 3.16, isn't it? Just as Moses lifted
up the serpent, that serpent was bearing those sins and those
people looked and they lived. The Lord Jesus Christ bore the
sins of all of his people on Calvary's tree. The father gave. The father gave. The son willingly went. He took
that cup and he drank it dry. There is not a tiny dreg left
in the bottom of that cup. That's what we're saying at the
beginning of our service. It is finished. It means the
dead in full. All, all of the infinite wrath
of God on the sins of all of God's people was in that cup
and was in the Lord Jesus Christ, was all paid for and gone. Paid
in full, there is nothing else that we owe God. Christ has paid
it all, all to Him I owe. He gave that whosoever, it means
all the believing ones, That's what it means. All the believing
ones, whosoever believeth, and it's in the present continuous
tense, is to believe and to go on believing. To go on believing, it's to rely
on, it's to trust Him, it's to have all of your eggs in one
basket, it's to commit all of your eternity into the hands
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is what the next words say, isn't
it? Whoever believeth in Him, well the word is into Him. It's into, it's to rely on, it's
to place all the weight of your eternal soul on Him. The one
believing into Him. Isn't that glorious? The one
believing into him should not perish. They should not perish
because they cannot perish because the Son of God did perish. It means to perish is a stronger
word in the original. We think of something perishing
here and we think of something wearing out, but the word perish
here act of destruction. It's to be
destroyed by someone in an act of destruction. It's to be ruined. It's to be rendered useless and
it's to be rendered in that act of destruction by someone. So
if you believe that John 3 16 teaches that God loves everyone
then you must also believe that God is causing people to be destroyed. So much for universal It's an act of God, but they
will never be destroyed. In one act, they are rendered
unable to be destroyed even by God himself. But have, but to have, to have
right now and to go on having life everlasting. Life. Life. He is life itself. It's to have
Him who is life. In Him is life. This is what
life is, is to have Him. To live, to have life fulfilled,
to have life satisfied. It's the opposite of perish,
isn't it? To have life everlasting. to have life with no beginning
and no end. If your eternal life began with
your believing or your saying the sinner's prayer or you doing
something, then that's not eternal life, brothers and sisters. Eternal
life had no beginning. Eternal life has no beginning and has no end. We quote 1 Timothy 1 often because
it's so precious, isn't it? And it gives a glorious description
of this work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, we suffer, we are partakers
of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God
who hath saved us. and called us. What did he do
first? He saved us. What's the evidence
of our being saved? Him calling us. We hear the shepherd's
voice. That's what the Lord Jesus says
in John chapter 10. They hear my voice and they follow
me. He calls them. He has saved us
and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works. Not according to our works, but
according to His own purpose and grace which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began. Eternal life is the possession
of the children of God from before the foundation of the world.
When the gospel comes with power and we're born again, then we
come to see it and we own it as ours. We have everlasting
life. So let's just go back and look
at what this remarkable verse says. That God, in this particular
way, in this one particular act, loved the world. Even as Moses
lifted up the serpent, that even so, in this particular manner,
God loved. loved once, loved completely
on this particular occasion. And this is the manner of it,
isn't it? That God the Father, in all of His glory, in all of
His holiness, gave His Son, gave His Son, all the believing ones
in the world, the living ones in the world, and they believe
in the only begotten Son, they believe in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, they believe in his carousel, in his word, they
believe in him. The evidence of the work of God
in the hearts of his people is that they persevere. They are
kept by the power of God, they're not kept by their own power,
they're kept by the power of God through faith, says Peter.
that thou believest, and therefore they will not perish, they will
not be destroyed when God destroys this world in an act of his destruction,
but have life everlasting, have it eternally. God so loved. It is sobering to think, isn't
it? that the verse of scripture,
which is so powerful in what it says about the love of God,
and so powerful in what it says to the believing ones in this
world, should be turned into something which distorts the
very character of God. The verse, like all the verses
in scripture, are there to magnify the character of God, to magnify
God in His holiness, to magnify God in His sovereignty, to magnify
all the character of God, and to magnify God in the Lord Jesus
Christ and him crucified. 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. May the possession of all of
God's people be lifted up before you and in you in his glory as
much as we can cope with in these bodies of flesh while we walk
on this earth. Let's have a break and pray the
Lord will bless his word to the hearts of his people.