May God bless us and help us
again tonight as once more we turn to his word. We'll turn
back again to John's Gospel in chapter 3 and verse 16. The Gospel according to John
chapter 3 and verse 16. 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. When we were on holiday this
year in the summer we went to the end of the pier at Cromer
where we were staying and at the end of the pier is a lighthouse
station and it was open to the public and we went inside and
went into the main warehouse area where the boat
was kept and there was a walkway along the top and you could look
at the side of the lifeboat and although you couldn't go onto
it, you could look through the window and you could see all
the instruments inside and you could see the equipment that
was there and you could also go down underneath so you could
see the shape of it at the bottom and the propeller and so forth. You could read all sorts of pieces
of information around the lifeboat. So there were displays about
its history, displays about particularly notable rescues over the years,
and about how the boat worked and how the crew worked. It was
interesting to look around it. and to see how it worked. It
was an interesting video of it being launched and you could
see how it was launched down the ramp and how it went about
various rescues. It was an interesting day. But it was just a visit. It was just, you could say, like
a museum for us. But if you were in the sea and
you were cast from a boat in a storm with the waves breaking
over you and with the wind howling around you, that lifeboat up
in its hangar and all the information and displays around it would
cease to be just an interesting exhibit, something to visit on
your holidays. It would become an essential
element to your rescue. You would not live without that
lifeboat. You would not survive the storm. It would be essential that that
boat was launched and came to your rescue. It would not be
enough just to know how it worked, its history, the events of the
past, the crew members, and so forth. You would not want to
just know about the lifeboat. You would need to know its work
and its work for you. And so with that in mind, this
morning, we looked at the first half of this verse 16, and we
looked at the truth of God's gift. We looked at how there
is an almighty and holy God, and how there is a sinful, lost,
and ruined world, and yet how God, in his infinite love, loved
his people in that world, and sent his Son. Sent the gift of
salvation through his Son, to sinners. God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son. And that is the truth of
the gospel. That is the essence of what we
believe, what we preach, that God gave his son to the lost,
that they might be saved. But you see, we could leave it
at that point and say, well, isn't that an interesting truth?
Isn't that a wonderful truth? something to admire and delight
in. But what the second half of this
text tells us is that we can know it ourselves, that we can
personally know its effect, and that we can not just know that
there is a Saviour, but we can know the Savior ourselves. And we can know the blessing
that comes from believing in God's Son. God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son. There is the truth. But
what application does it have for you and me? What does it
mean for us? Or how can we know it? How can
we experience this blessing? his love that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Coming first then to the problem
that is described here. There is a great need described
or a great problem Because this world that we thought of this
morning, outside of God's grace, is heading in only one direction,
and that is those who perish. They perish. We thought, well we read together
in the book of Numbers about Israel in the wilderness. And
of course, that is a very clearly right passage to consider in
the light of this word because Jesus himself makes reference
to those, that occasion where he says, as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up. And so he makes reference to
Numbers 21. And what happened there? Well,
the people of Israel sinned. They complained about the way
they murmured against God, and because of their sin, God sent
these fiery serpents to bite them, and many people died. It was clearly a terrible plague. It brought great pain and great
sorrow into the camp, as many families lost loved ones. And
if you were bitten by a serpent, you would perish. there was a
certainty about the power of the venom of this serpent there
were so many that were dying as a result of this bite and
of course as a result of their sin and of God's judgment they
were perishing many died in the camp because
of sin because they had rebelled against God and murmured against
him and here we have it those that perish. What does that mean? What does perish mean? What's Jesus referring to here? Well, he's not just referring
to someone who's bitten by a serpent and dies. He's referring to something
much more serious than that. As I said this morning, mankind
because of sin is separated from God God demands the standard
of his own holiness to be replicated amongst his creation and yet
we have fallen short of that, we have all sinned and fallen
short of his glory. And as a result of that sin we
are separated from God. Sin, as I said this morning,
sin played out in the Garden of Eden. The day that you eat
of the fruit you shall surely die, cast out from the garden
because of their sin. And so in one sense that is We
have perished. We have died of that good, loving
relationship we have with God because of our sin. We're separated
from him. We are all dead in our trespasses
and in sins. That is, we do not have that
right relationship with God. We are all dead by nature, but
we have not yet all perished. Because perish. is referring
to something that's eternal, an eternal state, an eternal
position, an eternal place where it is hopeless. It is beyond
hope. This is what he means to perish.
It means to be eternally, forever cast from the presence of Almighty
God. None of us here are yet in that
state. None of us here have yet eternally
perished. We may be dead. Our hearts may
be dead. We may not have that right relationship
with God as yet, but we have not as yet eternally perished. We are on praying ground. We
are in a day of grace. We are not in hell yet. But to perish is described by
Jesus when he describes that great day of judgment, when he
says that all the nations will be gathered before him. And he
said, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we
not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out devils,
and in thy name done many wonderful things? And then will I profess
unto them, I never knew you. I never knew you. That is, you are dead. In trespasses
and sins, your heart was dead. I did not know you, even though
you were doing these things in my name. I never knew you. And
then, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity. Perish. I never
knew you. And then he calls them, commands
them to perish. It is to be eternally departed,
eternally cast out from the presence of God. And it's to be cast out
to the point that there is no hope. No hope. No chance of relief. No chance
of being brought back. In that account, Jesus speaks
of the rich man and Lazarus. It's said, isn't there, there
is a great gulf fixed. Lazarus cannot come down and
the rich man cannot come up. is an eternal state of hopelessness. It's this place where we're told
the worm dith not and the fire is not quenched. It's a place
where the eternal gnawing, as it were, eating away at one's
conscience. It's an eternal pouring out of
the fire of the wrath of God. It's an eternal, complete knowledge
of sin without the glimmer of hope. That's what it means to perish.
It means to be cast out of any hope of grace. It means to be
shown the full extent of your sin. It's to mean to be experienced
the full extent of God's wrath. And it means to experience that
forever and forever and forever without the glimmerist element
of hope. There is no salvation. There
is no grace. And so, in a sense, the spiritually
dead state of the soul, the spiritually dead state of the world is confirmed
and made an eternal state in those that perish. That's what
Jesus is describing here. This is the great need. This
is the great problem. Those that perish, and the world
will perish. which is why it makes this truth
all the more amazing. God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son. So what are we to do? What is to
be done? What needs to come from those
who would not perish? What can we do? believe, what
whosoever believeth in him. This is something we do. Believing is an active thing,
isn't it? It's an active thing. We believe. Now let me be clear. We cannot
believe without God's help, we cannot believe without God's
work first in us, we cannot believe without that faith that he gives
to us, and yet we do believe. God's people do actively believe
in him. They are not entirely passive
in their salvation. It's not as if we go to bed one
night unsaved and we wake up the next morning and we are suddenly
a Christian, suddenly saved, without any knowledge, without
anything done ourselves. We are active in it in that we
believe. And this is what Jesus is saying,
whosoever believeth in him, it is something we do. Yes, of course,
with God's help and with God's grace working in us, but it's
something that we do, we believe. And that is played out in this
picture in Numbers 21. You see, for those who have been
bitten by the serpent and those who were dying because of the
plague, It was not enough just to know there was a serpent that
had been made by Moses and lifted up on a pole. It was not enough just to be
aware of the fact that this serpent had been made. It was not enough
to be aware of the fact that God had told Moses to do it.
You couldn't just say, well I've heard from my neighbor that there
is a serpent and therefore all will be well. What did they have
to do? They had to look. And they could
know about the serpent, and they could know about its history,
they could even know how it was made, and how it was lifted up.
But if they did not look, they died. So Jesus is saying, we must believe,
we must look to the Lord Jesus Christ. And in doing so, we must
trust in his word and promises to save those who do look. You
see, it wasn't the very act of looking which saved the Israelite.
It wasn't some superstitious power found in this brazen serpent. The act of looking showed that
they believed the promise of God. They had faith to believe
when he said, you look, you will be healed. And their act of looking
showed the faith they had. And so as we turn to the Lord,
those who are perishing look up to this gift who has been
sent this only begotten son and so we trust in the promise that
he that cometh to me i will in no wise cast out this is what
it means to believe in jesus christ It's not just a mental
academic acceptance of the truth that God has sent his son. It
is to actively involve ourselves in looking to Christ. It is to
acknowledge and to recognize the dire situation that we are
in outside of Christ. It's to acknowledge that we are
perishing in the world, in a sinful world and with a sinful heart.
It's to acknowledge the dreadful situation that we are in To confess
our sin and repent of it. To confess the desperate need
that we are in. And then to cling and to plead
the promises of God. To see them as the only hope.
Maybe I've tried any, many, many ways many avenues to make ourselves
feel better. And it's to come to the point
where we can only plead this, that God loved the world and
sent his son. It's to cling to those things. It's to plead those promises.
Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for
I am God. And there is none else. It's to believe these promises,
to hold onto them as something that's so necessary, so important,
because we're lost without them. And then to look and to fall
before the Lord Jesus Christ. To tell him is all we need, all
we desire. To believe is to trust. To trust
is to entrust ourselves to Him. To say, I have no one else to
go to, I have nothing else to bring, I have nowhere else to
go. To entrust all your hope on this glorious Son of God,
who gave His only begotten Son. This is what it is to believe,
to acknowledge our need and to look to Christ as the one who
can fulfill that need. simply to come with the publican,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Whosoever believeth. That's what it means to believe
in Christ. You see, it's an active thing.
We confess, we repent, we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We
willingly come to him. Now you see, when we walked about
that lifeboat station, as much as we might have read about it
in the hoarding around, we didn't understand everything about the
boat. We didn't understand everything about how it's been made and
the technology and everything which is involved in it. But
if you were drowning in the sea, if you were desperately crying
out to be saved, you would not be interested in a lecture about
how it worked and how the technology was put together. You would be
desperately crying that the lifeboat would do its work for you. Now you see, you may not understand
everything about Christ. You may not understand everything
about who he is, about the glory of the Godhead. You may not understand
everything about his deity, his humanity. You may not understand
everything about perfection and righteousness. And you may not
understand everything even about the depth of your situation.
You may say, I don't grasp it all, I can't have it all, I can't
see it all. No, you can't. But do you see
you have a need? And do you cry to the only one
who can answer that need? God's son, whosoever believeth
in him. See, it's in him. We can believe
all sorts of things. We may believe all sorts of things.
Some people believe almost anything you tell them. But this is believing
in Him, in Christ, in the Son of God, the one who has come
to stand in the sinner's place. The one who has come has been
crucified on that cross and died and risen victorious over sin
and death. The one who has finished the
work of salvation. The one who has given his life
for the life of his people. The loving, gracious savior that
we considered this morning. That one, his son. This God is to believe in Him,
for as Peter says, there is no other name given among men whereby
we must be saved. And so believe in Him, the crucified
yet risen Son of God, the one who has died in the sinner's
place. This, you see, is when religion
becomes real. This is when religion becomes
personal. When we realize, Lord, I'm perishing. I'm dying. I'm heading for hell. But Lord, the word says that
is so love the world that you've given your only son. Oh, that
I might know him. Oh, that I might be blessed.
to be in Christ, that's when religion stops being theory and
starts being reality. Do we know that? Do we realise that? Do we realise
that you, forget everyone else for a moment, it's true they're
all dying, but do you realise you are dying? Do you realize that you are guilty,
that you need a Savior? Have you looked? Have you looked? Bitten by the serpent, dying
from the venom, have you looked to the only way that's been raised
up for the salvation of God's people? As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up. This is God's remedy, to believe
in Christ, to entrust ourselves to him. Who is it for, then? Who is this remedy for? Who has
God made a way for? Well, God has an elect people.
God has his people. And the scripture makes it perfectly
clear that in the sovereignty of God, He has chosen some who
will look. It is clear that there is a place
of heaven and a place of hell, and that it is in God's perfect
choice and God's perfect right that He has chosen some who will
look to Christ. They must look. They must come. They are his sheep, they are
his people, and not one of them is lost. You see, it's his kingdom
that will be built. It's God's kingdom. And he has
chosen who will be in that kingdom. And you see, that is a great
encouragement for us, isn't it? in the work of spreading the
word of God, of preaching, of evangelistic endeavors, to be
encouraged to realize that God has his people, God will reach
his people, and oh, may we be privileged to be part of that
process in the sense that we are used to take the word of
God to his people. You see, these endeavors are
not fruitless, they are not pointless, because it is not in our power
to convert a soul, but it's God who comes to his people. and so he has an elect so in
one sense we could say well that's who this text is for it's for
God's people and that is true in one sense but the word you
see does not say God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son that the elect who believe in him will not perish
now that would be true we could say but that's not what it says
it says whosoever believeth in him Whoever feels their need. Whoever confesses their need
of Christ. Whoever feels the burden of sin. Whoever realizes that they're
perishing. Whoever looks. And so maybe you struggle with
the doctrine of election. Maybe you are tonight thinking,
but this is for some and not for others, and there's nothing
we can do about it. You hear the word of God. He
says, whosoever believeth in me, and therefore it includes
us all. We are all encompasses in this
word of whosoever believeth in him. You think of someone in the wilderness
on that day when the serpent came and bit so many. I'm sure there wasn't anyone
who had been bitten by a serpent that day who wondered, is it
God's will for me to die? Is it God's will for me to live? Am I one who's been chosen to
live or to die today? Am I one who has been elected
by God to die? Sure, having been bitten by the
serpent, having been really understanding your situation, you would have
gone to look. No one drowning in a sea spends
their time wondering whether today is the day, whether today
is in God's choice that they must drown. What do they do? They cry. What do they do? They cling to whatever aid they
can find. And they rejoice when they see
the boat coming for their rescue. They do not turn the lifeboat
away and say, well, it's not for me. I'm not one of the ones
for the lifeboat is for. They cling to it and climb aboard. You see, we do not, in our desperate,
perishing situation, we must not sit back and say, well, maybe
it isn't for me. We cry. Because the Word of God
says, whosoever believes will not perish. And that includes
us all. Whosoever. So, do you cry in your perishing
condition? Do you cry out in the situation
that you feel yourself to be in? Oh, are you despairing? Look. Look. For these words are for us all.
Whosoever believeth in him should not perish. You see, this is,
as we say, the end point of all in their sin, to perish. And
yet the word says, they shall not perish. We shall not be cut
off. We shall not descend into hell.
And so what is there instead? What is the final gift of God? You could say this word has two
gifts. This text includes two gifts. It's the gift of Jesus
Christ. He gave his only begotten son.
But through Christ he gives eternal everlasting life. The final gift. Everlasting life. Those who look to Christ who
cast their all upon him, they know the life that begins here
below, everlasting life, life in the soul. Jesus described
it in his prayer to his father in John 17, this is life eternal,
that they might know thee and Jesus Christ who now is sent.
The Lord's people know God through Jesus Christ. The Lord comes
and enlivens them, the Lord comes and gives them that new birth,
the Lord comes and blesses them and dwells within them, and He
gives them that relationship with God that they didn't know
before. That is life, to know Thee and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent. And so this everlasting life
begins here below. God's people, you could say,
cease to be dead, cease to be perishing, and God gives them
life. Do we know that? Do we know the
life of God in our soul? Do we know the blessing of God
in our soul? The peace of God? But you see, it's everlasting
life. It's not just something that makes us feel better, if
you like, in this life, and comes to an end when we die. It's everlasting. And so we know a little taste.
We know a little piece of it. It is described the earnest of
the spirit. It's a promise, it's a little
bit. Because the everlasting life is to come, to be fully
known, to be fully realized in heaven. when that sin, that great
mountain of sin, is finally removed, and that sinful heart is finally
taken out, and when God's people are gathered home into glory
to sing his praise from unsinning and perfect hearts, when they're
glorified to be made unto like his glorious body, to be glorified
like him, to see Christ as he is, not by faith, but by sight,
and to be with him, for for me to live is Christ, but to die
is gain. And his people will worship rightly,
perfectly, where that worship will never cease, and the congregation
will never be broken up, when the longing hungry soul will
be fully satisfied. when we shall see him as he is
without a veil between that is the life that's before God's
people that is what God has brought to his people through the sending
of his son to fit them and prepare them for heaven and one day to
safely bring them there to walk the glorious streets of heaven
to drink in the blessings of Christ and to eat at the marriage
supper of the lamb to be fully Beautifully united with Christ
forever and forever. What a contrast to those who
perish. What a contrast. God so loved the world. Do you
see now something of the love of God? Do you understand something
of the greatness of the love of God? That he could take this
sin-cursed, filthy sinner in the world that's heading on a
broad way to hell. Take that, child of God, and
wash them, and cleanse them, and forgive them, and clothe
them in righteousness, and love them freely, and fit and prepare
them for the highest heights of glory. He does this in sending his Son,
the Lord Jesus, to save them from their sins. And so, to recap from all that
we've considered today, consider the great difference. The world
in sin and hopelessness and cut off And yet those who are loved
and saved and blessed and given eternal promise and prospect
of heaven. What makes that difference? What
brings the change? Two things. God's free gift of
Jesus Christ giving himself for the sinner. God's work in their
heart that brings them to believe to look and trust in him as their
Savior. And so where are we in this text
today? Where do we sit in this text?
Are we amongst the whosoever? Do we believe in him? Do we see our need of him? Do we cling to him and plead
him as our only hope? Or do we not care? Are we not interested? Do we
not see its application for us? Do we not see its relevance for
us? Does it just, as it were, bounce off us and have no impact
upon us at all? Well, if that's the case, then
the word says those who are in the world should perish. That's how serious our state
is. Oh, if you've got any concern, any desire, any realization of
the condition and problem that you are in, come just as you
are. Remember, nothing is hidden from
Him. No sin is not noticed by Him. Come and pray. Come and plead. that this gift
of gifts might be given to you, undeserved and unearned, and
yet freely given of his wondrous grace, that he might be seen
as the Son of God, who came to bring everlasting life. Him says,
Come, come, ye sinners, poor and wretched, weak and wounded,
sick and sore, Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, joined
with power. He is able. He is willing. Doubt no more. Let not conscience
make you linger, nor a fitness fondly dream. All the fitness
he requireth is to fill your need of him. This he gives you. Tis the Spirit's rising beam. Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better,
you will never come at all. Not the righteous, sinners, Jesus
came to call. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten son. And whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. And whosoever looked