We're continuing in the book
of John in chapter three. And as I mentioned before, this
particular chapter could probably be the last chapter we visit
in all of our time together. I'm thankful that God has given
us such a chapter in scripture. And sometimes I always think
how God names people. Mary Magdalene, out of whom was
cast seven devils. or the demoniac, or the blind
man who's blind from birth, or the leper, or whoever it was.
And these seem to be humbling things. I wonder if King David
will be remembered as the man who committed such atrocities
as he did with Bathsheba and against Uriah in his sin against
God and God forgave him. But in any case, here what we
have in the book of John are many people set forth before
us to teach us about what we are in ourselves, and one of
them is Nicodemus. In John chapter four, we have
the woman at the well, and she was obviously a profligate woman,
and by all measure and all standards of morality, she was ashamed
of her lifestyle, and other people thought very little of her, low
opinions of her, and the Lord saved her. And then in John chapter
five, the man who was 38 years afflicted and couldn't get in
the water himself when the water was stirred to get healed, and
so he also, Jesus told him, he says, you have been made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing
come upon you. So he was a sinner. And his sin
was pointed out by Christ himself. And then in John chapter six,
all the teaching that the Lord gave there of his own body broken
and his own blood shed for the life of his people. and John
7 and John 8, we just see case after case of sinners saved by
the Lord Jesus Christ. And in here, in John chapter
3, what we have is a man who was a Pharisee, a master of Israel,
a very proud man, a man who depended upon his birth to Abraham, a
man who took confidence in his knowledge of Scripture, a man
who trusted that by his own obedience to what he found in Scripture
he could obtain eternal life, a man who really was respected
by others and took pleasure in that and sought actually for
that, and a man who condemned those who he considered to be
sinners. And then we see at every point
in this man's thinking, the Lord Jesus Christ addresses that by
bringing in the truth of the gospel, really the truth of himself. The truth about himself and about
God's own mind and character and heart and will and work,
his purpose of grace towards sinners. And so we see these
things set before us in the book of John, throughout scripture,
that there are people God uses to teach us about ourselves and
about His grace towards sinners. And this is the message that
we preach. This is the message we love.
And when we experience weakness in our bodies, or even in our
minds, it reminds us that the power is not in us. The power is not what we are
in our own strength. In fact, if it were, we would
be miserable, horribly miserable, and we would have no reason to
expect any benefit for all the labor that we expend or the sermons
that we listen to. But by God's grace, We have been
given as sinners as these like Nicodemus and the woman at the
well or the blind man or the woman taking an adultery or Peter
and all the other disciples who were obviously sinners in themselves. We're given this great treasure
in these earthen vessels that the excellency of the power would
be of God and not of us and therefore we preach the Lord Jesus Christ
and not ourselves. We don't preach ourselves. If
we did, we'd have nothing to say. We would sit down. If we
did, we wouldn't expend any effort in prayer or in fellowship or
in reading or in meditation because we would have absolutely no reason
for hope. But here, God shows a helplessly
sinful man So blind to his own self-righteous pride, that in
spite of his sin and his opposition to all that God is in his character,
God saves this man. And this is the topic, this is
the subject of this chapter, is the salvation of God in the
Lord Jesus Christ of sinners. And it's set forth in this light
here in our condition as the most proud and self-righteous
of people." This was his religion. This is what his friends and
his neighbors believed. This is what people admired him
for. is that he could do something, he could bring something to God,
he could meet the condition, whatever it was, in order that
God would have to acknowledge him, would have to accept him,
that he could somehow stand in judgment before God and give
an account of himself that God would have to say, yes. you are accepted, justified in
his sight. But nothing could be further
from the truth, and the process that the Lord Jesus Christ took
to bring him down was a painful one indeed. There's no doubt
about it that Nicodemus felt himself being brought down lower
and lower until he recognized through all that Christ said
here that he was no better, in fact worse, than the worst of
sinners. And this is what the gospel teaches
us. And so I want to read this with
you here, beginning in verse 13 and reading through verse
21 of John chapter three. He says, Jesus says in verse
12, if I have told you earthly things and you believe not, how
shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things? Clearly,
Nicodemus did not believe. Jesus said, you believe not.
And his unbelief was his fault. He says, if you believe not when
I told you earthly things, how shall you believe if I tell you
heavenly things? Because he spoke, Christ spoke
what he knew, he spoke what he had seen, and yet Nicodemus did
not believe him. It was his fault. And unbelief,
and this is a key point here, unbelief, failure to believe
Christ is a wickedness, and it's our fault. It's a choice that
we make not to believe Him. We reason, we... put all the
things together by our own reasoning and we consider ourselves and
we say, no, I don't believe that. So unbelief is a choice. But
what we see here is that faith is not a choice on our part,
but a gift on God's part. A gift given to us by the Lord
Jesus Christ because of his redeeming work for us. And that's what
we see in the next few verses. So I've entitled today's message,
The Son of Man. Son of Man. And let's read this
together in verse 13. No man hath ascended up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is
in heaven. Now that was the initial introduction,
really, and the summation of what Jesus would expound in the
next couple of verses. The Son of Man was the only one
who had or could ascend up to heaven. He said no man has ascended
up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son
of Man, which is in heaven. If you look at the scripture,
if you read the New Testament, in fact, if you, and it's easy
to do now that we have computers, you can search the entire New
Testament with those key words, the son of man, and what you'll
find is that this was the title that the Lord Jesus Christ used
to describe himself more than any other title. When he referred
to himself, and spoke of himself to others, he used this title,
the Son of Man, more than any other title. And so it's important
for us to understand what did he mean by that? Why was it significant? Well, first, what you see here
is that no man has ascended up to heaven except the Son of Man. That's what he said in the first
part of this verse. But when we think about the Bible and
what God has said throughout history, we think about, well,
what about Enoch? Enoch didn't die. It says that
Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him. And in Hebrews 11, it says he
was translated that he should not see death. So didn't Enoch
go to heaven? Yes, he did go to heaven, but
he didn't ascend up to heaven as it's spoken of here. And what
about Elijah? Remember, God took him when a
fiery chariot came and scooped him up and carried him up through
the clouds right up into heaven, and Elisha saw that. And Elisha
exclaimed when he saw the chariots of God and the horsemen thereof.
And God came and took Elijah up without passing through death,
right into glory. Didn't he ascend up into heaven?
And the answer is no, because Jesus said, no man hath ascended
up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven. So what does
it mean then for the son of man to ascend up to heaven? Well,
if we understand this, then we understand something about the
significance of this title, the Son of Man. And we see how important
it is, how it brought Nicodemus to his knees in the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ because of this title. And I suppose
the best way to get at the meat of this is to just give you the
answer and then give you some scripture to support that. First
of all, the Son of Man means the One who was with the Father
in glory before He came into the world. Notice He says here
in this verse, No man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came
down from heaven. So first he was in heaven, then
he came down from heaven, and then he would ascend up to heaven. So he had an existence with God
in glory, and it was a glorious existence in heaven before he
came into the world. And then he came into the world,
he descended. So his place in glory, though
glorious, was followed by this step of his own part, this stoop
of humility. And in this stoop, he came into
the world and he lived a life and died a death of humiliation. So from glory to in self. laying aside of his glory, he
stooped in humiliation and lived a life and died a death in service. And then he ascended back up
to heaven. And that ascent back up to heaven
was not merely going to heaven like Enoch or like Elisha, but
it was an entrance into heaven as the victorious king who would
be received into heaven as having accomplished God's will and finished
the work God gave him to do, and therefore given authority
and dominion and a kingdom for everlasting ages over all things
in heaven and in earth. So if we understand that, therefore,
which we will see shortly from other scriptures, then that we
understand that the Lord Jesus Christ uniquely ascended up to
heaven as a king ascends to his throne. And he ascended up to
heaven because first he descended in humility and suffered in humiliation. And this one who is the son of
man, he says in the last phrase of verse 13, the son of man which
is in heaven, we see that he not only is the son of man, but
he is God as the son of man. So that all that he did as man
is exactly what God would have done if he were a man. In fact,
he was. Everything Christ spoke, He spoke
God's Word. Everything He thought, everything
He felt in emotion, everything that He determined to do and
did on earth is precisely what God would do in our nature, because
He is God in our nature. And considering the fact that
he is God the Son and the Son of Man, Nicodemus therefore seeing
him and hearing these words realized that he who is the glory and
the majesty of God had stooped in humiliation in order to save
a people that Nicodemus condemned in his own mind by his self-righteousness. And so what this would do, it
would bring Nicodemus to his knees in his heart to know that
the one he came to to ask and to be recognized by was none
other than God in human flesh and human nature, who had stooped
not to exalt himself like Nicodemus and his friends tried to do,
but humbled himself as a servant in order to save the very people
Nicodemus thought were worthy to die. Sinners. And furthermore,
Jesus goes on in verse 14 to identify those particular sinners
that he came to save like those children of Israel who spoke
against God, who spoke against Moses, and who despised God and
his prophet Moses in the wilderness. And God therefore sent serpents
to bite them, and they were dying. justly condemned, without remedy,
and God lifted up the serpent on the pole, so the Son of Man,
the one who is the majesty and the glory of God, was lifted
up on the cross in order to bear the sins and the curse for His
people to save them from their sins. Now, given that Nicodemus
was lowered, was brought down in this way, what we see is,
imagine how he felt. And that's the feeling that we
have when the Lord saves us. It's being brought down and made
to look up, taking our place besides sinners who are not as
bad as we are, who we see ourselves to be made so low, and yet when
we look up, what do we see? We see the one who is high who
was made lower, lower. Even then a worm, he said, I
am a worm and no man. Because our sins were put on
him and he suffered for them in order to bring us to God. Now that empties us of all merit,
doesn't it? That empties us of all consideration
of what we are in ourselves or what we can do in order to do
God's will. It puts us absolutely in the
dust utterly dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
Man and Son of God, to take pity upon us and to save us by His
work and not by ours, by His worth, by His power to do the
will of God and to justify sinners. Because we cannot be justified
by any but God himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I've given
you the overview and I want to take you back to some scriptures
to show you these things. First of all, that the Lord Jesus
Christ had glory with the Father before he came into the world.
Look at John chapter 6. John chapter 6 and verse 62. The disciples heard Jesus, many
who heard Jesus, who were following Him as His disciples, heard Him
say that unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son
of Man, you have no life in you. They were appalled. They were
revolted. It was repugnant to them. They found it to be abhorrent. And so if you read that in verse
53, he said, Verily, verily, I say to you, except you eat
the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you. What he meant was, unless you see that the sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ for sinners is the only sacrifice
you have to cleanse you of your sin, the only obedience you have
for righteousness to bring you to God and make you accepted. And unless you by faith depend
and commit everything in your life to Christ, the one who laid
his life down in all of your acceptance before God, in the
judgment of God against sinners. If you do not trust him only,
then you have no life in you. But if you do look to him, then
you have that life, which is by eating and drinking with faith,
his blood and his flesh broken for sinners. Now look at verse
60. Many therefore of his disciples,
when they heard this, said, This is a hard saying. Who can hear
it? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at
it, he said to them, Does this offend you? Notice verse 62. What, and if you shall see the
Son of Man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit
that quickeneth, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak
to you, they are spirit and they are life. So Jesus said to them,
if this offends you, that I would stoop, if the cross offends you,
Christ crucified for sinners, if that offends you, that that
would be all of your life, and you have nothing but what God
sees and has done in His Son, how much more will you be offended
when the Son of Man, who's so stooped in humiliation, is ascended
back to His place of glory? Obviously, He would ascend up
where He was before. Hence, He had a glory with the
Father before He came into the world. All right, secondly, we
know that he stooped in order to take the sins of his people.
Look at Matthew chapter 12. Actually, it's in verse, chapter,
let's see. Let's see, I think it was, Well, okay, we'll go to Matthew
chapter 11. Look at this in Matthew chapter 11. It's not the one
I was looking for, but I'm going to go here anyway. Look at Matthew
11, verse 19. It says, the son of man came
eating and drinking, this is what they said in accusation.
This is why they hated him. The son of man came eating and
drinking, unlike John the Baptist, and they say, behold, a man gluttonous,
because he eats and drinks, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans
and sinners." So the Son of Man is what? He's a friend of publicans
and sinners. And if he were not the friend
of publicans, if he didn't make himself the friend of publicans
and sinners, none of us would have any hope, would we? Because
that's all we are. That's all Nicodemus found out
himself to be, was a sinful man. Even though he accused the publicans
and the taxpayers of being sinners, he found in what Christ said,
he was the one guilty. And then also look at In Matthew
chapter 12, he says here in verse 40 of Matthew chapter 12, he
says, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's
belly, so shall, notice, the son of man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth. What's he's talking
about there? He's talking about the humiliation. Jonah refused to go to Nineveh. He got in a boat, he was sailing
on the sea, and God sent a storm, and the sea was so violent that
the ship was going to be broken up and all of the mariners on
the ship would die. And Jonah said, it's because
of me. You have to throw me overboard.
And when they threw Jonah overboard, the sea became calm, all the
mariners were spared, just as that the Lord Jesus Christ had
to be cast into the flood of God's wrath in order for his
people to be spared. And then Jonah was three days
and three nights in the whale's belly. And then the whale, God
spoke to the fish and he spit Jonah out and Jonah then went
and preached to Nineveh and the people of Nineveh heard the message
that God was going to destroy their city in 40 days. They repented
in sackcloth and ashes and God did not destroy that city. So
the Lord Jesus Christ was three days, according to this verse,
three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, in the
grave, why? Because he endured the wrath
of God, he went into the grave, just as Jonah went into the fish's
belly, and then after the fish spit Jonah out, just like that,
the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He conquered death,
he rose out of the grave, and he ascended up to glory. And
there from his throne in glory sent the gospel to do what? To give repentance to Israel
and the forgiveness of sins, as Acts 5.31 says. So Jonah did. He was sent to Nineveh to preach
the gospel, and the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled that in his
preaching. That's what the Son of Man did. He stooped, he bore
the sins of his people as his sins, he endured the wrath of
God against them for their sins, he took the wrath from them,
and he answered all that God required of them in justice. And therefore he rose from the
dead, therefore he ascended into glory." So that's the humiliation
we saw in John 6, 62. He would ascend back up where
he was before, he had glory with the Father, he stooped, He took
on our flesh and blood. He was made in the likeness of
sinful flesh. He bore our sins. He rose again. He ascended to glory and is given
glory with the Father. All right, so we see this about
the Son of Man. Now, I want to show you another
text of scripture in Matthew. Look at Matthew chapter 12 in
verse 8. Matthew chapter 12 in verse 8. He says here, For the Son of
Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Now you remember in the
law of God, there is a commandment that says, you shall keep the
Sabbath holy. And it was the seventh day, Saturday. And in the Old Testament, the
Israelites were not to do any work whatsoever. And God reveals
that in the New Testament, that meant, that was showing us, not
that we would have to stop working every Saturday, but that the
Lord Jesus Christ would fulfill all of God's work, and having
finished the work of God, then entrusting Him, we would stop
working, but rely on His work. And so he himself is the rest,
the Sabbath. Not only that, but here he says
he's the Lord of the Sabbath. And what did he do when he finished
the work of God? Well, what did it mean for him
to finish the work of God? It meant that he fulfilled the
law of God. He not only did the work of God
and said the Sabbath means rest, and I finished that work, therefore
you rest in my work. But he actually fulfilled all
of the law as the son of man. And here's something that's very
important that we understand. The law of God is so holy that
only one could fulfill it, the son of man. And having fulfilled
the law of God for his people, Having answered all of the requirements
for all righteousness, he not only did that, but he took the
sins of his people and answered the justice of God and the curse
of God's law in his own suffering for them. so that the law was
so fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ that it was finished. It was put to an end for God's
people. The curse of the law was taken
away because he bore the curse of the law for them. The righteousness
of the law was fulfilled by Christ, so Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. And because the law was fulfilled
in him and brought to an end as the Lord of the Sabbath, he
abolished the law as a requirement for his people because he is
that requirement. He is the end of the law for
righteousness. And so we find in Hebrews chapter
7, for example, that when Melchizedek, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the
high priest fulfilled that type of Melchizedek, the one who's
had no beginning of days or end of life in the Old Testament,
that the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Son of Man, became our high
priest and because it was a new priesthood, a new law had to
be given and that new law was the new covenant made in his
blood. And in that covenant, all of
God's promises and all blessings, spiritual blessings for eternal
life are fulfilled and given to God's people because the blood
of Christ made that covenant. It put it into force. So as a
son of man now, he is the Lord of the law, the Lord of the Sabbath. He not only fulfilled it, but
he brought it to an end, he magnified God's law, he magnified God's
justice, and he put the law to an end for his people so that
they now live not by keeping the law themselves, but by his
law keeping. And so if you go back to John
chapter 3 now and keep these things in mind, the importance
of the Son of Man who was with the Father in glory, He came
He stooped in humility. He lived and suffered and died
in humiliation in order to bear the sins of his people for them.
Then therefore, what we see here in John 3 is that when Christ
is talking to Nicodemus about these things, he's describing
his work in a panoramic view. How what he did was a heavenly,
it took place in heaven before time. He was a son of man by
appointment with the Father in a covenant relationship. And
he descended in order to fulfill that covenant and put it into
force by his own blood. And having put it into force,
as Christ, our prophet, priest, and king, he ascended up to take
his place in glory as the king of glory. Now, it's this one,
this man, who alone could keep God's law. Only he could do what
God required. And all of our sin had to be
laid on him, and all of our righteousness had to be accomplished and established
by him. So that what we're left with
now as people, as sinners, is ourselves as nothing but sin
and needing and needing the sovereign work of the Lord Jesus Christ
to save us from our sins. You see that? So now, when the
Lord gives us these words in verse 14 and 15 and 16, we see
now how it flows from that verse in verse 13. He says, He describes
his humility and his humiliation in verses 14 and 15, and this
is the gospel. This is the substitutionary work
of the Son of Man for his people. This satisfied God's justice. This demonstrated all that God
is in his will, in his work, in his character, what God did
in Christ. The cross of Christ preaches
God's glory, and that's what we see here. Notice verse 14,
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up. That's who's lifted up, the Son
of Man, the one who made himself a lower than all men in order
to serve his father and serve his people, to stoop and give
himself as a ransom for their redemption, to redeem them from
sin and from Satan and the law and everything, death and hell
and the wrath of God. Moses is the law. God told Moses,
lift up the serpent. In the law, God speaks of Christ
and him crucified. That's what he's saying here.
The serpent was sent to bite Israel, the people who sinned
against God, that they might die. God's law pronounces death
to the sinner. The wages of sin is death. And
so everything that the people feared was contained in that
serpent. And yet, their own sin, which
was the cause of God sending that serpent, had to be borne
away in order for them to be healed, in order for them to
live after having been bitten by that serpent. So that's all
conveyed to us here. The serpent The Lord Jesus Christ
had to be made that serpent. That's what he's saying. As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up. The serpent was God's condemnation
on those who spoke against him. And what does that mean? The
Lord Jesus Christ was condemned by God. He was cursed by God. The pole the serpent was hung
up on corresponds to the cross on which Jesus was hung. The
death that the serpent brought corresponds to the curse of God
upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The reason for that curse, the
sin of God's people, Christ had to bear as his own sins. so that
the curse of God fell upon him, because the sins of God's people
were put upon him. And so we read in two places
the unfolding of this statement here in verse 14. First, Christ
was made sin for us. Second Corinthians 5.21, he who
knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. Second, Galatians 3.13, Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for
us. A sin offering and cursed by
God. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
was, the Son of Man. Not a serpent, but Christ himself,
the Lord of glory, stooped. He made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of
a servant. He was made in the likeness of men, and he bore
the sins of his people. And that obedience of his unto
death is our righteousness." That's the righteousness of God's
people. And notice he says, he says, as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up. Why? Why must the Son of Man
be lifted up? Because God required it. Why
did God require it? Because this is all that God
is. What we see here is the reason why Christ must suffer here. was a demonstration, it was setting
forth who God is. And we know what people are like
by what they say and what they do, don't we? This is how we
know God, by what he said, what he did. He sets forth that he
himself required this. It seemed good to God in order
to make His Son the offering for our sins, in order to pour
out His wrath upon Him. God's infinite justice and His
infinite righteousness and His infinite wrath and all of His
love and grace and mercy and the wisdom of God in this are
all demonstrated here in the Lord Jesus Christ being made
sin and a curse to save us from our sins. Christ took on our
nature that He might save us from the sins we deserved in
our nature. The Lord of glory made service
to His Father and to His people in His death, His rule of life. It's amazing here. God required
this. If God required His Son to die
to deliver us from sin, how bad must our sin be? How bad must
our sin be? If the Lord of glory, the Son
of God, was given, how great must God's love be? How great
must His justice be? How great must His grace be that
He would do all for sinners? Nothing can be added to Christ
crucified. And notice here, he goes on,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life. Perishing, that's what we were
doing. We were dying. We faced eternal
death. And he says, no, eternal life
given because Christ was crucified. We didn't contribute to that.
What did Nicodemus think? Just give me something to do.
God says no. The Lord Jesus Himself says no.
Believe, not work. Don't look to your work, look
to Christ and His work. This is the words of the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, telling whosoever, believe in Him. the burden of all of your sin
weighing heavily upon you in the day of judgment, in your
conscience, before the throne of God, look to Christ. Look
to Christ. He bore the sins of sinners that
he might save them from perishing and give them eternal life. All
the way from the depths of our sin to the heights of glory,
This is the love of Christ, isn't it? The length and breadth and
height and depth of the love of Christ, which passes knowledge,
is given to us right here. Whosoever believes in Him. Whosoever. It doesn't matter who you are. It's what He did that matters. Don't look for some merit or
worth or work from yourself or some condition to be met. Look
away to the Lord Jesus Christ and whoever believes in Him by
God's own testimony, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who hung
on the cross says, you shall have. No, you do have now already
eternal life. You know God in this and you
have eternal life. And then he gives the reason
for the gospel in verse 16. For God so loved the world. God
so loved the world. This demonstrates the measure
of God's love. He gave his only begotten son. The measure of the love of God
is the measure of his gift. And the world here is not so
much the number or the extent of people as it is the character
and the nature of those people. It shows here the condition in
which they were sinners. And it shows the requirement
that God could only find what He required for them in the Lord
Jesus Christ. It all depended upon him. The
love of God is what gave his son. That's the reason why we
have verses 14 and 15. The Lord, in verse 13, of glory,
the prince of life, came and stooped and fulfilled all, and
he, being worthy of all glory and honor in heaven and earth
and all power given to him, because of what he did, now preaches
to us this gospel. And He says, whoever believes
on Him has everlasting life. This is the Gospel, isn't it?
Verse 17, God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the
world. The world was already condemned,
but that the world through Him might be saved. That was the
purpose. God never fails to fulfill His purpose. If God said it,
He did it. If God did it, it was successful. Christ gave His life in order
to save those people in the world He gave His life to save. If
Christ died for us, Romans 8.34, No one can condemn us. God certainly
won't, and no one else can either, because Christ died for us. So
the world Christ came to save is the world of sinners for whom
he died. In verse 17, he says that God
did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but
that the world through him might be saved. What's the opposite
of condemnation? justification. God sent his son
to justify his people and that they would be saved by him. He that believeth on him, verse
18, is not condemned. Not condemned, but justified.
But he that believeth not is condemned already because he
has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation
that light is coming to the world, the light of Christ, The light
of his word, we just heard it. But he said to Nicodemus, and
men like Nicodemus and us love darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. But, verse 20, everyone that
doeth evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his
deed should be reproved. But he that doeth truth comes
to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they
are worked in God, or worked out by God. Isn't that true? What do we do as sinners? What
has God taught us in His Word? What does it mean to do the truth?
It means to believe the truth. It means to acknowledge the truth
in repentance. It means that we worship God
in spirit and in truth. And in so believing the truth,
we believe the truth about ourselves, which is we're nothing but sin,
and justly condemned. And we believe the truth about
God, that he's right in condemning us, and we believe the truth
about Christ and his salvation, that he accomplished it all.
And so we come to the light. We are coming to the light that
our deeds, everything God requires of us, may be discovered to be
worked out by God, not us, and worked out by God in Christ.
Even the faith. we have in the whosoever that
believeth in him, that faith is the result not of our work
or our will, but of God's gift because Christ laid himself down
in death and suffered for us and gave to us his spirit that
we might live and believe on him. All of grace, the faith
to believe and the life and the reception, the acceptance by
God of us in Christ. It's all because of him, and
we're glad of it, don't we? We're glad to have it this way.
We come to the light, as Nicodemus was brought, I am a sinner and
nothing at all. All I do is infected by sin,
and I'm guilty, it's all my fault, I'm helpless, there's no remedy
except in Christ, but the remedy God has provided in Christ is
all sufficient not only to establish my righteousness, but to give
me everlasting life. Let's pray. Lord, we stand absolutely
open mouth and unable to speak, and the knowledge of your salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ passes all comprehension on our part. But you have spoken it, you have
revealed it to be so. And we pray, Lord, that you would
convince us that we are in ourselves utterly sinful and worthy of
condemnation and helpless to do one thing about it. We need
you to do something about our sin, something about our spiritual
death. and this can only be done by
the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Having come into the world laying
aside His glory, bearing our sin and the curse for our sins,
and then rising in victory over the consequences of our sin,
which we deserve from God, death and hell and the grave and the
curse of God's law and the removal of God's wrath, and then ascending
up to glory and bringing us with Him that we might be brought
to God in Him. And to see these things, Lord,
and to trust Him, we find Him to be all-sufficient, and we
hunger and thirst no more for anything but Christ and Him crucified
for sinners. And so we come to God and to
come to You, Lord Jesus, looking to You only for everything we
need. and finding it too. And so we
find in our souls great peace and joy and thankfulness. And
yet day by day, we face this constant warfare in ourselves
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, that you
would rescue us from this sinful self that we are and direct us
to the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone could and did do all for
us in his own work and death on the cross. Thank you for receiving
him. Thank you for demanding and requiring
this in order to set forth your greatness and your glory. In
Jesus' name we pray. Amen.