6 pages later I was still in
verse 19. So we're going to be in Ephesians
1.19, but we're really going to spend most of our time over
in John 3. But I'm going to read, let's
read all of Ephesians chapter 1 just to have an idea of where
we have been and where we are going. Ephesians 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful
in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us
for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according
to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace,
with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon
us, and all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery
of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in
Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in
him, things in heaven and things on earth. That was one sentence
since verse five. In Him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works
all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who are
the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.
In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel
of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the
promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory.
For this reason, Because I have heard of your faith in the Lord
Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to
give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you
the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the knowledge of him, having
the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the
hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness
of his power toward us who believe. according to the working of his
great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from
the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above
every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in
the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave
him his head over all things to the church, which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all. So last time I was
up here, we were in verse 19, and we focused in specifically
on that phrase, what is the immeasurable greatness of his power. And so
Paul prays here that the spirit would train us to rest in the
immeasurable greatness of the power of God. We understand that
God is both faithful and immeasurably powerful. And so what God has
promised, he is faithful, to do. He is able to do. And so in this, the power of
God, we have an infallible security. We have an infallible assurance
of our salvation. We have talked a lot about God's
plan. The plan for the fullness of
time, we saw that in Ephesians 1.10, the mystery of his will,
his purposes in verse 9. And so we're okay talking about
the sovereignty of God, right? And I wanted us to understand
last time that that needs to be more than just a talking point,
right? We need to be more than just
okay with saying, yes, God is sovereign. We need to take that
and marry it to our understanding of God's faithfulness and understand
that not only is God sovereign, he is faithful to redeem his
people. He is faithful to preserve his
people. Last time we also talked about
prayer. We looked at the Psalms, right? You remember there are
some Psalms that have some disturbing imagery, right? We see David
in passionate prayer, praying that God would destroy his enemies.
We see David praying that God would take the children of his
enemies and put them out on the street. So I ask the question, what are
we supposed to do with this? We're not supposed to read these
prayers where David prays from a murderous heart and say, yes,
we should do that. That's how we ought to be praying
for our enemies, right? Because we looked at the example
that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us how
we should pray. And in that prayer, we call it
the Lord's Prayer. We don't see anything like praying
for the destruction of the people that you don't like. So what do we do when we read
the Psalms and David says something like, God, I pray that you would
dash their children against the rocks. The answer is that your flesh
is going to come up with wicked desires like David had. you are
gonna want horrible things to befall your enemies. In your flesh, you are going
to have hatred for people. Right, while we live in this
body of flesh, before our final glorification, there is still
that sin that remains. And that sin is going to rise
up sometimes and you're going to feel things. And so these prayers in the Psalms,
these we call them imprecatory prayers, they show us that when
we have these wicked desires for death, misfortune, the execution
of God's wrath, according to our own will and timing, We can
and ought to bring these things before our Father. So on the one hand, I have to
tell you, you shouldn't be praying like this. And on the other,
I have to tell you, you should be. You shouldn't be intentionally, from a heart of malice, from
a heart of hatred for people, praying that God would kill them.
But when you have those desires, bring them before your Father.
so that he can take them from you. You also see that praying like
this is one of the reasons we probably ought to be praying
in private, as Jesus instructs, right? On the one hand, we ought
not stand on the street corner so that people can see how holy
we are in our prayers. And also there are some things
that we pray for that should be kept between us and our Father,
right? Then we also talked about Lazarus.
Jesus is away. Him and the disciples get the
news that Lazarus is deathly ill. And Jesus says, okay, and
doesn't really do anything. He just sits there where they
are. And the disciples are like, shouldn't we go do something?
And Jesus is like, I'll handle it. Anyway, Lazarus dies, he
goes, he gets buried in his tomb. And a few days later, Jesus shows
up and Mary loses her mind. Jesus, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died. The point I wanted you to get
from this is that Jesus is here now, Mary. Doesn't matter that
he wasn't here then, he's here now. Right, and Mary has this idea
that it's too late for Jesus to do anything because Jesus,
or because Lazarus is already dead. And so I want you to pray like
Jesus is here now, church. God and his sovereignty is watching
over you and caring for you right now. And so we should be praying
like we believe that God has immeasurable power right now. Now as we get to the second half,
not even the second half, the second phrase of verse 19, toward
us who believe. I want you first to remember
the audience of this letter to the Ephesians. This is written
to the Ephesian church who are specifically believers, right? To the saints who are in Ephesus
and are faithful in Christ Jesus. So when Paul says toward us who
believe, he is of course talking about the saints who are in Ephesus,
the saints who are here, those of you who are faithful in Christ
Jesus. So Paul is drawing attention
to the unique exercise of God's immeasurable power for the believing
ones. Right? We recognize that God
is immeasurably power broadly and generally, right? God in
his providence upholds the working out of the entire universe. But the exercise of his power
toward his people, those who believe, is unique. There are specific things that
God does for his people that he does not do for anything else.
There are specific dispositions that God has for his people that
he does not have for anyone or anything else. And this exercise of immeasurable
power is the same power mentioned by
the Apostle John in what is probably the most famous verse in the
New Testament. So let's turn over to John chapter 3. We're going to walk through the
first half of John chapter 3 in order to get some good context
here about the most popular verse in the New Testament, John 3.16.
John 3.16, for God so loved the world. that he gave his only son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So to briefly tell you where
we are going, this toward us who believe, who are the recipients
of the immeasurable power of God in Ephesians 119, are the
very same as the whoever believes in him of John 3, 16. Now there's a popular understanding
of this verse. If you look out into cultural
Christianity and you explore the various interpretations of
John 3.16, you will often find that people understand this verse
as some sort of declaration of God's sacrificial love presented
through Christ to every single person. That it represents some
sort of enabling of everyone to respond to some sort of general
call, some desire for God, some hope of God that you might receive
him. And we have talked before about
God's nature as love, right? We understand that God is love,
it is who he is, it is his nature, and he cannot not be love. So there's some sense in which
all of his actions and dispositions are an expression of this nature,
right? But this general sense in which God is love is not what
is in view in John 3.16. Instead, it is a particular and
intentional exercise of God's liberty to love, rather than
some sort of incidental or accidental consequence of God's nature displayed
generally in his working and in his disposition. What I mean here is that this
particular work of love described in John 3.16 is the same work
that Paul describes in Ephesians 1.19 when he talks about the
immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. So to get there, to understand
what John 3.16 is, we have to back up to the beginning of this
conversation. Now there was a man of the Pharisees
named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. And this man came to Jesus
by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher
come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless
God is with him. So here you have Nicodemus, who
is the pastor of the entire nation, right? He is the teacher of Israel. He is one of the Pharisees. And he comes to Jesus in the
middle of the night, probably by secret, because he did not
want to be caught speaking with this Jesus fellow. And he says,
we know that you are a teacher come from God. It was probably
a lie. I think Nicodemus is shooting
for a little bait and switch here. I'm going to bait this
Jesus guy. I'm going to tell him that we're
on his team. We know that you come from God. And so Jesus,
seeing right through him, says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless
one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And of course, we know that Nicodemus
does not understand this. He says, how can a man be born
when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother's womb and be born? And so here you have the smartest
man in Israel asking silly questions. Like, can he enter back into
his mother's womb and be born? Nicodemus should have understood
Jesus is probably talking about something else, right? And so Jesus continues, I mean,
almost with the riddle for Nicodemus, because Nicodemus doesn't get
it. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which
is born of the spirit is Spirit. And so first, I want to observe
that Jesus is setting a distinction. He's separating these two ideas,
the two realms, the flesh and the spirit. There's a separation,
there's a difference between the natural man and the spiritual
man. There's a difference between
the man who has not known Christ and the man who does know Christ.
Paul outlines this distinction in Romans chapter 8. That which
is flesh is flesh and that which is spirit is spirit. In Romans 8, Paul says, let's
see, there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit of life has set you
free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God
has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by
sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin
he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement
of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according
to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live
according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.
That's Nicodemus, right? Nicodemus lives according to
the flesh. He sets his mind on the things of the flesh. And
so when Jesus speaks of spiritual things saying that you must be
born again, Nicodemus has set his mind on the flesh thinking
that he has to somehow come out of his mother's womb again. But those who live according
to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind
on the Spirit is life and peace. The mind that is set on the flesh
is hostile to God. That's why Nicodemus doesn't
understand Jesus. His mind is set on the flesh
and it is hostile to the God that stands before him. It does not submit to God's law. You can appreciate the irony
of that, right? Nicodemus, the teacher of all Israel, the great
law keeper, the one who tells us what it means to obey the
Torah, has his mind set on the flesh and does not keep the law
of God. It cannot. Those who are in the
flesh cannot please God. So that's Nicodemus. He cannot please God, he does
not submit to the law of God despite being the teacher of
the law of God to all of Israel. This is why he does not understand
what Jesus tells him. He is born according to the flesh
like all men, born under the curse of his father, Adam. And we each must be born again
according to the spirit, born under Christ. And Jesus continues to confuse
Nicodemus in verse seven, do not marvel that I said to you,
you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes. You hear it sound, but you do
not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with
everyone who is born of the spirit. So this is the new birth. Right? You know when a baby is
about to be born, right? Baby's mother is, as the Bible
says, great with child. It is time for the baby to be
born. You know that it's coming. It is not so with the second
birth. Jesus says, the wind blows where
it wishes. We cannot see it. This work,
this new birth is the work of the Spirit of God and it is alone
the work of the Spirit of God. God pours out his spirit upon
his people when and where he wishes. Just as the wind blows and we
cannot see it or know where it comes from or where it goes,
so it is with God's decree to save his people. God told us
how it works. Romans 1.16, the gospel is the
power of God for salvation. Jesus gives us this parable of
the sower. He sows the seeds. Some of them go on dry ground,
some of them land on fertile soil. It is not the sower to
pick and choose where the seeds go, but it is the work of God
to bring the harvest when and where he wishes. So Jesus continues, Nicodemus
says, how can this be? And verse 10 is one of my favorite
verses here, just because we get a little bit of sort of the
wittiness from Jesus, the sass. Are you the teacher of Israel,
and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I
say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what
we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have
told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe
if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. And this
is where Jesus, verse 14, Jesus really gets up in Nicodemus'
grill. He really gets in his face here.
Remember, Nicodemus, the teacher of all Israel, the world's leading
expert on the Torah. Verse 14, Jesus says, as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of
man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal
life. So here at verse 14, it becomes
really important for us to understand the role of Judaism, the role
of Nicodemus' faith in this conversation. Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, And Jesus makes a thoroughly
Judaistic claim about himself. He says, I am the serpent that
Moses lifted up in the wilderness. He points to the symbol of God's
salvation that Nicodemus is very familiar with, and Jesus says,
that's me. Turn to the book of Numbers,
chapter 21. Numbers 21 verse four. For Mount Orr they set out by
the way to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. And
the people became impatient on the way. You'd think people that
wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years would have a little
bit of patience. The people spoke against God
and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out
of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There's no food and no water
and we loathe this worthless food. You gotta love that attitude. There's no food and no water
and we loathe this worthless food. Sometimes I feel like that's
how my children treat dinner. There's nothing to eat. Yes there is. Then the Lord sent
fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that
many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses
and said, we have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord
and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents
from us. So Moses prayed for the people
and the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on
a pole and everyone who was bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent
and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone,
he would look at the bronze serpent and he would live. So the people sin, right? They
speak against God, they speak against Moses, they sin. So the
Lord pours out his judgment for the sins of the people. He sends
these fiery serpents. Fiery serpents will kill you. And something interesting happens
here. Remember that the sacrifices
of the temple are sort of the the ordinary picture of the satisfaction
of God's judgment, right? We read through Leviticus, we
read through Exodus, we read through the law, and there's
all these rules about how to do these sacrifices that represent
the satisfaction of God's wrath. You sin, you make a sacrifice,
you are atoned. But here in Numbers 21, the Lord
instructs Moses to erect a serpent such that all you need to do
for God's wrath for your sins to be satisfied is look at the
serpent. No sacrifice, no atonement, no priest, no temple. Look at
the serpent and you shall live. So this is a deviation from the
ordinary means of atonement that we see in the sacrifices of the
law. And so here Jesus says, I am
that serpent. Those marked for death according
to the judgment of God for their sins will look upon me and live. Jesus is claiming that his work
will circumvent the work of the law for atonement. We go around the works of the
law and look upon Christ. And for that, we live, right? We've been in Hebrews a lot. Hebrews 10, once again. For since the law has but a shadow
of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities,
it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered
every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, they
would not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having
once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness
of sins. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder for sins
every year. For it is impossible for the
blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Sacrifices and offerings you
have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. In
burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. And in verse nine, behold, I
have come to do your will. He does away with the first in
order to establish the second. And so here Jesus is destroying
Nicodemus' entire worldview. Everything that Nicodemus has
done, everything that he lives for, the motivation for all of
his works, the motivation for everything that he does in his
entire life is to please God through working
the law. And Jesus says, no, look upon
me and live, that's it. I am the serpent that Moses raised
in the wilderness. Jesus is telling Nicodemus that
he is here to bring to nothing the works of the law. The only
way to live is to look upon the serpent raised in the wilderness. That is to look upon Christ for
the satisfaction of God's wrath. To look upon Christ for the atonement
for your sins. And so we have verses 1 through
15 here setting us up to totally destroy Nicodemus' worldview.
The world of Judaism is about to come crashing down around
the teacher of all Israel. And it is through that lens that
we read John 3.16. Jesus is deconstructing Judaism,
tearing down the false law-centric view of man's relationship with
God that Judaism had become. And now in verse 16, The most
popular verse in the New Testament, Jesus is striking at the heart
of Nicodemus' very identity. Because Nicodemus believes that
because he is a Jew, he is a man of God. Because his father is
Abraham, he is a child of God. That Israel are the people of
God because of who they are. They are descended from Abraham,
so they must be God's people. And then everyone else, these
Gentiles, these nasty, dirty Gentiles, are wicked, evil people
hated by God. That's Nicodemus' worldview. And here we go. Nicodemus, God so loved the world. Nicodemus, the people of God
come from every nation. Not solely and uniquely Israel. And God loves his people in this
way that he gave his only son, the Christ, that serpent erected
in the wilderness that those who look upon him shall have
their sins forgiven. And so this serpent raised in
the wilderness, this uniquely Jewish image to Nicodemus is
given as the means through which the Gentiles would be saved. This representation of salvation
to Nicodemus, the love of God for his people, the Jews, is
given as the means through which the people he hates would be
saved. It is the means through which
the Jews and Gentiles alike who are God's people will be saved. And so the immeasurable greatness
of God's power that we are talking about in Ephesians 119 is the
very same power that caused those Israelites to live who looked
upon the serpent. It's the very same power that
gives eternal life to those who believe. and all these things with the
unique and effectual love of God for the salvation of His
people. So when we read John 3.16 and
see that God so loved the world, remember it's not God loved the
world so much, right? The word so means in this way.
This is how God loved the world. And we understand this world
to be a deconstruction of the Jewish worldview that only the
Jews are the people of God. It's a declaration that the people
of God come from every tribe, every nation, every tongue. So naturally the audience of
the Ephesians, the object of God's immeasurable power toward
us who believe, must necessarily be the very same believing ones,
the whoever believes, the whosoevers of John 3.16. John 3.16 is talking
about the people of God. And therefore God loved the world,
that is, his people who are not just from the earthly nation
of Israel, but from every tribe, nation, and tongue, in this way
that he poured out his wrath for their sins upon his one and
only son, so that those who believe in him, those people he has called
his own people, should not taste the death required by the law,
that they should not be burdened by the burden required by the
law, but they should live freely and eternally in Christ. Okay, but Jesus was just dunking
on Judaism, right? So how do we apply this idea,
this deconstruction of Judaism to our lives, to our culture?
Right, because we're not Jews. Right, we're not the Jews. Judaism
isn't super popular here. But the constructs of Judaism
that Jesus is refuting in his conversation with Nicodemus are
the very same constructs that prop up cultural Christianity. Nicodemus' worldview is the same
worldview upheld by the nominal Christian. How? Cultural Christianity places
unbiblical expectations upon its people, doesn't it? They either do it by making up
new laws, as the Jews were known to do, You want to read about some of
the weird things that Judaism is today? See how they relate
to technology. See how Jews today relate to
having a Sabbath day light switch and putting timers on their refrigerators
and making sure that on Saturday the light doesn't turn on when
I open the fridge. Talk about burden. Fearing hell. for turning on your lights. Cultural Christianity makes up
new laws or it relates to things that are actually sinful in ways
that are unbiblical, right? Okay, so you can't be a Christian
and listen to Led Zeppelin. Uh-oh. Right, that's just making
up new laws, right? You made that up, that's not
real. But cultural Christianity also
relates to things that really are sinful, because there are
sins. There are things that you shouldn't do. But cultural Christianity
relates to those things in unbiblical ways. For example, you're addicted
to alcohol? Don't be coming around here until
you get that straightened out. You don't have a place in our
church until you get your life straight. This is sort of applying
biblical principles. Alcoholism is a sin. We are warned
against that numerous times. But it's applying that in unbiblical
ways. We can either make up new laws
and push those upon the people, or we could take what is biblical
and create unbiblical expectations out of them. So many churches
today are just Jewish synagogues with crosses on the walls and
pictures of Jesus in stained glass. And they are that way
because of the burden of expectation that they place upon their people. Now, don't get me wrong. Like I said, there are things
that you shouldn't do, right? Scripture does regulate, right? Second Timothy 3.16, scripture
is profitable for correcting and rebuking. Hey, don't do that. That's in the Bible, right? But if your understanding of
biblical morality causes you or anyone else to live in fear,
it doesn't matter how right you are. You're wrong. Let me say it again. If your
understanding of biblical morality places a burden upon you or anyone
else. It doesn't matter how right your
understanding of biblical morality is, you're wrong. Christianity comes with regulation.
The New Testament tells us how we ought to live, but the entire
point of Christ and the new birth is to live freely apart from
this burden of the law. The entire point of looking upon
that serpent is to circumvent the works of the law. By faith
in Christ to live apart from the fear that comes from having
to work for your reward. This is the immeasurable power
of God toward us who believe that we can live free from the
burden of the law. that we can live free from those
unbiblical expectations. Remember, scripture does tell
us what to do, right? And it tells us how to relate
to one another when we don't do that. But we cannot live in fear. Right, what did Jesus say? My
yoke is easy, my burden is light. If the way you relate to the
regulation of the New Testament is to make it burdensome, you're wrong. We cannot live in fear, we must
live freely in Christ. And so we look upon the serpent
raised in the wilderness. We look upon Christ and live. Not in fear for performing, not
in fear of the works of the law, not in fear of judgment. And practically for you, church,
not in fear of one another. We cannot place unbiblical expectations
on one another. We cannot apply biblical expectations
in unbiblical ways. Scripture regulates how we relate
to that. Scripture tells us what to do when our brother sins against
us. And it is this living in freedom
that is the immeasurable power of God, the power of Christ to overcome
the law, the power of Christ to satisfy the law toward us
who believe the very same whosoever believes of John 3.16, the people
of God. And so, church, I would encourage
you to look upon Christ and live. to live freely and to live without
fear. Let's pray and then take the
Lord's table. Father, we pray that you would
give us the peace and the freedom that we have in Christ. Teach
us to live freely. Protect us from
fear and from burden. and teach us to relate to one
another without pushing those burdens
on our brothers and sisters. God, we thank you for your word
that we can see this and understand this, the power of your spirit
that we can read it and know who you are and what you have
done. God, as we eat of your table, Remind us of your wrath poured
out on Christ. Remind us of that satisfaction. Remind us that you were pleased
in the work of Christ, and for that you are pleased in us. We
pray these things in his name, amen.