For most of us, if we were honest
and would admit it, we would find that we would enjoy a sermon
that would tell us what to do and how to live more than one
that is rich with theology. For example, it'd be much better
for most of us in our mind if we could come and have a sermon
that directly addressed a problem in our life. Like, I'm grumpy. I hope the pastor preaches a
sermon about not being grumpy. Or maybe from the positive point
of view, about having joy. Or maybe in our household, we
live with a bunch of complainers. And we ourselves don't complain,
but we think, oh, how awesome it would be if the pastor would
take a couple of months, or a year or two, and preach about not
complaining. And then I'd make sure everyone
was at church, and then the world would be a better place to live. And the list goes on and on.
Wives, I wish he'd preach about how husbands should be husbands.
I wish he'd preach about how wives should submit. I mean,
you know, children obey. Wives submit. Well, husbands
die. Yeah, see, all the women just
rrrr. So we could come to the text and we could pull out all
these practical true, taught doctrines here in Scripture and
we get to them, if you notice. Not necessarily in the Gospels,
but we do get to them. We've done a lot of Pauline letters
in the last few years. We've gone to the places where
it said, do not let the sun go down on your anger. That's not
a sermon about anger, see. That's not a writing about anger.
We fall prey of wanting the Bible to dictate our discipline. And
when we do that, we come to a place of legalism, or we come to a
place of being controlled by the law, or we come to a place
sometimes of wanting to manipulate behavior rather than see the
gospel transform lives. And friends, it's not a balance.
We can either have the gospel that produces all the good, or
we can have our own righteousness that damns us eternally. We can
have the gospel and the reality of what God has done through
Jesus Christ, or we can continue to work out our salvation in
our own ability. We can have the gospel that allows us to
submit under the yoke of oppression, under the absence of righteousness
in our lives, under the frustration of disobedience around us, and
we can have joy and we can stand justified, not because we're
any more better or any better in our obedience than anybody
else, but because Christ was obedient. One is the gospel,
one is not. One is partly the gospel, one
is the whole gospel. And the whole gospel with a grain
of something else is no gospel. And the sooner we get that into
our minds, the easier, listen, the easier our life is to live
by faith. By the glory of God, by the grace
of God, for His glory, we are actually equipped to understand
these things more and more. I had a conversation with a brother
last week who said to me that the preaching of Scripture, no
matter what the audience, is equal. So he posits that you
could go to the lost world, let's just say the gay pride parade
in Atlanta just took place, and we could go there and preach
Ephesians 4 or 1 Corinthians 13 and that they could apply
it. What's that mean? You cannot apply scripture if
you're lost, except the parts that say, believe in the grace
of God through Jesus Christ. That's the only thing that can
be applied, and as we've learned through John's gospel thus far,
there is no possible way a man can apply the gospel to his life
by faith if God does not birth him anew. We have done a lot of soul-searching
through the years, all of us. We've come to a place where we've
said, well, we understand this doctrine or this teaching, we
understand this passage of Scripture, and some of us are settled on
these things, but beloved, don't ever be settled when confronted
with what Scripture says by saying, that's not really the way I see
that, and move on. If I say something in my teaching
that contradicts a belief system in you, it would be very easy
for me to say, you better believe the way I do. But that's not
what Scripture even teaches. The Scripture says you better
study the Scripture to make sure that I'm correct. That's what
Scripture teaches. And then when you see that God
has said what I am saying, then you agree with me. When you see
that God has said what you are saying in context, then you agree
with you. because ultimately we agree with God. The power
of the gospel comes through the hearing of the word. Imagine,
as I was trying to explain this to one of my children yesterday,
they were asking about people who can't comprehend certain
things, or maybe can't speak certain languages, or maybe in
a coma, or other places like that. How does God save? See,
we like to get all fancy smancy and philosophical. We like to
put God into a humanistic point of view. We'd like to put a man
heart and man mind in God. And we say, oh, God's too kind.
Those people are exempt from faith. No, they are not. No one is exempt from faith lest
God is a liar. Paul writes to every man that
all people must believe lest they perish. Jesus here in this
text in John 3, 17 and 18 will say this morning, All those unbelieving
are condemned already. It doesn't matter if your brain
works, or if you're conscious, or what. If you do not believe,
there is no extra grace that's stuck in some kind of module
somewhere, in a box that God sprinkles in certain conditions.
That is an instrument of Satan. You hear that? God says, through
the hearing of the Word, He saves people. Does He say anywhere
they have to comprehend it? No, He says everywhere they cannot.
So the difference in me in a coma and me standing around on the
sidewalk in a lost state is none. No difference at all in my cognitive
ability. No difference at all in my efforts.
No difference at all in my understanding. So God can save me in a coma
and God can save me in a, I don't know, in a comb store. We share the Word of God. And
God who parted the ocean, God who freed Israel, God who created
with His Word the cosmos of infinite measure can speak life into a
comatose person. He can speak life into a two-year-old
who can't even speak English. He can bring to life those who
cannot comprehend, and He will do it as He pleases. Friends,
please stop making God a man. He is God, and He does what He
does, and He can do anything. When Jesus said, what is impossible
with men is possible with God, those things fall under this
category. So if this is the truth of the Scripture in context of
salvation, why, pray tell, do we think that the outcome of
salvation, like affections and walking and things of that nature,
are now on our shoulders? How stupid have we become, as
a culture, to think that God is all-powerful except here? God can do everything except
this. Now when we confront people in
that, and you'll see the context in just a minute, we get in the
text. When you confront people with that silliness, they go,
oh no, no, no, no, that's right, that would be absurd. That would
be a theological absurdity to say that God could not be sovereign.
But in God's sovereignty, He gives man sovereignty over his
sovereignty. Because that's what a good God
does. Now that sounds about as dumb as anything I've ever heard. Why? Because why would God do
that? People say, well, because God's
love is most seen in the free will of man. Really? Man didn't freely put Jesus on
the cross. He did. He hated him. It's bound
to his nature. Man's a murderer. He hates not
being God. The Pharisees hated Jesus Christ
because everything that they were was darkness, and when the
light of Christ shined upon who they were, they were seen by
the public as dark. So they killed him. This man
has raised Lazarus from the dead. We must kill him. And we must
kill Lazarus again. This is bad for us. It is better
for one man to perish than the whole nation. That was Caiaphas
in John 12. When it comes to salvation, we
need to recognize that what we've learned last week is that it
does not apply universally to every person without measure. When we say that God is loving,
we say the truth. When we say that God loves, we
say the truth, because God is love, because God Himself has
said He is love. When we say that we love God,
we know that it is because God has first loved us. Listen to
this. We don't love God unless God loved us. And if God loved
us, we do love God. Period. There is no other way
around it. Now many have come to find a
love for God, but they found a love for God in what He does. For them, they find a love of
God in what He gives for them. For example, many people love
God because He healed their bodies. Many people love God because
He gave them a job. Many people love God because
He healed a marriage. Many people love God because
He gave them a child. And the list goes on and on and
on. And I'm not saying we should not worship and thank God for
these things, for He is the giver of all good things, according
to James. All good things from heaven come from God, and they're
good, they're gifts. But God is not necessarily loving
to all the people that He gives gifts to, for He gives gifts
to the wicked and He gives gifts to the saints. He gives gifts
to the evil. I mean, did not Hitler have a
house and an immense wealth? How did he get it? God purposed
that he had it. God purposed that he had his
power. God purposed that Obama was in
the White House, and God purposed that Trump was in the White House,
and God purposed that the Bushes were there, and the Clintons
were there, and Reagan, and I'm missing one, Carter. God purposed
these people in leadership. God purposes every seat of the
House of Representatives and every seat in the Senate, every
seat on the bench of the judicial branch of our government. God
purposes every bit of it. He puts them there and He does
it so. And people say, well, we voted. You voted as the Lord
purposed. Well, aren't we just puppets?
I don't necessarily want to be called a puppet. But if I have
to compare my liberty with the sovereignty of God, then yeah,
I'm a puppet. And if I hate the puppetry of God, then I hate
God anyway. What's the difference? You hate
God to start with, you hate God when you learn more about Him,
you hate God in any way. So does it matter? Hard determinism,
you're a determinist. No, I'm a believer. I believe
in what the Bible says about who God says He is. Why do I
call God a liar? The love of God for the world,
as we learned last week, has nothing to do with every person
in the world. Now, God is loving toward every person. God has
graciousness in his heart, or in his actions, rather. I don't
wanna use the word heart for God, because that's a misapplication.
God has graciousness in his providence. It's gracious that he doesn't
kill us all when we're born. It's gracious that he doesn't
just, every unbeliever, every time somebody rejects the gospel,
they just catch into flame. You know how many converts we'd
have if that happened? You're standing on the street, and you're
sharing the Bible, and somebody says, well, what is all this about? And I
say, well, you know, you're a sinner, and Jesus is God, and he came
to earth, and he created a womb, and he came through, and he created
his own body, and he lived on the earth, and he obeyed God fully the way
you should have done, but you're guilty before God, and he obeyed
God, so his righteousness is credited to your behalf, and
he died to pay for the sins that you've already committed, the
sinner that you are, the sins that you will commit. He paid for
those, and I go, man, I don't believe that, John, and he just
goes. I mean, the other two guys standing
there would be like, let's go talk. But even then, if they were fearful
of being consumed by fire, that doesn't mean they're born again.
So they could follow after some pretext, or some pretense, or
some assumptive explanation that they can pull out of Scripture
to go, okay, if we baptize, then we're saved. Or if we obey, then
we're saved. Or if we go to church, then we're
saved. All good Christians do this, and all good Christians
do that. And it'd be easier. Well, remember what I said when
I started this morning? It's easier for us to get up here and just
teach a text about how you should behave and give you four or five
points on what you should do if you can't behave. You have
a trouble forgiving? Let me give you some practical
application of forgiving. I can create a sermon off the top of
my head right now. It could be extemporaneous preaching. You
can give me any topic, any issue, and I could create a sermon that
would be really well handled and probably very applicable
to your life, but it would not be powerful. It would not be
good. It would not do anything but
put your focus on what you can do to change your circumstances
and what you can do to change your life and what you can do
to somewhat, in some semblance, look more like Jesus versus what
God has already done to create you in the image of Christ. To
recreate you in the image of Christ through the work of Christ. And so we get here and we see,
"...for God so loved the world," verse 16, "...that He gave His only
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have
eternal life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through Him." Whoever believes in Him
is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of
God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world,
and people love the darkness rather than the light, because
their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked
things hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his
works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true,
Listen to this text. It's not this morning's text,
but it's important. But whoever does what is true comes to the
light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been
carried out in God. I pray that the Lord would give you understanding
this morning. Verses 17 and 18 is where we'll be. It's all one
thought. It all flows together. It's all
part of the context of what Jesus is teaching Nicodemus and spoken
to him and written by John so that we also, just like what
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that Pastor Jesse read this morning,
it's for our benefit. What happened there has been
recorded so that we can see. And through the hearing of this
word, through the hearing of this text, God does a supernatural
work in His sovereign will. for His good pleasure in our
hearts and lives. So when we trust by faith in
the work of God, when we trust by faith in Jesus, and I'm going
to go over this in somewhat detail in a minute, we're actually believing
fully in what God has promised and what God has purposed, not
in what we've become. Let's start. For God so loved
the world, God did not send His Son into the world to condemn
it. but in order that the world might be saved through him. Now
let's take that text as many people see it. Let's take that
text out of the context of John's gospel completely, and let's
forget that we've ever learned any Pauline theology, anything
that Paul has taught about God, that's what that means. And let's
pretend that we don't know a thing, and let's just, in our English
language, give a definition of what that means. God did not
send his son into the world to condemn the world. but in order
that the world might be saved through him." If we take that
out of context, what we say is what it says. Jesus came to save the whole
world. Because after all, He loves the
whole world. So Jesus' intention was to save every person. Every
person. Isn't that what it says? And
if that's the truth, out of context, then Jesus is the most miserable
failure that ever walked the face of the planet. Because He
has not saved the world. He is not atoned for the world. We don't see the world coming
in droves to believe in Jesus. We see the world coming in droves
to believe in religion. We see the world coming in droves
to believe in churchmanship. We see the world coming in droves
to believe in the felt needs of Christian, whatever you want
to call it, benevolence. We see the world coming in droves
to come after their own affections and their own worldviews, cults,
false religions, world religions, mysticism, you name it. The world
comes in droves, believe me. So Jesus did a very poor job
if this means that he was saving the whole world. He failed miserably. Matter of fact, he failed miserably
in the first century because few people came to faith. Most
of the Jews rejected him. He came to His own, but His own
did not receive Him, John would say in John 1. He failed. But if you take all that and
you know that it's absurd because Jesus could not have failed,
if Jesus could fail, then what in the world? What are we really
here for if Jesus can fail? Why do we teach the gospel if
Jesus can fail? Because I can manipulate people's
thinking to follow a set of actions and follow a set of beliefs much
easier than I can just teach the gospel and wait for the Lord.
I can get people to respond to what I'm saying. I can have anybody
I want to walk an aisle, or say a prayer, or check a box, or
raise a hand, or stand up. And the longer I stand and the
more I say, the more people that will engage in that. Maybe you're
not certain of your salvation. Do you want to be sure? Maybe
your life's a mess. Do you want to see joy? Maybe
things are just really not going the way you thought they would.
Do you want to have happiness? Stand up! And before it's over
with, the only person that's not standing is the guy sleeping
or the guy that died through the sermon. That's manipulation. God doesn't
manipulate people into believing. God does not use reason and logic
to trick people into believing. God is not a salesman. The gospel
is not something to be sold. The gospel is something to be
proclaimed. And through the proclamation of the truth of what God has
done through Jesus Christ, God supernaturally saves. It's like
if I had a hidden language in my head and if I spoke the right
words to you and you had cancer, you could be healed of your cancer.
as long as your ears could hear them. And you don't even hardly
have to understand what I'm saying. And if I spoke those right magic
words, that you'd be healed. Who would not want to hear those
words? Well, that's just a little fairytale make-believe myth.
How much more is it true for the Word of God when people say,
well, how am I supposed to be saved hearing that? Hearing this
Bible, this billion-year-old book that the dinosaurs wrote.
What am I supposed to do with it? This book that man wrote. That didn't write the Bible. God wrote the Bible. God is the
author of Scripture. Man is the pen through which
it was collected. And you're talking about a masterpiece,
but I could tell you all the archaeological and anthropological
evidences of Scripture as a text, and it would blow your mind. It still won't give you eternal
life. You could even say, well, the Bible and everything in it
is true. It still won't give you eternal life. God must give you eternal
life through the hearing of the Word of God, apart from your
will, apart from your ability, and apart from your understanding.
And that's why you sit here today, beloved, redeemed. Because God
did a work in you through the work of Jesus Christ, through
the hearing of His Word. You didn't come to some really amazing
understanding of something. God gave you sight, and you see. Why? Because you've been born
again. God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might
be saved through Him." We know from what we've learned already
that the world is in contrast to the nation of Israel alone. John does not use the world in
a positive light. He uses the world in a negative light the
same way that Jews would use the world. It's Israel and the
world. Us, God's people, and wicked
world. This world. And so if we start
talking about other nations, And we say, we've got missionaries
going to Africa. Where in Africa? We're going
to see God save Africa. Does that mean? Nobody in here
would go, okay, that means that James is going to save every
person in Africa. Or that what they're going to do is going
to affect every person in Africa. What it means is that Africa, as a
represented people, as a continent, how many countries are there?
I don't know. Hundreds are going to be saved. They're going to be represented
in the salvation. When we see the world in this text, it is
not just Israel, Nicodemus. It's not just you people, you
Jewish people, who were no people, who came from pagans. But it's
the world, for God loves the world, that He gave His only
Son, that whoever is believing in Him will not perish but have
eternal life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn it. And see, people don't want to
read any further. Well, what do you mean He didn't? He didn't send His Son into the
world condemning. I know many scriptures that talk about Jesus
condemning the world and judging the world. Well, this text says
the world is already judged. This text says the world is already
condemned. And Jesus was sent as Messiah,
Savior, not judge. But He is the judge. The Son
of Man is the judge. We see that in John 5. Matthew 9, 13. I desire mercy,
not sacrifice. You need to go and learn what
this means, Jesus says. Go learn what this means. For
I came not to call the righteous, but call sinners. And Mark 1. Let us go on to the next towns,
that I may preach there also, for this is the purpose for which
I came. I came to preach in these towns
also. I came to preach the gospel to
the world, not just to Israel. Not just to Jerusalem. Not just
to the region of Judea. I came to preach. And do you
know what the narrative teaches? If you go into Luke's Gospel,
you see the narrative of Jesus' public ministry. When He began
to preach after the wilderness, what happens? They love Him in
the beginning of the sermon, and they want to kill Him by
the end. And he walks in and they hand him a scroll and he
reads and he says, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
And they're like rejoicing, they love him. Oh, how gracious are
his words. Then he goes, but it's not for
you. Isn't that funny? It's not funny, but funny as
we say in southern terms. Just strikingly ironic and odd. It's not something that they
wanted to hear. What do you mean it's not for us? We're Israel.
No, it's for the world. It's for all peoples, not just
you. As a matter of fact, most of
you, Jesus would say, most of the religious leaders of His
day, condemned already. In Luke, I must preach the gospel
of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well. This is
why I've come. This text in verse 17 states
the purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ. That He came to
save, not to condemn. Now see, if we don't put that
in the right context, we can make anything we want to out
of it. See, Jesus would never condemn anybody. That is not
true. Jesus will condemn everybody
who does not believe on Him. And I hear this argument a lot,
especially with college students who start their liberal arts
degree and they take their first humanities course, or they take
their first comparative religions course, or worse, their first
philosophy course. Do we exist at all? Je pense
tant que je suis. I mean, you know, we just...
I don't want to talk to you because you're ridiculous. But Jesus... Jesus wouldn't do this. Jesus
wouldn't condemn people. Jesus is a loving Jesus. And
if He did, what kind of a maniacal man is He? Worship me or die.
See, that's not the reason we're condemned. But it says it there,
whoever believes in Him shall not perish. It says in verse
18, those who believe not on the Son of God die. But we're
missing the key point. We're missing the key point.
The idea of the word condemned means to come into judgment.
The outcome of Jesus coming is that He came because of the love
of God for the world, so that those who believe do not come
into judgment. That's what it means. So let's read it like that. For
God did not send His world unto the world to bring the world
into judgment, but in order that the world might be saved through
Him. See the contrast of that sentence? Bringing into judgment,
escaping judgment. Being condemned, being saved. That's the antithesis. That's
the comparison. And that's what Jesus is telling
Nicodemus, who when every fiber of his being went to bed and
slept like a baby every single night because he was a Pharisee.
Because he was Israel. Like many people who go to bed
and sleep very well every night because they're in a church somewhere,
and they heard a sermon, or they teach a Bible study class, or
they share the gospel, and they do this, or they do that. And
we lay down, we go, oh, you know what? I'm good. It's been such
a good day, and I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm not even thinking
about eternity because look at all I did today. Look at all
I am today. Not God has saved me. Not look at what God has done.
Not look at the Gospel. Not I'm saved because of the
grace and the mercy of God. But look at what I've done and
look at who I am and I'm saved. Nicodemus was this mind. He had
this mind that he was safe because of who he was and what he did
in life. Because of the promise somewhere written down that he
misunderstood that he thought he was some special because of
his bloodline. He thought he was something special
because of his religion. He thought he was something special
because of his knowledge of the Word of God. This is to condemn, this is to
bring into judgment. Jesus did not come to bring all
the world into judgment. He came to bring to all the world
salvation. To all the world salvation. And those who believe do not
come into judgment. It's a clear statement. His mission
is certain. He brings those who believe out
of the world, which is already judged, into life. that escapes
judgment, in order that the world might be saved from condemnation. See? That the world, represented
of all tongues... Where do you get all this stuff?
If we just go through Scripture and we understand... I mean,
think about latter days, or think about the future when we're with
the Lord. And then I look and I saw. You
see the sequence of things that John looked at. He wrote them
and he says, I saw this, and then I looked over here and I
saw this, and I looked over here. And if you've not ever studied Revelation
from a contextual point of view, I highly recommend you go into
our website and listen to those 26 teachings about Revelation. Learning how to read it in context. And we see what? People from
every nation, from every tongue, from every tribe praising God
together. And we see the illustration,
the imagery, the picture of Israel talking about the completeness.
And I looked and I saw 144,000. 12,000 from all the 12 tribes
of Israel. And they actually weren't all listed there. It's
just interesting. The completeness. The fullness
of what God is doing in salvation. The perfection. And he heard
the names of these tribes. And when John says, I looked
to see who they were and I saw a myriad of myriad and thousands
of thousands of innumerable people of every nation, of every tongue,
and of every tribe. This is the completeness of Israel.
These are the people of God. These are the chosen of His affection. These are the elect for whom
Christ died. And that's what Jesus is teaching
Nicodemus right now. God loves not just you. You had a shadow, Nicodemus,
and your people had a shadow, which the true light has now
come, and there is nothing left of you to shine. In order that the world might
be saved from condemnation. Jesus' mission is that He will
bring the world salvation. To the world comes salvation. Jesus has come. The light has
come. He talks about it. Now see, I
know this already because I remember everything that I've already
read from Verse chapters 1 and 2. I already remember it. Christ
has come into the world. The light, the darkness shall
not overcome the light. Jesus, or the life, is the light
of men. You see that? And even with what's
been written thus far, we can prove what I'm saying, but Jesus
says it and proves it in context when He says, and this is the
judgment. The light is coming to the world,
in verse 19, people love the darkness rather than the light. The light's coming to the world.
And those who say they have the light can't see. Jesus would
reiterate this truth with the Pharisees. So are you saying
we're blind? Jesus is like, I don't know,
are you blind? No, we can see. He says, well then you're guilty.
If you say you can see, you're guilty. Because what you say
you see is wrong. And what you're looking at is
incorrect. And what you're proclaiming is an error. Your belief is not
true. You are guilty. Nicodemus, we
know that you are from God. You're guilty, Nicodemus. You
say you can see, but you can't see because you've not been born
of God. You've not been born again. You've not been born of
the Spirit. You can't see. You're using your own knowledge.
You're using your own wisdom. You're using your own human faculties,
and you're coming to a profession of faith from your humanity.
You must be born of the Spirit, because your flesh is just going
to give you a human belief, a human faith, a human redemption, a
human understanding, a human knowledge, and that human knowledge
keeps you in condemnation. That's what Jesus is arguing
here. He came to bring salvation to
the world because the world clearly will not come to Christ. The
world clearly cannot be saved apart from Christ. Jesus then
has not failed in His mission. He came to seek and save the
sheep. He came to seek and save the
lost. Paul would say to Timothy that Jesus came to seek and save
sinners of which I am the foremost. Paul will argue, those who can't
be here on Wednesday nights for Romans, go online and listen
to the messages. They go very, very lockstep with
John, doctrinally. But we cannot see, and we cannot
believe, and we cannot be saved. No one in the world can. except
the light shine. Jesus is the light who came into
the world and he has not failed in his mission. The point of
the world in these passages again is that it's not every human
being without exception, though dearly beloved brothers and mentors
of mine argue that with me. They want to say that there's
a love that God has for every human being without exception
but that there's a particular love in a different way that
it comes salvificly, effectually. They want to use language that
convolutes the gospel in its clarity by saying that the blood
of Jesus atoned for the elect, but also is for every man. It's
for every man to hear of it. There is no distinction. There
is no one who we should withhold the gospel from, but only those
for whom Christ died will come. This is the intricacies of what
we understand about election. When we were in Ephesians six
years ago, we learned that. When we were in Thessalonians
a year or so ago, we learned some of that. And in Romans,
we are learning some of that now. We've learned it surely
in John's gospel. the world. But it's in contrast
to the notion that the Jews alone would find salvation. The Jews
were looking for their own Savior, not the Savior of the entirety
of all peoples. The point then is that Jesus
came to seek and save all types of people, not every person.
Free will, as I mentioned earlier, is often put into play here.
People would argue, well we have libertarian free will, that means
we have open liberty. Really? Have we not studied past
first grade? And I don't mean to sound insulting
with that, but I cannot find anyone with any imaginable type
of brain that can literally say that to me and expressly give
me one example of free will. One! No one has ever given me
an example of free will from a philosophical point of view,
much less literal. What does it mean? Well, I can
do what I want to do. Then do it. What do you want
to do? Well, I'm going to kill somebody. Then go do it. Well,
I don't want to go to prison. Unless you have free will, dude. You're too dumb to even know
what you have. I mean, that's what you want
to say. You can't say that to people. It's like a pastor, I won't say
who it is, but he said one time he was at a very liberal university
and was in a conversation with some people and somebody asked
a question that was so dumb it made him roll his eyes. And he
said to this boy, I don't want to get into this conversation,
but I'm going to so I can beat you like a tied up goat. And
I laughed and laughed and laughed. Those are improper things to
say as Christians. These are coarse and awful things
to say, and I say them in jest sometimes in the teaching because
it is frustrating. How much more frustrating is
it to God when He sees our ignorance? Guess what? It's not. Because God doesn't look at us
and judge us by our ignorance. God sees us in our ignorance
and our inability and the inability to do anything He's commanded
us to, and He acts on our behalf. So when we see ignorance and
we see blindness and we see stupidity, and it's often stupidity, from
a philosophical point of view, from a worldly point of view,
but when we see it, we should have the mind of Christ, not
think we're something because we have the truth, but to think
that we're nothing and we should be a slave to the one who has
no understanding, that we might rightly devour the word of truth,
and when the problem, when the conversation goes to that stuff,
we thank them for their time, we move on, we don't have to
be such bullies. Now when you draw the line and
say, hey, I want to be bullied, be bullied. It's healthy sometimes,
like sparring in Kung Fu. It can be healthy and it can
also leave bruises. We can spar in our theology, we can spar
in our philosophy, we can spar in certain areas of our lives,
but friends, sparring doesn't win. It just bruises. The same thing is true with Scripture.
We must not, though we know that free will is ridiculous in the
context of how people understand it. We have freedoms, but our
will is not absolute and it is not free. We cannot become that
which we are not. We cannot do things that we are
unable to do. The blind man cannot make himself
see. The Ethiopian cannot make himself pale. I cannot make myself
look like an Ethiopian. I cannot will myself to be a
bird. I cannot will myself to be rich. I cannot will myself
to be healthy. And I surely cannot will myself
to see and believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to overcome the free
will of man. to save him in spite of him,
to rescue him out of a helpless and desperate situation, not
give him the hook that he might climb out, not give him the ladder
that might draw him out of the pit, but to snatch him out while
he ran the other way. That's why the gospel is so beautiful. Some people argue that the free
will of man is an attribute of God's love. Because God in his
love gave man the liberty to do what he does freely, so that
he wouldn't impose himself upon people. This makes no sense,
and it's an ignorant application of what man does not understand.
And man cannot understand it, we did not understand it, and
we would not understand it if God had not saved us out of it.
Jesus provides here then a distinct mission that can seem to contrast
the teaching that He would bring judgment. For example, in John
5, verse 27, Jesus says, and He's given He, being God the
Father, given Him, the Son of Man, authority to execute judgment
because He is the Son of Man. So in other words, Jesus and
His humanity has the authority to judge the whole totality of
humanity because He is the perfect man and by His own standard and
His own life and His own holiness, He can say, you are guilty. You
see? That's what it means. So even
those people say, well, you know, Jesus, who is He to judge? He's
the perfect man. I can't stand up here and say,
quit lying as I'm lying. Quit stealing as I'm stealing.
I can't be a cop who goes after the crook over here while being
a crook over here. That's hypocrisy. It's a double standard. We're getting away with the same
crime while punishing someone else for the same crime. Jesus
is perfect in His humanity. He has followed the commands
of God perfectly. Every breath He took, every step
He walked, every word He spoke was done to the glory of God
the Father. With all affection, with every fiber of His DNA,
every cell in His body did everything it did for the sake of the glory
of God. Because He loved God with all
of His heart, with all of His mind, and with all of His strength.
And we want to add, too, all of His soul. And so Jesus rightly can stand
and say, you all are not like me. I am worthy of all judgment
because I have the perfection of all eternity upon me. See, that's why a judge must
be a right standing person. That's why those who are called
to the eldership must really live in glass houses to some
degree. Be careful. And those from the outside better
be careful to not throw bricks through it. Here Jesus came into
a lost and condemned world. God's judgment is pronounced
in the Garden of Eden. You realize that? Jesus isn't
coming back to pronounce judgment on the world. God pronounced
judgment on the world when Adam and Eve disobeyed. It's right
there in Genesis 3. pain, suffering, eternal wrath. And the only thing that will
cover you and to cover your sin is the blood of an innocent. And the lamb that God killed
in the garden and covered Adam and Eve's nakedness, which was
shameful then, was symbolic. It was a shadow, it was a picture.
And we are guilty before God. All humanity is guilty before
God. We don't get to plead our case because God has spoken already
and His Word says that we are guilty. There is nothing to say. Well, I didn't rob that store.
Well, here's a video of you robbing the store. Well, that just looks
like me. Well, you showed your ID and
it's yours. Well, they stole it. I mean, what else are we
going to say? What are we going to say when
God says you're guilty? Nothing. We know that we're guilty. Nobody
under the sound of my voice that could ever hear this thing in
a 40 billion years can ever rightly say that they're not guilty before
God if they do their lying and they know they're lying. So then
what happens is, well, I don't want to be guilty and I know
that I am, so therefore I have to prove to myself verbally and
mentally that there is no God. I'll show God. I'll live like
the devil. Isn't that funny how people say
that and they don't believe in God? I'll live wickedly." Well,
if there's no God, there's no wickedness. If there's no holiness, there's
no goodness. There's no evil. How in the world,
where's the standard? Who's to say that we're not the
weirdos, not robbing, killing, and stealing? That's the normal thing. Don't
you see ants killing each other and stealing from their own?
No, you don't. vultures maybe will fight over
that, fight over this. But ultimately they work together
to devour the carcass. Humanity is evil. We're guilty before
God. The world is condemned long before
we were born. It was condemned during the first
moments of creation when Adam and Eve sinned against God and
he brought a just judgment against humanity. He says, you're guilty
and you will suffer death. But in that same breath, talking
to these first humans, what did he say? The seed of the woman will crush
the head of the serpent. Jesus Christ, the virgin birth,
will crush the head of the serpent. So you're condemned and all your
progeny are condemned. Everybody's condemned. All the
way through. Even when God restarted with
Noah and his family. Everybody's condemned. There's
still sinners. None of us are righteous. No, not one. None
of us are worthy. We're all guilty. But God has
saved some. Condemnation is already here. So now we can understand What
1 John 4, 14, which is always in my face. 13 says what, these things are
written that you may not sin, but if you do sin, you have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is
our propitiation and not ours alone, but for the whole world.
He goes, oh, see, Jesus propitiated for every single human being.
Well, if He did, guess what? Propitiation means satisfy the
judgment of God. If He satisfied the judgment
of God for every human being, then God cannot, by His own nature
of righteousness, condemn us for our sin. Because Jesus satisfied
it. I can't pay a debt and then the
bank come and ask me to pay it again. It doesn't work that way. I can't serve a sentence of a
year and then somebody say, well, you got to serve another year
because we just don't like you. There's got to be a judicial element,
a sentencing, an application of that. There has to be. If
Jesus satisfied the wrath of God for every human being in
the world, then every human being in the world is already saved
and we can find something else to do on Sundays. So we can read this verse lightly.
I mean rightly. We've seen and testify that the
Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world." That
was 1 John 2, 1 John 4. We've seen and can testify the
Father has sent His Son into the world to be the Savior of
the world. He's the Savior of the world because Jesus brought
salvation to the world, not just the Jews. And you and I, beloved,
are the world. We're representative of the world.
And Jesus very clearly now in verse 18, and this might seem,
well, we're not going to finish today. We're not, but that's okay. We'll
pick it up. In verse 18, Jesus clarifies
who these people are that will not be condemned. He says, whoever
believes in Him is not condemned. What does He say? Whoever believes
what? In Him. Is what? Not condemned. But whoever does not believe
is condemned already. And if we go on down to verse
36, it says there what? Whoever believes in the Son has
eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life.
But, the element I'm looking for, but the wrath of God remains
on him. If we don't believe in Christ, we're already condemned.
Then salvation comes into a condemned world and says, see me, I'm like. People look and go, okay, bright
and shiny. So what? Then God, the Holy Spirit,
brings people to be able to see rightly. He brings them new life
so they can see rightly Jesus. Then we believe freely. Because
it's the natural outcome. If a dog is hungry and you throw
food at his feet, it eats it. If we have a spiritual hunger
because we've been made right, we are justified, we are born
again, then we see and we believe. We have hunger. We see. This clarifies the point of the
world in context. He says that in the world, of
course, are all people. Particularly though, Not every
person, but among the world there are people of the world who will
be condemned in a class by themselves and there are people in the world
who will not be condemned who are in a class by themselves.
And who are they? Those who believe. Those who
believe. So there is no universalism in
salvation. There is no universal atonement. There is no universal payment
of sin. There is no universal anything
in the gospel. That's not good news. It's not
good news for God to say, hey, there's a bowl of salvation over
here. Come get it. Oh, you don't have
any legs or arms. Sorry. Well, that's a little
weird. Why would you say that? Because
that's the condition we're in. We cannot believe on Jesus Christ.
We cannot come to salvation except God give us the ability. And
God's ability is effectual. His grace always produces eternal
life. His love is only given to those
whom He has loved eternally. What is His love? Jesus is given
on their behalf. Well, whoever finds himself in
unbelief The verdict has already been made. Judgment and sentencing
is already pronounced. But those who believe, those
who have faith, those who trust in the work of Jesus Christ,
and this means to know the truth of Jesus as it is one's own and
applies to one's own life, this is faith. But those in unbelief,
John 5, 25, "...Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming,
and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son
of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life
in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in
Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment, because
He is the Son of Man." Do you not marvel? For an hour is coming when all
who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out. Those
who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done
evil to the resurrection of judgment do not hear what he's saying
there." This is not a doctrine on how you get justified. He's
talking to the Pharisees just like Paul was talking to a Jewish
audience as well in his writing to the Romans and he sets the
implication that there are none who are righteous. You cannot
do good. You must believe by faith in
Jesus Christ. There's no waiting for God to
make judgment. It's already been done. Though the actuality of
the sentence is future, the judgment has already been made. Humanity
is guilty. Humanity has been sentenced to
condemnation. Humanity awaits wrath. This is
the state of unbelief. But Jesus says, whoever then
believes on the Son has eternal life. They escape judgment, and
that's what Jesus came to do. To present Himself, to obey,
to live, and to die, and to be born, I mean to be raised from
the dead. so that he would catch himself of people, snatch himself
of people, grab himself of people, redeem himself of people who
would believe upon him. Unbelief is a rejection of the
clear truth. the clear truth that Jesus came
to the world. He's the light. He's the one through whom salvation
comes. See, man hates the idea that he's condemned by God. So
he rejects salvation in order to remain, quote, right in his
own eyes. As long as we pretend we don't
have cancer, we can live our lives as though we don't until
it overcomes us. We can do the same thing in unbelief
when it comes to the gospel. We can know with all the fiber
of our being we deserve judgment because we are not holy people.
But when we hear the gospel of grace without the work of God
in us, we can just say, nah, I don't want anything to do with
that. So what does Paul say? How do we suppress the truth?
By works of unrighteousness. Unbelief is a rejection of what
is clearly true. Men refuse to believe on Christ
because they are judged already. The human mind hates God. It
is hostile toward Him. But when the grace of God appears
in Christ Jesus to you, beloved, you believe. You believed because
God's grace was given to you. You believed because God's love
was effectual for you. You believed. You see, this is
not the evangelism. This is growing. This is maturing. This is learning to praise God
for His glorious grace like Paul teaches the Ephesians church.
We go out to the world and we proclaim that faith is, what
does Paul say in Hebrews 11? Faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. You know what
the actual language there teaches us? That it's like a deed to
a piece of property. It's a guarantee whether we have
the deed or not, it's done. We're not believing in an ambiguous
God with a hope of something we've never witnessed, with a
hope of things that we're hoping that are true. No, we're focused
on that which is not yet culminated. That's what it means in Hebrews
11.1. Faith is to look to that which is yet unseen but will
be one day face to face. We know that God is. We know
that the gospel is true. We know that Christ has redeemed
us. We know that He's lived and died and raised from the dead.
We know that. We're not hoping that it's true.
That Christ, He is in whom we trust. But we await for the day
we see it face to face. It's coming for us. Unbelievers
have not that confidence. Saving faith in this manner means
to believe, to have faith in God, and specifically that we
say, well, how do we have faith in God? How do we know? I've
never seen God. We have seen God. We've seen God through Jesus
Christ and Jesus Christ through the Scripture that was given
to us by Him through the apostles. Now we see and we believe by
the supernatural divine intervention of God Himself because He loves
us. And when we share the Gospel,
we can share it in three quick parts. You are sinful. All man is guilty. Everyone is
condemned. And God in His holiness will
bring just wrath upon us all. However, God loved and sent His
Son into the condemned world in order to save. And when you
say something like that, people are like, wow, that's different. They haven't thought about that.
And then Jesus Christ was lifted up on the cross to pay the penalty
of your sin. And when people reject that, they reject the
proclamation of the good news. They go, I don't believe that.
I don't believe that. And that's unbelief. And some people say, well, I
do believe that. That could still be unbelief. And we don't sit
there and give them a treatise on election, and the new birth,
and all this kind of stuff. We just tell them again, do you
understand what I'm saying? That Jesus Christ is your only
hope for eternal life. God satisfied His judgment against
you through the person of Jesus. And when God the Holy Spirit
is ready, that person will see. We don't have to lead them in
a prayer. See, the prayer takes away the
conflict. We don't have to walk them down
an aisle. The aisle takes away the edge. If you want to be saved,
clap your hands. I'm glad I did that. I was worried,
man. I was sweating. Thirty years
from now, somebody shares the gospel. Oh yeah, I clapped my
hands thirty years ago. Clap your hands. Raise your hand. Whatever you did. Are you believing
in Jesus Christ this morning? Completely. Do you believe? Do
you see the intimate God, the intimate picture of God and salvation
here? It is found in Jesus Christ.
Saving faith is believing in Him and all that He said and
all that He's done and all that He's promised in His Word. And
it was all done, here's the cool thing, on your account. Let me
say that again. All that Christ has done was
done on your account. Yes, for the glory of God, that's
the ultimate end. But God is glorified in the salvation
of His people. If God loses one of His children,
then Christ died for nothing. It's all done on your account,
and it's effectual in all of its promises. I pray you believe
that, church. And I pray you share it with
that simplicity. It's not academic. It's not manipulative. It's not
a sales pitch. It's just a proclamation of a
divine promise that when God is ready, He causes belief. Be encouraged. Let's pray. We
love You because You love us. We praise You because You're
worthy of praise. We are thankful, Father, that
You are mighty to save and that nothing can take us out of Your
hand and nothing can cause us to fall away. Father, hold us
as You've promised to do. Send us into the world. Save
our children. Save our households. Save our
neighbors. Save our enemies. Save the lost
for the sake of Your name and for Your glory. And it's in Jesus'
name we pray. Amen.