Take your Bibles now and let's
turn to John chapter 3. I want to read several verses
to you beginning with verse 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not
condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is condemnation, that
light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that
doeth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds should be reproved. For he that doeth truth cometh
to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they
are wrought in God." Now these verses are an explanation that
I just read to you, especially John 3.16, John 3.17, and so
on. All these verses are an explanation
for what he declares at the beginning as Moses lifted up that serpent
in the wilderness. Even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up. He's got to be lifted up. He's
got to die. He's got to be raised up. The
reason he has to be raised up is because everybody's been bitten
and everybody's dying. The reason he'd been lifted up
is because God loved somebody. He loved somebody. Had he not
loved somebody, he'd have just left Israel to die in the wilderness,
wouldn't he? They were nothing but rebels.
They'd done nothing but complain and chide against him from the
get-go. Think about what these people had seen. Winston, they
walked through a sea. Not a pond, a sea. And they walked through with
a wall of water on either side, on dry land. And having passed
through the sea, they stood on the other side and watched Pharaoh
and all the great armies of Egypt as that sea come in on top of
them. And then God preserved them, two and a half million
people out there in the middle of a wilderness for forty years,
and the whole time they kept chiding, chiding, chiding against
God. And they'd watch a hundred thousand
fall under the wrath of God, and they'd repent, and then they'd
go right back to chiding and murmuring against God. Until finally, God sent fiery
serpents down among them and began to bite the people and
the people began to die and fall on the ground. Nothing they could
do, nothing Moses could do, nothing Aaron could do, nothing anybody
could do. They were dead and dying. The serpents didn't go
away. They kept right on biting, biting,
biting. People just kept right on dying,
dying, dying. But God caused in their hearts,
He caused a turning. And they ran to Moses, and Moses
called upon God, and God provided the serpent that He raised up
on fold. Now He said, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up. Who was He lifted up for? Huh? Everybody that was bitten. That's who he was raised up for.
Everybody was bitten. Anybody that was bitten. It shall come
to pass that when a man was bitten, if he looked on the pole, he
lived. Look on that serpent that God
provided, that God had raised up on that pole. Now, I'm going
to say this at the outset, and I'm going to try to deal primarily
here with John 3.16, for God so loves the world. And it's
not the only place it says that. Not the only place it says that.
I want to deal with this, and this is not the only passage.
The Samaritan woman over in John chapter 4, if you want to turn
over there. The Samaritan woman told her relatives and friends
about Christ, and they went out and heard Him for themselves.
They went out and listened to Him, listened to what He had
to say. And in verse 42, they said unto her, Now we believe.
Not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves,
and know that this indeed is the Christ, the Savior of the
world." Do you see that? In 1 John 2, John's first epistle,
it says, And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours
only, but also for the sins of the whole world. In John 6, verse 33, he says
this, "...for the bread of God is He which cometh down from
heaven and giveth life unto the world." And then back in John 3, in the
very next verse after John 3.16 and John 3.17, he makes this
statement, For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn
the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. And two or three things are important
for you to keep in mind when we study the Scriptures before
we even consider this verse of Scripture. Now, I talk to men
all the time who try to read this book and interpret this
book just by taking the book at face value. Now, I'm going
to tell you something. This is the Word of God, but
it's not meant. It means what it means. It doesn't
necessarily always mean exactly what you think it says. It means
what it means. In 1 Corinthians 2, verse 12,
it says this, Now, I was talking to Sue, she called me this morning
and she was confused about how I arrived at that statement that
I made there in Revelation 6, Tuesday evening. I made a reference
to that, about him riding on the white horse, the holy will
of God. That horse carried him wherever
he went. This was a symbol. The whole
book of Revelations is in symbols, and these symbols talk about
the will of God. You can't find anything that
Christ did outside the will of God, can you? In the volume of
the book, it's written of me, I came to do thy will, O God,
all from front to back. Everything He did. His incarnation,
all that He did. It was the will of God. He said,
I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent
me. And this is the Father's will which has sent me. And on
and on and on He goes throughout the Gospels, telling those Pharisees
and telling those scribes and Sadducees and those that had
put themselves in opposition to Him, that he didn't come here
to glorify himself, he wasn't doing these miracles and these
things to glorify himself, but he came on an errand from God
the Father to do his will. And that's what he did, front
to back. But it says here in 1 Corinthians
2, verse 12, it says, Now we have received not the Spirit
of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things
also we speak not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which
the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. The message of the gospel of
the kingdom of God is a mystery to this world. It's a total,
absolute mystery. You might as well, if you go
talk to a man, any church, I don't care which one it is, go down
the road and pick one. Methodist, I don't care where
it is. Just go down and start getting involved in a conversation
with him about the things of God and he's going to look at
you like you were born on another planet. And he'll just sit there,
where did you get that? Where did that come from? How
did you arrive at that conclusion? And so on, because it's a mystery. That's what he says in 1 Corinthians
2. He says it over and over and
over. I hath not seen nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, any man, any age,
never entered into his heart the things that God hath prepared
for them that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by
His Spirit. And the Spirit of Christ unveils
the gospel, the spiritual kingdom, spiritual Israel. These things
are spiritual. Man looked at Israel for thousands
of years. He's still looking over there
at Israel. You say something even remotely contrary to that
nation of Israel and people go, oh, don't say that, don't say
that. Why? because they still hold value
in natural Israel. God's Israel are spiritual. It's
not that nation over there in the Middle East. God has an Israel.
All that are of Israel, he said, are not Israel. The true Jew is not the Jew who
is a Jew outwardly, but the one who is a Jew inwardly. Ain't
that what he says? These children of the flesh,
he said in Romans chapter 9, these are not the children of
God. But the children of the promise
are counted for the seekers. They are spiritual. And the message
of the gospel is a spiritual message. He went out and he taught. And the scribes and the Pharisees
and all the religious folks, they'd just twist him, turn things
that he said, ask him questions, trying to trap him and all these
type of things. And then when he got by himself,
the disciples were totally confused because they had a lot of honor
and a lot of respect for these elders in the Jewish nation.
They honored those folks. They grew up with them. It's
the only religion they ever knew. And then Christ would get them
aside. And here they are all confused
because Christ and these men that they held in high esteem,
they're in opposition to one another. And they get by themselves. And finally they asked Him, they
said, why do you speak in parables? He said, because to you it's
given. to understand the mysteries of
the kingdom of God, but unto them it's not given. They can't
see it. Why not? It's not given to them
to see. Salvation is a gift. Revelation is a gift. Redemption
is a gift. The calling of the gospel is
a gift. How shall you hear without a preacher? He can't preach unless
God sends him. If God sends him, then what is
it? It's the gift of God. You can't find any part of salvation
that's not a gift of God. Now here, he's talking about
the serpent that was raised up on a pole and Christ who must
be raised up as the object of faith. It's
God's provision for their justification and for the object of their faith.
And then here's another thing you need to keep in mind. We
compare things. The religion of our day, I hope
you'll hear me. Just go home and listen to it.
The religion of our day has based everything it has to say on these
few passages that I read to you this morning, especially John
3.16. If I stand up here this morning
and preach the biblical doctrine of particular redemption, they're
going to turn the inside out. What are you going to do with
John 3.16? I'm not going to do anything with it. It's the Word
of God. Why should I do anything with it? I just need to understand
the difficulty is not in the Word of God. It's not in the
statement. It's in our understanding of the statement. That's where the difficulty is.
It's not in the Word of God. We don't need another translation.
Often I sit down and on my computer I have a study program I think
14 different versions of the Bible there. At a click, I can
get what they all say. They all say the same thing,
basically. Some say it a little differently, but they are basically
saying the same thing. The difficulty is not in the
Word of God. The difficulty is here. It is
here. It is in my ignorance. And the
ignorance of foolish men and the influence of Satan who goes
about to confuse and deceive has created a religion in our
day that believes in a falsehood. They believe that when Christ
died, He died for every individual, every single person without exception
in this world. And these are the passages that
they cite to prove it. And here is another problem over
here in 2 Peter 1, verse 20. He said, knowing this first,
that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. It's not for me, number one,
to privately interpret. It's not for me to do that. And
secondly, it's not to be taken by itself apart from the other
Scriptures. I'm to interpret this Scripture
in the light of all these other things. And that's why I told
Sue this morning, here's how I arrive at that conclusion through
the Gospel. through the gospel. I see who's
riding on a horse, Christ. What carried him to do all that
he did? The will of God. It was the will
of God. God saves men on purpose. This
thing wasn't born sometime in time, out of circumstance. God
does things on purpose. And the fulfilling of His purpose
is the doing according to His will. And even so here, when
he's talking about these things, he's not talking about every
man, woman, and child. There's no way you can take that
interpretation and make it fit the rest of the Scriptures. That's
why I know that he's not talking about, if you just insert all
men without exception, if you'll just insert that in the place
of world and then try to make it fit the rest of the Scriptures,
it ain't going to fit. It ain't going to fit. Now, he
declares that he has an elect people. He declares it some 37
times, not counting the times that he uses the word chose or
chosen, choose, so on, so on, so on. You're not going to make
universal redemption fit those scriptures. It don't fit. It
clashes. So is there a controversy in
the Word of God? No. Controversy is here. It's
in my ignorance. It's in my ignorance. I've spent several Sundays trying
to emphasize who Nicodemus was and all through the first three
chapters talking about the Jews and the Sanhedrin and those who
pitied themselves against Christ. and all these different sects
of the Jews, the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the doctors
and the scribes and the priests and so on. And the general background
of the Jews were of such a mind that only the Jews had any connection
with God at all. And at face value you will find
that declared throughout the Old Testament. He had no dealings
with the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Jebusites or any of the
otherites. He had no dealings with them whatsoever. He didn't
give them a law. He didn't enter into covenants
with them. He didn't do anything with them. He left them alone. He left them out there in darkness.
He left them out there in heathenism and idolatry. He didn't have
anything to do with them whatsoever. He dealt only with the nation
of Israel throughout the Old Testament. And this nation was
a typical nation to typify and show God's spiritual Israel what
it was all about, and how this redemptive work was to be carried
out, and for whom it was carried out. And when Christ came into
the world, the Jew still assumed himself to be the only one with
whom God, and this is the judge, this is how they judged the appearance
of Christ when he came. Because he was saying things
contrary to the Jew, contrary to their way of thinking, contrary
to their beliefs. Then they set their self in opposition
to him and they said, he can't be of God because he, look at him, look at him, he
keeps company with publicans and sinners. God has no dealings
with those folks. Why would he go down there? He's
not of God. He's not of God. He wouldn't
be down there with those publicans and sinners. Look at his disciples. Look who he's called. Look at
these folks. You're going to be hard pressed
in the Old Testament to disagree with the nation of Israel as
being the chosen people of God. I think that's pretty much a
universal accepted thing anymore, isn't it? I don't care where
you go. Any kind of news from any country. That seems to come
up and be the real issue. And I'll guarantee you our presidency
right now is taking those things into consideration because of
the religious beliefs of the world we live in. The world to the Jew was not
every man, woman, and child. It was everybody who wasn't a
Jew. That was the world. And they
say it over and over. Our Lord told them, He said,
now if a man be overtaken in a fault, He said, you go to him.
You yourself, in humility, go to him and try to work it out.
If you can't work it out, go back and get one or two more
and take them with you. Go back down there, talk to him,
try to work it out. If he won't have the two or three
that you took with him, he won't have their witnesses, he won't
listen to you, go back and get the whole church. Bring the whole
church down. and sit down and try to resolve
the matter. If you can't resolve the matter, he said, treat him
like a heathen and a publican. Treat him like the world. That's
what he's saying there. And to the Jew, he didn't include
himself in the world. He included himself as the favored
of God, as the elect of God. You see what I'm saying? And
to him, the ungodly was the world. Now what our Lord is telling
them in John 3, verse 16, that God has a people, not just Jews,
but spiritual Jews out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue
under heaven. That's what He's telling them.
For God so loved the world. You go into those other scriptures
that I read to you. God is going to save all kinds
of people. God's love before the foundation
of the world, all kinds of people, black, white, red, yellow. He's
got people from every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue under
heaven. He told Abraham, he said, through
thy seed all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed.
The blessings of God are going to come to all nations, come
to all nations. So when you read that word, world,
it's not talking about everybody without exception in the world.
You can't read these verses in a sense that they apply to every
man, woman, and child in the world. And if you do, you're
going to run into some difficulties. And I'm just going to give you
a few of them here this morning. If you try to use these verses
to imply that God's will is in some way to save every man, woman,
and child in the world without exception, then you make the
will of God something that can be defeated. And he says, David said, Our
God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath
pleased. Nebuchadnezzar, after conversion,
gave this testimony. He said, He ruleth in the armies
of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
his hand or say unto him, What doest thou? In Isaiah, he made this declaration. He said, I am God, and beside
me there is none other. I declare the end from the beginning. And from ancient times, the things
that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I
will do all My pleasure. You cannot defeat the will of
God. And a belief in universal redemption
defeats the will of God that He declares throughout the Scripture. If it's the will and purpose
to God to save every man, then His will is not sovereign because
some are not saved. Now that's what that does. That's what that does if you
try to apply that to every man, woman, and child. Here's the
second thing. If the giving of the Son is the
ultimate expression of God's love, and He says that it is,
He says it in Romans 5. He says it here in John 3.16.
He says it in 1 Corinthians. He says it throughout the Scripture.
If the giving of His Son is the ultimate expression of God's
love, then His love is not what He declares it to be if that
love is universal in its objects. It cannot be. It cannot be. In Romans 8.28, He said, all things work together
for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according
to His purpose. And then He goes on and tells
you about the means of redemption and predestination and all those
things. And He comes down toward the
end of the chapter and He spends four or five or six verses talking
about the utter impossibility of separating you from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Yet thousands are separated. How can that be? It can't. There's
no way that you can take universal love and apply it to the Scriptures. It don't fit. It's contrary. It goes contrary. It may fit
the passage that you read. It may fit your natural understanding. It may fit the way you were raised.
But it won't fit the Word of God. It won't fit the Word of God. It says in the Corinthians, it
says, Love never faileth. But Judas perished. Pharaoh perished. All the workers of iniquity perished. Then is the love of God defeated?
Is the love of God overturned? Can you see what I'm saying?
This idea of universal love cannot be compared spiritually throughout
the Scriptures. And then you've got some real
problems with this, like over in Romans 9, when he begins to
deal with this thing of election, this election of grace, because
he said it was said unto her before these two children were
ever born or ever having done any good or evil. that the purpose
of God according to election might stand, not of works, but
of him that calleth. It was said unto her, The elder
shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved,
but Esau have I hated." That's the Word of God. You can't take
universal love and make that fit the Scriptures. And then
here's another problem. If the sacrifice of Christ is
meant for everyone without exception, and some for whom He died are
not redeemed, then His sacrifice was not sufficient. And we have
no reason or basis for assurance before God. If He died for Judas, the same
as He died for me, then where is my hope? Where is my hope? Well, the Scripture concluded
all under sin, all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Judas was a sinner. I'm a sinner.
So where's my hope? Judas perished. You see what I'm saying? It takes away my sin. If Christ
died for all men without exception and some perished, then His blood
was not sufficient to take away their sin. Because the only reason
they're going to perish is because of sin. Huh? That's right. What brings us to that spot of
unbelief and that spot of aliens to God, that spot of being enemies
to God, is sin. By one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin, and death passed upon all men." It's
the sin that carries you to these places and alienates you from
God. Our sins have separated between
us and our God. That's what causes the separation.
If He, by the sacrifice of His own blood, takes away sin, then
where's the separation? There is no separation. And so
reconciliation can take place. The gifts can be bestowed, all
these things. They are all based on that sacrifice
of Christ. But if He sacrificed that blood
for all men and some perish, then where is the sufficiency
of the sacrifice? See what I'm saying? Fourthly,
if God so loved everyone without exception, and His intention
was to save all men, but all men are not saved, then God has
suffered change. Now you've got a God that's changed.
He can change. So I can't believe any of His
promises, because if I believe one, He may change His mind. Now think about it, over in the
book of James, he said, Every good gift, every perfect gift,
cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning. But if he promises me life, and
promises me the sufficiency of that sacrifice, and then changes,
then it's not from God, is it? It can't be from God. You just run into all kinds of
problems. If I buy into this thing of universal
love and a universal atonement, then I've substituted faith in
the place of the blood of Christ, and I've exalted my faith on
a higher plane than the redemption of Christ. What I'm really saying
is His sacrifice didn't make the difference, my faith makes
the difference. So where does the glory go? Right? Well, now you've got about 100%
of the Scripture going against you because everything he did,
he did for his own glory. I won't share my glory, he said.
I won't share it. I won't share it. We don't want
to share it. We want it all. That's what unbelievers
want. That's what sin wants. It wants
all the glory. It makes faith the reason for
redemption. And it robs God of His glory.
And what about grace? By grace are you saved. He's going to read it to you
here in just a minute. By grace are you saved through faith and
that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. How are you
going to apply that to universal redemption? Now you've got God
giving gifts that are not really gifts. I give you salvation and
take it back. You cannot in good conscience
and in harmony with the rest of the Scriptures interpret these
passages to mean every individual without exception. And you can't
do it because of the plain declaration of the Word of God. In his intercessory prayer in
John 17, verse 9, he says, I pray for them, I pray not for the
world. You mean he loves all men, but
he only prays for some? You mean he prays for all men,
but he only gives gifts to some? You see what I'm saying? He goes
against the plain declaration of the Word of God. And the books of both 1 and 2
Peter, they're written to what he calls strangers scattered
throughout the world, but elect according to the foreknowledge
of God. Jude begins his letter directing his words to a people
set apart by God the Father, preserved in Jesus Christ and
called. You can't find a single New Testament
official that doesn't in some way identify the writings to
be to God's chosen people. You can't find it. It ain't there.
It ain't there. And John's second official, he
just starts out and he says, to the elect lady. Why didn't
he just say lady? Because he wasn't talking to
every lady, he was talking to the elect lady. That's right. Paul tells the Thessalonians
in his first letter that he knew their election of God, and in
his second letter he tells them that God had from the beginning
chosen them to salvation. In Acts 13.48, Paul and Barnabas,
God had separated him to be a missionary to the Gentiles. And being separated,
he went to Antioch and he preached, and the Jews wouldn't have it,
and he said, okay, I turn to the Gentiles. And they received
what he said gladly, and here's what it says. He said, as many
as were ordained to eternal life Believed. Ain't that what it
says? So when he's talking about, for God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life. He's talking about his
elect throughout the world. Throughout the world. And we
go and we preach. I preach to all men. I have no
bias to whom I preach. I preach anywhere I have an open
door to preach. But I don't preach expecting
somebody, something in somebody, some bit of potential in somebody. I preach knowing that God has
a people and that He's going to redeem these people. He's
going to call these people. He's going to reconcile these
people. And one day He's going to glorify them. That's my hope
before God. And this is what He's trying
to teach here in Romans. He's not trying. This is what
He is teaching right here in John chapter 3. For God so loved
the world. God so loved the world. Lord
bless you and give you an understanding of His Word.