God Is Not Done

Well, please remain standing for the reading of God's Word if you would turn your Bibles to John chapter 3. We'll preach from John 3, 16, but I'll begin reading at verse 14 of John chapter 3.

This is Jesus, of course, speaking to Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel. In verse 14, he says, and 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. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

God bless that reading, and now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. It is well said by many commentators and theologians through the years that 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, that that is the thematic statement of the entire fourth gospel.

Now, that's a bit arguable, because there's others that you could place the entire gospel in that schematic for.

But this is really at least one of them, one of the most prominent of those verses in this gospel, that set the tone for all that follows.

Here's Jesus Christ, who Nicodemus came to at night, or he went to Jesus at night, and the teacher of Israel being instructed on the need for rebirth, new birth.

And he says, can a man go into a womb a second time, just not getting it, and that whole discussion that most of us are so familiar with.

But this afternoon, to encourage us in our prayer, to prepare our hearts for going to the

Lord together as we do each Sunday afternoon, just this verse, and a simple exposition of it,

I'm gonna leave a lot on the table, because there's a lot in this verse, could take such a long time to go through. This thematic statement that really sets the tone for everything, and has words to speak to us here this day, this afternoon.

You know, when I first saw John 3 .16 in writing, was a long time before I was a

Christian. It was at Monday Night Football, on TV. Now, I wasn't at any of the games, but that was back when

Monday Night Football was the only premier football game. There wasn't two games on Monday night like they have now.

There wasn't Thursday Night Football, which is a version of Sunday Night, or Monday Night, and then there's Sunday Night now.

Back then, it was only Monday Night Football. That was the premier event. And remember, have you ever seen, you can find this easily on YouTube, if you want, there were some people who were always able to get this banner behind one of the goal posts, in the bleachers there, that said

John 3 .16, you seen that? Look it up sometime after church, you'll see that. The old

Monday Night Football games, the people would be behind the goal post, so they paid a lot for those seats, and there's this huge banner,

John 3 .16. And I asked my wife what that was, and she's a Christian, it was before I was converted, she says, well, it's just the most famous verse in the

New Testament. And I knew nothing about it, but there it was, John 3 .16. Later, when

I became a Christian, I began to realize, of course, the importance of it. And the last thing

I'll tell you about my experience with John 3 .16, way, way, way back, before we actually get into this message, was right here at this church.

The first time I came to this church in the fall of 1999, Pastor George was still the pastor, and he preached, and as he was preaching, as I was watching things and being a part of things,

I thought, I feel like this is the church I should stay at, and of course we did. But after that first day,

I was sitting just about where this gentleman is, and after the final amen, before I stood up,

I was surrounded by this forest of these big, heavily girthed, tall, heavily bearded men.

And before they asked me my name, they said, John 3 .16, who's the world? I said, well, my name's

Josh, glad to be here to worship with you, well, who do you think the world is? They said, well, the world is the world, right?

No, it's the world of the elect. Well, this verse has had that kind of controversy for a long time.

The Arminian points to this verse, and he says, well, look, he loved the world, he gave his son that, whoever believes, so all you have to do is believe, exercise your faith.

That really freights this too much, because that's not at all what Jesus is saying. And then the starchy, reformed person answers back, said, no, the world means the world of the elect.

That's clear, that's obvious, and that freights it too much on the other side. Both are wrong. We can take

John 3 .16 on its own merits at this point in the gospel, and just for those of us who are reformed and properly have a view of the sovereignty of God and that God is the only and the sole acting agent in salvation, understand this, that what

Jesus said here to Nicodemus and what we're going to take apart really pretty briefly this afternoon, we can take on its own merits exactly as he meant it this early in the gospel.

Now, predestination and God's sovereignty, and no one can come to the father unless the son reveals him, and no one can come to the son unless the father sends him to the son.

God is absolutely the sole agent in salvation, right? But here in this gospel, this early, before those theologies are well -developed by John and give us that certain and sure foundation for our faith, this early in the gospel, we can just take it for what he meant and for who he was talking to and for the author,

John, the evangelist, as we call him, not having developed everything but setting us up for those developments so that when we get to the end of the book, we are sure that God has predestined a people, and it's a particular people, who benefited from Christ's death.

Let's look at this verse then. This afternoon, we're gonna take it just at face value, and we're going to look at what it means to us here in prayer this afternoon.

The title of my message is God has not given up. God has not given up. God has not given up on Israel then, and this is really the message to Nicodemus.

He's saying, you need to be reborn. It's not that God has abandoned. He's given the way that was always meant to be.

All the traditions, the word of God, the oracles, the prophets, all these things that Israel has had, these precious gifts,

Romans 3, what advantage then has a Jew? Much in every way, and yet missed the rebirth, the new birth.

Part of the message to Nicodemus then as the teacher of Israel is going to teach Israel this. The reason you can be reborn is because God has not given up.

To say God has not given up, it almost says too little, because God doesn't give up on something like, okay, this didn't work, and I've got to go back.

God's plans are eternal. They never were not, and they never will not come to pass, but God has not given up, and he is not finished, and this is sort of the message that Nicodemus is to bring back to Israel.

Tell them to be reborn. Tell them to have faith in me. Tell them that God is still working today, and that's one of those themes that works throughout this gospel.

Jesus told the Pharisees that my Father is working, and I am working to this day, thus making himself equal to the

Father. What's our context here? Beyond this nighttime conversation and meeting between Nicodemus and Jesus, I started at verse 14, and Jesus clearly takes his work, the thing that the

Father sent him for, back to the bronze serpent, back to Numbers chapter 20, when the

Lord sent those snakes, the serpents among the people, and they bit, and many of them died, and God told

Moses, make a bronze serpent and lift it up high, and whoever looks upon it will live and not die, and what does

Jesus say? That what is that bronze serpent about? It's about me and the work

I was sent to do for the Father. So as the serpent was lifted high and gazed upon with eyes of faith, and that brought healing, so the

Son of Man from heaven will be lifted high so that those who look upon him with eyes of faith shall be healed not of viper venom, but of sin, and of the penalty for it, and of eternal perishing.

So God had not then, has not now given up on the world, he never did. Everlasting to everlasting in all things, be they ever so large and dramatic, or minuscule and mundane, all things are under his direct, his sovereign control, all designed for and moving towards an exhibition of his glory.

So with that serpent in the background, and we'll come back to him, or come back to it a bit later, let's just go quickly through John 3, 16.

In the way we were taught in grade school, at least I was, look at who, what, when, where, why, and how about verse 3, 16.

We called them the five W's. Who, what, when, where, how, and why.

So who is the acting agent here? Who is Jesus talking about in verse 3, 16?

With that bronze serpent kind of waiting in the background, just 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. The who is clearly

God the Father. He's the agent who acts. Jesus spoke of his incarnation pretty often, but in John's Gospel especially, he spoke of having been sent.

So what we have here is not just the God the Father sending his Son, but there's authority there.

Because the Father can have authority to send the Son. The Son, as Jesus, when he walked in this world, he says so often in the

Gospel of John, he subordinated himself to the Father's will. It's not like sometimes he turned on humanity and did something human.

Other times he turned on divinity and did something miraculous. No, he was one. There was no confusion between his humanity and his deity.

And yet, in his humanity, subordinated himself to the Father's will, came to do the

Father's will, and so the Father sends the Son. He didn't send you or me or anything like that.

He sent his only begotten Son. He is the acting agent here. He is the sovereign one. Now we know from Ephesians chapter one and the opening of it that God determined all this before the foundation of the world.

So John is really writing in space and time here about the sending. So the who is God the Father. He's the acting agent.

He's the agent of salvation. He's the one who sends his Son to bring salvation. It's all to God's glory.

So what? What did he do? Well, we've already talked about it. He sent his Son. But let's go back a little bit.

He so loved the world. The original language is really close to so loved the world that we have in English, but it's like in this manner,

God loved the world. Because of this love, we could say, because of the way God loved the world, he did something.

Now saying he loved the world, we don't have to dice that up and say, okay, he loved the elect and the elect only and all the others he hates because he hates sinners every day, as the psalmist says.

We don't need to do that here. We can view this as simply what Jesus said. God is looking upon this world, what he created, what he spoke into existence, and six times said, let there be, let there be.

And each time it was good until he made bad, and it was very good, and God rested. He's looking upon that world he created, that place that is to be our home.

We said, go forth to subdue the earth, be fruitful and multiply. Ephesians chapter three says, it's the place he made so that the church would be in existence upon it, and that we would then declare the manifold glories of Christ.

It's Ephesians chapter three. God looks upon that world, and he loved the world. Now that does not mean that he loved every person on the world ubiquitously and promiscuously and said,

I'm gonna save them all because I love them all. That's not what it's saying here. We don't need to freight it with all that.

He's looking upon that which he made, and he loves that which he made because he made it, and he makes no mistakes, and all that he does is good, and because of that world and that love that he has for the world, he sent his son to it.

It's as simple as that. He loved the world, and he gave his son. So the who is God. The what is that he loved, and he gave.

He loved the world. He gave his son to the world. The when, there's two whens.

The first when is about 2 ,000 years ago, and that would answer also the where,

Bethlehem. A little bit more than 2 ,000 years ago, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. God became flesh and dwelt among us.

He became flesh when he was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem about 2 ,000 years ago.

So that's the when, and the where I said is in Bethlehem. The other when we've already talked about before all time.

There was never a moment when God and the Son and the Spirit did not have this covenant together to effect our salvation.

So God the Father, loving, giving, about 2 ,000 years ago in the flesh, before all time and intent in Bethlehem.

And the why. Why did he act? Well, he acted for love, but why?

To what purpose? Well, the first purpose was to save people. He says it right there in the verse, does it not?

He says, for God so loved the world. In this manner, because of this love that he had, he gave his only

Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The why is to save.

The why is to take us from the pool of perishing persons to the pool of not perishing.

In other words, from perishing to salvation. From eternal death to eternal life.

Eternal death, just as a quick aside, if you read in Thessalonians, it speaks of eternal dying. Not dying as you have death at any point.

Eternally dying, eternally in the stages of death, but never quite getting there. And this is the kind of perishing that Jesus speaks of here that he came to save people from.

To save people from themselves, really. Save us from our sin.

But more accurately, as R .C. Sproul used to point out, what we really need to be saved from is God. From the wrath of God.

The consequences of our sin. Now back to that serpent, which is part of the why.

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.

The word must is from the Greek D, D -E -I, if you want to transliterate it.

And it has the flavor of something that is necessary, something that really must be done.

As Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Let's put the emphasis back, so must the

Son of Man be lifted up. There's no other name given to men under heaven by which they must be saved. And there's no other way to be saved other than the cross of Jesus Christ and faith therein, that on that cross he died for your sins.

There's no other appropriation we can make other than, it's like in Galatians 2 .19, speaking of the

Son of Man, the Son of God, excuse me, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. And so must here does have some freight to it.

It does have some that we can load upon it. Must be lifted up.

Must be lifted up because it's the Father's will. Must be lifted up because it's the only way you can not perish but have eternal life.

By Jesus, by his sacrifice, by his death, by faith in him, that's why it must be lifted up.

There's salvation in no one else, no other name under heaven given among men by which you must be saved, only

Jesus. It must be lifted up because it's the

Father's will. Then I said, Hebrews 10 .7, behold, I have come to do your will,

O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. John 12, 27, and 28,

Jesus speaks of the same kind of imperative when he says, now is my soul troubled, and what shall

I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven, I have glorified it and I will glorify it.

The Son of Man must be lifted up to effect our salvation. The Son of Man must be lifted up because it's

God's will. The Son of Man must be lifted up because by that God is glorified. Now is the

Son of Man glorified when the cross was now rising up out of the ground as it were and becoming more and more prominent in the end of his days on earth.

He told Pilate, you say that I'm a king for this purpose I was born in, for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice, must. Must be lifted up because that is the truth of God in Christ.

That's the truth of God by the prophets who came before him. That's the truth of God that the law was to point us to.

It's the truth of God that everything in Israel's history and all the past was to have a trajectory towards.

Jesus Christ, his perfect life, his sacrifice for our sin, the cross upon which he bore our sin, must also because of love.

See when John writes for God so loved the world, that word for means as a consequence, as a logical consequence or ramification of what came before, here's what

I have to say. So when he says for God so loved the world, the for then relates up to those first two verses we read.

Back to the serpent. For that reason stated, because of that serpent, because he was lifted up, because he was lifted up and people looked upon the serpent and were healed of the poison, because of that, because God loved so much that he kept them from perishing in the wilderness, for that reason, the son of man must make the ultimate fulfillment of what that pointed to, of what that really meant.

And it's after the serpent in the wilderness, it's after that that we get for God so loved the world. The love of God now poured into the hearts of his people.

The other why is to save people from perishing, as we've said. We know that to believe in Jesus means to not perish.

The Greek has in the word, where we have the word that, the Greek has a more powerful word meaning the purpose for this.

The intent behind it, and it's a stronger word than just that, but we can say in order that, for this very purpose, that men should not perish.

Unless God's purposes were somehow thwarted, which they never will be, but unless they were, people were, have been, and are being saved.

And so we could say that God has not given up. You see, God sent Jesus to save people,

God sent Jesus to fulfill the Old Testament, and God has sent Jesus' word today.

He's ascended, he's at the Father's right hand, and when he was there, when he first went there, who did he send?

He sent men, the 12 apostles, to found the church upon the foundation of the death, burial, and resurrection of himself.

And today, is God done? No, today he has churches, he has us, he has saints like you and me, ordinary people, carrying on that evangelistic fervor.

That's what it means when he says that they may not perish. That we declare his word, that we bring forth his salvation.

We'll pray in a little while, in just a few minutes. Lord willing, in just a couple minutes, we'll stop and we'll pray.

We're gonna pray for the ministries of this church, that we declare that you are going to perish unless you believe in this one, and have eternal life.

And here are the two choices, they're that stark. Perish life. Jesus came and declared that during his entire life.

He sent the apostles after his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Sent the apostles, and now as worthy apostles send us, because they're the ones who gave us this completed word of God, by which we have the words of life.

Why the image of the serpent, that leads to this most famous of New Testament verses? Because serpents were killing those people.

Like in Genesis three, a serpent came and brought death. It's like saying, when they lift up the serpent, the bronze serpent, it's like, look at what you've chosen.

For them back then, it was look with regret, look with repentance, but look with eyes of faith. Because Moses said, if you look at the serpent, you will live.

Who would believe that? Logically, you couldn't. But with faith, they were saved.

They were saved from the poison. They were saved from the adders, or whatever those serpents were. Now look, now look.

Not a serpent that brings death and eternal perishing, but a savior who brings life.

So the bronze serpent, because of love, for God so loved that people that he had drawn out of Egypt, even with their grumbling and complaining.

Now in Jesus, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

He gave his son. Abraham was told to give his son what he was ready to do, but God didn't take it.

God didn't take Isaac, but gave a substitute for him. Just as he should take us, and yet gave a substitute for us in Jesus Christ.

So God hadn't given up on Israel. He sent Jesus to save, to save people, to explain to them, to explain to the teacher of Israel the truth that he always understood, that he had all the groundwork for, all the foundation for, but didn't see.

Jesus was working. After he ascended on high, he sent the apostles. Jesus is working today in and through the church.

And this means something, and with this we will close. That means he is working today. When Jesus told the

Pharisees and John that my father is working and I am working to this day, brethren, by his spirit, he continues that work.

He continues that work in and with all of us, in you individually, where the Holy Spirit dwells, and in us as a church, as a congregated people.

He's still working. He's bringing you through hard times. Perhaps he's giving you some easier times.

In all these things, making you more and more like Jesus Christ. And if you don't believe in him, then this is a message also for repentance, that God sent one way to himself, and one way to himself because there's only two choices other than coming to him by faith in his son,

Jesus Christ. Perish or eternal life. Know that God is continuing this work of salvation.

Know that God is still saving people today. Know that you and I have no idea who the elect is, so let us, as God so loved the world and gave his son ubiquitously, and we could say promiscuously, so also we need to declare this good news that we have.

And so also we need to pray with fervency when we close and go to the Lord in prayer together.

Amen? Let me pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you, Father, for the love of God that you showed in sending your son, and for the love of God that is poured out in our hearts.

I pray, Father, that as we proceed, that we would be confident in that love, that we would know that you,

Father, sent your son to save us, and that we were saved by Jesus Christ when he says it's finished, it was finished indeed, so we are indeed saved.

But, Lord, may we be those who declare this with courage and with clarity, and,

Lord, that Jesus Christ would be glorified, that we would bring people to look upon him and be saved by having faith in him,

Father, faith that only you can give. So, Lord, continue to accomplish this great work that Jesus started, even through us, we ask in his name, amen.