So this is John chapter 3, verse 11 through 21.
Jesus says,
Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen,
but you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe,
how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And as Moses lifted up the servant 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.
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.
Not because he has not believed in the name,
condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Verse 19.
And this is the judgment.
The light has come into the world,
and people have loved 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 shall be exposed.
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.
This is the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God.
Thanks be to God.
You may be seated.
Let's pray.
Father, we come before you once again.
You know what is in man.
You know what we lack.
You know what we need today.
So we ask, Lord, in the words of that ancient prayer,
once again, as your people,
this little congregation,
gathered in the name of King Jesus,
we ask that what we know not,
you will teach us.
What we have not this morning,
please give us.
And what we are not yet,
make us, Lord,
for your glory.
Amen.
Well, on January 6th, 1815,
there was a snowy blizzard in England,
and there was a young man
who would normally walk to a church a bit farther away,
and he grew up in a Christian home.
But this young man
found himself not being able to go to his normal path,
so instead,
he went to this chapel that was a little bit closer.
And for months now,
he had felt so miserable.
He was under deep conviction of his sin.
He had no assurance that he was truly saved.
And in this little chapel closer to a home
that he'd never been to before,
there he sat.
Very few people showed up in that blizzardy morning.
And it was actually not even the pastor.
It was another member of the congregation,
a lay man who had just prepared.
He had one verse to preach,
and it was Isaiah 45, verse 22,
which says this,
Look to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth,
for I am God,
and there is no other.
And the man just kept repeating that over and over.
Look to me and be saved.
This is what Jesus says to you.
Look to me and be saved.
And he called the young man out in front of everyone.
He said,
Young man, teenager,
you look miserable.
You look miserable.
Look to Christ.
Don't live in fear of condemnation forever.
Look to Christ and have eternal life.
Don't believe in your worth or all your shortcomings.
Don't let Satan attack you.
Just look to Christ.
He promises you will be saved
if you simply look to him.
Well, this teenager felt the call to follow Christ.
Christ became Lord of his life.
He started devouring his dad's and grandpa's libraries,
reading the old Puritans,
and he became a popular pastor in London,
in the Victorian era,
named Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
That's how God saved Charles Spurgeon.
And Charles Spurgeon said,
Once a year,
he wants to make it his humble practice
to preach a sermon on John 3.16.
The reason is because he says,
There is nothing I or any preacher can say on John 3.16
that has not been said already.
And when, not if, but when,
God moves by the power of his spirit
through those words,
he will know,
and everyone will know,
it's not the ministry of the people.
It's the work of Christ.
It's the gospel of Jesus Christ
so that no man can boast or take credit.
John 3.16 is our text for today.
It's been described as an ocean of gospel truth
in a drop of words.
Martin Luther called it the miniature gospel.
And on his deathbed,
Martin Luther wanted to hear John 3.16
over and over and over.
It's the whole story of how God saves sinners in a verse.
There was a missionary named Henry Knott,
and he traveled part of William Carey's mission movement
from London as well.
He traveled to the Polynesian Islands.
So picture going to Hawaii,
you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
you go south.
That's where Polynesian Islands are.
One of the islands is called Tahiti.
So it's basically between Hawaii and New Zealand, Australia.
That's where Tahiti is.
And this missionary, Henry Knott,
the first sentence he wanted to learn
in the language of the Tahitians
was John 3.16.
And as they began that project
of trying to now translate verse by verse
into the language of the people of this island,
the first verse he wanted to translate
was John 3.16.
Look in your Bible.
In the ESV, John 3.16 reads like this.
Now, in verses 15, 16, and 18,
look at verse 15.
The phrase is,
whoever believes in him.
You see that in verse 15?
Whoever believes in him.
In verse 16, that's what we read.
Whoever believes in him.
And then verse 18, it's that same promise.
Whoever believes in him.
In the Greek, it's literally translated
anyone believing into him.
So believing in Christ is believing into Christ.
And that's significant because through faith,
you are united to Jesus Christ.
And his righteousness becomes your righteousness.
His love with the Trinity,
Father, Son, and Spirit becomes your love now.
You get pulled in to the work of Christ
by being in him,
by believing into Jesus.
So church, that's really the message for today.
And I want you to hear it
from Jesus Christ.
Jesus himself is the one
who urges you this day.
Look to me and be saved.
All the ends of the earth.
For I am God.
And there is no other.
Believe into Christ and have eternal life.
My prayer is simply that you'll understand
the meaning of our Lord Jesus
with those glorious words.
And I'm going to try to open this for you
in just two ways.
The first one is the first part of the verse.
For God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son.
And what I want to emphasize with that
is what is true of God.
And that's the first half.
The second half is what is true of you
that whoever believes in him
or into him should not perish
but have eternal life.
So what is true of God first?
Second, what is true of you?
What is true of God?
For God so loved the world.
Number one, this is true.
Jesus Christ came to reveal to you
that God is love.
Jesus reveals that God is love.
Look at verse 17 as confirmation.
I'm pulling in these surrounding verses
as context for verse 16.
So verse 17 we read that God did not send
his Son into the world
to condemn the world.
See, God so loved the world
that's why he sent his Son.
The very first cause of Jesus' mission
is the love of God.
And it's so significant
because of two things.
Number one, the loveliness of God's love.
Number two, the worldliness of the world.
Both of those things make the love of God
just something that's mind-blowing.
So first of all, the loveliness of God's love.
Well, we're told in 1 John 4, verse 16
that God is love.
We know that God is, from his scripture,
God is eternal.
So God is love and God is eternal.
Therefore, God loves beyond measurement
of time and space.
We know from the Bible that God is infinite.
You know what that means about God's love?
God's love has no limits in Christ.
We know that God is unchangeable.
So he loves in an unchanging way
all those who are united to Christ.
We know from the Bible that God is powerful.
So God loves powerfully.
When he displays his saving love through Jesus,
it works powerfully on all those
who will be believing into him
because the Spirit's regenerating them powerfully.
We know that God is perfect.
God is immeasurable.
And God is wise.
So the love of God shown to you in Jesus Christ
is perfect.
It is wise.
And there's no measurement in human standards
of the love of God.
Do you see how lovely the love of God is?
Now the verse says,
God, this God we're talking about,
so loved the world.
Well, the connotation for the word world,
in the Greek it's cosmos.
And so you can even picture that magazine
as you're going to check out of the grocery store,
cosmopolitan.
It really means worldly.
God so loved the worldly world.
God so loved the cosmos.
It doesn't mean to emphasize how big it is.
It means to emphasize how bad the world is.
That's how that connotation is always used.
So all nations,
no matter what tribe you're from,
Israel, Tahiti,
anywhere else in the world,
all are part of this fallen,
depraved, dark world.
And it's God divinely loving,
perfectly, wisely loving,
this fallen, worldly world.
To prove to you that this is
how that word is normally used,
the same author,
1 John,
in 1 John chapter 2,
verses 15 through 17.
He writes,
go ahead and turn there.
Let's turn a few pages.
1 John chapter 2,
verses 15 through 17.
Every time I come to the word world,
I'm going to say cosmos.
So you get the picture.
It's the same word.
1 John 2, 15, 17.
Here's what John wrote.
Verse 15,
Do not love the cosmos
or the things of the cosmos.
If anyone loves the cosmos,
the love of the Father is not in him.
Do you get the picture?
The world is worldly.
If you're loving the things
of this fallen, depraved world,
then the love of God
is clearly not in you.
Those are incompatible.
Verse 16,
For all that is in the world,
the desires of the flesh,
the desires of the eye,
and the pride of life
is not from the Father,
but is from the world.
Verse 17,
And the world is passing away
along with its desires,
but whoever does the will of God
abides forever.
Now, if God is holy,
but yet God loves this fallen,
bad, dark world,
how does that even work?
How can it be that such a holy God
would love the world?
And that's exactly what Jesus shows us.
It's only with the selfless,
costly love of redemption
that God can love those
who are still in the world
and love them to save them
out of the world.
John Calvin put it this way,
Jesus does not say that God
was moved to deliver us
because he perceived in us
something that was worthy
of so excellent a blessing,
but he ascribes the glory
of our deliverance
entirely to God's love.
You see why it's important
that this holy God
shows his love to a fallen world?
It's so that none of us
can boast of anything worthy in us.
Why did God save me
and not the person next to me?
Why did he save my family
and not this family
on the other side of the world?
It has nothing to do
with how good you are.
It has everything to do
with the wise, powerful,
perfect love of God
to redeem anyone,
any sinner out of this fallen world
so that God gets all the glory.
See, left to itself,
this worldly world is in death.
And how is it that God loves the world?
Well, think about it.
Every one of these disciples
and everyone who is truly united in Christ
was of the world.
So God loved you
while you were yet in the world.
That's how he loves the world.
In John 15, 19, we read,
If you were of the world,
the world would love you as its own.
But because you are not of the world,
but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world now hates you.
So they are the world.
You are the world
until God saves you
through Jesus Christ.
And it's the gospel
that comes first to those
in darkness,
pulling them out now
and giving them life eternal,
life of the age to come now.
So what is true of God?
It's true that God so loved the world
that Jesus Christ came to reveal
the love of God.
It's also this,
that Jesus was given.
See, our verse says that
God in his love gave Jesus.
That's our second truth of God
is that Jesus Christ is sent
on a sacrificial mission.
We can confirm this
with the second half of verse 17.
Look at verse 17.
We're told God sent his son
in order that the world
be saved through him.
The mission of Jesus,
it was sacrificial,
being sent by the Father
so that the world
could be saved through him.
See, Jesus in the gospel of John
is on the move.
He is going and coming.
He's ascending and descending
and it's language of a trip.
Scholars have noted
how there are three times
where John points out
Jesus is taking a trip
up to Jerusalem.
So he's singing those psalms
of ascent going up
through Jerusalem
and it's really his way
of journeying back to his Father.
The fourth time
when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem,
it's on his trip to the cross.
And so the cross
was one of the stations
on his trip of ascending
back to the Father.
See, God gave his son.
He said,
Son, you go into that dark world
and the way that you redeem
sinners out of it
is you will go through the cross
and you will bring many sons
and daughters to glory with you.
It was the active
and passive obedience
of Jesus in the body.
That was his mission.
And then through the cross,
he leads us like a parade,
ascending up to heaven
to be with the Father.
But before he could ascend
in glory,
first he had to descend.
This is what all the New Testament
is proclaiming.
Philippians 2.8,
being found in human form,
he humbled himself.
himself.
He's made low.
He's descending
by becoming obedient
to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
This is what the church
has called
the humiliation of Christ.
And Benjamin Keech's
catechism
in the 1600s,
he summarizes scripture
this way.
Christ's humiliation
consisted in his being born.
Even his incarnation
was him being made low.
That in a low condition,
made under the law.
He was born into Israel
under this principle of works
that they had to merit life
in Israel.
Under the law,
undergoing the miseries
of this life.
Have you felt miseries
of this life this week?
I'm sure every single one
of us has.
Jesus took on flesh
so he could be
your representative.
There's not a temptation
that you face,
you'll face this upcoming week
that Christ himself
has not fought
and conquered for you.
And on the cross,
he bore the wrath of God
for sin,
for your sin.
And the curse of death
on the cross,
and being buried,
and then continuing
under the power of death
for some time,
three days,
made low,
as low as can be.
So what was
the mission of Jesus?
Please turn to Isaiah 53.
We read,
in our assurance of pardon,
that by his wounds,
we have been healed
from Isaiah 53 as well.
So turn to Isaiah 53,
and I want to show you
the covenant of redemption
in these verses.
Isaiah 53,
looking at verse 12.
So in your Bible,
you can look,
we read earlier,
verse 3 through 5.
He was despised
and rejected
by men made low.
And then verse 5,
it was the chastisement
of Christ
that brought us peace,
and by his wounds
we are healed.
How did this fulfill
the Father's plan
and the Father's will?
Look at verse 12.
The Father now says,
I will divide him.
So the Father
will give to the Son
a portion
with the many,
and he shall divide
the spoil
with the strong.
So you need to understand
the language Isaiah
is grabbing here
to paint this picture.
If you have a mighty emperor
with a general,
the general would be sent out
by the emperor,
you know,
by the king,
the supreme ruler,
send out a mighty general.
The general would conquer
and fulfill the mission
and bring back the spoils.
And the spoils
would be divided
with his soldiers
and being brought back
to the empire.
So that's the language
Isaiah is borrowing
to say the Father
sent the Son
on a mission.
He gave his Son
sacrificially
so that then
when the Son returns,
he ascends back
to heaven victorious.
The Father rewards him.
He lacked nothing,
but he made himself empty
so that his reward
could be you.
You who believe,
you who are purchased
by the blood of Christ,
you are the reward
that the Father
gives to the Son
for his mission accomplished.
Look at the rest
of verse 12.
Why?
Why can this be?
Because he poured out
his soul to death
and was numbered
with the transgressors.
He put his lot
with yours.
He was humbled
and he said,
those who have offended
the mighty God,
I am with them.
I'm among them
and from their midst
I will redeem them.
And now where is Jesus?
Because he bore
the sins of many,
he makes intercession
for the transgressors.
So he loved the world
and he bore the sins of,
what's the next word?
He bore the sins
of many out of the world.
See, his love is wise
and not a drop
of Christ's blood
is wasted
and God is powerful
and when God saves,
he actually saves.
And now he intercedes
and he's wise
and perfect.
He doesn't waste his prayer
because when he prays,
it happens.
And that's what
our hymn captures.
We sing,
before the throne
of God above,
I have a strong
and perfect plea.
Who is it
that prays powerfully
this strong plea?
That's a perfect plea.
What Jesus prays happens.
It comes from the lips
of the high priest
whose name is love.
And like Hebrews says,
he ever lives
and pleads for me.
Can you find comfort
that the Father
in his love
gave Jesus
to redeem you,
to ransom you
out of the worldly world?
And he gave his only son,
our verse says,
so Jesus Christ
is the promised son.
And we hear son of God
and son of man.
Scripture uses both
to describe Jesus.
Both are fulfilling prophecies.
Our catechism captured that.
He must be fully divine
and without sin.
And he also must be
a representative head.
He must become one
with the transgressors
to redeem us.
So one person,
the son,
according to his human
and divine nature,
Jesus Christ,
fully satisfying the will
and the wisdom
of the Father.
Verse 13,
look at that.
Jesus says,
no one has ascended
into heaven
except the one
who descended from heaven,
the son of man.
He's most likely alluding
to Daniel chapter 7,
verse 13.
Daniel has this vision.
Listen how both are combined.
In Daniel's vision,
he says,
behold,
with the clouds of heaven,
so a heavenly spiritual being
with the clouds of heaven,
there came one
like a son of man.
See,
he's a son of man.
He's identifying
with the transgressors,
but he's from the clouds
of heaven.
He's from the spiritual,
eternal realm
where God dwells.
Jesus says,
you can believe me.
I'm trustworthy
because I'm from heaven.
That's why I'm here.
And he says,
no one can share with you
unless they've ascended.
You know,
you have to know God in heaven
in order to make him
revealed on earth.
And so to ascend to heaven
means that Jesus alone
is the pure knowledge
of the mysteries of God.
and he is the light
of spiritual understanding.
We know Jesus,
his permanent dwelling
is with the father
because Mark 16,
19 says,
then the Lord Jesus,
after he had spoken
to the disciples,
so there's again,
according to his human nature,
even after the resurrection,
speaking with them,
he shared food with them.
So Jesus,
in the glorified body
with his disciples,
so that's the son of man,
he was then taken up
from them
into heaven
and sat down
at the right hand
of God,
who is spirit.
See how glorious
our Christ is?
Jesus' return
to the glory
that he had with the father
before the world began
was accomplished
by him being lifted up
on the cross.
And it is this exaltation now
that draws sinners
to him.
In the book of John,
just like in the book of Isaiah,
is the suffering servant
who's also exalted.
It's through his humiliation
that he's been lifted up
on high
so that all can behold him.
To be lifted up
means that he's set
on display
so that all the world
can see
and believe in him.
And that's why Christ now,
from heaven,
urges you
this morning, church,
look to me
and be saved,
all the ends
of the earth,
for I am God
and there is no other.
Believe into Christ
and have eternal life.
You might be thinking,
it's hard for me
to accept such glorious truth.
And it is,
unless the Spirit
gives you a heart
to believe.
But I want to share
with you a story
from missionaries
in the 1700s
of a very dark,
worldly part
of the world.
So we could read
this verse like this,
For God so loved
the Tahitians.
And this comes
from the biography
of Henry Knott
that I mentioned
a moment ago
called The Herald
of the Love of God
to Tahiti
by Eugene Meyer Harrison
written almost
a hundred years ago.
There were reports
from Captain Cook
who had traveled
the Pacific Ocean
that there's a people
in Tahiti
that were a warring people.
They're always at war.
They idolized revenge.
And they had this weapon
and it was specifically
to be used for revenge.
So we go to war,
one tribe against the other.
The losing tribe,
you'd have a few that win
and they flee into the mountains.
They would not leave them alone.
They would go hunt them down.
And they made a special weapon
taking the tail
of three different stingrays
and they loosely attached it
to a long pole.
And they would chase their enemy
and they would spike it
into their body
so that it would come
detached from the pole.
And those stingray tails,
they have barbs on them
so it goes into the flesh
and does not come out easily.
These Tahitians,
they had a very strong sense
of their own judgment
that they would receive
for their wickedness.
But they did it
by appeasing these gods.
So they fashioned gods
out of birds,
turtles,
and sharks.
And these animals,
and also the sun and the moon,
these gods
that they made idols out of,
they had axes and swords
and hammers
that were used to punish you
if you did not pay them
for your sins.
So they had that,
you know,
Romans 1,
that sin was imprinted
on their heart.
They killed two-thirds
of their babies
upon their birth.
They would make alcohol
out of this fruit
called kava.
And they were said
to be almost universally drunk
and acting more like demons
than human beings.
There was a special,
like,
religious class among them
that would paint their bodies
in dark charcoal
and then make their faces white.
And they were terrifying.
There were these two sailors,
one from Sweden,
who landed there
and they were translators
because they just had to survive
and so they learned the language.
And they had made
several observations.
They wrote down
that they would take
the infirmed
or the weak
or the elderly among them
and they would walk them
out to the ocean
like these beautiful beaches
of Pacific Ocean,
huge palm trees,
and they'd pretend
like they're going to bathe them.
But instead,
they had already dug out
a hole in the sand
and they would tip
their own family members
into that hole
and kill them with stones
and bury them
and leave them there
and then go back
and steal all their possessions.
Now, hold on.
We just read that God
so loved the world.
God loves the Tahitians?
How could this be?
They had a temple
to these idols,
these gods of theirs,
and the pillar
of one of the temples
was made up.
I'm not going to share
more details,
but it was made up
of human sacrifices.
And God loved,
somehow,
these Tahitians
and he would save them?
How could this be?
See, Jesus says
that this way of the cross,
going through the cross,
before he ascends
to be in the glory
of the Father,
in John chapter 12,
verse 26,
he says,
whoever comes after me
must take up his cross
and follow me.
So the way of life
in Christ
is the way of the cross.
And in John chapter 20,
verse 21,
Jesus says
to all who are his disciples,
as the Father sent me,
so I am sending you.
And there was this man
back in England
at the same time
who was a simple laborer,
worked in the trades
as a bricklayer.
And his name
was Henry Knott.
And he,
along with William Carey,
they were part of
a Reformed Baptist church
like this one,
the same confessions
that we hold to.
And he went
to be a missionary
to the Tahitians.
He saw three of his friends
killed by the Tahitians
the very first year
that they got there.
But he did not leave.
There were several times
over decades
where he was the only missionary
still there,
somehow,
still alive.
Others kept leaving
and others would arrive.
Well, finally,
after much prayer
and persistence
and trying to learn
their language,
on March 19th,
the Lord's Day,
it was a Sunday,
1797 was the year,
under the cover
of these enormous trees,
they gathered
to have their first
public worship service.
And here's what Mr. Knott
started that service off.
He had a translator
for the first part.
He said,
O Tahitians,
I come with a message
of infinite compassion
to those in deep distress.
I bring glad tidings,
glad news of salvation
to those who are in
sin's control.
I proclaim a gospel
of comfort
to those in sorrow's gloom.
And then,
he quoted the first verse
he had translated
and memorized
into the Tahitian language.
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's the truth
for you today,
church.
Christ urges you
from heaven,
look to me
and be saved,
all the ends
of the earth,
for I am God
and there is
no other.
Believe into
Jesus Christ
and have
eternal life.
see how the gospel
is simply
opening up to you
what is
and always
has been true
of God.
We're going to have
to divide this
into two parts
so next week
we'll see what's
true of us.
Let's pray.
Oh Father,
we believe
your promise
in Isaiah chapter 2
verse 2
that it shall
come to pass
in the latter days
that your kingdom
like a mighty mountain
where you,
O Lord,
dwell from
where you rule.
Your everlasting kingdom
shall be established
as the highest
of the mountains.
Your kingdom
shall be lifted up
and all the nations
will flow to you.
Lord,
I plead with Christ
right now
that none
of our loved ones
here today
or around the world
will be caught
loving darkness,
that none
will be caught
choosing death
and despising
your precious
son Jesus Christ
whom you sent
because you
so loved us
in this sinful world.
May each one
whom you have
given spiritual ears
to hear this
very moment
believe into
Christ
and have
eternal life.
We beg you.
Amen.
As you prepare
your heart now
to proclaim
this gospel
by taking
the Lord's Supper,
I want to
share with you
what Thomas Watson,
one of the Puritans,
wrote
of the Lord's Supper,
that it's a visible
sermon
in his words.
It's a sermon
wherein Christ
crucified
is set before us
it's a New Testament
sacrament
wherein our
communion with
Christ
is signified
for us
in these elements.
It's a divinely
instituted sacrament
wherein Christ's
death
is showed forth
by giving
and receiving
bread
and the fruit
of the vine.
Now listen to this.
When you partake
of Christ,
you receive
all the benefits
that flow
from the throne
of God's glory
to you
through the mediation
of your Savior,
Jesus Christ.
So take a moment,
still your heart,
ask the Lord
to prepare you
for this celebration,
this visible sermon,
and by taking it,
you are proclaiming
this glorious gospel
of Jesus.
When you're ready,
we're going to come
through this center
row right here
and we can take
the elements
and then after
you've taken them,
you can go around
the outsides
back to your seat
and we'll hold on
to them and then
enjoy together
with the words
of institution.