What a blessing, what a blessing.
I went to Gardner-Webb.
I was a biblical studies major at Gardner-Webb.
And we, right there on the North Carolina, South Carolina line,
and on Wednesday nights, we'd ride out in the country
to this big old church set out in the middle of nowhere.
And I think it was called Holly Springs Baptist Church,
somewhere in northern South Carolina.
And if she'd have sang that song at that church,
some old boy would have got loose back there and went on a running fit.
Now, that freaks some of y'all out.
But for some of us, Brian, you've been in those atmospheres,
ain't you, brother?
A little sawdust will tear you up, son.
Good stuff.
Thank you so much, Charlotte.
If you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter 3.
John chapter 3.
In the 1870s, archaeologists uncovered in the sands of Egypt
a giant red granite obulus.
They named it Cleopatra's Needle.
And they gave it to England,
which placed the 69-foot shaft
on the banks of the Thames River in London.
They put a time vault in the base of that shaft.
And they put coins in there.
And they put clothes of that day in there.
They put some newspapers in there.
And they put some photographs.
They put some children's toys of that age as well.
And then they formed a committee
to pick the greatest verse in all the Bible
and to put it in the vault.
They chose John 3.16
and they put it in the vault
in all of the other,
more than 200 known languages of that day.
Not only is John 3.16
the most popular verse of Scripture,
but it may be the most impactful verse.
Must be, actually.
It's called the Mount Everest of Scripture.
Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer,
called it the Bible in miniature.
A.T. Robertson, the greatest Greek scholar
possibly since the time of the Lord,
called it the littlest gospel.
It's also been called the gospel in a nutshell.
And today is March the 16th.
If you abbreviate that, it's 3.16.
It's a great day to celebrate the gospel verse,
John 3.16.
As a matter of fact,
today has been marked the international day
of the gospel.
And so I want us to do something today
to celebrate John 3.16.
I want us to read it together.
If you would stand together with me
and let's read John 3.16.
It says,
You may be seated.
It's such a common verse
that it's likely that we take it for granted.
It sounds simple, but yet it's very profound.
It is inexhaustible, quite honestly.
Dwight L. Moody was a great preacher,
a great evangelist that founded the Moody Bible Church
in Chicago as well as the Moody Bible Institute
and was preaching in the United Kingdom
when a young man began to listen to him preach.
As Moody would travel,
that fellow would travel with him in the UK
and follow him to the next church
and would listen to him again.
And night after night,
he listened to D.L. Moody preach.
He got to know the young man
and the man said that he had a desire
to preach in America.
And Moody invited him and said,
If you ever get there to America,
let me know and I'll let you preach
at Moody Church.
Well, his name was Henry Morehouse.
And sure enough, Henry Morehouse
had the opportunity to travel to America.
And when he did, he contacted Moody.
And Moody said, Well, great.
He said, I'm preaching Sunday morning
and then I'm leaving and going out of town
for a little while.
And so you can preach on Sunday night for me
when I leave.
And that night, Morehouse preached.
And when Moody returned,
several days later,
he found out that Morehouse
not only preached that night,
but he had preached several nights
to a growing crowd every night.
He also found out that every night
that Henry Morehouse preached,
he preached on John 3.16 as his text.
He preached different sermons,
but he always preached on John 3.16.
As a matter of fact,
Morehouse began preaching
when he was 16 years old
and he died at an early age at 33 years old.
But for the 17 years that he preached,
every sermon that he preached,
he preached from John 3.16.
Different sermons,
but every time the same text.
My friend, it is inexhaustible.
And I will not do it justice today,
but I want to have some fun trying.
All I want to tell you
is the same thing that this verse tells you.
And that is,
I want to tell you how to be saved.
Now, I know that may sound overused to some,
but I don't believe there's any need
to fix something that isn't broke
because Jesus still saves.
And our verse today lies in the midst
of an encounter that Jesus had
with a Pharisee named Nicodemus.
Jesus said that when one is changed by Christ,
it makes a world of difference.
It's as if you are starting over,
being born spiritually all over again.
I remember when I was a small child,
I remember hearing President Jimmy Carter
say that he was born again.
And I remember,
even though I was a child at the time,
remember the media giving him a hard time about that,
what it meant to be a born again Christian.
Well, I got news for you.
Jimmy Carter didn't come up with that.
Jesus came up with that.
And when he told Nicodemus that he must be born again,
old Nick, as I love to call him,
didn't understand,
even though he was a religious leader,
schooled in what we now know as the Old Testament.
And so Nicodemus asked him,
how then can I be born again?
And the response of Christ gives us a great glimpse
at the power and the hope of the gospel message,
the good news of Christ.
Notice what he says in John 3, beginning in verse 13.
He said,
No one has ascended into heaven
except he who descended from heaven,
the Son of Man.
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.
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.
It's been said a lot of different ways,
but I want you to see this morning
three steps to being saved.
The first step is this,
to look,
to look.
In describing how a person can be saved,
Jesus referred to Moses
and the serpent in the wilderness.
And that account is found
in Numbers chapter 21.
Numbers 21 says this,
beginning in verse 4.
For Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea
to go around the land of Edom.
And the people became impatient on the way.
And the people spoke against God and against Moses.
Why have you brought us out of Egypt
to die in the wilderness?
For there's no food and no water,
and we loathe this worthless food.
Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people,
and they bit the people,
so that many people of Israel died.
And the people came to Moses and said,
we have sinned,
for we have spoken against the Lord and against you.
Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.
So Moses prayed for the people.
And the Lord said to Moses,
make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole,
and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.
So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.
And if a serpent bit anyone,
he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
It's amazing sometimes what we have to endure
to turn our eyes back to the Lord.
These were a complaining, impatient people.
Surely not Baptist.
And they were upset with their circumstances,
and it just made it worse.
The more they moaned about it,
the worse it got.
That is usually what happens, quite honestly.
The more negative you are about something,
the more you whine and complain,
the worse things will get.
I heard Lou Holtz say one time,
don't complain about your problems.
90% of people really don't care,
and 10% are glad it's happening to you.
So listen, you got to keep it all in perspective.
A harsh word, but it may be reality.
Complaining does not help.
And when those complained,
the Lord sent serpents that had a fiery bite to them.
Now when it says fiery there,
one, it means it hurt.
The second means it was venomous.
And that woke up folks that were hurting,
and they said,
Moses, you need to call on the Lord.
And Moses called on the Lord.
I hope you know that there would have been
a lot less loss here
if they had turned to the Lord when times got tough.
Instead of turning to each other
and complaining and growing impatient.
Because in reality,
it's not what happens in life.
It's what happens to what happens in life.
How do you respond in life?
They got to the point in their lives
when they turned to God and followed his instruction.
And his instruction was to look to the snake
and find relief.
And they did.
Now you may not seem comfortable about that.
Why in the world would there be a bronze snake for comfort?
Well, I'll tell you why.
Because God gets on our level.
He speaks to where we are.
And these people had been plagued by a tendency
to look at graven images.
Idols that they looked to for strength
and comfort and hope.
And so God gave them an icon
and he instructed them to look at it.
And when they looked at it,
they found healing.
Get this now.
Not because of the snake.
They didn't get their healing because of the snake.
Their healing came in obediently following
what the Lord told them to do.
And just as that serpent was lifted up,
so Christ has been lifted up on the cross.
And when we look to the cross,
we'll find our strength.
When we put our faith in the God
that hung on the cross for our sin,
but first, we have to look.
First, we have to acknowledge it.
We have to see the need.
We don't need to look inside of ourselves for answers.
We need to look to Christ for answers.
That's where the answers are.
But it's not just enough to look.
For the second means,
the second way to come to salvation
is to believe.
To believe.
For after acknowledging our need for help,
we must look to God
and believe
that what he did changes everything.
The key to John 3.16
is the love of God.
He willingly sent his son
to die in our place
because of our sin
so that we could have eternal life.
What kind of love is it
that sends his sinless son to the cross
to die in our place?
All of us,
ugly sinners before God,
quite honestly.
Without the forgiveness of God,
we'd have no hope.
So how is it that he sends his son?
What kind of love is that?
It's a matchless love.
I guess my two favorite songs
that's ever been written
is It Is Well With My Soul
and The Love of God.
And the lyrics of The Love of God say this,
Could we with ink the ocean fill
and with the skies our parchment made
were every stalk on earth a quill
and every man a scribe by trade?
To write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry,
nor could the scroll contain the whole,
though stretched from sky to sky.
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure,
how measureless and strong,
it shall forevermore endure
the saints and angels song.
Friend, it is a love worth believing.
And that belief is a committing belief.
It is an all-in kind of belief.
It is an action statement
of not just understanding something,
but acting on that,
believing it enough to act on it.
Romans 10, 9 says,
If we confess with your mouth
and believe in your heart
that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
It's having a confident trust in the Lord.
It's having a firm, life-changing conviction in Christ.
It is enough to surrender our lives.
It's enough to surrender our plans.
It's enough to surrender our ambitions,
to give him over control of our life.
And when we do that,
we do that with everything that we are.
We are saved for all of eternity.
More Oklahoma may be the deadliest place on the planet,
at least for tornadoes.
In 1999, an EF-5,
very rare to have an EF-5,
but an EF-5 tornado
with top speeds of 301 mile per hour,
the highest wind speeds ever measured on Earth,
came right through the center of Moore, Oklahoma.
It stayed on the ground for 85 minutes.
It went for 38 miles.
It killed 36 people.
And it was the first tornado to ever cause
over a billion dollars worth of damage.
In 2013, practically the same path was taken
by another EF-5
with 210 mile per hour speeds
that killed 24 people and injured 377.
It wiped Moore, Oklahoma off the map twice.
It got hit again in 2015 by an EF-2.
And I guess they just thought it was a strong breeze
compared to what they had faced before.
But in 1999, it was devastating.
And the storm went right by First Baptist Moore, Oklahoma.
That is a beautiful facility
with instead of a steeple,
they have a large cross projecting
where the steeple normally would be.
That facility was practically left untouched.
And its central location
caused it to become a relief and a care center.
And in an effort to get the word out,
people got in the back of trucks with bullhorns
and rode through Moore, Oklahoma,
saying,
whatever you need,
go to the cross.
However you're hurting,
go to the cross.
Whatever you need help with,
go to the cross.
If you need any supplies,
you go to the cross.
If you need anybody to take care of you,
you go to the cross.
Whatever you need, Moore, Oklahoma,
go to the cross.
Go to the cross.
Help is waiting for you.
My friend,
help is waiting for you.
Go to the cross.
God will save you
if you only believe.
Look to the Lord.
Believe.
And lastly, be saved.
There's a choice to make.
God initiates
within us
a desire to come to him
and we respond to that.
He gives us the ability to believe
and we just have to give up
and we just have to give in.
And that's not offered to just some.
It's offered to all.
Romans 10, 13 says,
everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.
It is a promise
that is as real and lasting
as the shed blood of Christ on Calvary
for your sins.
God knows us like no one else does.
God loves us like no one else has.
And God wants to save us
like nothing else you will ever experience.
Years ago,
there was another school tragedy.
This one
was in Florida.
And my oldest daughter, Abby,
was in a government class
in high school
and they were talking about guns
and they were talking about prevention
and they were talking about school policies
and they were discussing
what was happening
with this tragedy.
And she had seen an interview
in that class
with a father of a child
that had been killed.
And he had talked about
how things could be done differently
if people would work together.
And I agree with a lot of what he said.
But part of what he said
was haunting to me.
He said this,
I didn't think it was going to happen to me.
I knew that
if I knew that,
I would have been at school every day
if I'd have known how dangerous it was.
Work with the president.
Work to fix schools.
That's it.
No other discussion.
No more discussions.
I will never
see my kid again.
Never ever
will I see my kid.
I want you to
let that sink in.
Eternity.
My daughter.
I'll never see her again.
And it's simple.
We can fix it.
That man had a lot of good points.
But what kept ringing in my head
was something different.
And before the preacher daddy in me
could say it to my daughter,
Abby looked at me and said,
Daddy,
he's lost.
He's lost.
Now either his daughter
never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ
or either she did
and he don't know it
or either he didn't understand it
or either he was just lost
without Christ
but he said there was no hope
of an eternal reunion.
No hope
of eternity.
I can't imagine
what that man
was going through.
I can't think about it.
It has to be
the most horrid thing
that anybody could ever
go through in this life.
However,
if you don't believe
in the Lord
and if you don't
surrender your life
to him
and you don't get saved,
you'll go through
the most horrid thing
that anyone could ever
go through
for all of eternity.
You'll die
without Christ
when in reality
he died
for one reason
so that you don't have to die
without him.
Billy Sunday
was a great preacher.
He's a character.
He's a baseball player
that turned preacher.
Man,
he's a character.
He was like a Billy Graham
of the day.
Billy Graham
made such a difference
in the second half
of the 20th century
and Billy Sunday
made such a difference
in the first half
of the 20th century.
But there was a difference
in the way
they presented themselves.
Billy Sunday
was a wild man
in the pulpit.
He was a fire-breathing preacher.
He preached hard messages
on sin.
And one time
after a sermon
somebody said
to Billy Sunday,
he said,
Billy,
you better tone it down
a little bit.
And Billy said,
why?
And he said,
well,
Billy,
you're rubbing the fur
on the cat
the wrong way.
And Billy Sunday said,
that old cat
is headed to hell.
And if that cat
will turn around,
I'll rub her
the right way
and she can go to heaven.
And my friend,
I want you to understand
something this morning.
I don't talk about
the reality of hell
with glee.
I don't celebrate
the fact
that the majority
of the people
in the world
in which we live
will probably die
and go to hell
without Christ.
I don't relish in that.
I don't celebrate that.
I try my best
to get the warning out
that anybody
and everybody
that I come in contact
with at all possible
can know
you don't have to
let your sin
separate you
from Christ.
He died in your place
to change your life.
And all you must do
is give him
everything you've got.
Just all of you.
Look to Jesus.
Believe in your heart
that he'll forgive you
of your sins
and he'll come
into your life
and he'll save you.
And as you begin
to feel him
draw you to himself
respond
and get saved
and let him
change your life.
You'll never be the same.
the Holy Spirit
of God
will empower you
to rise above
those circumstances
that may hold you back
from making a decision
for the Lord now.
Don't let anything
hold you back.
You just trust Christ.
He'll make all the difference
in the world.
There's a lot of people
in here today
and you know that
and you've accepted
the Lord Jesus
as your personal Lord
and Savior
and you're secure in that.
Maybe you've never
acknowledged that publicly
in the way that
Jesus commissioned us
to do it
and even did it
by example
through baptism.
And if you've done
that privately
but you've never
acknowledged that publicly
I encourage you to come.
I'd love to guide you
in that.
Maybe God's guiding you
to First Baptist Church
and you feel like
the Lord's leading you
to do this
and your next commitment
of obedience
to follow Christ
is to join the church
and be a part of that.
I'd love to guide you
through that as well.
But the reality is
if you're here this morning
and you know the Lord Jesus
and you're an open
confessing Christian
I want you to know
that God has planted
people all around you
that desperately need
the Lord Jesus.
And when you leave here today
don't feel like
because I got my salvation
everything's done.
No it ain't.
God's put many people
around you every day
in the different walks
of life that we live
in the different places
that we go
in the different conversations
that we have.
People who desperately
desperately
need the Lord Jesus.
And the way it works is
as God lays those people
upon your heart
God works in their lives
as well.
There's a divine appointment
that takes place
that we can't even see
even half of it
taking place.
But God allows us
to be used
to see people's lives
changed.
But if we're not
sensitive to that
if we're not open
to that
we'll miss that opportunity.
So I ask you today
Christian before you
leave here
will you say
dear God
will you put somebody
in my path
this week
for me to share
the gospel with.
For me to just ask
have you ever
given your life
to Christ?
And if you have
I'd love to hear
your story.
Listen if there's
a Christian
that gets offended
by that
they're not a real
Christian.
If you can ask
somebody
have you ever
given your heart
and life to Christ?
I mean you can tell
them look
I mean it seems
like you have
but will you
tell me about
that experience
and let them
share their
testimony with you
and then share
your testimony
with them?
They may not
have a testimony
and by you
sharing yours
you can make
a difference
in their life.
God's just using
you.
You're not doing
the salvation.
You know what
you're doing?
You're just
scattering seed.
You're not
responsible for
whether it takes
root.
You're not
responsible
whether it's
fruitful.
You're responsible
for scattering
the seed.
You don't have
to be eloquent
about it.
You're just a
beggar telling
another beggar
how to find
bread.
My friend
I encourage
you if you've
got salvation
in the Lord
Jesus give
it away.
Give it
away.
It'll just be
better in your
life.
Heavenly Father
I love you.