The whole Bible and some of the things
that are said there.
Last week we went back to go again
into John chapter 3 and verse 16.
I know that many of you know this
verse by heart.
Can we say it together this morning?
Because it's probably the most well-known verse
in the New Testament.
And it's a precious verse, isn't it?
So let's say it together.
Doesn't matter what version you happen to be
using or familiar with.
If it's language is a little different, that's
fine.
But let's say it all together, okay?
After two.
One, two.
For God so loved the world that he
give his one and only son that whoever
lives in him should not perish but have
eternal life.
Hallelujah.
What great words.
For God so loved the world.
That's a great word that is given to
us.
A great word that is given to us
in this passage.
God loves the world.
I don't understand that.
The world's not very lovable.
The world is not very lovable.
We live in a world full of wickedness
and full of conceit and full of sin.
Things that are contrary to what God wants
for us.
That's what sin is.
It's when we go against what he has
designed or what he has told us is
good for us.
That's funny.
We should do that a lot.
And yet still God loves us.
We turned our backs on him back in
the Garden of Eden, but still God loves
us.
We continued through century after century of world
history to turn our backs on the things
that God thinks are good and bring our
attention upon those things that God says are
bad.
We do it.
We have done it since then and we
do it in our generation in the same
way that generations have done it before us.
Some people think that our generation is different
than any other.
It's not.
Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun
and there isn't.
The same wickedness that we see today has
been seen in the world before.
Because man never changed.
Jesus, it says, came into the world and
he did not give himself to man.
He did not trust himself to their care.
See that in John and in chapter 2.
Because he knew what was in man's hearts.
But even though that was true that he
would not entrust himself to man, he entrusted
himself to his Father.
It is true that he gave himself to
man in disrespect, that he gave himself to
die for us.
Hallelujah.
And that's the second part of this verse.
The great word is God loves the world.
That's the great gift is that he gave
his one and only Son.
Gave him to live among us and to
die for us.
To die for our sins.
Every single one of them.
Past, present and future.
The Word of God declares that Jesus in
dying on the cross dealt with all of
our sin, not just some of it.
The Scripture declares that all of our sin
was defeated, or dealt with I should say,
and all of our enemies defeated.
For we have an enemy of our souls.
One who seeks to destroy God's work within
us.
One of the reasons that Jesus came was
to destroy his work.
The devil's work.
Hallelujah.
The great word is that God loves us.
The great gift is Jesus himself.
And whoever believes in him, and that's the
source, the heart, the very ground zero of
salvation.
Whoever believes in him will not perish.
Will not be separated from God forever.
And that's the great reality of this passage.
But will have eternal or everlasting life.
And that eternal or everlasting life is not
just life that begins after we die.
It begins the moment we believe.
We end up with life with heavenly content.
That's what eternal life is.
That's such an exciting concept.
Life with heavenly content.
Things that wouldn't normally be part of our
lives as human beings become part of our
lives when we put our trust in Jesus.
Now you think it's an easy thing to
believe in Jesus.
It's not, because by nature we cannot believe.
So God must give us faith to believe.
But the wonderful thing is that just as
God has given us his Son, the Bible
says in Romans 8, he freely gives us
all things, including the faith that we need
to put our trust in Jesus.
If you need faith to believe in Jesus
today, God will give it to you.
All you have to do is ask.
If you need to understand what God is
saying through his Word, all you have to
do is ask.
Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find.
Knock and the door will be opened.
Isn't that good news?
Jesus was given to us not only to
die for us, but to rise again.
Given to us to live on the earth.
Given to us to die on the cross.
Given to us to rise on the third
day according to the Scriptures.
So that he might live at the right
hand of the Father and pour out the
Spirit of God upon us every single day.
Given to us so that as the Spirit
of Jesus, his Spirit comes to live in
us, which is what happens when we believe,
that God takes over our lives.
Slowly, inexorably, irresistibly, God takes over our lives.
Thank goodness.
Thank goodness he doesn't leave it in our
hands.
He is not some cosmic cheerleader who having
saved us stands on the sidelines to do
some wonderful dance and throw his legs up
in the air in order that we might
someday reach heaven, just because he encourages us.
God is much more proactive than that.
He gets in on the game.
He comes onto the field and he comes
into our hearts and our lives and he
lives for us.
How exciting is that?
I've never been a football player.
I think I would have been if I'd
lived in North America, but I grew up
where soccer rules and soccer still rules and
soccer will rule.
But had I grown up in North America,
I might have played some football because I
love that game and I'm only just really
beginning to understand it and it's an incredibly
powerful game.
But you know, I haven't the skills.
I haven't the background.
But wouldn't it be neat if suddenly, I've
often thought this as I've watched it on
TV, it'd be neat if suddenly you could
be one of those players, if suddenly you
had the skills.
You didn't have to learn them, I'm not
lazy, I often think about these things.
You didn't have to work for it, if
suddenly it was there.
I saw a movie once where this, it
was one of those stupid movies about ghosts
and this guy who had been a football
player dies and his spirit goes into the
body of another guy and he becomes a
football player, this wimp.
This guy who had no clue, had absolutely
no ability, but suddenly he could play football
and he got on the field and he
was amazing, best I'd ever seen since the
other guy.
But that's who it was, it was the
other guy inside of him.
Suddenly all of the skills were coming through,
all of the abilities.
But you know what?
Although that was a silly story and clearly
obviously not possible, that's the amazing thing that
God does for us.
He doesn't stay on the sidelines, He gets
into our bodies and He lives out His
power, His skills, His virtues, His blessings.
Isn't that amazing?
That's awesome and it's weird.
It's as weird as it gets, but it's
wonderful.
And it all happens when we trust Jesus,
when we believe that He died for us,
that He rose again for us, that He
paid for our sin and that He set
us free.
It all happens when that takes place, that
transaction that the Bible talks about, where we
put our trust, that moment when we believe.
We confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ
is Lord.
What an amazing moment.
And the Lord Jesus continues to speak in
John 3 about these things.
He says in verse 17, and that's where
we continue this morning, for God did not
send His Son into the world to condemn
the world.
It's interesting to me that again, again Jesus
says this.
And it's obvious when you read His life
story and it's obvious when you take time
to look at His ministry, He did not
come to condemn anybody.
A bruised reed.
Jesus quoted this passage from the Old Testament,
one of the prophets.
He did not break.
And what that simply means, and the reed
is the word that's used in Hebrew and
then in Greek is the word for bulrush.
And you've seen those bulrushes.
Some of them grow along the sides of
the roads here in Long Creek at the
springtime.
Those big, tall, ungainly plants that grow tall
and then they have this thing on top
that makes them top-heavy and they break
easily.
A storm of wind or rain comes and
you see them all broken down.
And that's the picture that Jesus paints of
mankind.
That's the way we are.
We're tall, we're ungainly, we're unbalanced by sin
and we easily break.
But Jesus did not come to break us.
He did not come to be the one
to break that plant that is so fragile.
Hallelujah.
He came to save the world.
A lot of people don't like that word,
save.
They think it's fanatical.
But it's Jesus' word.
So, you know, if you think it's fanatical,
then you think Jesus was a fanatic.
And actually, I think he was.
I think he was a real fanatic.
He was committed to us.
He was trusting in his Father.
And he was obsessed with that simple relationship
of dependence.
That's fanaticism.
But that's what God calls us to.
And Jesus did not come to break the
fragile lives that were before.
And my dear, he could have seen so
many lives that he could have broken because
we were living in such sin.
The people who were before him were so
full of sin.
Remember the woman he met on the way
to Samaria?
She had had five husbands.
She was now living in sin with a
man who wasn't her husband.
Her life was a total mess.
Her moral existence and her moral expression was
totally unacceptable.
She couldn't even go at the normal time
to get water at the well because the
whole community had rejected her.
She came at noontime, in the heat of
the day.
And isn't it fascinating that it was in
that place of rejection, in that part of
her life where she had no answers to
give to men who would have criticized her
for her moral behavior, it was right there
at the point of her failure that Jesus
Christ met her and did not condemn her,
but brought her hope.
This is what God does through His Son,
the Lord Jesus.
It's what He still does.
He doesn't condemn people.
He brings them hope.
He didn't come into the world, condemn the
world.
You know, that means as preachers and as
Christians, we don't need to condemn people either.
And I think we lose sight of that.
And I've stressed this as we were beginning
in this chapter and then partway through again,
I stress this.
And I don't apologize for stressing it again.
We do not need to get out into
people's lives and bring down the boom upon
them for their failures.
We do not need to point our fingers
at them and tell them how badly they're
living.
You know what?
People know.
People know for two reasons.
They know, first of all, because they have
a conscience, which is a gift that God
gave all of us at birth.
And that conscience will tell us when we
have failed.
Now, the Bible also speaks about the times
when we can sear or burn off of
that conscience.
But until that happens, there is a conscious
witness in the minds and hearts of men
and women and boys and girls.
They know the difference between right and wrong.
Sometimes they couldn't even tell you why.
Well, when they do something wrong, their conscience
bothers them.
And every single one of us have experienced
that.
Sleepless nights, days when we've been burdened with
guilt, understanding that something has happened in our
lives which we know is displeasing to God.
We may not even know why it is.
We may never have read a passage in
the Scripture that helps us define how we
have failed, but our conscience tells us so.
And then there's another reason that we know.
And that's a reason that is consistently with
us, even if the conscience has been seared.
See, because a man's conscience has been burned
off does not mean he's unreachable.
For God, the Holy Spirit, still lives to
speak to man's hearts.
And even into the lives of some who
have lived in profligate and sinful ways.
And my friends, don't start thinking about all
the worst people you know.
That's what we tend to do.
Oh yeah, speaking about so-and-so, he's
a real bad egg.
I'm talking about you.
I'm talking about me.
That's what we are.
We're corrupted to the core.
The Bible says, there is nothing good that
dwells in this flesh.
We are every one of us sinners who've
fallen short of God's standard.
But God looks at us and loves us.
And even though there are times when we
have turned our backs, even on our conscience,
the Holy Spirit comes to bring us conviction.
What a beautiful thing.
It says in John chapter 16, which we'll
get to in about five years.
You think I'm kidding.
It says in John chapter 16 that that
is his function.
He comes to convince and to convict man
of sin.
And it doesn't matter how much they resist
that.
It's a beautiful thing that God does.
He's able to reach even the most decimated
heart and bring the sense of need to
them.
But not to bring them to condemnation.
If that's all he came to do, then
it would be hopeless.
But he brings them that sense of burden,
that sense of need, that sense of their
awareness that they've failed him.
And then he brings them word about Jesus.
Good news.
Though you have failed, though your conscience tells
you, though the Holy Spirit lays it upon
your soul, though you feel burdened and know
that if you were to die today, you're
not sure if you'd get into heaven, the
good news is by Jesus Christ, there is
a door by which all men can come
to God.
Isn't it beautiful?
And Jesus said, I am the way.
I am the path.
He also said, I am the door.
By me, if any man will enter in,
he will be rescued.
Hallelujah!
He will be, not might be.
By me.
What a bold statement.
Some people think, well, you can never know
that you're going to heaven.
That's not what Jesus said.
Jesus said, By me, if any man will
enter in, he will be saved.
That's bold.
That's fanatical.
The guy was either God or a noctis.
I'm going to go with the former.
He was the Lord.
He was God.
He proved it in so many ways, in
his words and in his actions.
And he said, If by me you enter
into the kingdom of God, you will be
saved.
Not might be.
Not possibly.
Not if you try hard enough.
Not if you add more good works to
your lifelong existence.
Not if you try to keep all the
rules and standards.
No, by me.
Glorious word.
And those of you that are Christians, you
know that.
But isn't that a glorious word?
Doesn't it make your heart miss a beat?
By me.
Some of us tried so long in various
ways and in various fashions to reach a
place where we pleased God and discovered we
couldn't and so it discouraged us.
Yet still we knew that we needed a
Savior and then we heard the good news.
By me, says Jesus.
If any man will enter in, he will
be saved.
I am the way, Jesus said, the truth
and the life.
No man comes to the Father except through
me.
It's exclusive.
There is no other way.
We make no apology for preaching an exclusive
salvation.
Exclusive in the sense that it's only through
Christ.
Universal in the sense that all who believe,
all who enter by Him will be saved.
Well, hallelujah.
It's not good.
It's so simple.
A child can understand it.
You get to heaven by trusting Jesus, not
in anything else.
You get to heaven by entering through Him.
You allow Him, as it were, to carry
you there.
You put your whole trust in Him.
I have sat on many a seat.
Many a seat has taken my weight.
And if seats could talk, they might complain.
For I am a great weight.
The bulk that they have to receive from
me is massive.
And indeed it's been true that chairs have
broken under that burden.
And so through great embarrassment and terrible experience,
I've learned to carefully examine a seat before
I sit down.
I have sat on seats and found myself
on the ground.
Truly.
And if you've ever had that happen to
you, you know how embarrassing it is.
So I look carefully.
And I examine.
And I wonder.
And I quietly, without anybody noticing, check the
situation.
I watch to see if there are people
of similar bulk to me.
Who are sitting on the seats.
And then I come to a conclusion.
I think this seat will take me.
I think I will be okay.
I don't think I'm going to end up
on the floor.
And that's all well and good.
But a decision has to take place.
It doesn't matter if you know the seat
will hold you.
It doesn't matter if you're certain of the
steel that has formed the frame.
It doesn't matter that you look around and
you see people like you.
Of great girth.
Sitting on similar seats.
A decision has to be made.
What is that decision?
Huh?
Whether you sit or not.
See, it will never help my poor back
if I stand and say I am confident
that this seat will take me.
I am sure of its structure.
I know I could depend upon its security.
It will hold me up.
But I've still got a sore back.
At some point I've got to turn around
and rest my weary legs.
And take the leap of faith.
Well, not leap.
Take the move of faith.
And sit down.
And actually allow this seat to carry me.
Not right now.
But you can sure help me later.
Yeah, but you can do that later.
Okay, why don't you do it now?
All right.
A decision has to be made.
Now, it's the same spiritually.
I may know that Jesus has died for
me.
I know the good word of God.
God loves me.
I know the great gift of God.
He gave His only Son.
I know that the Bible is true.
I believe that the Bible is true.
That whoever believes in Him will not perish
but have eternal or everlasting life.
But at some point a decision has to
be made.
Will I rest my soul on that or
religion?
Will I rest my soul on that or
my self-effort?
Will I rest my soul on that or
some other promise?
Or some other person?
Or some other system?
No, at some point I've got to sit
down and trust that Jesus will hold me
up.
And I have.
And He is.
And many of us today can say that
at some point by grace, through faith, we
rest with our souls under eternal destiny, not
upon our religion, but upon Jesus Christ.
And He is sound, faithful.
Hallelujah.
And if you haven't done that yet, a
decision has to be made.
You can't, you know what?
You can't say, well, no, I'm not going
to make a decision.
I'm going to leave it as a great
uncertainty.
You will make a decision.
You'll make a decision whether you want to
or not.
And someday your eternal destiny will be entirely
dependent upon that decision.
Whether you've rested your great spiritual weight, because
it is great, all your sin, all your
failure, all your inability to find a way
to please God, all of your apathy, all
of your unbelief, all of your problems, you've
laid them upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you find that He carries you.
But some of you won't.
You'll stand before God someday and try to
say, well, Lord, I tried my best.
My friends, that will not be good enough.
Some of you will say, but I preached.
And God will say, but that is not
good enough.
Some of you might be able to say,
but I was able to share in miracles.
And God will say, but that is not
good enough.
The answer to our need, the decision that
must be made is a decision to put
Jesus in that place of our trust.
Nothing else.
Do you know, we have problems when it
comes to that decision.
Listen to what Jesus says in verse 18.
Whoever believes in Him, and He's speaking about
Himself, of course, is not condemned.
There's an immediate freedom from condemnation.
Hallelujah.
That's why the thief on the cross who
didn't live more than a couple of hours
after his decision, went home to heaven.
What did Jesus say to him?
Today.
You will be with Me in Paradise.
Now, anybody who believes that salvation is based
upon the things we do, to please God,
has got a problem with that verse.
Because the man didn't do anything to please
God.
He couldn't.
He didn't have time.
But he didn't, and he couldn't, but he
still went to heaven because he believed in
Jesus.
Because he believed in Jesus.
And whoever believes is not condemned.
That's what the Bible says.
It's immediate.
The moment you put your trust in Christ,
the moment you believe in your heart that
He is Lord, and you express with your
mouth that God has raised Him from the
dead, or the other way around, you believe
in your heart that God has raised Him
from the dead and express with your mouth
that He is Lord, then you are immediately
rescued.
Immediately you go from death to life.
Immediately you're acceptable to God.
Immediately your burden is carried and covered.
But Jesus says, whoever believes in Him is
not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands
condemned already because he has not believed in
the name of God's one and only Son.
This is our problem.
It's not that God condemns us.
We stand condemned already.
People think that God is up there waiting
to condemn us.
God is not up there waiting to condemn
us.
We condemned ourselves long ago when we turned
our backs on Him.
The problem is, God is standing up there
waiting to rescue us, but we will not
be rescued.
The problem is, God has made a beautiful
provision in giving us His Son, His love
and the cross, but we will not trust
in it.
The problem is, God has pulled us away,
but we will not walk in it.
And that leaves us in condemnation.
It doesn't bring us to condemnation.
You've got to understand this.
You see, because again, people think, I'm going
to stand before God someday, and on this
side, all my good works will be piled
up, and on this side, all of my
bad works will be piled up, and God
will weigh it up.
And if my good works outweigh my bad,
then I'm going to be okay.
Listen, if you start from a place of
condemnation, then you'll end in a place of
condemnation.
God is not deciding whether or not to
condemn you.
You stand condemned already if you don't believe
in the Son.
He's waiting to see whether you will receive
His provision.
He's waiting to see whether you will receive
His forgiveness.
He is not waiting to condemn you.
You've done that already.
You were born in a place of condemnation.
You were shippen in sin and born in
it.
God is not going to condemn you.
You're condemned now.
You were condemned the day you were born.
You're condemned the day you die, unless you
put your trust in Jesus, then everything changes.
Do not think that God is in the
business of weighing up whether we've been good
enough.
It is not going to be of any
interest to Him whatsoever.
What will be of interest to Him is
whether we have accepted His provision for our
salvation.
If we do, we are no longer condemned.
If we don't, we already stand in a
place of condemnation.
Already.
Jesus hammers this home with some very powerful
words in verse 19.
This is the verdict.
This is the truth.
This is what has already been passed down
long ago by the grit judge.
Light has come into the world.
But men love darkness instead of light because
their deeds were evil.
There's our grit problem.
That men love darkness rather than light.
That we are condemned by our unbelief.
That we are cursed because of our love
for evil.
Now, you ask yourself this simple question.
Whenever you watch a movie, and usually in
movies, there's a good guy and there's a
bad guy.
Think now for a moment.
Who is it that you're attracted to most
of the time?
Who is it that the movie makers seem
to have been able to give a character
to?
They've worked a long time on what this
character looks like, what he talks like.
Who is it that seems to make sense?
Who is it that draws you?
For example, the Superman movies.
Christopher Reeves.
Now, when I first watched those movies, I'm
a Superman fan.
I grew up reading Superman comics.
Just love the stuff.
But when I watched Superman, the first time
I saw the movie, do you know who
I liked most in the story?
Max Luther.
Do you know why?
Because the man had character.
It wasn't a good character, but he had
depth.
Superman was just this sort of guy in
a silk suit.
I began to really question a lot of
things.
Who wore blue tights and high-heeled boots.
But he was so thin as a character.
There was so...
Now, Christopher Reeves, I mean, a good actor,
but it just seemed that he didn't have...
See, he was good.
And it's very hard to present someone who's
good.
But somebody who's bad, man, you can really
get into that.
Why is that?
The new series called Smallville, that's about Superman
in his youth.
The actor who plays Superman is a wimp.
I mean, he's handsome and all that.
And right now he doesn't wear blue tights,
which is a good thing.
But you know the actor in the story
now, who's the strongest and he's getting all
the best reviews?
Max Luther.
Why?
Because it's good to be able to draw
character into a person.
And it seems that we're all drawn to
the characters who've got a tinge of evil
about them.
When you see a movie, this is where
it really stands out.
And really, these movies reflect our culture.
When you see a movie about Jesus, it's
even worse.
And there are some movies about Jesus which
are excellent, some which I recommend.
The Jesus movie, for example, is now the
most viewed movie anywhere at any time in
the history of moviemaking.
Did you know that?
More people have seen the Jesus movie than
any other movie.
Any other movie.
After that, you have that one about E
.T. Call Home.
That's the second most viewed movie in history.
But the Jesus movie is the first.
But you know what?
The Jesus who's there, he's really hard to
read.
Because he's no character.
He's just this sort of cardboard figure who
keeps quoting Bible verses.
And you look at his lips and he's
not even moving with the words sometimes.
It's like dubbed in and it really just
gives you no confidence.
But the people you remember from that movie
are people like the guy that betrayed the
Lord Jesus.
He stands out.
See, even for us, as we depict people
dramatically, it's easier for us to define evil
than it is for us to define good
because we're drawn to evil.
Now, put it down into your own life.
What is it that you're attracted to on
a daily basis?
What do you do whenever the world vision
adverts come on with starving little faces before
you?
Well, if you're like me, you turn it
off and you get back to superman.
And I don't think I'm the only one
who does that.
I hope I'm not.
But I know I'm not.
How many of you have taken time or
taken your money in a sacrificial way in
order to feed the poor?
Watch the neat ad by the Rotary Club.
One of the best I've seen in a
long time.
Tom, wherever he is.
In the Rotary Club.
There he is.
About the need for giving health care to
those who are on the streets.
It's just started to be shown how the
Rotary Club has established a moving clinic.
One of the questions they ask in this
ad that I watched last night was, do
you really care about those who are homeless?
Or do you think they need to help
themselves?
Of course, immediately, I said that.
Do you really care about the needs of
the homeless?
Or do you think they just need to
get a real job?
Or just any job?
And you think, oh, I said that.
And I have.
I've been on the street when somebody has
stuck their hand out in front of me
and said, hey, you got any change to
spare?
And I've walked by.
That was another question.
Do homeless people become invisible to you?
Ooh, that hurts.
Why is that?
Because the verdict is already down.
Because it's clear, because God has said it
for centuries, we love darkness rather than light.
We consistently choose the wrong actions.
We consistently express the wrong attitudes.
Instead of helping, we criticize.
Instead of reaching out a hand to give,
we take.
Instead of selflessness, there is selfishness.
It's born in us, it's bred in us,
and it's in us from the beginning.
I've often said, and I have to be
very careful because my children are now older,
but I never had to teach my children
to be bad.
They have a natural gift for that.
And I bet that it's true for your
kids, too.
Never had to teach them to be bad.
You have to try and teach them to
be good.
Why is that?
Because we are naturally bent toward wickedness.
Man loved darkness rather than light.
And the verdict has come down.
It's not that, you know, this is such
an important phrase.
There's not going to be a verdict someday
in heaven.
Some people really believe God will someday bring
down the verdict.
He'll weigh it all up and he'll decide.
This is the verdict.
It's already come down.
It came down centuries ago, eons ago.
Man loved darkness rather than light, for their
deeds are evil.
Now, that's our problem when it comes to
the wonderful good news.
The thing is, we want to naturally go
in the wrong direction.
Light has come into the world, but man
loved darkness instead of light because their deeds
were evil.
You know, it's amazing to me.
I've had people say to me, and no
doubt they will soon again as we see
incredible global events erupt around us, and many
will die.
Why?
How many of you heard this question?
Why did God not do something about that?
How many have heard that question?
You know, it'd be even more interesting to
say how many of us have asked that
question.
Why did God not do something?
And I am always fascinated by that question
because often it comes from those who in
their own lives are not willing for God
to do anything.
And I'm always tempted to say, but I
don't have the guts.
Most of the time I don't have the
guts.
When someone says to me, why did God
let these children die?
40,000 children will die today.
Never mind the decimation that could come in
Iraq tomorrow.
40,000 children will die today.
And people will ask me, why will God
not step in and do something about the
problems of mankind?
And always I'm tempted to say, He will.
He'll step into your life and He'll give
you hope if you'll turn away from your
sinfulness and your selfishness and give your life
to Jesus Christ.
Will you let Him do that?
Oh no, I don't want that nonsense.
That's too fanatical.
I don't need this born again stuff.
I don't want God interfering in my life.
How many of you have heard, this is
my life.
I'll decide what to do with it.
Yet the very same people will say, why
will God not step in?
I mean, it just doesn't make sense.
If you want God to step in to
the problems of humankind, you've got to allow
Him to step in to your life.
Okay, it's okay.
Let Him step into Biafra.
Let Him step into Afghanistan.
Let Him step into Iraq.
But don't let Him step in here because
we love darkness rather than light.
And that's the crazy thing.
The very things that destroy us are the
things we are drawn to.
The very things that eat us away from
the inside out are the very things that
we want.
The very things that will destroy our souls
and leave us without hope and without God
in this world and in the next are
the very things that we want and we
don't want God to interfere on that level.
But that's where God changes the world.
That is where God brings help to the
human condition and to the problem of evil
in your life and in mine, one person
at a time.
But we've got a problem because it says
that we love darkness and it says that
we resist the light.
Listen to what it says then a little
further down.
First it says in verse 20, Everyone who
does evil hates the light and will not
come into the light for fear his deeds
will be exposed.
We've covered that.
I want to finish with verse 21.
But whoever lives by the truth comes into
the light so that it may be seen
plainly that what he has done has been
done through God.
Whoever lives by the light.
Some of your translations have a very poor
expression here.
Whoever does what is right.
That's not what this verse says.
Whoever lives by the light.
The words that are used here, the verb
that's put in place is a verb about
cause and effect.
What this verse is saying, whoever lives because
of the light.
Because my friends, we won't live apart from
ourselves.
We won't live at all unless the light
works a miracle upon us.
Unless Jesus does something to change our direction,
the verdict is already dying.
We love darkness rather than light.
We will not come into the light for
fear that our deeds will be exposed.
But those who live by the light, because
of the light, through the light, because the
light comes to them, will step into the
light so that all that they have done
will be plainly seen to be done through
God.
Hallelujah.
There is a point where God comes to
us and we live because of the light.
We live because the light has touched us.
We live because the light has revealed Himself
to us.
We live because the light of the world
comes to live in us.
We sit upon Him and trust Him.
Then all of the good things that happen
in our lives, we can plainly give God
the glory because it's plainly seen that they
come from Him, not from us.
The only thing that comes from us is
darkness.
What comes from Him is light.
But you have to live by the light.
And that's not your responsibility.
We can't live by the light.
The very verse before this has said that
we cannot live by the light.
We cannot do it ourselves.
We love darkness, therefore we will not come
into the light.
We fear that our deeds will be exposed.
And yet the very next phrase says, but
those who live by the light will come
into the light.
Is it a contradiction?
No, it's those who live because of the
light.
Those who live because Jesus comes to them
and changes them.
And those of us today who are living
in the light, who are allowing God to
live through them, those of us who put
our trust in Jesus, we did not make
that decision ourselves.
We couldn't.
We did not seek to come to Him
ourselves.
We haven't the power.
We did not turn away from wickedness because
we want to turn to wickedness.
We changed because Jesus came, because the Spirit
came and touched us, because light from heaven
shone upon us, and suddenly we saw what
was true.
He turned us around, and by grace He
led us to Himself.
And so today we can say, Hallelujah, God
has done this.
There are no Christians who are true Christians
today who will stand up and say, I'm
a Christian because I'm a good man.
Because there are no good men who are
Christians.
No good women who are Christians.
We're Christian because we live by the light.
Because somehow in His mercy, God decided to
reach into our hearts.
To rescue us.
I want to baptize Erica in half an
hour or so.
She did not decide to follow Jesus.
Jesus met her and drew her in mercy
to Himself.
And she lives because of the light shining
on her.
You can too.
All you have to say is, Lord Jesus,
shine on me.
All you have to do is act in
the faith that God gives you and believe.
And pour out your burden upon Him.
Will you do that today?
If you do, it's only because God has
touched you.
It won't be because I've convinced you.
It won't be because of any decision you
make.
It'll be because you live by the light.
Because of the light.
If I were to say, how many of
us live today because of the light?
A great many of us could put our
hands up or stand and say, I live
because of the light.
Not because I'm good.
But because Jesus touched me.
We give God the glory for all the
good things that are coming out of our
lives.
Consequently, all the changes that have taken place,
and many of us are still changing.
It's God at work.
It's not us.
We give Him all the glory today.
We'll stand in a few minutes in the
water and in a visual aid say, yes,
Erica used to be this way, but now
just as someone goes into the grave, as
she goes down in the water, her whole
life, the old way is ended.
Because she's been touched by the light as
she comes up out of the water.
It's like someone who rises from the dead.
She's got a whole new life and she's
washed clean to start anew by Jesus Christ.
Isn't that wonderful?
I hope it's true for you.
I hope it's true for you today.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for being with us
today.
Thank you for the good news of the
gospel.
Thank you that you have reached us.
Because Lord, the verdict is we love darkness
rather than light, and we always turn to
it.
But those of us who put our trust
in Jesus can say, as much today as
we did the day we were rescued, we
believe that Jesus is our Savior today.
There may be some today who for the
first time need to say, I believe that
Jesus is my Savior.
No one else.
Nothing else.
Just Him.
Grant them the faith to do so.
By your love and grace, touch them so
that they can say, like Erica can say
today, I've been touched.
I live because of the light.
Grant it to many here today, and even
this morning, because we ask it in Jesus'
name.
Amen.
We'll receive your offering.
Then we're going to sing a song in
closing.