A
Study of the Book of John
“That
You May Believe”
Sermon
# 9
“Look And Live!”
John
3:14-21
Earlier in John chapter
three Jesus has confronted Nicodemus with the momentous announcement that even he must be
born again. Although he is a respected
leader, a moral man, even a religious man he is still lost. Jesus is still talking to
Nicodemus, he is responding to the question Nicodemus asked in verse nine, “How can this be?” What Nicodemus
really wants to know is, “How does the new birth happen?”
And so the Lord answers with an illustration that Nicodemus would never forget.
Jesus ends his conversation
with Nicodemus by telling him three things about salvation.
First,
A Picture of Salvation (3:14-15)
In
verses fourteen and fifteen Jesus uses an event from Israel’s history to
illustrate His teaching. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilder-ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus calls to mind a scene from the book of Numbers 21:4-9.
“Then they
journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom: and the
soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. (5) And the people spoke against
God, and against Moses, “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the
wilder-ness? For there is no food, and no water; and our soul loathes this worthless bread
(manna). (6) And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit
the people; and many of the people of Israel died. (7) Therefore 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. (8)
Then the Lord said unto Moses, Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole: and it shall be
that everyone that is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live. (9) So Moses made a bronze
serpent, and put it upon a pole, and it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he
looked at the bronze serpent, he lived".
In
this passage the people of Israel are journeying through the wilderness and have recently
traveled from the Mount Hor area near the Red Sea to the borders of Edom near where Petra
is located. It is without a doubt some of the most inhospitable territory on the earth.
The Bible says that because of the difficulty of the journey the people became discouraged
and began to complain against God and His servant Moses (Numbers 21:4). Because of their
grumbling and murmuring, God in response sends poisonous snakes into their midst and many
of the people are bitten and die from the snake bites (v. 6). Then the people repented and
cried out, “We have sinned” (v.
7).The Lord then offered salvation through a strange means. He commanded Moses to make the
image of a serpent from bronze and to hang it from a pole. The people who were bitten and
were dying could be healed only by lifting their eyes and looking at the serpent. They
would be saved by an act of faith, those who looked up at the serpent were saved. It
certainly goes without saying that the remedy proposed by God through Moses sounds utterly
absurd.
The details of the analogy are remarkable.
First, it is a story of sin and its consequences.
Nicodemus understood that it was sin that had
brought the judgment of God upon the people. It was a result of their sin that they were
dying.
Secondly, the only people
who were saved by looking to the bronze serpent were those who acknowledged that they were
dying. These were people who were perishing because of their sin and they knew
it!
Third, we dare not overlook the importance of
the “look of faith,” it was by faith
that those who were bitten looked at the bronze snake lived. Moses lifted up the serpent
in the camp and all the dying Israelites had to do was look at the pole and they would be
saved. “No matter how horribly they were bitten, no matter
how many times they had been bitten or how sick they were, the opportunity for salvation
was there. Even the most degraded and miserable sinner who looks to Christ will be saved.
That is why the Lord used this wonderful illustration.” [R. Kent Hughes. “Preaching the
Word: John –That You May Believe.” (Wheaton: Ill.: Crossway Books, 1999) p.
83]
It should be noted that it
was not enough to know that salvation was offered, each man had to look for himself
otherwise God’s provision was useless. Jesus is saying that being born again comes
through the simple dependence of a look of faith, not by having a perfect faith.
Even so, Jesus would be lifted up on a cross, and all those who look unto him will be
saved.
“On January 6,1850, a snowstorm
almost crippled the city of Colchester, England and a teenage boy was unable to get to the
church he usually attended. So he made his way to a nearby Primitive Methodist chapel,
where an ill-prepared layman was substituting for the absent preacher. His text was Isaiah
45:22 – ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth.’ For many months this young teenager had been
miserable and under deep conviction; but though he was reared in church (both his father
and grandfather were preachers), he did not have the assurance of salvation.
The unprepared substitute
minister did not have much to say, so he kept repeating the text. ‘A man need not go to college to learn to look,’
he shouted. ‘Anyone can look – a child
can look!’ About that time, he saw the visitor sitting to one side, and he
pointed at him and said, ‘Young man, you look
very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!’
The young man did look by
faith and that was how the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted!” [Warren Wiersbe. “Be Alive.”
(Wheaton, ILL: Victor Books, 1986) pp. 39-40]
Not
Only A Picture of Salvation but …
Secondly,
The Motivation For Salvation (3:16)
“For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
This
is one of the best known verses in all the Bible, no doubt because it states the gospel so
clearly and simply. It summarizes what the Lord Jesus had been teaching Nicodemus
concerning the manner by which the new birth is received.
But Jesus is not through
turning Nicodemus’ world upside down because in verse sixteen, Nicodemus is
told that the love of God extends to the whole “world.” In
John’s writing the “world” (Gk- cosmos) is not a reference to the physical world
of plants and animals, that is of such concern to activists groups like Greenpeace and the
Sierra Club. The “world” that John is referring
to is humanity. “The
world” here includes all mankind. Yet this does not mean that everyone is saved. A person must
receive what Christ has done for him before God will give him eternal life.
The idea that God is concerned with the whole
of humanity is an idea Nicodemus would have found shocking indeed! This was an idea that
was almost beyond comprehension for the Jews. Remember the prophet Jonah, he could not conceive that
God’s love included the Ninevites (who were not only Gentiles but vile unloving and
unlovable Gentiles).
The disciples John and James wanted to
call down fire from heaven to torch a Samaritan village (Luke 9:52-56). It took a special
vision from God to convince Peter that his plan called for
including Gentiles in the Church (Acts 11:1-3)
God so loved
the world, that He gave His only begotten
Son that whoever (you can write your name in here and I can write mine – in fact
in your outline this morning is verse sixteen with a blank – I want you to write your
name in that blank) believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Notice that the word “believe” is accompanied by the
little preposition “in”
which means to believe “in Christ.”
That is, we must trust Him as the One who bore the penalty for our sins. This is a
personal thing. We must each believe that He died in our place. That means that you must
believe that He died for you.
There is no need for anyone to perish. A way
has been provided by which all might be saved, but a person must acknowledge the Lord
Jesus Christ as personal Savior. When he does this, he has eternal life as a
present possession.
Not Only The Motivation for Salvation but
Third, The Necessity
of Salvation (3:17-21)
“For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (18) “He who believes in Him is
not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
When
Jesus came the first time, He did not come as “a” judge. He made that very clear to
the man who wanted Him to give a judgment between himself and his brother. He said, “… Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?”
(Luke 12:14). He didn’t come as “a”
Judge the first time. He came as “the”
Savior. He will come the next time as “the”
Judge. But now He says that God didn’t send Him into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved.
Jesus did not come to
condemn an already condemned world, what good would that do? He doesn’t say that
those who refuse the Light will be condemned at some future date. He says that they
are “already condemned” they are just waiting for
the sentence to be carried out!
If you were to make a trip
to Cummins Prison and be taken on a tour of “death row” you would see inmates
who are waiting the carrying out of the death sentence. They are not waiting to be
condemned they are already condemned men living on borrowed time just waiting for the
sentence they have already received to be carried out. The thought that in a very short
time they will die for their crimes sends a shiver up our spine.
But there is something more
horrible still. Everyday you come in contact with a host of condemned men and women,
condemned by their sin, because they have never accepted Christ as their savior. They are
not condemned to die by lethal injection but they are still only waiting for the carrying
out of the just sentence that their sins demand. It is a sentence of judgment that people
impose upon themselves.
The only way to escape that
condemnation is to believe in Jesus. In Romans 8:1 the Apostle Paul writes, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
Jesus…” As this verse so clearly states “in
Christ” there is no condemnation. Those who are not in Christ are already condemned. There are a great many who
feel that the world is on trial today. It is not. The world is lost. You and I live in a
lost world, our position is some-thing like a man who is in prison being asked whether or
not he will accept a pardon. That is the gospel. It is not telling a man that he is on
trial. He is already condemned. He is already in prison waiting for execution. But the
gospel tells him a pardon is offered to him. The point is, will you accept the pardon? How
wonderfully clear that is. The gospel is to save those who are already lost.
Beginning in verse
nineteen we are given man’s reaction to the light. “And
this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (20) For everyone practicing evil
hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. (21) But
he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they
have been done in God.”
Jesus is “the light” who came “into the world.”
He was the sinless Son of God. He died for the sins of all the world. But do all men love
Him for this? No – some resent His intrusion into their lives and they resent being
revealed for what they are. They prefer their sins to having Jesus as Savior, and so they
reject Him. Just as rats and cock roaches and other creeping things scurry away when light
enters a room, even so wicked men and women flee from the presence of Christ.
According to verse twenty, those who love sin hate “the light,” because the light exposes their sinfulness. When Jesus was here in the world, sinful men were made uncomfortable by His presence because He revealed their awful condition by His own holiness.