The sermon titled 'For God So Loved the World' by Scott Brown focuses on exploring the depth and significance of John 3:16, often considered the greatest verse in the Bible. The sermon begins by examining the context of the verse, highlighting God's love as the motive for sending His only begotten Son for the salvation of humanity. It emphasizes the importance of understanding God's love as a central theme throughout the Bible, impacting how believers view themselves and others. Scott Brown discusses the concept of God's condescension, illustrating how God reaches out to humanity despite their sins. The sermon underscores the necessity of belief in Jesus Christ for eternal life, contrasting intellectual assent with a deeper, heartfelt belief. Through various biblical illustrations, the sermon portrays God's love as inclusive, reaching out to all kinds of people, regardless of their sins. It calls on believers to understand the vastness of God's love and to live in a manner that reflects this love towards others, suggesting that a church should be rooted and grounded in God's love.

If you would join me and turn to the sermon text this morning, you'll be reading from John 3, verses 14 through 16. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 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 Let's pray Heavenly Father Lord we remember our voice that was amongst the mockers and those who was gone for, but through the gospel of your Son, you have changed us, Lord. Father, I pray that even as we hear the gospel afresh this morning that it will continue to convict us of how unworthy we were and remind us of the great salvation that Christ has wrought for us. May we continue to be enthralled by this beautiful gospel.

Oh Lord, fill our hearts with goodness from above today, even as we hear these words. And Lord, for those who are still sitting in the seat of the markers, Lord, I pray that You would do the work of the Spirit in their hearts. Lord that You would turn the hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. Oh Lord we pray for miracles today. Amen.

Well, we'll have our entire focus this morning on one verse, John 3 16. I've been looking forward to this day for a long time. We preached around it. We preached above it. We preached below it.

Now we're going to focus in on it, John 316. It's been called the greatest verse in the Bible. It does reveal the central matter of the Bible. It reveals the heart of God for His creatures. God created people, and what is He going to do with them?

He's going to reach out to them. That's what He does for people. Luther said that this verse is the Bible in miniature, and everything in the Bible is here. The eternal love of God, the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, propitiation, salvation, glorification. His motives are revealed.

And it brings us down to one of the most important things a church can ever really understand, and that is the love of God. And this is why the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian Church where he prayed that they would be rooted and grounded in love and that they might be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. To be filled with the love of God is to be filled with the fullness of God. And so this text brings us right there. Many people have called it the greatest text in the Bible.

I heard a sermon once where, where the man said it's the greatest verse in the Bible because it speaks of the greatest giver, God, the greatest lover, God, the greatest degree, so loved, the greatest company, the world, the greatest act he gave, the greatest gift is only begotten, the greatest opportunity, whosoever, the greatest simplicity believe, the greatest attraction in him. The greatest promise shall not perish. The greatest difference but the greatest certainty has and the greatest possession eternal life." So we won't walk through that many points in this sermon, but I think you get the idea. Every single word breathes of the greatness of the mercies of God. And he meets man's greatest need with his great love and that's why John Flavel said that John 316 shows us the exceeding preciousness of souls and at what a high rate God values the soul that he will give his son his only son out of his bosom as a ransom.

And you know every word in this verse speaks of what the apostle Paul spoke of in Ephesians 2, 4, and 5, when he said that God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, he made us alive together with Christ. So we enter into this central message of the love of God, and it really is of enormous importance for our church that we are or become a church filled with the love of God. And I'll bear my soul with you. You know, my goal every time I preach here in this church, of all the things that are said, of all the words, of all the verses, my greatest desire is to extol the beauty of Jesus Christ and his love. That's, you know, I don't know how else to communicate it except to try to explain the words of Scripture.

But if anybody walks away from anything and forgets everything, and we will forget so much, I forget so much of my own sermons within five hours, but what are we left with? And It's really a vision, a firm conviction deep within our hearts of the sweetness of Jesus Christ, of His tenderness, of His superiority, and to know His love the way that the Bible describes it. And so that we walk away thinking how great is your love? How loving are your laws? How good are you Lord?

And I pray that happens as we penetrate into this verse here. And it really is important that our hearts connect with the love of God, that a church is filled with a sense of the love of God. Paul made this very clear in 2 Thessalonians 3. He said, now may the Lord Jesus direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. There in 2 Thessalonians 3 verse 5, he's talking about the heart being directed into the love of God.

Your heart can be directed into the love of God. Let that happen today that we would just grow in a sense of his love. And you know the greater our sense of the love of God will mean something really important for us. It'll mean the greatness of our love for one another. If you have a sense of the love of God, you'll have a sense of just how appropriate it is to love one another.

And so this central message is about the greatness of the love of God. You have an outline in front of you. I've broken it down, this verse, into four points that I want to make. And The first is the motive of God, that's love, and then secondly, the gift of God, God's only son, and then the call of God, whoever believes, and then finally, the promise of God, everlasting life. So that will be what I'll try to explain from this great verse here.

So let's begin with the motive of God, and the motive is love. Now, I want to look at four words here. First of all, the word for, then the word so, then the word loved, and then the word words the world. And so let's look at this first word for. This really brings us into the context of what the Apostle John is trying to say.

And when a sentence begins with the word for, it means that it's part of something greater. There's something that went before it. So John has been making statements about Jesus and he's been quoting Jesus. And then he uses the word for in his explanation of the words of Jesus Christ. And so It connects to the previous part of the story.

And of course, this is a conversation with Nicodemus and the new birth. And the Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And then he tells Nicodemus about a type in the Old Testament of the time when the children of Israel had really lost a sense of the love of God. And they didn't love Moses, they didn't love Aaron, and they really were struggling with love for God and they were complaining. And God sent fiery serpents among them to judge them, to test them.

And they were, many were getting sick and many died as a result of that. And then God told Moses to raise up a bronze serpent in the wilderness. And everyone who would look at that serpent would be healed and they wouldn't die. That was a type, that was a type of Jesus Christ. And the whole idea is look to Christ and you'll be healed.

Yes, you are a sinful people. Yes, you've been caught as a complaining, ungrateful people, self-driven, self-obsessed, and proud, but there's a way out. And it's a look to Jesus Christ and be saved. And so the serpent made of bronze was raised up in the wilderness as a type. And it was a type of Jesus being lifted up on the cross, being crucified for our sins.

And that's the same message for sinners today. Look to Jesus Christ. Look to the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ became sin for us. In the same way that serpent, the representation of sin, Christ became sin for us as well.

When the people looked at the bronze serpent, it was as if they were looking at their own sins before them. And their own sins were on that pole. And the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way, He became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. And this is the whole doctrine of substitutionary atonement. And so John is connecting the bronze serpent with the Lord Jesus Christ being lifted up.

And so now Jesus says, speaking to Nicodemus, he says, for, for God so loved the world. And so he's connecting with this moment in the wilderness where people's hearts turned in love toward God because God made a way. He saw his creatures in disobedience and in disarray and he drew them to himself by lifting up the atonement for their sin. He was kind to them because they were caught in their sin, and he gave them a way out of their sin. So verse 16 is the climax and the summary of this illustration in John 3, 15 and before.

So the word for is important because it connects us with the whole context. You must be born again. Looking to Jesus Christ is how you become born again. Now everyone looks at Jesus Christ in different ways, and it really matters how you look at him. If you look at him with love, if you look at him with desire to follow him, you'll be saved.

And so that's the first thing that we encounter. Then there's the word so, for God so, so loved the world. And the word here doesn't primarily mean he loved you this much. There are two different ways that you can think of the word so. One way is he loved you this much, but that's not actually the primary meaning of this Greek word, houtas, that he uses here.

He's really saying, for God loved the world in this way, like this. So it's, of course, this is huge, but that's not the primary meaning. He's really saying, God loved the world like this. In this particular way, he did something. He sent his son.

It's the way that he loved the world. Now it is great, we know that, but that's not what the verse is actually contending. It's contending for the act of what God did. He sent his son. And so it's not enough to say he loved the world this much.

You know, we do that with our children all the time. How much do I love you? I love you this much. Oh no, I love you more than that. I love you from here to the moon.

I love you from here to Googleplex infinity. Well, He's really saying God loved the world in such a way that he would give his son. And I think another way to think about this is in 1 John chapter 3 verses 1 and 2. You remember this verse when we were going through 1 John, behold what manner of love, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. It's a manner of love.

It's a way of loving. God is loving us by the sending of his Son. And God initiates this love. Paul says God commended his love in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us in Romans 5, verse 8. We are not lovable, but we are loved, and we're loved by the giving of a son to us.

And we are all like sheep, we've gone astray, but there's a way that God loved us in the sending of his son. Now the way that he loved us is to reach out to us. This is what God does with sinners. He reaches out to sinners. He speaks to them.

He declares His word to them and He sends various messengers, the messenger of the conscience, the messenger of the written word of God, the messengers of the Church of God and the internet and all kinds of things that are scattered all over this world. And this really brings us to what God always does. God always reaches out to mankind. Every covenant that God makes with man, God is the initiator of that covenant. And God makes the move.

This is love. God makes the move. When you love, you make the move. That's exactly what God did. And you know, theologians have a word for this.

It's a long word. Children, are you listening? I'm going to teach you a long word. Okay, are you ready? Condescension.

If you're 10 years old and below, please say this word with me. Condescension. Let me hear it. Condescension. Okay.

Condescension. It means to come down, to reach out. Like if I were to come out and just grab you and hold you and carry you back here, I would have condescended. To condescend is to reach down. Most of you are little enough that I would have to condescend to hold you.

I'd have to reach down to hold you. And that's exactly what God does. He condescends. He reaches down. Even when we haven't done what we've required, like the children of Israel in the wilderness, who were proud and self-obsessed and discontented and unhappy with their leaders, God descended and he helped them.

And he condescends to Adam, that's a whole other story. He condescends to Noah, another remarkable story. He condescends to Abraham and he condescends to sinners. He comes, he reaches out, love reaches out. God creates human beings, there are billions of them in the world and he reaches out to them.

And He reached out through his son, Jesus Christ. And there's this beautiful language in the book of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter four, verse 13, there's this amazing imagery. It says that he passed through the heavens, he passed through the heavens and he came down. And then in his resurrection, he passed back through the heavens, and he sat at his father's right hand. He reached out, he came down, he sent his word, he sent his people, he sent preachers throughout the whole earth.

And now he's sending really the internet all over the world to reach almost everyone on the planet. It's amazing what God is doing. He passes through the heavens. God reaches out. Love reaches out.

And that's the whole idea. Now, what does that mean for us? It means two things for us. First of all, it means if you're saved, it means that God reached out to you. He reached out to you.

You were born from above. Born again. Remember that in the first part of chapter 3? You must be born from above. It comes from above.

You don't do it. You don't want it. He makes you want Him. And so what happens in reconciliation is that the offended party makes the move. Now that's what happened in our salvation, but that's also, by the way, and everybody knows this, that's the only way that reconciliation happens between people.

It's when the offended party reaches out. And when God was reconciling the world to himself, he came to us. This is love. It condescends. It reaches out.

It touches the heart through words and through feelings and through sensibilities that are born by the Holy Spirit. And that's how we're saved. So he so loved. He loved the world. Now we know that God is love, but love is not God.

The love of God is really one of the categories of many of the attributes of God. Now, I would like to suggest that all of his other attributes are attributes of love, but you can't just simply take this one attribute as a standalone. He is also omniscient and immutable. He also has wrath. So you can't just take one of these attributes and isolate it.

If you do, you might say love is God. But that's not true. When the Bible says God is love, it's not saying that love is God and therefore all is love and therefore all is God. That's not what this is teaching at all. God's love as an attribute exists alongside all of the other attributes.

But in its core, love is good will toward men. It's God's good pleasure. Paul says to the Ephesians, it was the good pleasure of his will that has accomplished all these things. That's why you hear when the Lord Jesus was being born, glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth, good will, good will toward men.

That's love. It's the good will of God that reaches out to sinners who do not deserve it at all. Nobody ever got into the kingdom of God by deserving any of it. And it's the love that reaches out that has goodwill toward man, man that God created. You know, all the people in the world that are alive today, their only hope really is to be loved by God and to know it.

Now because God is a God of love, he desired to communicate the greatness of his love through a very graphic and an extremely understandable personal illustration. If you think about what it was that God used to demonstrate His love for us, well, He used His Son, and not just his son, he used his only son. You know, people get very emotional when they think about losing their only son. It's hard enough to lose your son, but if you lose your only son, it seems to be far, far more challenging to absorb. And God used this illustration to connect with every human being who's ever been born so that they could understand it, so they could understand the greatness of his love.

He's giving a picture, an illustration that everyone can understand. He did condescend to us. He did come down to our level. And when he says he gave his only son, He's really coming down to our level. He's connecting with everyone's feelings.

He's connecting with the way that everybody thinks about life. You don't have to be a Christian to have your heart break when your only son dies. Or when he's punished, or when he's hurt, or when he's killed even, or slandered, or slapped, or spat upon. No one wants their son to be treated like that. And so what God has done is he gives us this one thing that every single person on the planet can relate to.

Isn't that amazing? Why? Because he wanted to draw all men to himself through his everlasting love. With loving kindness you have drawn me. And I think this illustration is part of his loving kindness.

He wanted to make it so clear of the greatness of his love, how astonishingly deep, how profoundly costly it was, and he wanted to make it very clear how hopeless sinners were in their sin. But in the midst of their hopelessness, how much hope they had in God, that God would rescue them, that God wanted to reach out to them, that he wanted to condescend to them, he wanted to make it so clear so he used the most powerful illustration that can be given in the human family. You know many of you have sons, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And he sent his son to give the world an earthly representation that they could understand at the most intimate, emotional, mental level to help them understand His love. You know, God, This is not just some kind of intellectual concept here that God has presented before us.

This is not, believe in His Son, this thing. No! It's far deeper than that. He gave you something that He knew could break your heart and turn to Him. Turn to him.

So he's giving an earthly demonstration to show what kind of love it was. It is interesting maybe as a rabbit trail there are many ways that God communicates His love. He uses the same language with marriage. He uses the same language that lovers use when they love one another from the heart and they can't get enough of each other and they don't want to get away from each other and they want to marry one another and stay with each other forever. He uses the language of marriage and love like the go read Song of Solomon you know go go read Ephesians chapter 5.

It's perfectly plain there. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. And then he says husbands should love their wives like their own bodies because nobody ever hated his own body. In other words, there's so many illustrations of how love works and God uses illustrations right out of our lives, your life and my life, Whether it's a son or whether it's falling in love or a marriage or something like that He uses all this language to help us to understand The depth of his love so we are receiving a degree on the love of God here with this very phrase loved for God so loved Loved And then we come to the word world, the world. Now, this is actually a broad term that's used.

I read an article this week that says that John has 10 uses of the word world. It's the word cosmos. It appears over and over again, 185 times in the New Testament, 78 times in John, 8 times in Matthew, 3 in Mark, and 3 in Luke. In other words, John uses this word, the world, more than any other gospel writer. And he uses the word in different ways in the gospel of John.

Sometimes he uses it of the entire universe. Others the physical earth. Others the world system. Other times he uses it of all humanity except not believers. And sometimes he uses it as a big group but less than all the people everywhere on the planet.

So he uses the word differently. And what does he mean here? I think that what he's saying is really a lot simpler than we might think. And that is that the love of Jesus reaches to every kind of person in the world, every kind of person, every tongue, tribe, and nation, every sinful pattern of sinners, of fornicators, and idolaters, and thieves, and homosexuals, and adulterers, and transsexuals, and violent abusers. He reaches out to those.

He loves the world. And go to 1 Timothy 1 and you'll see this remarkable list of sinners. And you read this in 1 Timothy 1 verse 9. He talks of the lawless and the insubordinate, the ungodly, the unholy, the profane, the murderers of fathers and of mothers, fornicators, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and any other thing that's contrary to sound doctrine. This is the world that God loved.

He loves sinners. No sin puts you beyond his reach. No sin. No character quality. Nothing puts you beyond the reach of God's love.

You know, in 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul makes this really clear. He lists all these same kinds of things, and then he turns, and you can just picture him looking at the church there, And he says, and such were some of you. Yeah, you're the homosexuals and the liars and the wife-beaters and the perjurers and the thieves. Here we are. We're gathered here in this church.

He loves sinners. He wants to draw them together to love God. And that's why he has made the church. You know, one of my favorite songs in this world is the hymn, The Love of God. The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.

It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. That's the love of God. Well He loved the world, which translated means we love him because he loved us. Now, he's explaining his love here. And I think the word love is the central word and the central principle of this entire passage, this entire verse.

There are so many ways that he's expressed his love. Here's one, he laid down his life. 1 John 3 16, got that? 1 John 3 16. By this we know love because he laid down his life for us and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

We learned also from John in the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 1 verses 5 and 6, that he loved us and one of the things that he did because of his love is that he washed us. To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and made us kings and priests to his God and Father. He made idiots, priests, and kings. He made sinners, priests, and kings. Exactly what he did.

It's exactly what he's doing here. His love is so clearly communicated also in Galatians 2.20, which really speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ being present with us as a manifestation of his love. Like the song says, he walks with me and he talks with me. But Paul says it like this to the Galatians. He says, the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." So this is the love of God.

And I know our response, you know, should always be the same. You know, he... Like Paul says to the Ephesians, he says, be imitators of God, dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. You know, it was yesterday Dwayne had a singing that song, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and We were in the back listening to that. It's out of Psalm 103.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul. And then later on the psalm says, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. This is the love of God. So my prayer really for today is that we somehow find ourselves having a greater sense of the love of God and how unfathomable and how wonderful it is and that we being rooted and grounded in love might be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. You know when the apostle uses that language, you know he uses width and length and depth and height.

He is all over the geographical spectrum and he's talking about the the vastness of his love. It's like these four dimensions of his love that go out in every possible direction. And His love is multifaceted, it's multi-sided. The width and the length and the depth and the height all speak of God's unsearchable infinite greatness of love. It's width beyond widths, it's length beyond lengths, it's depth beyond all depths, and heights beyond all heights.

It's greater than all of your sin, It's greater than everything. It goes beyond the greatness of your sinfulness. It's amazing. Jonathan Edwards said this. He said, and this is a book that everybody should read, this quote comes out of Charity and its Fruits.

It's Jonathan Edwards' commentary on 1 Corinthians 13. But he says this, God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven fills heaven with love. As the sun placed in the midst of the visible heavens on a clear day, it fills the world with light. The apostle tells us that God is love, and therefore seeing He is an infinite being, it follows that He is an infinite fountain of love.

And in that he is an unchangeable and eternal being. He is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love. And then he continues, you know, Edwards is thinking about the attributes of God. He's unchangeable, he's immutable, and he's pouring love into all these. And then he says, there even in heaven dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, every drop that is or ever was proceeds.

In other words, any love that anybody's experienced in any time in history, it all comes from God. It's all been flowing from God. There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one in infinitely dear and incomprehensible and mutual and eternal love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yes rivers of love and delight, And these rivers swell like an ocean of love in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment in their hearts, as it were, to be deluged with love." Now, you know, this is a picture of a church basking in the love of God and recognizing that all sources of love flow from God. They flow from the throne of God like a river and they become like an ocean reminds me of Ezekiel 47 where the prophet you know sees this water flowing out of the temple and it's ankle deep and then it's knee deep and then it's waist deep and then you can't even stand in it.

It's so deep. And oh that God would help us to keep ourselves in the love of God in this church. But this would be the greatest, most prominent feature of our hearts. When we think of each other, when we're together, when we're talking to one another, Keep yourselves in the love of God says Jude verse 21. So the motive of God is love and then secondly the gift of God is God's only Son.

He gave his only begotten Son. The word begotten is really unique. It really doesn't have anything to do with birth. It has to do with the singular nature of him, how different he is. He is the unique Son.

He is the only Son of God. That's the idea. And that Jesus is the only Son of God. And You know, this morning I received a note from somebody in our church. This person obviously knew that I was thinking about John 3.16.

And this person sent me a quotation from Derek Thomas who said this, God spared Isaac, but he sacrificed his own son. This is how God deals with sinners. He spares the sinner and he sacrifices his only son. And he's speaking here of really the two natures of God, that he is fully God and fully man. You know, Jesus could not have been atonement for our sin if he was a sinner, but he wasn't a sinner and he kept every law of God.

So our sins, which we deserve punishment for, were laid upon him who did not deserve any punishment for. So when we read this, he gave his only son. We're taken back really to the nature of the Son of God, that you had two natures living in one person. He was fully divine and he was fully human. And so this only son became the sacrifice for sin.

But what God did with Isaac is exactly what he's done with us. You know, back in 2000 BC, when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and he took him out to Mount Moriah and then God did not allow Isaac to be sacrificed but he provided a substitute. God spared Isaac, but he sacrificed his own son. Again, I think that just takes us back to what God is trying to connect with us, that his love is so great and we must somehow grasp it on an emotional and a mental level that no one would do that to his son. Only a great love would do such a thing, so that we would be rooted and grounded in love.

And then you see the call of God, whoever believes, or whosoever believes in Him in some of the translations. Whosoever believes means what it sounds like it means. It just means all who believe. Whosoever believes, It cannot be an argument against Calvinism. It's just simply a statement of reality that only those who believe will be saved.

It's a lot simpler than people might wanna make it out to be. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. It's that simple and Does he save the whole world? Well, no just keep reading on Some will be condemned some won't believe so But But the word believe is also one of those words like world that's used regularly in the Gospel of John, that whosoever might believe. By the way, this word is used seven times from verse 12 to verse 18 right here in the section in front of us.

And you know, there's several words like that, you know, receiving and seeing and believing. These are common words. Now, there are different kinds of belief. First, there's belief in facts. You believe a proposition.

And you say, well yes, Jesus Christ is real. You know, he was born and he was sacrificed on the cross. Yeah, I believe that. That's believing in facts. And people are often deceived into thinking that believing in facts is the end of belief, that that's the kind of belief that he's speaking of.

Now that's the first part of the kind of belief that he's speaking of. He's not speaking exclusively of intellectual assent, that you believe these facts about Jesus. In some ways that's irrelevant. In James chapter 2 we learn that even the demons believe. They believe the facts.

They know the facts. Their number is up. Their days are numbered. So he's not talking about just stopping with the belief in facts. And many people think they're saved because they believe facts about Jesus.

And you can believe in Jesus in the same way that you believe that snow is white or that a Tesla is battery powered. I mean, You can believe in Jesus like that, you just know what it is, and what's said about it. But that's only the beginning of the kind of belief that John is speaking about here, because even the demons believe intellectually, but they don't believe lovingly or savingly or trustfully. The demons don't believe in the goodness of his authority. The unbeliever hasn't embraced the idea that all his laws are good.

That's a completely different kind of belief. So the second kind of belief is a belief that trusts, that Maybe you could just say it like this, that really believes deeper than just on the surface of, yeah, I believe Jesus came and He died. But the demons don't believe in Him warmly or savingly or trustingly or hopefully and they don't believe submissively and they don't believe expectantly. They don't believe that God is so wonderful. You know in Hebrews chapter 11 we read that without faith it's impossible to please Him.

It's the same word, faith and belief. It's impossible to please Him. But then He says, for he who comes to God must believe, not just the facts, must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. In other words, that kind of belief believes that God is so good that he's a rewarder and you can't wait to be with him. That's a completely different kind of belief.

There's a great difference when you believe the snow is white as opposed to I want to go jump in that snow and that's the difference between intellectual ascent and the belief that John is talking about here that the Lord Jesus Christ is calling it has to be due with being persuaded and confident in God. You know the Bible says with the heart one believes it rises up within the heart For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. That's in Romans chapter 10 verse 10. With the heart one believes unto righteousness and it involves faith.

So to believe means to embrace and internalize, to love, to be attracted to, to want. That's the kind of belief he's talking about here. Now, there may be people here who say, wow, I think I just have intellectual assent. I'm here because, well, maybe my parents make me come, and yeah, if somebody asked me, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Of course I do.

That's all I know. That's not the kind of belief that Jesus is saying will bless you for all eternity. And then he turns from the call of God to believe. And everyone should recognize that in reading these words, whoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life. They should consider that a call from God.

God's calling him. God's reaching out to you. He's reaching out to you with those words. That's what God does. He condescends.

He reaches out. He makes the first move. And you may recognize that your heart is hard. God is making a move toward you in the very sound of these words. Believe, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

And abandon this intellectual unmoved belief. You know, That's not what it means to be a Christian. And then the promise of God is referred to whoever believes should not perish but have everlasting life. So the first words I'd like us to focus in on are these two words, not perish. Not perish.

To perish is to be destroyed. And there are those that perish and there are those that don't perish. Somebody once said, you got two kinds of people in the world. You got the saints and you got the aints. And the aints perish.

That's the idea that he's giving here. And you're either living or you're perishing. There are only two kinds of people in this world. It always amazes me how people so misunderstand what God has said. You know, they divide the world up in races and cultures.

That's ridiculous. There really are only two kinds of races, sheep and goats. That's it. That's all that exists. We're all one blood.

And some are perishing and some are not. Not perishing. To perish also is not to be annihilated. This is not teaching annihilationism, which some do. He's speaking of the final destiny of ruin of those who do not believe savingly and lovingly toward God, who will spend an eternal ruin in hell.

And so to perish is to experience everlasting destruction while the saints experience everlasting life. This eternal life is in the...has eternal life. This is in the present tense. Those who are being saved have eternal life. And we read in Matthew chapter 10, Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.

And we have all over the Bible a declaration of God's wrath. People say that Jesus spoke more about hell than any other author in the Bible, and that is true. Now, you're either perishing, you're either in a state of perishing, or you're in a state of everlasting life. And this is in the present tense. And this is very important.

When you turn to Jesus Christ, you immediately, instantaneously have passed into everlasting life. There's much evidence for this, that the present tense is used in many places, that you pass from death into life in the new birth. It's an instantaneous transformation of your status before God. In fact, if you go to the end of John chapter 3 verse 36, he who believes in the sun has everlasting life. That's in the present tense.

You believe in the sun and you have everlasting life. Your body may die but you don't die. You have everlasting life granted to you at the moment of belief and it does happen in a moment of time. You might not know the moment of time but it happened in a moment of time. You pass from death to life during some period of time.

It doesn't matter if you know what moment that was. God knows what moment that was because you were born. Something happened. You were born again from above. Something happened from above and you received everlasting life.

But then if you go on to verse 36, he who believes in the Son, present tense, has everlasting life, he who does not believe in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Abides is also in the present tense. The wrath of God is always abiding on you when you're in a state of unbelief. I remember being so thankful for this as a young man. I felt like I'd stepped over a line, that I was protected by the power of God for all eternity, That I had everlasting life right then.

I've had it for a long time and will have it for a long, long, long time. So when you're born again, you step over a line. That's not a sales pitch. God's not making a sales pitch to you. Step over the line.

He's declaring a reality of what happens when you believe in Him. Jesus also said, this is eternal life that you may know the eternal God. Now when you're on your deathbed and you don't think you're going to live very long, And if you believe savingly and warmly and submissively and sweetly and you know his everlasting arms, then you've already passed into eternal life. You're not passing into eternal life when you die. You already passed into eternal life.

The only thing that's happening is that your body is dying, but your soul lives forever. All souls live forever, either in everlasting blessing and light or in everlasting punishment. When a person dies, they don't enter into eternal life in the sense that we normally think about it. Their bodies go into the grave and they decay and their souls go in one of two directions. They go to be eternally in the presence of Jesus Christ or they go into eternal punishment.

At some point at the end of time when Jesus Christ comes all the bodies will be raised and bodies will be united to souls. The bodies of the unbelievers will be united with their souls in hell to be tormented forever and the bodies of Those who believe in Jesus warmly and savingly and submissively will be united with their souls in heaven for all eternity. And that's why he says we'll have everlasting life. Now, there are two words here, everlasting and life. The first word everlasting has to do with the quantity of life, the length of life.

And the second word is life. It's by the way it's the word zoe where we get our word zoology, you know. I mean it's life, all kinds of life, That's the quality of life. This quality of life is declared all over the Bible. The Lord in Romans 14 says the kingdom of God is in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's the quality of life. So it's quantity and quality. 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." What a great verse. I want to just have us drop in, just for a few moments, into some applications of this. First, calculate the vastness of his love, the width and the length and the depth and the height.

It is unsearchable. It goes higher than your greatest enemy. It goes lower than your deepest depression and disappointment. It goes longer than you've traveled away from him. His arm is longer, longer than your disobedience.

And it's wider than anything. It's, it It covers everything. So calculate the vastness of his love for you. And then count, count. This is a little bit different than what I appealed to you a moment ago.

Count the multitude of his loving kindnesses. In Isaiah chapter 63 verses 7 through 10 we read this that he says, I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord. There are many loving kindnesses of the Lord that have been bestowed on all of us. He says they've been bestowed on them according to his mercies, according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses. Let's just count up the loving kindnesses of God.

You know, David prayed, show your marvelous loving kindness by your right hand. Let's count, count the loving kindnesses. Don't miss them. Today's the Sabbath day, it's the day for delight. There's no better day than today.

To spend the whole day counting. Maybe as we eat together in the fellowship meal later on, we'll count. And then understand why he drew you to himself or is drawing you to himself. Understand. The Lord says, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. Again, I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt. Why did he draw you? Or why is he drawing you? Maybe he's drawing you this morning because he wants to build you.

That's why. And then next, love in the same way that you've been loved. Forgive in the same way that you've been forgiven. Colossians chapter 3, the Apostle commands the church there and the reason he's commanding the church there is because problems, you got problems in churches on this area. People receive a lot of mercy, but they don't give a lot of mercy.

That happens in churches. It happened in Colossae, it happened in Ephesus, it happened in Corinth. I dare say it happened in all the New Testament churches we have record of. And guess what? It happens here.

And here's what he says. He says, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Love in the same way you've been loved. Condescend, reach out, make the first move like he has.

Well, Paul told the Corinthians, let all that you do be done in love, And may the Lord direct our hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Jesus Christ. You know, there's a benediction that really fits this passage of scripture in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, And I'll take this as our benediction today. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Lord, we thank you.

Thank you for your love. We pray that you would grow us in love, that we would be changed by your love in all of our doings in our homes and in this church and our businesses. Oh Lord that you would manifest your glory by causing love to spring forth from our hearts. Lord we Thank you for the sending of your Son and your condescension and how you reached out to us and we needed you so much. Amen.