Pastor Jerry Zepnick's sermon, titled 'The Love of God in the New Birth,' explores the profound theological themes found in John 3:16. The sermon begins by highlighting the notable contrast between Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee, and Jesus, a rejected Galilean carpenter. This dichotomy underscores the sermon's central message that all humans, regardless of status, are in need of rebirth through faith in Jesus. Pastor Zepnick emphasizes that God's word is powerful and transformative, inviting listeners to engage deeply with scripture to find Jesus within it. The sermon elucidates that Nicodemus, despite his religious stature, remains spiritually dead because of his human nature, not due to any specific sin. This reflects the universal human condition: all are blind and powerless to save themselves without divine intervention. The sermon asserts that God's love is radical and transformative, not just accepting humans as they are but offering a completely new life through rebirth. The sermon critiques the modern culture's misunderstanding of God's love, which often overlooks the need for personal transformation. Pastor Zepnick stresses that God's love is not an endorsement of human goodness but a call to a new life through Jesus. He underscores the generous nature of God throughout biblical history, from creation to the sending of Jesus. The sermon concludes by inviting listeners to embrace this love and rebirth, emphasizing that salvation is a gift from God and not earned by human effort.

Good morning, family. Good morning, brother. Happy New Year to everyone. To continue to grow on the Lord as we see him in his work. And so it's the work of God that of all days, the first Sunday of the year that we would be in what is probably the most recognizable Bible verse of all time, and nonetheless one of the most powerful as well.

Not that it's any more or less powerful than any other one, but one of the most recognizable Bible verses in the Word of God is John 3 16. And so I just want to welcome you to the first service of 26th and kind of review where we've come to this point in the book of John chapter 3 really, which is the discourse of a conversation between Jesus Christ himself and Nicodemus, probably would be one of the head leaders of the Pharisees, if not the head guy, very wealthy, very well known. And so as we go through this this morning, I'm going to ask you not to listen to me. I don't want you to listen to me today. I want you to listen to the word of God this morning.

The word of God is powerful and it speaks to our hearts and our lives. I have a lot of things to say but my words have no power. God's words have power. As we go through a lot of verses today and a lot of scripture, let it soak in and let the Word of God speak to you because we all need the same thing. We all need the exact same thing and that is to find Jesus in his word.

As we read the Word of God, Jesus speaks to us. As the Word of God speaks to our hearts and our lives, we become transformed. We become more like Him. That's what we all need. Every one of us here, there's not one of us here that does not need that.

And so there's no one that can say, you know what, I've read enough of the Word of God and I know enough of it where I can coast. I really don't need to be in the word every day. I really don't need to study I've talked to old preachers that have told me that and I had to disagree with them And so we all need and we will need Reagan to till the day we die And so today we're looking at what is this conversation that we're east-rocking in on between Jesus and Nicodemus. And this is a disparity of sorts. So we look at the two, we look at what is Nicodemus, he is the most respected man in Israel.

And then we look at Jesus and he is the most rejected man in Israel. And then we look at Nicodemus and he is a wealthy, he's an elite. And we look at Jesus and he is a Galilean, he's a poor partner, he doesn't have anything. And at the same time Nicodemus comes in and he's hungry for the truth. He's hungry for something that's an empty hole inside of him that he does not understand and at the same time Jesus is the embodiment of truth.

So we look at that in our lives and we can say well we can have respect we can have we can be elite we can know all this and have all this, or we can be the follower of a poor, galloping carpenter that you will not be respected. And so today, there's the paradox in our own lives. We need to decide this. We need to make a choice between the two. It's speaking to us again today.

And with us today, that same message that Jesus cut off Nicodemus and he said you must be born again. Nicodemus said you are a man of God. I can tell that you come from God and And Jesus cut him off and said, you must be born again. Whoa, what does that have to do with what we're talking about? He saw his heart, like it says in verse 2, 24 and 25, Jesus knows the hearts of men.

And so he knew the heart of Nicodemus and he caught him up and he said, you must be born again. And that's all of us. This text today speaks directly to us. We can thank God for his providence to give a word that is alive and everlasting that speaks as much to us today as it did to them at that time. And so let's open up the Word of Prayer and then we can continue on.

The more we think for this morning. Father, I pray for the word that you blessed us with, Lord God, that you have given us, that you have gifted to us, that is more precious than anything that we own, Lord God. Help us, Father, help us have faith. Help us to walk in that faith Lord God, to please you to lift up and glorify your holy name that our worship might be true Father God. I thank you for this day.

I pray for our hearts Lord this morning in Jesus name And so as we look at this this text today Nick and he misses the lost man he is stumbling he is looking But he's spiritually dead He is a dead man walking. He's spiritually dead. But why is Nicodemus spiritually dead? Why is he not redeemed? Is it because he's particularly sinful?

No, he didn't have girlfriends on the side. He didn't have a drinking problem that we know of. It wasn't that he was overly self-righteous. He was self-righteous, but it wasn't because he was self-righteous. It's because he's human.

It's because he's human. All humans are blind and powerless to save themselves. That's why Nicodemus was not born again. That's why he was dead. And here's our text today, the love of God in this new birth that we've been talking about, how God shows his love to us.

But in Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saves us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. See, that's what we all need. That's not what Nicodemus has. So Jesus is driving His point home to Nicodemus in the text. He's trying to drive His point home to us this morning.

And this is why we're like almost sitting on idle on top of this text. We're sitting on it, and we're trying to stew out of it as much as we can get out of it. We took the skeleton of the turkey, and we put it in a pot, and we're boiling it now to get some bone broth out of it. This is where we're at this morning, where we're trying to get everything we do that is so precious and speaks so bold and loud to us that we can't afford to miss this. We can't walk past this.

And so Jesus is driving this point home to us this morning as well. So Nicodemus thought Jesus was bringing some kind of new doctrine or some course of some sort on learning and a new fresh look at this. But we all kind of like that kind of thing, don't we? There's the carnivore diet, or there's this way that we work, or there's this new way to make money. And people are falling for it back and forth and and there's there's always something if you're ever online there's always the next big thing and it's and it's always out there in your face and if you don't do it you're a fool and then there's this and there's that and it's new medications and stuff and and Jesus is not bringing that he's he's not doing that.

He isn't offering new courses. He's not even offering reformation. He's offering a new life. And so he's not telling you how to improve the life that you have. He's not interested in taking you the way that you are and then tune you up and then use you.

That's not what Jesus does. It's a whole new life. Jesus, He's talking about a radical miracle. It's so radical that the old you died And the new you is his. It belongs to him.

It doesn't belong to you anymore. That's how radical that this whole concept is. It's your own, It's a radical miracle in it. And if anything less than that, it's really, it's just your own work. And my own work, I've seen it.

It's not good enough. I've taken my work and I've held it up to this. No, I need Jesus. It's not going to stack up. So this is the thing that all humans need the most in their life is one thing that we cannot do.

It's the thing that we need more. The thing that we can't do. We need God to be reconciled to God. You follow that? We can't reconcile ourselves to God.

Only God can reconcile us to Himself. So once this happens, it's going to be different. It's going to direct everything that you do. It's going to direct how you see, how you sleep, how you eat, how you pray, how you praise the Lord. We can't have proper worship without it.

So it's all directed by God's work in us to be born again. So last week we talked about the fact, the reality that we contribute nothing to it. We have no merit. We add no merit to our salvation But but there's one thing that we've got to do. There's one thing that we must do We must look to Jesus We must look look to Jesus.

That's what you remember when Jesus talked last week. He said he said well like they had to look at the serpent the brown serpent in the wilderness. That's numbers 21 the brown serpent and that was when when the people of Israel were being punished, being bit by serpents because they were so disobedient. And they were dying. And they said to Moses, cry out to God and have him.

Have him save us, help us. And Moses went and cried out to God and he said, okay here's what you do, you give us a brown serpent and you put it on a stick and you raise it up high and everyone that looks at it is healed. Okay and so that's that's what they did and so to look to the Son of Man Jesus This is this is salvation Look look up to me on the ends of the earth and be safe for I am God and there is no other Isaiah 45 22 Look, it's a simple games a child Anyone a cripple, anyone can do it. And it's your responsibility to look. And it's not a perfect fate, but it's a trusting fate in God.

And so the text that I want to cover today is John 3.16. I'm going to read through 21 And if you'd like to follow up right, John 3, 16 through 21, and it reads, For God's soul of the world that he gave is the one he got a son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, though he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only God, the Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to light lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." And so this is this is the text I'm honestly I'm probably just getting through verse 16 today. And so what I think about when I studied through John 3.16, I thought of the beauty that was in it when I came back to it. I looked at it and it reminded me of some situations and scenario. We go up to Alaska in the summertime to do some work.

And I talked with an old pastor out there And I asked him, I said, and we get to the island and I look out and there's other islands, there's whales coming up in Spalding, there's these old, old fishing boats tugging through way out. There's just mounds, there's beautiful sky. It's just breathtaking and I said to him what is it like to wake up every morning and step outside and just look at this. This is just incredible. He said, what?

And I said, the view. He's looking at the rocks in his backyard. I said, no, the view. Look at the, It's like, it's stunning. There's eagles flying all over the place.

It's just, there's everything. He said, yeah, I guess I didn't really, I don't think about it. I don't really notice. And it's not that he wasn't a man of God. It's just that he had seen it every day for 40 years.

And it no longer really held that sense of awe to him. And this tells me how a scenery can be taken for granted. But sometimes beauty is overlooked by familiarity. Okay, and that's what this verse is today. And this text, it can be familiarity, apathy, a terrible culture we live in, indifference, but this text, God loves you.

God loves you. This is the bottom line of it. And we don't see The big deal about God loving us sometimes. Of course he loves me. Did you see me?

Do you know what I look like? Don't you know how good of a person I am? Of course God loves me. Why wouldn't he? I'm a lovable guy, right?

No, you're not. Neither am I. And so the stunning fact of this text is that that God who loves you this is this is over the top and so however this is this text being that God loves you, if this bothers you, no, he doesn't. No, he doesn't because I have problems in life. I have this going on and that happened and that happened.

You know what? It doesn't matter if God still loves you. You take it up with the word of God. We're going through the word today, remember? And so you take it up with the word of God.

But the fact is, and always will be, that God God loves you. However, some of this focus of this love culture in our generation, and for quite some time now, of God and his love is focused on at the expense of His other attributes. God has other attributes aside from His love that we don't see sometimes. Like saying God loves you just the way you are. Don't change a thing, God loves you just the way you are.

Well, that's probably true where you're at right now. But at the same time, God never leaves us where he finds us. When I got saved, there's somebody who said, God loves you just how you are, don't change a thing. Man, oh man, I would have done a thing with my life. That would be a horrible place to be.

But he's always at work to transform us more and more into the image of Jesus is what he's doing. And so the world abuses this, this Jesus loves us, or what love looks like even, what God's generosity toward us really is. And when you look at it, God was generous towards mankind when he created the world. He created the world. This is his generosity, creating this world.

He was generous at the fall of man. He offered a redemptive promise at the fall of man. He was generous. He could have went mankind just shrivel up to nothing. He was generous in giving his covenant to Abraham When he gave his covenant to Abraham, he was overly generous and he was generous in delivering his people from slavery.

He took them out of bondage. He was generous in giving them the law. They didn't know how to live. They had nothing. He gave them the law.

Here's the law. Coming out of the mountains, out of the desert on the other side, Moses went up on the mountain and he gave them the law, the ten commandment. He was generous in giving them the promised land. They went right into the promised land. And he was generous in sending them prophet after prophet after prophet after prophet and who they either killed or sent away.

And his heart was trying to pull them back. That was his generosity. He was generous in sending us a savior. The whole biblical story is a story of total and complete divine generosity. And we don't see it.

The world abuses this. Jesus loves culture. Some see God as a king and a judge, but not a loving creator. While other people see only God as love, but not a king and a judge. God is all love and God is the sovereign king and he's righteous judge.

But do you know him personally as a loving creator? Do you know him personally as a loving Savior? The Savior of your life, of your soul, do you know Him personally as that? Do you know that He does love you? Isaiah 40, 28-31 pretty much spoke to me through this, but have you not heard the everlasting God the Lord the creator the ends of the earth neither faints nor is weary his understanding is unsearchable he gives power to the weak and to those who have no money He increases strength even the youth shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength They shall mount up with wings like eagles.

They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint Is that you today Is that where your heart is today in the Lord? I'm going to go through some points here and I want to use a guy as I studied through this, a man by the name of Sinclair Ferguson. Maybe some of you are familiar with him. But he's a Spanish Reformed theologian.

He's an author and a preacher. He set up John 3.16, three points, and they really hit me. And one of the first one is the greater the lover, the greater the love. The greater the lover, the greater the love. And number two, the lesser the object of love, the greater the love is.

See where I'm going with this? And number three, the greater the expression of love, the greater the evidence of love. And so as we walk through that at this time if you are in Christ I want to encourage you I want to take it today is a it's it's 2026 let's reset today okay Let's take everything we know of biblical church and our personal relationship with Jesus Christ and let's set it on the tracks again. Let's take it from where it was, wherever it might be. Maybe it was on the tracks.

Maybe it's nowhere at all And I want you to put it on the trash and let's go forward individually and as a body. But if you're not in Christ, Get out of the pickers and get out of the tracks. Let's talk. I want to invite you to see and experience this extreme love that Christ has for you. To warn you if you pass it up and if you fall asleep today, but to show you and to express to you this extreme love that God has for you in his life, in your life.

And so the first point is the lover, that's God. For God so loved the world. God loved the world. Not a heathen prince, it was God, the God of the universe. John 1.1 says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And so the book of John should have to this point elevated our view of God. It should have taken our view of God and raised it to the next level. It should have taken what was our stale and crusty understandings of sorts and shook us up and said, hey, let's pay attention to who God really is. It should have picked up our view and our understanding of God. And so that's what the book of John should have done.

And in this day, the Greeks believe that God was disconnected. And this is a lot of the gentile and unbelieving audience that was being preached to at the time. But the Greeks believed that God was an unconnected force. He was detached. Maybe not like the Big Bang theory, but close to it.

But just a random force. John said that you are a product of a logging creator. And I think about what the word of God has to say about it. And David says, and David was a little shepherd boy, longing for being a king, and he spent a lot of time outside. He spent a lot of time seeing nature and seeing creation.

He would be with the sheep at night and looking up in the sky. He would see the heavens far from the city. He would see God's ending work. And he wrote in Psalm chapter 8, verse 4. And in the end of it, as he gets done explaining, he says, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him?

That was his conclusion of it. And that should be our conclusion to people. When we see the mighty hand of God working, when we look at creation around us. So we see a person that was dead in their sin, and God in his grace and mercy creates a miracle and gives them a heart of flesh and raises them up. And then you see that person living with the Holy Spirit in them that's gonna make you be like I you see God's hand working This is this is his creation you see not just mindful of you Not just being mindful of you What because the text says and the stuff man that you visit him or that in it says boys man that you're mindful of him.

He's not just mindful of you. He loves you. He loves you. The book says he loves you. Our thoughts of God's love for us ought to be elevated.

They ought to be high. Is it shocking to you that God loves you? Because we skip over this verse, like, for God so loved the world. Yeah, of course he loved me. Yeah.

Is it shocking to you that God loves you? The song was written, Amazing Love, How Can It Be? Amazing love. See the old hymnists, they had something going on. They had a heart for the Lord.

And this is amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me? How? How? Amazing love.

If it's not shocking to you, you have too small of a view of God. Too small of a view. And the second point today, I've got six points today, by the way. I'll have six. And I'm gonna even try to tell you every point as I get to them so that you can follow the numbers.

So if I miss one, you can yell at me later, at least. The second is the object of that love, the world. For God so loved the world, remember the lesser the object, the greater the love. The lesser the object, the greater the love. So God so loved the world, not only the children of God, not only those who followed and obeyed him, he loved the world, the world of humanity.

And so what we get is a different picture of God in this, because this love starts with God. It doesn't start with a cruel, absolute monarch of a God treating man to be whipped into obedience by his acts. He is a father who cannot be happy until his wayward child comes home. And this is the love of God. Love originated with God.

God so loved the world, He sent Jesus, His only son. He's not happy until his wandering children come home. He doesn't desire to suppress and discipline and smash underfoot those who disobey him. God, yours for you to come home. Come home, come home.

Ye who are weary, come home. That's his call to rule us to bring us back to him That is the love of God this is the The theology of who God really is Matthew By 45 be the object of his love. You can say, well, why is it, Why does evil get rewarded? Or why do good things happen to bad people or bad things happen to good people? You know what?

This text tells us for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. This is to do again with God's love and God loves the rebels, the Muslims, The sinners. He loves that waiter that comes to you that is gay, that has pink hair and piercings all over his face and that swears randomly. God loves that person. God loves them and desires to call them to Himself for His glory.

And so God is not what we sometimes think that He is, but we have to again take this back home to ourselves and we have to remember what what we were Romans 5 8 says God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It's not something that we burned. It's not something that we're good enough for. While we were dead, while we were sewage floating down the trough, God loved us. That is the love of God.

Psalm 145 verse 9. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. See, there's unbelievers that have the same luxuries that you and I have, The same blessings as one that's born again. And there's unbelievers that'll get up today and they'll have their cup of coffee. They'll kiss their wife, they'll pick up their baby, they'll have a beautiful breakfast, they'll watch the Packer game.

There's these blessings that are across life, and God loves the world. God has these across the world and so this is not not that the world is is so so big that makes it wonderful that he loves the world but that the world is so bad. That's what's amazing about his love for the world. And so he yearns for people to come to him. Titus chapter three verses four and five, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

And that is just to me amazing. The object of love is not lovable, and God loved it anyhow. There's that song calling, oh sinner, come home. It's powerful. This is, it's holy, God's working and we're undeserving.

Fundamentally, we're sinful. And so this is this is just an amazing work of God. This is so counter to our culture. I couldn't help but be reminded as I thought about our sinfulness and the nature of mankind. And so I thought of this interview that was in May of 2024.

It was a 60-minute interview that I literally popped it up and watched it just for this so I could take some notes on it. It was a Pope Francis interview. And so he said, he said in this interview that people are fundamentally good. He said some groves and sinners, but the hurt itself is good. And so this, and so I had to look at how many Catholics are there in the world.

There are 1.406 billion, That's 1, 406, 000, 000 Catholics in the world that are listening to this and they're hanging on his words. You know why? Because he is to them the vicar of God on earth. And so he speaks, God speaks. That's what they believe.

So he is the vicar of God. This book is speaking what people deem to be an infallible doctrine. And so he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand the gospel. This is the fundamental gospel message. And this is our mission field out there people.

Okay? This is where God is sending us to a mission field where people think that they can go to heaven because they're fundamentally good hearted. The heart is deceitful in wicked above all things. Who can know it? And so, I put an other thing too, the Reformation and Martin Luther, and he spoke in a voice of thunder.

He spoke loud and as did the Reformation and many others as well. It's faith alone. Faith alone. And that's it. The world that God loves is not full of people that are fundamentally good.

But bad ones that meet them miracle. This world is full of bad people, and before I got saved it had one more. And It is full of bad people that need a miracle in their hearts. Romans 3.23, for all of sin can come short of the glory of God. What happened to that verse?

See, we can't pick and choose what we want to believe. It's The Word of God and the Word of God speaks to us. God doesn't love us because we're lovely, but because His character, because of who He is. God hates sin, and he hates the wicked. So how can he reconcile those?

Well, 10 times in the first Psalms, it talks about how God hates the wicked, but he loves so much. He sent his son to save them. He lays that carpet out. He gives the opportunity for one and all. His delight is in saving sinners.

That's the business that he's in. Saving sinners. Not punishing sinners. God loves the fallen. He loves the foul coworker.

He loves the grumpy neighbor that swears, that hates it when you leave your hands out too long or when you plow your snow across the road and you leave a little line on the road. He loves the person in church that grinds your gears. Don't look at Gary. Don't look at Gary. Don't look at Gary.

I love you, brother. He loves the person in church that grinds your gears. He loves the guy that just sometimes just doesn't agree with you. But this is God's work. This is God's work in His people.

This is God calling them. And so, we must realize that apart from His love, not a person would be saved. There would not be a person born again apart from the love of God. And we're all indebted to him. And so when we get when we take all this away and we look at it and say, God loves me.

It's got to really just drop our jaw. This is a shocking reality of the gospel. This is the gospel laid bare right in front of us. That God loves sinners. That God redeems lost, guilty, worthless, rotten sinners.

This is the shocking reality of the gospel. And then third point is the expression of that love. And that is He gave His Son. For God so loved the world that He gave His Son. That's the expression of His love.

And Romans 8.3. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin, he commended sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. This song, again, as I'm studying songs speak to me constantly, but There's a song, yet not I, but through Christ in me. And it says in there, in one text, it says, there is no more for heaven now to give. There is no more now for heaven to give.

God sent his son. He sent everything that we need. There is no more that heaven can give. He gave us his son. The deep satisfaction and completeness that's found in Jesus Christ.

God has already given the greatest gift, the most complete gift. We're coming right off of the end of Christmas, the New Year, the first service of the New Year. We're looking at what this gift is and how it is relevant in our hearts and lives today. And so the completeness that's found in Christ alone, nothing else needed for salvation. You don't need anything else for salvation.

You don't need to work. Some people are happy that they can work. And in a prayer this morning, Brother Nico prayed, thank you God that we don't have to work for salvation. That it's not something that I can earn. We don't have to earn it.

We don't have to work for it. We have to trust in him. We have to gaze, a simple gaze to him. Nothing else needed for peace, for joy, for fulfillment in life. He provides everything.

Everything that we need. The love of God is not a thing. It's a person. So you can say, well I love you. Okay, what is that love?

Well, you can't put a thing on it. You can't put a finger on it. It's a feeling, right? Well, with God, love is His Son. For God so loved the world.

It says in Philippians 2 and 5, 7, let this mind be in you, which is also Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a modest servant and coming in the likeness of men. That's love. That is love. And you don't like to get off the couch to change the channel. He came down from heaven.

From heaven, not a couch. He came down from heaven to save filthy sinners that didn't want Him, that rejected Him. That's love. How much will he do? He'd come down from heaven.

When he came down, he came down. He came down a long way. He didn't come down to be the Prince of Jerusalem and to rule the world. He came down to be a cuddly son of a carpenter, to be mocked and ridiculed of a poor family north of the tracks, ridiculed, and in the end hung on a cross, the most humiliating death possible. Strip the clothes off you, nail you to a cross, and hang you up there.

That's love. That's the love of God. How much did He love you? That's how much He loved you. Have you received Him yet?

Have you looked up? Is your gaze there? Are your affections on things above yet? Are they still looking this way? Then you know.

God the Father sent His Son to earth on a mission to die for us to die for you to die for me John 10 17 18 says therefore my father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from my father and the motive of the love of God. That's the motive not not your worthiness or loveliness.

Thank God for that, right? Ephesians 2, 3, and 4, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath just as the others but god I love the but god sentences in the bible That's always good news for me But god was rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. Romans 5, 8, 9, But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us, much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." That's love. See, we need to today give an elevated view and understanding of God's love for us. And when we get that, our response is going to be, wow, it's gonna drop our jaws.

So if you don't believe in Jesus, And if you don't believe and have faith and look unto Him, it's bad. It's an eternal destiny in hell where you will perish. There is a literal hell where you will burn, the gnashing of teeth, the screaming. That is very literal. So we tend to get this false idea that that God is the judge and Jesus is the Savior, but the Father loved first.

The father loved in such a way that he sent his son. He loved the world. In Luke 15, we have an account of the prodigal, remember? The prodigal. How many sons?

Three sons, right? Or is there two? Two? There's the son that went astray, right? And then there's the son that stayed and he worked and he was a faithful son, right?

What about the son that told the story about it? Jesus Christ. This is a beautiful story of the redemption of mankind. This is a story of me. This is a story.

I'm the one that went away. I'm the one that ran. I'm the one that took my inheritance. I'm the one that took whatever biblical knowledge I had and I left and I strayed from God. It was Him that called me back home in His mercy, in His grace, in His love.

He's the one, the son of God that called me, he said, oh, sinner, come home. Will you? That is the account, a perfect, beautiful picture of how his love works, of how he loved the world. That son repented, and there was a celebration for him. The fourth point I have is the whosoever.

Now whosoever in the text Nicodemus he's probably very biased, Jews only. This is God's nation and this is who God's work through. This is God's contract. This is His work. He seems to think that God will crush all these other nations under His feet, and that we are the chosen people.

And gratefully so. This covenant was with them, Romans 10, 11, and 13. So it reads, for the scripture says, whoever believes on him will be put to shame, will not be put to shame. See, the text it reads, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever, whoever, whosoever, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved whoever whoever John 11 26 and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?

Acts 2, 21. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Good question this morning. Do you remember when you were a whoever or a whosoever?

Do you remember that? Because we've got to remember that when we were a whosoever that God loved us and he called us whoever will may come. This is a song that was written by by Philip Bliss in 1869, the year this church was built. In 1869, this song was written by Philip Bliss after hearing a sermon, a series of sermons on John 3.16 by Henry Morguff. He wrote that song, Whosoever will make come.

I wish we could close in that song, but I know it's too late. Acts 10, 43. To him all the prophets witnessed that, through his name, Whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins. Whoever. I want you to remember that word.

John 7, 37, 38. On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, If anyone thirsts, let it come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Whosoever. That's anybody.

It doesn't matter who you are today, how low you are, what has happened in your past, what your future looks like. It does not matter. That's right. Whoever, anyone. Again in Isaiah 55, 1, whole.

Everyone who thirsts, come to the water. And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come. Buy wine and milk without money and without price. It's free.

Come and get it. It's this buffet. And whosoever, it's everyone you ever met. It is anyone, most holy to the most sinful and lowly. It doesn't matter.

We tend to be sometimes, I'll speak of myself, to look and say, I don't think so. I'm not going to waste the gospel tract on that situation. No, I have to catch myself and make myself do it. We have forgotten that we were like, what we were like before we were called. But there was a time when we were a whosoever.

And the fifth point I have is the means. The means. The means is belief, faith. It's not religion or words. Whosoever will, and old hymn, whosoever will, whosoever will.

Let's send the proclamation over Baal and Hill. Tis the loving Father who calls the wanderer home, whosoever will may come. That's Right out of here. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, By faith alone, by faith, through grace, you are saved. Not of course, lest any mention be bold.

See, God bridges this eternal gap that is the gospel in between is Jesus Christ and His work by the love of God to send Him. We have this bridge gap. And so, And it's not because of our goodness, it's in spite of our goodness. In spite of us. Genesis 15-6.

And he believed in the Lord, and he counted unto him for righteousness. So you place your faith in Him today. He believed in the Lord. This is what it's looking for. From the beginning of the Bible to the end, this is faith, salvation by grace.

It's your faith. This is God's work. It's not our work. John, again, I'm going to go right, I'm coming full circle, but we have to just look. That's all we have to do is look and cry out.

Hebrews 11, 6 says, but without faith it is impossible for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. That's what Nicodemus is doing in the text today, diligently seeking, who so ever will. We have to look to cry out. We have to set our gaze. No one looks for sight unless they know that they're blind.

No one goes to a doctor unless they know that they're sick. Romans 3, 23, the Paul is saying, come short of the glory of God, We're all sick. It's just like the beginning last week, the serpent on a stick, everybody that looked to him was ill. We all have that venom running through our veins. We all have that.

There's not one of us ever been born that doesn't have the sickness of the fall, the sin within us. Job 20-31. The focus of the book of John again, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. And so the point, He's God. We gain His promise, Romans 10, 9, that if we confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart, that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Why? We have what we see the magnitude of our sin and Overpowering that is the magnitude of His love for us. John 1, 11 and 12, He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. But, But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, to believe, to receive, are one and the same. And we're called to believe, we're called to receive.

And the sixth and last point I have is the promise, the promise that you shall not perish but have everlasting life. Right? This is the promise and this is the first John 2.25 and this is the promise that He promised us. Eternal life! Eternal life!

See, it's not quantity of life that is forever. It's the quality of life. We're in Christ forever. What could be better? If you can't get fired up about that, you're going to hate heaven.

Heaven's going to be hell to you. If you can't think about spending eternity with Jesus Christ glorifying his name and praising him. I can't help yet but this is this is just it's over the top. The magnitude of his love for us. And I give them eternal life, he says, in John 10, 28.

And they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand." Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. Eternal security, John 6, 40. And this is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." See, salvation is not a reward for the righteous. Salvation is a gift for the guilty. It is what we get as a gift from God.

John 5.24, most assuredly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment but has passed from death unto life. From death unto life. See, this is rich communion with god and it's eternally his his quality of life forever undying glorified god free from the presence of sin, living with and worshiping our Savior forever. And it never ends. It never ends.

And that eternal life, it starts now. Do you see what I'm talking about? If you're saved, your eternity started when you got saved. Because I read it, no one can pluck him out of my hand. No one will take you out of God's hand.

No one. Your eternal life started when you got saved. We have this stretch right now, where we're in the flesh, we're in this body, and we're gonna go, and we're gonna keep going through it. And we're gonna walk it and we're gonna live it. We're gonna have these aches, these pains.

We're gonna have these problems in life. And yet in the end, He's gonna take us home. Our pain will become sight and he'll hold us, we'll hold him for eternity. But that eternity started when you got saved. It's not our righteousness.

We fight this fleshly battle from this platform of victory that we stand on right now. So you all need to understand that this does not happen aside from surrendering your life to Christ. Have you surrendered your life to Christ? This is your position. In Proverbs 12.8, in the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.

The undying love of God. Have you surrendered to that gift? That's the question this morning. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this text, and I pray, Father, that all of our hearts and minds, or that we be shaped and molded and moved in a way that would bring you glory, Lord God.

Help us, Father, to understand and see how great that love is, Lord God, how great you are, Father, and the gift that you've given us. I just thank you for this day and I pray, Father God, for us to see and to have faith in Jesus name. Amen.