SPEAKER_00: Well, if you could uh find John three again, uh either in a in a hard copy Bible, it's on your phone.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so you can turn up John three.
SPEAKER_00: Um we're going to pick up at verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, really, there was enough in the sermon last week if you were here last week, so that's why we kind of cut it off at at 16.
SPEAKER_00: So we were uh we're picking up again.
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of the the the to-be continued episode uh in John 3, thinking about the the new birth.
SPEAKER_00: But why don't we pray as we come to God's word together?
SPEAKER_00: And if you need a Bible, you can nip down.
SPEAKER_00: My eyes will be closed, nobody will see.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Heavenly Father, we thank you uh that when your word is read, your voice is heard.
SPEAKER_00: Give us ears to hear this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Give us those soft hearts that we prayed for earlier to receive your truth, uh, that you would change us by your spirit, that you would help us to live into that new birth that Jesus has brought about.
SPEAKER_00: But we ask it for his sake.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine that lots of people, uh, certainly your colleagues or maybe even family members, maybe even some of you this morning, think that what Christianity is about, it's about a moral system.
SPEAKER_00: You learn the moral system and then you follow the rules that that's how this works.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit like uh following the five pillars of Islam.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to learn the five pillars, you've got to go on the pilgrimage, you've got to observe Ramadan, you've got to pray five times a day, you've got to give alms.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you do the you do the the moral code stuff, and that's what it means to be a follower of that religion.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you think it's like reading some sort of philosopher, like uh like Marxism or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: You read the philosopher and you you emulate that philosopher's thinking and teaching.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Christianity is.
SPEAKER_00: That's not Christianity, not at its core.
SPEAKER_00: You might even think about Christianity as a claim on people's lives, that it's a claim to earthly power, the desire to subdue or to subjugate people who are weaker.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that would be a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: The essence of Christianity is not power, it's love.
SPEAKER_00: The father loves the son and has given all things into his hand.
SPEAKER_00: In contradistinction, again, to Islam.
SPEAKER_00: The essence of Islam is power, not love.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the father loves the son, and in eternity, in eternity, there is an object of the father's love, and it is the son.
SPEAKER_00: That's not so with Allah.
SPEAKER_00: Allah is alone.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes loving when he has a creation.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes loving after he exercises his power.
SPEAKER_00: Two very different starting points.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity is not a system of belief laid down by man over the last 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: It's about a man who's alive today.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the God who is the creator of all, coming into mine and your life and creating something new.
SPEAKER_00: It would be a mistake to think that it is simply a moral add-on to your day-to-day.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Christianity actually invites you to experience something supernatural.
SPEAKER_00: That is, something you cannot create yourself, something you cannot achieve or muster up by your own effort, but something that is given to you by the God who made you.
SPEAKER_00: That is, as we saw last week, to be born again, to experience the new birth.
SPEAKER_00: That is a result of the work of his spirit in your life.
SPEAKER_00: The result of this new birth is quite surprising.
SPEAKER_00: We think differently, we act differently, we even feel differently.
SPEAKER_00: The new birth turns everything on its head.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: And in this passage, as we close out John 3, John continues to show us some of the surprising changes that experiencing the new birth by the Spirit of God brings about in your life.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, it helps you to act differently.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, we willingly come into the light.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to pick it up in John 17 through to the end of that little section in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: John, the gospel writer, told us in chapter 1 that Jesus was the light that had come into the world.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that Jesus is the one who brings the light of salvation, forgiveness, relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: But what do we learn about the darkness in John chapter 1?
SPEAKER_00: The darkness can't comprehend it.
SPEAKER_00: It can't overcome it, can't master it, can't obliterate it, but can't get its head around it either.
SPEAKER_00: And here in this section, that theme of light and darkness emerges again.
SPEAKER_00: Cast your eye down, would you please to verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus saying, and this is the judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.
SPEAKER_00: We read last week in verse 1 of chapter 3 that Nicodemus, this ruler of the Jews, the uh the dean of the school of theology, uh, comes to Jesus at night.
SPEAKER_00: And what we saw there was what John was kind of hinting at and pointing at was that Nicodemus was coming in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: He was emerging from that darkness of ignorance and of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And it can be easy to think that what was happening with Nicodemus was that he was simply uninformed, that he needed to be educated by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He needed to be taught what the kingdom of God was like.
SPEAKER_00: But human beings are in the darkness not just because we are ignorant, but because we actually prefer the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: That is the diagnosis of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We prefer darkness.
SPEAKER_00: We would rather actually run and hide from God than face what we deem to be the scrutiny of his light.
SPEAKER_00: We hide from the light because we actually don't want to change.
SPEAKER_00: We prefer to live our way.
SPEAKER_00: Our darkness is not accidental, it's willful.
SPEAKER_00: You may have had the experience now that you're uh a believer in the Lord Jesus, that you're looking back over your life beforehand, and there's a sense in which you knew that you should interact with the claims of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You knew really that you should uh put your faith in Jesus, that you should follow Him.
SPEAKER_00: You knew at some core level that it was true, but you didn't want to go there because you didn't want to interact with what it would make you, quote unquote, give up, or how it would make you change.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're here this morning, and that's exactly where you are.
SPEAKER_00: You've come along, you don't really quite know why you've come, but you know that there's something kind of tugging at your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You know you should consider uh the gospel and the claims of the Lord Jesus over your life.
SPEAKER_00: You know that you should trust him, but there's a there's the part of you that's like, no, not yet, don't make me change yet.
SPEAKER_00: There's a willfulness that wants to keep you in the darkness because you prefer it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sin.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't do sin if it wasn't fun.
SPEAKER_00: There's a willfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Men love the darkness because their deeds are evil.
SPEAKER_00: We like it, and we don't want to be found out.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be exposed.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the what's the result then of this kind of willful love of the darkness?
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, uh it's there in verses 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus again saying in verse 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever whoever does not has not believed in the name of the Son of God is condemned already.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why Jesus doesn't come to condemn the world in verse 17 is because condemnation has already happened.
SPEAKER_00: We're self-condemned, in a sense, by our willful turning from the light.
SPEAKER_00: John picks this up again and really clarifies it in verse 36.
SPEAKER_00: It's really quite stark.
SPEAKER_00: Right down at the very end, the very last verse of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever believes in the sun has eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever does not obey, that's he's paralyzing belief and obedience because if you uh if you obey, you also believe, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's whoever does not believe in the sun shall not see life.
SPEAKER_00: For the wrath of God remains on him.
SPEAKER_00: It would be a mistake to think that the world, you and I, are by nature and birth morally neutral.
SPEAKER_00: It would also be a mistake to think that Christians are the morally superior people, that we're the good people and everyone else is bad, like those old Westerns where everybody's wearing a black hat except for the sheriff who rides in and he's got a white hat on.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how any of this works.
SPEAKER_00: No, we have all turned from the light and chosen darkness.
SPEAKER_00: We've turned from life and chosen death.
SPEAKER_00: We've turned from justice and righteousness and chosen injustice, selfishness, wickedness.
SPEAKER_00: And so we stand condemned.
SPEAKER_00: God's settled anger is upon us.
SPEAKER_00: Unless.
SPEAKER_00: Unless the wind of the Spirit blows into our hearts, and we look at the lifted up sun like the serpent in the desert that we saw last week, and we believe and trust in God's provision, then we come into the light willingly.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it, to give us an escape route from the condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: And as we look to him with the eyes of faith and as we experience the new birth, what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We come willingly into the light.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20 for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his work should be exposed.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever does what is true comes into the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we come into the light?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because we have nothing more to fear.
SPEAKER_00: When you realize that Jesus died for you in that John 16 way, you realize then also that he took your shame.
SPEAKER_00: That thing that makes you hide, he took your guilt, he took your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You no longer need to be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: No condemnation now I dread.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus and all in him is mine, alive in him, my living head, clothed in righteousness, divine.
SPEAKER_00: We come into the light, not pridly, saying, Look what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: Look at my good works, look at my merit, but humbly saying, look at what God has done for the likes of me.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what God has done for me.
SPEAKER_00: And look now at what God is doing through me.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't he amazing?
SPEAKER_00: That's what John means.
SPEAKER_00: That we might see that all of our works are carried out in God.
SPEAKER_00: And we go, look at the great work that He has begun in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Look how much He has transformed me.
SPEAKER_00: Not that I have transformed myself, but that He has brought me.
SPEAKER_00: We can think that actually coming into the light is a very scary thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a sense in which it is exposing.
SPEAKER_00: We come into the scrutiny of God's light.
SPEAKER_00: Let me encourage you by a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: When we come into the light and we see the light shining upon us spiritually speaking, one of the things that we realize as we look down is that actually Jesus has truly made us clean.
SPEAKER_00: In the darkness, we we think that we still bear the guilt and shame and defilement of our sin, but when we come into the scrutiny of his perfect light, we realize that Jesus actually has made us white like snow.
SPEAKER_00: Come, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool.
SPEAKER_00: Though they be red as crimson, they shall be white as snow.
SPEAKER_00: The light of the gospel makes you realize that God has made you clean.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing, to encourage you, is that you can think that it's a very vulnerable thing, that it's that it's you alone standing in.
SPEAKER_00: But let me tell you that when you come into the light, that is, when you trust in the Lord Jesus, when you put your faith in him and step in and see that cleansing, the other thing that happens is you look to either side of you and you realize that everybody else is there.
SPEAKER_00: That you're part of a new community, a new society, a new family of those who have been bought by God's own blood.
SPEAKER_00: And so we step into the light with courage, the courage that God supplies, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with one another.
SPEAKER_00: Experiencing the new birth makes us act differently.
SPEAKER_00: It also means that through the Christian life, I mean, we're not immediately sinless, oh, that that would be the case.
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be nice?
SPEAKER_00: But you've got this civil war going on in your heart?
SPEAKER_00: You've got this clash between your old self and your new self going on, and sometimes you lose when you realize that in those in those objective heavenly courts that Jesus has made you clean, you can come into the light with your church family and can say, I lost this week.
SPEAKER_00: I lost as a father, I lost as a husband, I lost as a colleague, I lost in private.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm coming into the light with you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Would you help me?
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray for me?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what tends to happen then?
SPEAKER_00: People go, yeah, me too.
SPEAKER_00: Can we pray together?
SPEAKER_00: Can we spur one another on?
SPEAKER_00: Can we help one another?
SPEAKER_00: We act differently.
SPEAKER_00: We come into the light together.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we feel differently.
SPEAKER_00: That is, we find joy in unlikely places.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we've all had the experience, haven't we, of seeing someone close to us, someone who we who we love, achieving something great, or to use this illustration, getting married.
SPEAKER_00: And you have this sense of you're their friend, and uh and maybe you're involved in the wedding party, or maybe you're you're with them when they open the envelope and they say, Oh, it's good news.
SPEAKER_00: I came into the I'm in the fifth percentile in my class.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sense in which you're genuinely glad.
SPEAKER_00: And also, there's a little part of you that says, I wish it was me.
SPEAKER_00: I wish it was me.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people allow that I wish it was me to fester, and actually they become quite resentful.
SPEAKER_00: They find it hard then to find joy when God blesses other people.
SPEAKER_00: Others become prideful and self-obsessed.
SPEAKER_00: You've met those people that only ever want to tell you about their thing and how great their thing is, but they have no desire to ask you about yours because they have no desire to find joy in your life or in your ministry.
SPEAKER_00: There's a me monster in all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We're always running a feedback loop thinking, how does this make me look?
SPEAKER_00: What are they thinking now?
SPEAKER_00: Why couldn't that have been me?
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist has experienced the new birth.
SPEAKER_00: And so he thinks and feels differently.
SPEAKER_00: His disciples uh come to John the Baptist and they say, Well, now that Jesus is on the scene, everybody's going to him.
SPEAKER_00: What's happening to our ministry?
SPEAKER_00: Our bottom line's being affected, your platform is being undermined.
SPEAKER_00: John, everybody's heading over to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Even some of your own disciples, they're they're leaving us and they're going to him.
SPEAKER_00: But look at John's response in verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.
SPEAKER_00: The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist says, Look, guys, I'm the best man.
SPEAKER_00: I derive my joy from the groom, from the fact that I'm his best friend, and that he's getting married, and that I get to be so close to witness it.
SPEAKER_00: That's where I get my joy from.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, John here in saying this is alluding again to who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because, well, God in the Old Testament is described as Israel's bridegroom, as the one who will love and protect and serve and care for his people, for his bride.
SPEAKER_00: And so John the Baptist is saying, Jesus is the bridegroom.
SPEAKER_00: He's the bridegroom of the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And if the bride, if the bride is going out to meet him, then I rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but it completes John's joy.
SPEAKER_00: John's joy doesn't come from the fact that the people are at his church.
SPEAKER_00: John's joy comes from the fact that people are meeting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it can be really hard to say goodbye to people from your church or from your ministry, from your sphere of friendship group, but those goodbyes, goodness knows, we have been through those goodbyes as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you remember those more painful goodbyes, those friends that we have that we have sent off and that uh that have gone to other parts of the world, and we miss those friendships.
SPEAKER_00: I still miss some of those friendships.
SPEAKER_00: But when they leave and are still following Jesus and following his plan for their life and pursuing him, we can still have joy.
SPEAKER_00: How can John think like this?
SPEAKER_00: More importantly, uh, how does being born again help us to kill our me monsters?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look at verse 27.
SPEAKER_00: John answered, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: In one sense, John is saying here something quite broad and quite general and certainly true.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that God stands behind everything that we have.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, My ministry is up to God.
SPEAKER_00: My life is up to God.
SPEAKER_00: John the gospel writer puts in this little editorial note on up that John hadn't been arrested yet.
SPEAKER_00: It was about a few weeks before he'd going to be arrested by Herod.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Everything that's going to happen to me comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true for us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we if we are Christians and we believe that we live in a genuine, genuinely theistic universe, that is, that there is a sovereign God who stands behind all things, then of course this is true.
SPEAKER_00: We don't receive anything except from God.
SPEAKER_00: Your life, your family, your home, your housemates, your career, the food that you'll eat later, it all comes from Him.
SPEAKER_00: But as broad as this is, we're still prone to forget it.
SPEAKER_00: How many times do we grumble and become discontent because we haven't gotten what we want or have some unmet desire?
SPEAKER_00: So we want to stand where God is, go into his place to try and achieve it and gain it ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: John realizes that his whole life comes from God, and so he holds on to it loosely.
SPEAKER_00: That's how the new birth frees you, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you realize that everything you have is given to you by God and kept in trust by you, that you're a steward of it, you'll hold it loosely.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, even so, blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: As Job said.
SPEAKER_00: But I must decrease.
SPEAKER_00: The way the world works is that we think that the more we are congratulated, the more that we are admired, the more we're followed, we think that means the more joy we'll have.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, that very rarely works.
SPEAKER_00: It tends to create uh quite insecure or prideful people.
SPEAKER_00: It tends to create quite anxious people because they've got to hang on to that adulation and that admiration, and that can so easily be taken away.
SPEAKER_00: But we think that that's what's going to bring us joy.
SPEAKER_00: But the way of the new birth is that the more you point away from yourself and towards Jesus, the promise of the new birth is the more joy you will have.
SPEAKER_00: The more you point away from yourself, the more joy you will have.
SPEAKER_00: The more you say, not me, but Christ, the more joy you will have.
SPEAKER_00: The more you make it about the bridegroom, the more you seek the flourishing of the bride, then the more gladness and joy and delight God will give you in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You will be more joyful the less self-obsessed you become.
SPEAKER_00: Our desire to live this out, and we don't live it out perfectly, but our desire to live this out goes right to the very core of who we are as a church.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we're seeking to plant another church.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want you all here long term.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that the way it sounds.
SPEAKER_00: We want to give away, we want to give away resources and people, we want to send out so that more people can come to know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so that is why we're doing what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're making these plans and preparations.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Duncan and Becky are laboring in ways on scene on a Sunday morning to work with the launch team and to gather people in church time.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we want to bless that and be to saturate that in prayer and to be behind that.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're not about building our own platform.
SPEAKER_00: We're about pointing people to the bridegroom and saying, look at him, look how glorious he is.
SPEAKER_00: Go and follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And if that means going to church time, then do that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of posture that we want.
SPEAKER_00: And brothers, sisters, particularly if you are members here, keep us, your leaders, accountable to that.
SPEAKER_00: How are we doing it?
SPEAKER_00: Pointing away from ourselves and pointing to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How are we doing it and not just and not just growing our own ministry?
SPEAKER_00: But seeking to magnify the fame of the bridegroom all over the city of Dublin and perhaps even beyond.
SPEAKER_00: We feel differently because we find joy in unlikely places.
SPEAKER_00: We find joy in loss.
SPEAKER_00: Finally.
SPEAKER_00: So we're acting differently because of the new birth, we're feeling differently because of the new birth, and now we finally think differently.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we see God and humanity differently.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 31 to 36, John the gospel writer, essentially what he does in these last five verses is he summarizes the themes from the whole chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna quickly just draw out four things from these five verses that help us to think differently.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, what we think is that Jesus is above all.
SPEAKER_00: Not us, not anyone else, not our spouse, not our lover.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is above all.
SPEAKER_00: Before becoming Christian, before becoming a Christian, there are so many things clamoring and competing for our attention, so many different authorities speaking into our lives, constant voices telling us who we are, who we should be, expectations that we need to live up to.
SPEAKER_00: When we experience the new birth, we realize the seat of final and ultimate authority.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when Jesus came to Nicodemus?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, remember when Nicodemus came to Jesus and Jesus says to him, I could speak of heavenly things.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he is the one who has come from above.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is above all.
SPEAKER_00: He is in the place of supreme, final, and ultimate authority.
SPEAKER_00: We live out of the identity that He has given us.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who declares who we are.
SPEAKER_00: He declares that we are forgiven, redeemed, adopted, children of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He declares that over your life.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we run after any other opinion?
SPEAKER_00: Why would we let other opinions gnaw away at our soul when because of the new birth, the only opinion of you has already been declared?
SPEAKER_00: It was declared on a hill far away, some 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And so we receive our identity, we do not achieve it, we listen to his voice and follow his lead.
SPEAKER_00: He is above all because he is from above.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, because of the new birth, we believe that God is truthful.
SPEAKER_00: Have a look down at verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: He bears witness to what uh he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like a weird way of talking, but really it means this.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the garden, our first parents in Eden, they believed that God was a liar.
SPEAKER_00: They believed that God was a killjoy, that he was holding back their best life, that he was stopping them from living into their full potential.
SPEAKER_00: And ever since then, we, humanity, have believed that lie.
SPEAKER_00: We're still believing it.
SPEAKER_00: That God won't love us as much as this thing or that thing or this person or that person.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God won't be good to us, that he doesn't want our joy, that he doesn't want our flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God is actually against us, that he is a stern and grumpy father.
SPEAKER_00: We believe those lies.
SPEAKER_00: So John says, people don't receive the testimony of Jesus, the testimony of the love of God that sent him into the world.
SPEAKER_00: That all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: People don't receive that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you feel that in your interactions with people who don't know the Lord Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: It feels like those things bounce like bullets off a Kevlar vest.
SPEAKER_00: The new birth helps us to think differently.
SPEAKER_00: It opens our eyes, it opens our ears.
SPEAKER_00: And so we go from believing that God is a liar to believing that God is faithful and true.
SPEAKER_00: That's what verse 33 means.
SPEAKER_00: Sets his seal to this is it confirms this reality that God is true, that God speaks the truth to you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we trust him, and our trust is never broken.
SPEAKER_00: The third thing that the new birth helps us to realize is that Jesus isn't just a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 34.
SPEAKER_00: For he whom God sent has sorry, for he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews believe that the reasons why the prophets of old in the Old Testament spoke the words of God is because they were given a portion, a measure of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: But here we're told in verse 34 that Jesus receives the Spirit without measure.
SPEAKER_00: How can that be?
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus would receive the infinite, eternal spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Only if he is the infinite and eternal son.
SPEAKER_00: Here we're beginning to we're beginning to glimpse the tip of the Trinitarian iceberg in John's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That will be on part more in John 5 and uh in just a couple of chapters' time.
SPEAKER_00: But do we see what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Who's involved in the new birth?
SPEAKER_00: God in sending his son, the son in willingly going and perishing, that you might have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: In God the Father giving the Spirit to the Son without measure, so that he might truly and perfectly speak the words of God, that he might be the full and final disclosure of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And so the words of the beginning of the book of Hebrews is true.
SPEAKER_00: That many times and in various ways God spoke to our forefathers by the prophets, but now in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed as heir of all things.
SPEAKER_00: And after making atonement for sin, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that Jesus is set apart from the prophets, from the religious leaders, from those who would claim divine insight on authority.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who is able to bear the full, unmitigated, unbounded measure of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so He is the full, true, and final revelation of the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: Finally.
SPEAKER_00: The new birth helps us to realize that the world isn't full of good people and bad people.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the last phrase of verse 36.
SPEAKER_00: But the wrath of God remains on him.
SPEAKER_00: The wrath of God in the Bible, sometimes we kind of trip up on this term or even thinking about it, but the wrath of God in the Bible is not some divine temper tantrum, the way some toddler might uh might throw his toys out of the pram.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, some of us say, know exactly what that's like.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like that.
SPEAKER_00: No, the wrath of God is his settled anger and opposition towards sin and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: And we want a God like that because it comes from his love.
SPEAKER_00: It is because God loves humanity that he is angry when we harm one another.
SPEAKER_00: It is because God loves us, that he is angry when we harm ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever interacted with somebody who is caught in addiction, and they and they're continuing to manipulate and to lie and to steal, one of the feelings that you have towards them is you actually become angry, not because you hate them, but because you love them and you would say, Won't you stop?
SPEAKER_00: It is as a consequence of your love that your anger is aroused, do you see?
SPEAKER_00: God is committed to righting the injustices of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And you want a God like that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want a God who will look at the suffering that has befallen you, the sin and the wickedness that has been perpetrated against you, and go, hey, it's alright.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna let him go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna let her off.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want a God who's going to wink at injustice, you want a God who's committed to justice, who's angry at sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why he sends Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes to face divine justice in our place.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to escape that divine justice and have eternal life, what we do is we believe.
SPEAKER_00: We look to the sun lifted up on that cross.
SPEAKER_00: Faith gives us life, eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: It assures us that we will never face the judgment of God on that last day, that we have been passed over.
SPEAKER_00: But that is the state of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: It is not good versus bad.
SPEAKER_00: It is bad people and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a glorious reality that we have skipped over in verse 35, and with this we will conclude.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35 the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what John the Baptist said on up in verse 27?
SPEAKER_00: That God is giving followers to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That the reason why they're going from him and to Jesus is because God is giving them.
SPEAKER_00: What motivates God the Father to give those followers to Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Because he loves them.
SPEAKER_00: The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
SPEAKER_00: I leave you with this thought.
SPEAKER_00: That if you are a believer in Jesus, you are a love gift from God the Father to God the Son in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: That is how precious you are to him.
SPEAKER_00: That he would gift you to his son because he loves his son.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine if you believed that, what that would do to your assurance, to your willingness to come into the light, your desire to live for him, and to find joy, not in yourself, but in him and what he has done.
SPEAKER_00: You are a love gift from the Father to the Son eternally.