SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, church family. I'm going to invite you to grab a Bible if you have access to a Bible and to read along with us. We're going to start with our scripture reading this morning. And I want to encourage you that as we read it to try and take in as much of it as you can. We're going to go through a significant portion of John 3. And I know myself that when I read a text like this, I can get distracted by some of the thoughts. But my hope is that as you read it, you would take in as much as possible. So John chapter 3 and verse 1 is where we're going to start out this morning. It's where we're up to in our series. John 3. Verse 1 starts out like this. There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him. Jesus replied, I assure you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. But how can anyone be born when he is old? Nicodemus asked him. Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born? Jesus answered, I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I have told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. How can these things be? asked Nicodemus. Are you a teacher of Israel and you don't know these things? Jesus replied, I assure you. We speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. If I have told you about things that happen on earth and you don't believe them, how will you believe if I tell you about things of heaven? No one is ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up a snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way. He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This then is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices wicked things hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But everyone who loves, sorry, but everyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. Let's pray. God, thank you for your word. Thank you that it contains amazing truths. And God, I pray that today, for those of us in particular who these truths have are not as beautiful as they once were. And especially for those who have never maybe even believed some of the truths that we've just read, God, I pray that you would work on our hearts this morning. God, whatever needs to be heard and understood, comprehended and believed this morning. I pray that you would work and move and act in a way on our hearts that you need to today. Thank you. Amen. This passage contains the best known verse in the whole Bible. Arguably, John 3.16 is the most recognized verse in all of scriptures, right? And for that reason, for good reason, it is that way. It's an important verse because it simply and clearly articulates the best news that has ever been proclaimed in the entire universe. But because it's so well known, it has for many of us lost both its allure and its power. And we all know that overexposure to even good things sometimes can have negative repercussions. Think about Christmas with me. What if we had Christmas every single day of the year? Christmas is a good thing, right? We enjoy Christmas. It's a time of family and food and fellowship and all of these things that I can alliterate. It's a good time. But if you had Christmas every day, pretty soon you would grow weary of it, and I would say, ultimately, probably come to loathe it. And I know that if I'm honest, I can easily rattle off John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his own. You get the idea. You guys can probably do it too. But if I'm honest, I can say those words without pausing in wonder or feeling overwhelmed by God's grace and God's goodness expressed so clearly through this scripture. I can read that or recite that text without my heart exploding in love for God, without being moved towards tears. And I'm trying to say to you this morning, that's not the way that it should be. I shouldn't be able to recite or rattle off John 3.16 to you without being totally moved. Now, some of you thinking, well, Harley, that sounds a bit dramatic, isn't it? Like for you to think that way. And perhaps the reason you may think that is because you too have waned in your love. You are no longer caught up in the beauty and grace of Jesus. Your original awe and wonder at God has cooled like a dinner that is set out on a cold winter evening for too long. A meal that is no longer enjoyable because it's gotten cold. Or maybe you think my earlier thoughts about the importance of this verse, when I was saying how important it is, how it should move me towards tears, were too extreme because you've never allowed yourself to believe the truths that this scripture contains. Could it be that the problem your problem with my sentiments is not a love that is cool, but rather a love that has never been. Whatever spiritual space you find yourself in, I want to ask you to attempt with me to approach this text with an open heart this morning. That's what I'm asking. I'd hate for any of us to miss the importance of this text. The reason this passage is so memorized and quoted is because it doesn't just capture the essence of John chapter 3 or even the essence of John or the New Testament. It actually captures in a beautiful way the message of the Bible, the narrative of Scripture. Now, this text, John 3.16, obviously rests inside of a context, and I would say it's a context that most of us don't think about too often. Most of you probably know John 3.16, but I would say a lot of us don't think about the fact that it actually falls in place of a dialogue between Jesus and this religious leader named Nicodemus. So the way that I'd like for us to get either acquainted or re-acquainted with this text this morning is by breaking down this very important verse, John 3.16, into four key phrases and allowing the passage of John 3, verses 1 through 21 to kind of fill in our thoughts about what this passage is actually saying. So we're going to look at John 3.16 in four phrases. Now, when I read it earlier, it was out of the Holman Christian Standard Bible version. But I'm going to imagine that most of you, like me, learn this in probably a translation that's more similar to the ESV translation that says this way For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. So that's the translation that we're going to use. And we're going to break this particular verse into four, three, four, not four, three, four key phrases. The first of which is just two words long. For God. For God. The good news of this famous verse and the message of the entire Bible hinges on the presupposition of God. It's founded on God. He's at the foundation of the truth of this statement. And God is at the foundation of the truth of the Bible. It shouldn't surprise us when I say, hey, this Bible, this verse captures the message of the Bible. It shouldn't surprise you that it starts out with for God, because if you go to the very first page of your Bible, what does it say? Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God. God is the presupposition, he's the foundation there. And God is the basis for the whole of the text. Go all the way to the end of your Bible, the last page, Revelation 22, what does it talk about? It talks about God dwelling amongst his people. It's a beautiful picture. Nicodemus came to Jesus that evening with a belief in God. They had this shared foundation. That's what enabled them to start this conversation together, right? Nicodemus was a believer in this God, Yahweh, that he'd learned about through the Torah, through the Old Testament scriptures. He comes to him, now note that he comes to him late in the evening. Now, this is interesting. There are a couple of thoughts on why this was. Those include thoughts like he came to Jesus late at night because the crowds weren't as bad then. Like Jesus was a very popular man. He was in Jerusalem at this time, which means there was people all around him all the time. So maybe it was easier to get access to Jesus late in the evening. Another thought is he was away from the eyes of his peers. You see, Nicodemus was a religious leader and a Pharisee. He was a very important man. And later on we discover in the book of John that the Pharisees and Jesus didn't really get along too well. And so maybe it was just to be away from the eyes of his friends. Either way, he comes to him in the evening, and the foundation for their conversation is this belief in and respect for God. And I think that was what really drove Nicodemus to seek this interaction with Jesus. Now, it's interesting to note that good news, for God's good news, to be truly good news to us, to you and I, we must be at least open to the idea of God. And we see that in Nicodemus. He has this openness to God. Like he's like, hey, this is our foundation. But this is difficult for us because at no other point in history has there been a culture that has worked so hard like ours to reason away God. Our culture has attempted to explain the inexplicable. And to use science, that is knowledge, to deconstruct the God whom we believe as Christians is omniscient, omniscience, all-knowing. We've tried to use knowledge to deconstruct he who is all-knowing. There's a famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, he's a man who is very anti the idea of God, who says this. He kind of captures the view of our culture. He says science is the poetry of reality. In another place, he said the feeling of odd wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. And I read that and I'm like, that's so sad. It's so close and yet so far from the truth. There is a God, I would say, who is beyond the science, who is behind the science. He's the creator of the science. It's interesting to note that Dawkins has also stated that if there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian or any religion has ever proposed, to which I would say a hearty amen. God is bigger than any book we can write about him, or anything that we would try him and contain him inside of. So if there is a God, who is he and what is he like? For God so loved the world. The Bible paints for us a very clear picture that God is a loving God. God is a caring father. And as a religious leader, Nicodemus would have been intimately familiar with this view of God. He would have memorized scriptures like Psalms 103. Nicodemus would have had a whole bunch of scriptures about how loving and awesome God is, memorized in his memory bank. Let me read part of Psalms 103 to you. Verse 8, it says this The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in what? Faithful love. Verse 11 goes on and says, For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. Verse 13, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. This is the view of God that Nicodemus has. He has no problem knowing that God is love. What he's struggling with is who is Jesus and what is his plan? Like what is he doing there? That's his struggle more. And we see that coming out in his conversation with Jesus, right? I don't know if you guys picked up on that. In the very first part of verse 2, let's go back there. Verse 2 of John chapter 3, he comes to Jesus and he dresses Jesus in a very respectful way. He says, Rabbi, which means teacher. I respect you. I want to hear from you. Okay? So he addresses him, which is interesting because he's a very respectable and important man himself. He says, Rabbi, verse 2, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs, that is, miracles, you do, unless God were with him. Now this is interesting to note. This isn't a question, and yet Jesus responds to it like it is a question. And again, I think we see Jesus just cutting through the chase. He's like, okay, I he's like, I know why you're here. Let me speak to why you're here. Let's talk about what's going on here. And so it's interesting to note Jesus' response. What does he say to him in verse 3? He says, I assure you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So it's interesting to note, Nicodemus is here claiming to see who Jesus is. He comes to Jesus and he says, Hey, I see these signs, I see that you're from God. Um, you know, I see you. And Jesus basically turns around and says, No, no, you don't see me. Because he says to him, hey, like, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. You see, what Nicodemus is failing to see is twofold. He's firstly failing to see who he himself is, who Nicodemus is. Yes, he's an important person. Yes, he is a leader amongst the Jews, but he is just as broken and needy as every single other human being. And that's why Jesus has to talk to him about new birth. That's why he talks to him and says, Hey, buddy, you need to be born again if you're going to see. The second thing that Nicodemus is failing to see is who Jesus is. He's failing to see that Jesus is actually the Messiah, the Son of God, sent to save the world. And that's why Jesus has to talk to him about his purpose. We see him tackling it from several angles. We see it obviously coming out in John 3.16 as he expresses the purpose of why he's there. But verse 17 captures it also. I really like verse 17 as well. Read it again with me. For God did not send his son into the world that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Ultimately, what Nicodemus is failing to see is what many of us are failing to see: that Jesus loves him and loves the world. Now, some of you know that I'm married. I'm married. I have a wife, her name's Liz, and uh, she's great. I love her. And I can say, hey, Liz, I love you. I can say that over and over and over until I'm blue in the face. I can text her and say, hey, I love you. I can give her a phone call and tell her I love her. But the truth is that my love is rather an abstract concept. It's just words until it's actually acted on and displayed, until it takes some sort of physical form. Until I show her by loving her and serving her and caring for her. It's just words. It's an abstract idea. And the reason I give you that illustration today is because to Nicodemus, God's love, I believe, was a concept that didn't have a physical form. He knew Psalms 103. He knew that God was loving up here, but it didn't have a physical form, and Jesus was God's love incarnate. Jesus was God's love incarnate, a physical expression of what his love looked like. And we see that beautifully displayed in the next phrase of this verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. I believe that Nicodemus wanted to understand the plans and purposes of Jesus. But as Jesus articulates to him these truths, including John 3.16, he's telling him all these things. I'm guessing that he was puzzled by what Jesus meant. I think a lot of it probably was like, whoa, what are we talking about here? The Son of Man lifted up, believing in him, eternal life. Like, I think a lot of that probably went over his head. And with the gift of perspective, we can look at this verse and be like, oh yeah, this is awesome. This is great. We've had people for centuries saying, hey, John 3, and John 3.16 in particular really captures the gospel. We've had people pointing us towards this. What Jesus is talking about here is the most radical display of love that the universe has ever witnessed. The death of the perfect Son of God for the imperfect humanity. For God so loved the world that he gave his son. Tim Keller captures the absurdity and the immensity of God giving Jesus to us in this quote. In the Christian view, the ultimate evidence for the existence of God is Jesus Christ. If there is a God, we characters in his play have to hope that he has put some information about himself in the play. But Christians believe he did more than just give us information. He wrote himself into the play as the main character in history when Jesus was born in a manger and rose from the dead. And as a father myself, I see these truths as more incredible now. As a father, as I hear, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him, that idea starts to make more sense to me. Especially when I I think, often I think when I hear this verse, of the story of Abraham and his son Isaac. Are you guys familiar with that story? Genesis 22. There's this incredible story of Abraham, this man who God has chosen and said, Hey, I want to bless the world through you, and I have a son that I'm going to give you. Abraham waits a long, long time, struggles with infertility to have this son through his wife Sarah. Finally, the son arrives in his old age and he grows into a teenager. And what does God do in Genesis 22? He comes to him and he says, Hey, I want you to take Isaac up to this mountain and I want you to sacrifice him. It's an absurd story. And as I read it, I put myself in Abraham's shoes and I'm like, whoa, how heavy is that? And then all of a sudden, you know, what we see Abraham doing is early the next morning he gets up and he obeys God. I'm like, wow, incredible. He heads up to the mountain, he gets up to the top of the mountain, he binds his son, puts him on this altar, lifts his hand, and God stops him and says, Stop, wait, I see that you trust me. I see you believe in my promises, I see that you're faithful. And in that moment, there's this beautiful picture of the gospel as there is a sheep, a ram that's caught in some bushes nearby. And God instructs him and says, Hey, take Isaac off the altar and put that lamb on there instead. What does that represent? It's a foreshadowing of Jesus being sacrificed for us. And go back to the illustration of Of Abraham, it's like God is on got his son on the altar instead of stopping, he follows through. He gives his son for us. And as I picture that as a father, I'm like, whoa, how incredible the grace of what God has given us in Jesus, and how incredible that he would allow his son to die with our wrath on his shoulders. That's incredible. Romans 8, 32 expresses this so well. It says this, for he did not spare his own son, but offered him up for all of us. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Some of you struggle not to believe that there is a God. When I said earlier, you know, there's a struggle to believe in a God, you're like, yeah, I can believe that there's a God. But your struggle is more with believing that he is good. And I don't want to treat this lightly because your struggle is probably somewhat warranted. Like, there's probably good reason for it. For some of you, you look at the world around you and you just see the messed up and the broken world around us, and you're like, how can God be good when all of this is going on around us? Others of you have lost something special to you. Maybe a relationship, maybe a human love, and you're like, how could God allow that to happen if He is a loving God? Others of you have struggled with sickness personally or somebody close to you has struggled with sickness. And you're like, how is God loving? I can't believe that right now. Others of you have experienced death. Death of a loved one. And whenever these things happen, they agitate our souls. We ask, how can a good God put up with these realities? And the answer is he hasn't. He hasn't. At great expense to himself, beyond what we will ever understand. He bankrupted heaven so that we could experience restoration. We can't look at the cross and look at the sacrifice of Jesus, where God gave of his son for us and not see that God is good, that he is loving. I'm not saying that our suffering isn't hard. If you're in the middle of suffering, I'm not saying that it isn't hard. But I am saying in the midst of it, you can and must know that God is good. Hear me say that so clearly today. Please know that God is good. Have a right view of who he is. For God so loved the world that he gave his son. Just a side note, some of you, if as I've been talking about this, you're like, yeah, I'm struggling right now to see that God is good. If that's the space you find yourself in this morning, come up for prayer in a few minutes. When we're closing, I really want to ask you and challenge you to come for prayer because that's something that God wants to address in your heart and in your life. We have uh our pastors and our elders will be around the room, and we'd love to pray with you about that. You can go into some details if you want to with us, or you can just say to us, I'm struggling to believe that God is good, and we will pray for you. You need prayer and help in that. You need to ask God to help you with that because the reality is the true view of God is that he is good, even in the midst of our hardship. We see this thought of God's goodness continued into the next phrase. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Now, this is the main point that Jesus is trying to convey to Nicodemus. And it hinges on this all-important word of believe. Believe is an interesting word. It's one that in our modern English language doesn't really convey what it needs to. You see, we often confuse in our language knowledge and belief. We say, yeah, I believe something, and what we mean by that is I give mental assent to that thing. Or, yeah, yeah, I kind of agree with that. And I think that's one of Nicodemus' biggest hang-ups, too. He has this knowledge of God, but it's not transforming his heart and his life. I'm trying to think of a way to picture this for you guys, and as I was thinking about that, I was thinking, imagine with me, I'm gonna ask you to imagine for a moment, imagine with me that we are at the beach in Australia. It's a nice place to be, okay? We're at the beach in Australia, and we're there standing on the edge of the beach, and I say to you, hey, let's go swimming. And you say, Okay, okay, yeah, that sounds good. But wait, wait, wait, hey, don't we have, don't you guys have like those, all those really big sharks here in Australia? To which I would say, yes, yeah, yeah, we have sharks here, we have great whites, and all of that, and yes, I have seen sharks before in the water. If there are sharks, but let me tell you, and I start to go into the statistics, statistically, you are way, way, way, way more likely to die driving here to the beach today than you are from getting in the water. You are way much way more likely to die driving to the beach than you are from getting in the water. There is a very, very, very low chance. You take your life in your hands more when you jump inside of a vehicle than getting inside the ocean. And you're like, oh, okay, okay, yeah, okay, I believe that. And I say, okay, let's go swimming. If you stand on that beach, do you believe? No. If you're not moved to action, you don't believe what I'm saying. It's not true to you. It's only true if you are like, yeah, okay, that's good, I believe that, and jump on into the water. And so I use that illustration just to say, hey, belief is much more than just giving of a mental assent. If we go to the original language and what it means here when that word believe, if you look up the lexicon, what the lexicon says is this to believe something to be true and hence worthy of being trusted. As in, I would put my life on this. I would depend on this. This is trusted and trustable. That's what we're talking about when we talk about believe. And Jesus attacks the belief issue of Nicodemus from several angles. I love the way that he he talks to Nicodemus about belief because he uses all of these word stories, these illustrations. There's three in particular I'd like to highlight. The first one is new birth. He talks to Nicodemus about being born again. Remember that? Verse 2 and 3 is like, hey, you've got to be born again. Now Nicodemus seems to be thrown off and maybe almost offended by this thought. His response is interesting because it seems to be dripping with sarcasm. Look at it with me. Verse 4. He says this. Jesus says, Hey, you know, I assure you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And he says, But how can anyone be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born? Jesus moves past that and continues to make the point of needing rebirth because he's trying to articulate that basically all of us are born of the flesh, which means we are born into death ultimately. Romans 3.23 puts it like this for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are born as sinful beings into a sinful world. And it goes on in Romans 6.23 to say this that the wages of sin is what? Death. We are dead. We are born into death, and we need new birth. We need birth into an eternal life, and this can only happen through Jesus. It's put another way in verse 18. I'll get you to look at that with me. I really like this verse, and yet I it's very sobering too. Verse 18 says this anyone who believes in him is not condemned. That's good news, right? But here on. But anyone who does not believe is already condemned because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. It's a sobering message. Without being reborn, we're automatically born into death. We need new birth, new life, and without it, we are lost. Christianity, this reminds me, Christianity is not a renovation program. You and I are not a fixer-upper. We don't slap a little bit of morality or good behavior or a little bit of church attendance or even reading our Bibles and praying onto our lives to make us acceptable to God. And yet many of us act like that. Some preachers even preach like that. But that's not the message of the Bible. That's not the message of John 3.16. The fact is that we, our lives, are more in need of a bulldozer. Basically, what God needs to do is take the rubbish pile of our lives and bulldoze it off and start over with something new and fresh and unbelievable as He makes us a new creation, a new child in Him. There's so much more we could say on this, but let's go to the second word picture that Jesus uses. He talks about being lifted up. Being lifted up. Go to verse 14 with me. See what it says. Verse 14, you probably thought this was interesting earlier. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. Now, if you don't have a lot of background around church or around the Bible, you're probably like, okay, that's what what are we talking about here? Like, that's strange. Now, to Nicodemus, he would have been right on knowing what was going on. Immediately, again, he probably had this passage memorized. He would have known this is Numbers 21 that Jesus is referring to. There's this crazy story in Numbers 21 that again foreshadows the gospel. You see, Moses, God's special leader, is there in the wilderness with the people of Israel, God's special and chosen people, and they're rejecting God and they're rejecting Moses. They're sinning against God and against Moses. And so God allows these snakes to come amongst the people. It's a creepy story. The snakes start biting people, and as they're bitten, it they're dying. Like they're they're dying. And there's as this is chaos is going on throughout the people of Israel, they cry out to God, they cry out to Moses, and God tells Moses, hey, make a bronze snake, put it on a stick, and anybody who's bitten and has this poison inside of them, if they look to this snake that's been held up on this stick, I'll save them. Like that, they'll they'll get better. They'll be miraculously healed. Just as the Israelites were dying for their sins, we too are dying poisoned by sin. Our only hope is to look to the cross and to be healed. We too need to look to that stick and to be healed. This is the illustration that Jesus is drawing for Nicodemus. He goes on and makes a third illustration as he talks about light and darkness. Verse 19 through 21. He says this This then is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and the people love darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices wicked things hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. There is a lot in here. But again, it's a similar story that we see. It's the same message. Like we have before, we're dead in need of rebirth, we're poisoned by sin, needing to look to Jesus. And here again, we're in darkness without God. Jesus is the king of the illustration, and he's showing us here that God loved the world oppressed by darkness. And the good news is that he sent his son to be a beacon of light, a beacon of hope to whoever. And when it says whoever, it really means whoever would believe in him. There's so much truth and so much grace in this passage. But the question I want to ask you today is this is this good news really good news to you today? Is this good news good news for you? We've talked about the opening few words for God. I would argue the fact that there is a God is good news. The fact that we don't just happen to exist, that we aren't the product of millions and millions and millions of years of just happenstance is good news. It's good news that there's an intelligent designer who has a plan and purpose behind everything and is sovereign behind everything. It's good news that he doesn't just exist, but he is a loving God. We see that for God, so loved the world. He doesn't just exist. He's loving, kind, compassionate, and perfect Father. It's good news that he gave us his only son. That's very, very good news. He proved his love by giving us Jesus at great expense to himself, like we've talked about already. That's good news. It's good news that whoever believes in him, any of us, will not perish but have eternal life. That through belief we can have everlasting life. You and I were made for more than just these few hard years on this earth. This is good news. That word good news, those words good news mean gospel. Gospel means good news. In preaching this passage today, I had three primary objectives. Now, if God's spoken to you outside of these three things, that's awesome. But three primary objectives. The first is this that those of you as described by this text, not my words, but this text's words, as dead, poisoned by sin, or in the darkness, that you would believe for the first time. That you would experience light, that you would experience healing, that you would experience new life. That's my prayer today. Is that for some of you, for the very first time, would experience the miracle of going from death to life, the miracle of new birth. I'm praying that for some of you, you may have heard John 3.16 before, but it never made sense to you. And today it's like the curtain's been pulled back, and you're like, I can see it. I'm starting to understand that there's a God who loved me and has a plan and purpose for my life. If you're getting stirred in that way and you've never made a decision to be a Jesus follower, man, I would encourage you, do not move from this moment without getting in a right place with God. If somebody brought you along today and you're here with a friend or a family member and you're in that space, talk to them about it. If you're here by yourself, come and talk to me or somebody else on our prayer team later on. Do not move from this space without allowing God to really sink into you the truths of this reality, that He loves you and He gave Jesus for you so that you could be in right relationship with Him. Second objective is that those of us, definitely include myself in this, who have grown cold, who have become overly comfortable with the news of the gospel, that we would allow the Holy Spirit to convict us again and to remind us of the beauty of the gospel. The picture I have in my mind is that some of us, our hearts were like this fire when the good news of who God is and the grace of the gospel first came into our hearts, and that fire in some ways has dwindled down into just a couple of little embers. And my hope is that as we've been talking today and reminding ourselves of these truths today, that it's like the Holy Spirit's breathing in on those embers and putting fuel on that fire and allowing it to come back into flame. That's my prayer for today. One of the frustrating and beautiful things about preaching is that you have to preach a message to yourself before you go ahead and preach it to anybody else. And that was certainly true this week. This week uh we um I was getting ready for the message, and I was looking at this passage, I was starting to get my notes together, and it came to the evening time, I came downstairs, and I uh I was in a good frame of mind. Um, and we were at the dinner table together, and in our dinner table interaction, all of a sudden my son like just started being bad. There isn't a good way to describe it, and he was bad, and uh and I was the cool, calm, collected parent until I wasn't. You know what I mean? All of a sudden, I went from peaceful, calm, normal, in-controlled dad to being angry and being frustrated. And in that moment, I was angry and I did not parent well. And our house, as dad was thrown into chaos, our house was thrown into chaos. And for the next few minutes, our house was in chaos. Thankfully, things started to simmer down. And we kind of figured things out, but I was still angry. I was still frustrated. And one of my frustrations was knowing that it was almost it was gonna be bedtime soon, and I had to go to a meeting, and my son was about to go to bed, and I knew that we couldn't go leave in this space. And so I'm feeling some conviction from the Holy Spirit. My beautiful wife, Liz, is like, hey, you need to make things right here. Like, this isn't good. And so I called my son into the room, and I said, Hey buddy, for what it's worth, I want to own what I need to own in this situation. I want to apologize for this, this, and this. I shouldn't have acted like this. And so I just laid those things out and I just said, I'm sorry, daddy's not perfect, and I really messed up. I'm sorry, would you forgive me? And then I tried to coach him a bit. I was like, okay, so you got anything for me, you know. Um and you know, he mumbled out some stuff. But the beautiful moment came as I uh beautiful moment came as I said to him, hey buddy, what really frustrates me and what I'm really aware of right now is the fact that I'm about to get in a car and drive to this meeting, and as I'm driving, I'm gonna have to pray and make things right with God because I am messed up, I'm a broken man, I'm not a good dad, and I've just been reminded of how bad I am tonight. And as I said these words, I started to cry, and I don't do that in front of him normally, so I think he was a bit like, whoa, what's going on here? But it was this beautiful moment because in that moment, as I started to cry, and as I was broken, all of a sudden the truths that I'd been studying all day started flooding, rushing back into my soul. John 3, 16 became alive to me because I'm a wretch, and I was remembered, man, I'm a wretched man. And without the truths of this gracious gospel message, I am nothing. I am broken and I'm lost. And it was like, wow, thank you, God, for reminding me of the truths of this passage. I hate how it happened, but I love that it happened, and I love that this is the reality that you love me. I am, yeah, yeah, I'm a pastor on staff at a church. Yeah, I act like I've got it all together, but I don't. I'm just as broken and as messed up as the next guy, and I'm just as need of your grace, God, as anybody else. And so my prayer, I tell you that story because my prayer is that in some way today that the Holy Spirit would move and act and do something in your heart where the truths of this verse really impact your soul again. That it's not just this verse that you can memorize and say off the top of your head, but really that it would grip your heart. The third objective here today is this: that all of us, and I mean all of us, would be moved by this love that we've been talking about to love and engage the world around us. We breezed over a lot of this text, but verse 21, and it says there in verse 21 anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God. God saves us for a purpose. I could give you many Bible verses right now about how God calls us to be ambassadors of his love. When we receive his love, we're called to take that love to whatever spheres God places us inside of. Our family, our circle of friends, neighbors, coworkers, all of those places that God puts us, as we receive this love, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, as we receive that love, we're called to be ambassadors of that love in whatever places he gives us. And so the bottom line that I'm trying to say to you today is this the gospel message needs to both captivate us and motivate us. My prayer is that as we're talking, that you would be captivated again by John 3.16, that you'd be reminded again that man, God is good, God is gracious, and that your heart would be stirred, but for a purpose. Not just so you can soak in it and enjoy it yourself, but that you can give of that same love in whatever place that God puts you. God so loved the world that he gave that which was most precious to him so that whoever would believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for the message of the gospel. God, it doesn't get any more succinct or beautiful than we find it here in John 3.16. And God, we find great hope in it today. God, I pray that these truths would really go and sink down, even in these next few minutes and this week, into the crevices of our hearts where there is unbelief. In the places in our hearts where we are struggling to believe that you are good, that you are gracious, that you are great and in control. God, would you help these realities that you are there, that you exist, that you are loving, and that you've given Jesus for us. God, may those truths sink deep into our hearts today. Change us, transform us, allow us to be totally immersed in your goodness, even in this moment. Thank you, God. Show us how to reflect and show us how to respond in this time. Thank you. Amen.