3.
"...that the world through Him MUST be saved", 3.17
Can
God really save your soul? Did the man Jesus, really make provision
for eternal life with Father God? Did He really... "rise again
on the third day according to the scriptures"?! Well, from what
we read in the Gospel of John, He did, and He has; and not only that,
but He will return again to claim His church as His Bride. And this
is truth from word of God!
Today,
it seems as though everyone has a message for us...advertisers, politicians and the media all want to bend your ear, and for the most part, the messages they
have for us are of little consequence after all! However, there is one Person
Who really does have something to say that we need to pay heed-to,
and that is Jesus, as He continues His conversation with Nicodemus in
this portion of the scriptures, found in John 3.14-21.
First
of all (as we saw last time), notice again that He told Nick of...
(a)
a situation from the past (vss. 14-15)
Up
until now, Jesus had been speaking to Nicodemus about the necessity
of the new birth, but in the next few verses He "shifts gears"
in order to make some sense of an ancient event that had taken place
in the early history of his nation; you can be certain that Nick
would have known of the incident from his early childhood, as he had
studied the Books of Moses, Numbers 21.4-10.
In
that passage, Israel is found journeying through the wilderness,
grumbling as usual about their state in life, when God sent "fiery
serpents" among them as punishment for their sin; consequently, many of the
people were bitten and some of them died. Eventually however, the people repented
and asked Moses to go before God on their behalf, and strangely
enough, God commanded Moses to fashion the image of a snake from
brass, and hang it on a pole and invite everyone who had been bitten
to look upon it, and live!
Now this strange event was prophetic of the anti-serpent,
the Christ, the ultimate cure for the death-dealing bite of Satan!
Notice that God didn't command them to worship the snake or to pray
to it or to present an offering to it, but to very simply look upon
it. Now that required faith! And all those things God did not
command them to do, are precisely the things that Satan has been
telling men to do since the beginning of time! Believe me, the devil
is well pleased if he can get a man to focus on anything other than
Jesus, the Christ...good works, resolutions, even church membership;
anything that deflects our attention from our Lord.
You
know, that serpent was God's provision for that time, for man's sin;
and it constituted a very public witness for those Israelites who
chose to obey. Every man, woman and child who had suffered snake
bite had to raise their eyes to that bronze serpent in order to be healed;
and just as the lifting-up of that snake, with no other requirement
than "to look" and be healed, so the lifting-up of Jesus
upon His cross was to have the same healing effect on sinners in
every subsequent age.
Of course, as we now see and understand, Jesus
was speaking to the Jews in our current study, in heavenly code; one
that I'm sure, caused some head-scratching amongst them. But as His disciples
later saw and understood, He had been speaking of the coming
Calvary..."even so must the Son of Man be lifted up"! And not
just upon His cross, as necessary as that was to be; not just by His
resurrection, as necessary as that was to be; not just in His
glorification, as necessary as that was to be, but in our own hearts
and minds!
Secondly,
Jesus told Nicodemus of...
(b)
a sacrificial provision (vs. 16a)
God
loves His Son, and He loves us too! And it's because He loves us so
much, that He was willing to give us His Son as a Sacrifice for our
sins. Now remember, in the wilderness, no sacrifice had been
made...that singular incident had only been a "type" for
the eternal purposes of God, for His later work on Calvary's hill;
that's where the Sacrifice would be made...the Sacrifice to end all
sacrifices...that of Jesus Christ Himself! But of course, the "lifting-up"
of Jesus meant more than a sacrifice, but also, a glorious
resurrection, and His eventual exaltation as He took His rightful
place at the right hand of the Father!
For
Jesus, as well as for the recorder of this Gospel, it was the
crucifiction, the resurrection and the exaltation of the Sacrifice, that we are called to focus the eyes of our hearts and minds upon.
Without a Sacrifice there could be no pardon, and without a pardon, there is no salvation, and..."so must the Son of Man
be lifted up"!
Next,
Jesus told Nicodemus of...
(c)
a simple plan (vss. 16b-17)
The
key to eternal life is honestly, as simple as receiving and believing. No "twelve step program", no application process, no references required... just, "the way of the cross leads home"! So simple that children, elders, people who can't yet read or write, along with
leaders of nations, are all able to respond when called by Father God! In fact, how much simpler
could God have made it? He has already done the work; He has paid
the price; He has torn down the veil of separation; all that remains
is for us to receive and believe! And nothing has changed in more
than 2000 years!
Isaiah
put it this way in 45.22..."Look unto Me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else."
Jesus put it this way in John 6.47..."verily, verily I say unto
you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life." And Paul
says it this way in Acts 16.31..."Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved...". And do you know what?
This simple plan is all-inclusive...the door
of heaven has been flung open and all who believe will be lovingly received...the most
sad, the most despised, the most doubtful and the most lost!
It's
quite likely that some of those olden-days Hebrews might have scoffed
at the idea of being saved from their deadly condition by merely
looking at a brass snake on a pole, and refused to be healed, just as
people today continue to refuse Jesus. You know, our first parent on
this earth lost her place of safety in the Lord God when she, as recorded
in Genesis 3.6... "saw that the tree was good for food, and that
it was pleasant to the eyes...". And so it is that lost sinners
are saved from a lost eternity, by..."looking to Jesus, the
Author and Finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12.2). The sinner
begins his walk of faith by looking; and we end our walk of faith by
looking..."For our (real home) is in heaven, from whence also we
look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Philippeans 3.20).
Now,
John 3.16 is not only the best known verse of scripture, it is also
one of the most misunderstood! The one thing that confuses so many,
even in the light of such a simple plan, is that, although..."God
so loved the world...", He never freely offered salvation to us solely because of His
love! That is the gross error in much of today's contemporary
preaching; God loves us, but His love alone would never result in the salvation of a lost
sinner. God does not save us by His love...He saves us by His grace
(Ephesians 2.8-9)! "God so loved the world that He gave...that
whosever believeth in Him should not perish...". God's
love-at-large for the world resulted in a very personal Sacrifice,
that requires a very personal response. His sacrificial death did
not result in salvation-at-large from our sins, but a very specific
atonement...yours and mine, as we answer God's call to receive and believe!
(See John 3.17-18, Romans 5.8, Ephesians 1.7, and 1 John 3.4-6)
Yes,
it's a simple plan, and it's God's plan, and it's a plan that allows
us to enter-into, as Jesus told Nick...
(d)
a precious state (vss. 18-21)
Jesus
didn't come into this life the first time as a judge, as He has clearly stated in John 12. As we can see
by now, He came as a Sacrifice; the next time He comes, it will be to
judge. He makes it so clear here, that anyone who has received and believed, already has everlasting life! The fact of the matter is, to
them which are in Jesus, there is no condemnation, as we read in
Romans 8. Yes, the Christian will continue to live in this lost
world until the day he meets his Redeemer, but he can live without
the sentence of eternal death hanging over his head!
Notice
that in these verses our Lord speaks of these things from a
negative perspective..."For every one that doeth evil hateth the
light, neither cometh to the Light, lest his deeds should be
reproved." (vs. 20). We used to hear a lot about "the
power of positive thinking", but Jesus knew there could be a lot
of power in negative speaking...vs. 18..."he that believeth not
is condemned already..."! And vs. 19..."This is the
condemnation...men loved darkness because their deeds were evil"!
It's a sad fact, but true...God's mind is already made up concerning
the eternal state of those, who by reason of their hard hearts,
reject His gift of salvation; they are condemned already! It may be
that they have rejected God's simple plan, perhaps due to the simple
problem of simple neglect. Or perhaps they are spending too much
time looking at their look..."Am I looking in the right place?"
or, "Am I looking in the right way?" You know, Nick could have wasted a lot of a lifetime, even up to the door of eternity, focussing upon the question, rather than looking upon the Answer!
Then
there's that "But" in vs. 21. Truth, as stated there, is
the opposite of "error", just as "light' is the
opposite of "darkness", and that's the state in which the
newborn Believer finds himself, and it's a precious state indeed...a
state wrought by God, in Christ! It's no mystery at all, why people
prefer to stumble along in spiritual darkness...it's because
as the word says, they love darkness more that the Light! And so,
this is the final word, here, by Jesus to Nicodemus; no mention of
his salvation, although we find in chapt. 7.50 and in 19.39, that he
likely was, as Jesus would have said, "born again". And
these verses continue to speak to us, even today, and are just as
clear and simple to our ears as they must have been to his!
Thank
you Lord Jesus, for Your provision of redemption, opening to all who will, the door to everlasting life!
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