The Gospel in One Verse

What a blessing, what a blessing.

I went to Gardner-Webb.

I was a biblical studies major at Gardner-Webb.

And we, right there on the North Carolina, South Carolina line,

and on Wednesday nights, we'd ride out in the country

to this big old church set out in the middle of nowhere.

And I think it was called Holly Springs Baptist Church,

somewhere in northern South Carolina.

And if she'd have sang that song at that church,

some old boy would have got loose back there and went on a running fit.

Now, that freaks some of y'all out.

But for some of us, Brian, you've been in those atmospheres,

ain't you, brother?

A little sawdust will tear you up, son.

Good stuff.

Thank you so much, Charlotte.

If you have your Bibles, turn to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

In the 1870s, archaeologists uncovered in the sands of Egypt

a giant red granite obulus.

They named it Cleopatra's Needle.

And they gave it to England,

which placed the 69-foot shaft

on the banks of the Thames River in London.

They put a time vault in the base of that shaft.

And they put coins in there.

And they put clothes of that day in there.

They put some newspapers in there.

And they put some photographs.

They put some children's toys of that age as well.

And then they formed a committee

to pick the greatest verse in all the Bible

and to put it in the vault.

They chose John 3.16

and they put it in the vault

in all of the other,

more than 200 known languages of that day.

Not only is John 3.16

the most popular verse of Scripture,

but it may be the most impactful verse.

Must be, actually.

It's called the Mount Everest of Scripture.

Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer,

called it the Bible in miniature.

A.T. Robertson, the greatest Greek scholar

possibly since the time of the Lord,

called it the littlest gospel.

It's also been called the gospel in a nutshell.

And today is March the 16th.

If you abbreviate that, it's 3.16.

It's a great day to celebrate the gospel verse,

John 3.16.

As a matter of fact,

today has been marked the international day

of the gospel.

And so I want us to do something today

to celebrate John 3.16.

I want us to read it together.

If you would stand together with me

and let's read John 3.16.

It says,

You may be seated.

It's such a common verse

that it's likely that we take it for granted.

It sounds simple, but yet it's very profound.

It is inexhaustible, quite honestly.

Dwight L. Moody was a great preacher,

a great evangelist that founded the Moody Bible Church

in Chicago as well as the Moody Bible Institute

and was preaching in the United Kingdom

when a young man began to listen to him preach.

As Moody would travel,

that fellow would travel with him in the UK

and follow him to the next church

and would listen to him again.

And night after night,

he listened to D.L. Moody preach.

He got to know the young man

and the man said that he had a desire

to preach in America.

And Moody invited him and said,

If you ever get there to America,

let me know and I'll let you preach

at Moody Church.

Well, his name was Henry Morehouse.

And sure enough, Henry Morehouse

had the opportunity to travel to America.

And when he did, he contacted Moody.

And Moody said, Well, great.

He said, I'm preaching Sunday morning

and then I'm leaving and going out of town

for a little while.

And so you can preach on Sunday night for me

when I leave.

And that night, Morehouse preached.

And when Moody returned,

several days later,

he found out that Morehouse

not only preached that night,

but he had preached several nights

to a growing crowd every night.

He also found out that every night

that Henry Morehouse preached,

he preached on John 3.16 as his text.

He preached different sermons,

but he always preached on John 3.16.

As a matter of fact,

Morehouse began preaching

when he was 16 years old

and he died at an early age at 33 years old.

But for the 17 years that he preached,

every sermon that he preached,

he preached from John 3.16.

Different sermons,

but every time the same text.

My friend, it is inexhaustible.

And I will not do it justice today,

but I want to have some fun trying.

All I want to tell you

is the same thing that this verse tells you.

And that is,

I want to tell you how to be saved.

Now, I know that may sound overused to some,

but I don't believe there's any need

to fix something that isn't broke

because Jesus still saves.

And our verse today lies in the midst

of an encounter that Jesus had

with a Pharisee named Nicodemus.

Jesus said that when one is changed by Christ,

it makes a world of difference.

It's as if you are starting over,

being born spiritually all over again.

I remember when I was a small child,

I remember hearing President Jimmy Carter

say that he was born again.

And I remember,

even though I was a child at the time,

remember the media giving him a hard time about that,

what it meant to be a born again Christian.

Well, I got news for you.

Jimmy Carter didn't come up with that.

Jesus came up with that.

And when he told Nicodemus that he must be born again,

old Nick, as I love to call him,

didn't understand,

even though he was a religious leader,

schooled in what we now know as the Old Testament.

And so Nicodemus asked him,

how then can I be born again?

And the response of Christ gives us a great glimpse

at the power and the hope of the gospel message,

the good news of Christ.

Notice what he says in John 3, beginning in verse 13.

He said,

No one has ascended into heaven

except he who descended from heaven,

the Son of Man.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world

that he gave his only Son,

that whoever believes in him should not perish,

but have eternal life.

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.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already,

because he has not believed in the name

of the only Son of God.

It's been said a lot of different ways,

but I want you to see this morning

three steps to being saved.

The first step is this,

to look,

to look.

In describing how a person can be saved,

Jesus referred to Moses

and the serpent in the wilderness.

And that account is found

in Numbers chapter 21.

Numbers 21 · chapter mention

Numbers 21 says this,

beginning in verse 4.

For Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea

to go around the land of Edom.

And the people became impatient on the way.

And the people spoke against God and against Moses.

Why have you brought us out of Egypt

to die in the wilderness?

For there's no food and no water,

and we loathe this worthless food.

Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people,

and they bit the people,

so that many people of Israel died.

And the people came to Moses and said,

we have sinned,

for we have spoken against the Lord and against you.

Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.

So Moses prayed for the people.

And the Lord said to Moses,

make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole,

and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live.

So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole.

And if a serpent bit anyone,

he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

It's amazing sometimes what we have to endure

to turn our eyes back to the Lord.

These were a complaining, impatient people.

Surely not Baptist.

And they were upset with their circumstances,

and it just made it worse.

The more they moaned about it,

the worse it got.

That is usually what happens, quite honestly.

The more negative you are about something,

the more you whine and complain,

the worse things will get.

I heard Lou Holtz say one time,

don't complain about your problems.

90% of people really don't care,

and 10% are glad it's happening to you.

So listen, you got to keep it all in perspective.

A harsh word, but it may be reality.

Complaining does not help.

And when those complained,

the Lord sent serpents that had a fiery bite to them.

Now when it says fiery there,

one, it means it hurt.

The second means it was venomous.

And that woke up folks that were hurting,

and they said,

Moses, you need to call on the Lord.

And Moses called on the Lord.

I hope you know that there would have been

a lot less loss here

if they had turned to the Lord when times got tough.

Instead of turning to each other

and complaining and growing impatient.

Because in reality,

it's not what happens in life.

It's what happens to what happens in life.

How do you respond in life?

They got to the point in their lives

when they turned to God and followed his instruction.

And his instruction was to look to the snake

and find relief.

And they did.

Now you may not seem comfortable about that.

Why in the world would there be a bronze snake for comfort?

Well, I'll tell you why.

Because God gets on our level.

He speaks to where we are.

And these people had been plagued by a tendency

to look at graven images.

Idols that they looked to for strength

and comfort and hope.

And so God gave them an icon

and he instructed them to look at it.

And when they looked at it,

they found healing.

Get this now.

Not because of the snake.

They didn't get their healing because of the snake.

Their healing came in obediently following

what the Lord told them to do.

And just as that serpent was lifted up,

so Christ has been lifted up on the cross.

And when we look to the cross,

we'll find our strength.

When we put our faith in the God

that hung on the cross for our sin,

but first, we have to look.

First, we have to acknowledge it.

We have to see the need.

We don't need to look inside of ourselves for answers.

We need to look to Christ for answers.

That's where the answers are.

But it's not just enough to look.

For the second means,

the second way to come to salvation

is to believe.

To believe.

For after acknowledging our need for help,

we must look to God

and believe

that what he did changes everything.

The key to John 3.16

is the love of God.

He willingly sent his son

to die in our place

because of our sin

so that we could have eternal life.

What kind of love is it

that sends his sinless son to the cross

to die in our place?

All of us,

ugly sinners before God,

quite honestly.

Without the forgiveness of God,

we'd have no hope.

So how is it that he sends his son?

What kind of love is that?

It's a matchless love.

I guess my two favorite songs

that's ever been written

is It Is Well With My Soul

and The Love of God.

And the lyrics of The Love of God say this,

Could we with ink the ocean fill

and with the skies our parchment made

were every stalk on earth a quill

and every man a scribe by trade?

To write the love of God above

would drain the ocean dry,

nor could the scroll contain the whole,

though stretched from sky to sky.

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure,

how measureless and strong,

it shall forevermore endure

the saints and angels song.

Friend, it is a love worth believing.

And that belief is a committing belief.

It is an all-in kind of belief.

It is an action statement

of not just understanding something,

but acting on that,

believing it enough to act on it.

Romans 10, 9 says,

If we confess with your mouth

and believe in your heart

that God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved.

It's having a confident trust in the Lord.

It's having a firm, life-changing conviction in Christ.

It is enough to surrender our lives.

It's enough to surrender our plans.

It's enough to surrender our ambitions,

to give him over control of our life.

And when we do that,

we do that with everything that we are.

We are saved for all of eternity.

More Oklahoma may be the deadliest place on the planet,

at least for tornadoes.

In 1999, an EF-5,

very rare to have an EF-5,

but an EF-5 tornado

with top speeds of 301 mile per hour,

the highest wind speeds ever measured on Earth,

came right through the center of Moore, Oklahoma.

It stayed on the ground for 85 minutes.

It went for 38 miles.

It killed 36 people.

And it was the first tornado to ever cause

over a billion dollars worth of damage.

In 2013, practically the same path was taken

by another EF-5

with 210 mile per hour speeds

that killed 24 people and injured 377.

It wiped Moore, Oklahoma off the map twice.

It got hit again in 2015 by an EF-2.

And I guess they just thought it was a strong breeze

compared to what they had faced before.

But in 1999, it was devastating.

And the storm went right by First Baptist Moore, Oklahoma.

That is a beautiful facility

with instead of a steeple,

they have a large cross projecting

where the steeple normally would be.

That facility was practically left untouched.

And its central location

caused it to become a relief and a care center.

And in an effort to get the word out,

people got in the back of trucks with bullhorns

and rode through Moore, Oklahoma,

saying,

whatever you need,

go to the cross.

However you're hurting,

go to the cross.

Whatever you need help with,

go to the cross.

If you need any supplies,

you go to the cross.

If you need anybody to take care of you,

you go to the cross.

Whatever you need, Moore, Oklahoma,

go to the cross.

Go to the cross.

Go to the cross.

Help is waiting for you.

My friend,

help is waiting for you.

Go to the cross.

God will save you

if you only believe.

Look to the Lord.

Believe.

And lastly, be saved.

There's a choice to make.

God initiates

within us

a desire to come to him

and we respond to that.

He gives us the ability to believe

and we just have to give up

and we just have to give in.

And that's not offered to just some.

It's offered to all.

Romans 10, 13 says,

everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord

shall be saved.

It is a promise

that is as real and lasting

as the shed blood of Christ on Calvary

for your sins.

God knows us like no one else does.

God loves us like no one else has.

And God wants to save us

like nothing else you will ever experience.

Years ago,

there was another school tragedy.

This one

was in Florida.

And my oldest daughter, Abby,

was in a government class

in high school

and they were talking about guns

and they were talking about prevention

and they were talking about school policies

and they were discussing

what was happening

with this tragedy.

And she had seen an interview

in that class

with a father of a child

that had been killed.

And he had talked about

how things could be done differently

if people would work together.

And I agree with a lot of what he said.

But part of what he said

was haunting to me.

He said this,

I didn't think it was going to happen to me.

I knew that

if I knew that,

I would have been at school every day

if I'd have known how dangerous it was.

Work with the president.

Work to fix schools.

That's it.

No other discussion.

No more discussions.

I will never

see my kid again.

Never ever

will I see my kid.

I want you to

let that sink in.

Eternity.

My daughter.

I'll never see her again.

And it's simple.

We can fix it.

That man had a lot of good points.

But what kept ringing in my head

was something different.

And before the preacher daddy in me

could say it to my daughter,

Abby looked at me and said,

Daddy,

he's lost.

He's lost.

Now either his daughter

never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ

or either she did

and he don't know it

or either he didn't understand it

or either he was just lost

without Christ

but he said there was no hope

of an eternal reunion.

No hope

of eternity.

I can't imagine

what that man

was going through.

I can't think about it.

It has to be

the most horrid thing

that anybody could ever

go through in this life.

However,

if you don't believe

in the Lord

and if you don't

surrender your life

to him

and you don't get saved,

you'll go through

the most horrid thing

that anyone could ever

go through

for all of eternity.

You'll die

without Christ

when in reality

he died

for one reason

so that you don't have to die

without him.

Billy Sunday

was a great preacher.

He's a character.

He's a baseball player

that turned preacher.

Man,

he's a character.

He was like a Billy Graham

of the day.

Billy Graham

made such a difference

in the second half

of the 20th century

and Billy Sunday

made such a difference

in the first half

of the 20th century.

But there was a difference

in the way

they presented themselves.

Billy Sunday

was a wild man

in the pulpit.

He was a fire-breathing preacher.

He preached hard messages

on sin.

And one time

after a sermon

somebody said

to Billy Sunday,

he said,

Billy,

you better tone it down

a little bit.

And Billy said,

why?

And he said,

well,

Billy,

you're rubbing the fur

on the cat

the wrong way.

And Billy Sunday said,

that old cat

is headed to hell.

And if that cat

will turn around,

I'll rub her

the right way

and she can go to heaven.

And my friend,

I want you to understand

something this morning.

I don't talk about

the reality of hell

with glee.

I don't celebrate

the fact

that the majority

of the people

in the world

in which we live

will probably die

and go to hell

without Christ.

I don't relish in that.

I don't celebrate that.

I try my best

to get the warning out

that anybody

and everybody

that I come in contact

with at all possible

can know

you don't have to

let your sin

separate you

from Christ.

He died in your place

to change your life.

And all you must do

is give him

everything you've got.

Just all of you.

Look to Jesus.

Believe in your heart

that he'll forgive you

of your sins

and he'll come

into your life

and he'll save you.

And as you begin

to feel him

draw you to himself

respond

and get saved

and let him

change your life.

You'll never be the same.

the Holy Spirit

of God

will empower you

to rise above

those circumstances

that may hold you back

from making a decision

for the Lord now.

Don't let anything

hold you back.

You just trust Christ.

He'll make all the difference

in the world.

There's a lot of people

in here today

and you know that

and you've accepted

the Lord Jesus

as your personal Lord

and Savior

and you're secure in that.

Maybe you've never

acknowledged that publicly

in the way that

Jesus commissioned us

to do it

and even did it

by example

through baptism.

And if you've done

that privately

but you've never

acknowledged that publicly

I encourage you to come.

I'd love to guide you

in that.

Maybe God's guiding you

to First Baptist Church

and you feel like

the Lord's leading you

to do this

and your next commitment

of obedience

to follow Christ

is to join the church

and be a part of that.

I'd love to guide you

through that as well.

But the reality is

if you're here this morning

and you know the Lord Jesus

and you're an open

confessing Christian

I want you to know

that God has planted

people all around you

that desperately need

the Lord Jesus.

And when you leave here today

don't feel like

because I got my salvation

everything's done.

No it ain't.

God's put many people

around you every day

in the different walks

of life that we live

in the different places

that we go

in the different conversations

that we have.

People who desperately

desperately

need the Lord Jesus.

And the way it works is

as God lays those people

upon your heart

God works in their lives

as well.

There's a divine appointment

that takes place

that we can't even see

even half of it

taking place.

But God allows us

to be used

to see people's lives

changed.

But if we're not

sensitive to that

if we're not open

to that

we'll miss that opportunity.

So I ask you today

Christian before you

leave here

will you say

dear God

will you put somebody

in my path

this week

for me to share

the gospel with.

For me to just ask

have you ever

given your life

to Christ?

And if you have

I'd love to hear

your story.

Listen if there's

a Christian

that gets offended

by that

they're not a real

Christian.

If you can ask

somebody

have you ever

given your heart

and life to Christ?

I mean you can tell

them look

I mean it seems

like you have

but will you

tell me about

that experience

and let them

share their

testimony with you

and then share

your testimony

with them?

They may not

have a testimony

and by you

sharing yours

you can make

a difference

in their life.

God's just using

you.

You're not doing

the salvation.

You know what

you're doing?

You're just

scattering seed.

You're not

responsible for

whether it takes

root.

You're not

responsible

whether it's

fruitful.

You're responsible

for scattering

the seed.

You don't have

to be eloquent

about it.

You're just a

beggar telling

another beggar

how to find

bread.

My friend

I encourage

you if you've

got salvation

in the Lord

Jesus give

it away.

Give it

away.

It'll just be

better in your

life.

Heavenly Father

I love you.