The Gospel of John: Born Again to True Life - Jan 19, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be together this morning.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, you can open them up to John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a Bible, the ushers are going to make their way down the aisle and you can just flag them down.

They'd love to put a copy of God's Word into your hands.

You can keep that.

This is our gift for you.

Life is incredibly precious, and one of the ways that we know that is that when life is on the line, humans are willing to go to great lengths to preserve it.

You may have heard of the story that was made into a movie of a hiker by the name of Aaron Rostin, who, when he was trapped in a canyon, his arm trapped between a boulder and a wall, was willing to amputate his arm just to survive.

Or one of my favorite stories is the story of the ship called Endurance and its captain, Ernest Shackleton, who trying to cross the Antarctic, the first people to do that, their ship became trapped in ice, and there's this incredible story of this whole crew surviving this 800-mile journey, riding icebergs, killing seals, facing the incredible cold temperatures, the darkness to survive.

And these stories are all around, whether it's firefighters who are willing to run into burning buildings to save lives, surely one of the things that shows us that life is so precious is the willingness of people to fight to preserve it.

But the example that trumps all of these is found really in the Gospels, where Jesus, if we do believe in all that Jesus said about himself, came from heaven, the glories, the wonders of heaven, which we have all thought about, but never begin to scratch the surface, no matter how great our imagination is.

Jesus came from heaven, being the eternal God to earth.

He left the happiness of heaven for the horror of a cross, all for the sake of life.

Eternal life was at stake.

Now I believe that the historical death and resurrection of Jesus is the greatest example of someone who is willing to go to great lengths to preserve life, because what Jesus came to give us is eternal life.

And so, you know, all of the crew mates who were on the endurance would later pass away.

So would every other example of someone who has fought for life, but Jesus came to bring something so much greater, he came to bring eternal life.

Now, whenever someone is willing to fight for someone, whenever someone is willing to go on such a dangerous mission as Jesus was to travel from heaven to earth just to die on a cross, I believe that that person should have all of our attention.

And in John chapter 3, we meet Jesus, who is meeting with Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee searching for answers as to who Jesus is and what he is here to do.

John 3 · chapter mention

And this morning you and I get to be participants of this conversation as Jesus explains to Nicodemus exactly what he came for.

Let's read it together in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Why don't you stand with me as we read God's word?

And we do this as a way to confess through our actions that this word is important to us and we need it more than we need bread.

And so let's read from John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Jesus answered him, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water in the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit.

Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be?

Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

Truly, truly I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, and as Moses lifted up the servant in wilderness, so much 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.

And this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and the people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean's countryside, and he remained there with them, and he was baptizing.

John also was baptizing at Anon, near Salem, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming and being baptized, for John had not yet been put in prison.

Now a discussion arose between some of John's disciples and a Jew over purification, and they came to John and said to him, Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.

John answered, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.

You yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.

The one who has the bride is the bridegroom, the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice.

Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

He who comes from above is above all.

He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way.

He who comes from heaven is above all.

He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.

Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this that God is true.

For he whom God sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we bow before you, and God, thank you that you love us and that all the evidence that you love us is found in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection and the signs and miracles that he performed.

And in the invitation to a conversation like this with Nicodemus.

God, as we witness Jesus and the conversation he had with this Pharisee who was trying to wrap his mind around who your son was, and ultimately would not until many days later.

God, we pray that you would do a work in us.

God, that by your Holy Spirit, you would reveal from heaven your wisdom and knowledge that we cannot find on earth.

God, open our eyes to the truth of the gospel and the freedom that is found when we believe in your Son and find eternal life in him.

God, as you speak to us through your word, I pray that your light would shine in the darkness of our hearts.

And God, that you would give us the confidence, the strength, the trust to step out of the darkness that we love so much and into the light of your gospel.

God, speak to us, we pray.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take your seat.

Jesus is here for life.

I want to spend our time this morning, especially focusing on verses 1 to 21.

This is the difficulty with the Gospel of John.

There is so much to get into, and yet the great treasure of John is that he often comes back.

And so we'll spend a lot of our time in verses 1 to 21.

I just tell you that so that as we near the 40-minute mark and we're in verse 21, you're not looking at your watch thinking, what is this guy gonna do for the next few minutes?

Jesus is teaching us about the eternal life that He brought, He came from heaven to preserve, and He's showing us the way to receive this life.

And the first thing I want you to see this is this that if we want to receive this eternal life, we must not settle for religion.

Don't settle for religion if you want eternal life.

Jesus now has made incredible claims in the Gospel of John.

He's promised his disciples, he said it to Nathaniel, that they would see much greater things than the signs and wonders that he was performing.

But when he then cleared out the temple, he said something amazing.

He said that he would tear down this temple and raise it up in three days.

Surely of all the miracles, this would be the greatest one.

And John tells us that it points to his resurrection, and all throughout Jesus' ministry, we will find that he is pointing our attention to the greatest of all miracles, the death and resurrection, the eternal life that he will bring through the cross.

The fulfillment of the words of John the Baptist, who, when he looked at Jesus in John 1, said, Behold, it is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This was his mission.

It was the salvation of all who would believe.

And here we find Nicodemus coming to make sense of the mission that Jesus has come to accomplish.

Well, this is the problem that is exposed in this conversation that we just read of is that you and I, as we seek to find life, are more, maybe the word is magnetized to religion than we are to relationship.

This isn't, you know, just like a trait that is maybe alive in some people and not in others.

It is to say this: that to be human is often to settle for a religion rather than the relationship that God came to restore us to.

Religion, it focuses on outward practices, on rituals, on rules, and because of that, it is very manageable.

But what Jesus comes to offer is something totally different.

It's an inward transformation.

Jesus comes to cleanse us in those areas of our heart that are like the areas of our house that we just cannot reach.

It is the mold that is behind the drywall that needs a specialist to get to.

Now, religion is easy in one sense, and we're drawn to it in one sense because it feels manageable.

We we have a sense of control.

We feel that if we can just turn our relationship with God into a set of rules, maybe it's a practice of Bible reading or a ritual of prayer, then we can find life and be in control of it.

The issue is that religion doesn't deal with our real need, the internal transformation.

And this is why Jesus had so such strong words for the Pharisees.

You'll remember that Jesus looked to the Pharisees in his ministry and said to them, You whitewashed tombs.

Because they did all the easy work cleansing the outside of their lives, following the rules and rituals that they had really set up for themselves and invented themselves, but they were not pursuing the most important work, the internal cleansing that's required if we're gonna stand before God.

And so Jesus looks at them and says, You're whitewash tombs.

Now I've never washed a tomb before, but I could imagine that it's hard work.

It's hard to wash a tomb until it's completely white.

And yet it is a useless work.

What we need is transformation.

What we need is renewal from the inside out.

What we need is Jesus.

So if you lack faith, then religion is great for you because you can control your relationship with God.

But if you want transformation, you need trust because you need Jesus to do a work that you just cannot do yourself.

Now in verse 1, we're introduced to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a religious ruler, we're told.

John places this conversation with Nicodemus here.

If you'll look at chapter 2 with me, get your eyes on the text in verse 23 and 24.

After the cleansing of the temple, we're told here that Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, and many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.

We're told in John 20 that Jesus performed many more signs than were recorded here in this gospel, and they were all recorded so that we might believe in him.

And here we find that as Jesus is starting his ministry and performing these miracles, there are many who are believing in his name.

And John invites us into this conversation so that we can get a sense of what a conversation looks like for someone who is rejecting Jesus.

Nicodemus would not, though he saw the signs, he would not accept Jesus for who he is until later in his life.

This is why John highlights the fact that as Nicodemus comes to Jesus, notice that in verse 2, he came by night.

It is a physical darkness, but it is a night that also signifies a spiritual darkness for John.

It is a darkness of spiritual understanding, of spiritual life.

It is a darkness that all who pursue God through religion are therefore in.

It contrasts the faith of Mary.

You remember Mary's faith at the wedding?

Who, when she asked Jesus to do something about the water and the wine, Jesus said, My time has not yet come.

And Mary with great faith turned to her servants and said, Do whatever she tells you.

Mary comes to Jesus on Jesus' terms.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus with an agenda.

What is his agenda?

Notice what he says in verse 2.

Rabbi, we know, we know, you can imagine the pride, the intellectual pride of Nicodemus as he is saying this, as though he knows anything.

We know that you are a teacher come from God.

For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

Now notice here what Nicodemus assumes that the signs that Jesus is performing prove that Jesus is merely a teacher, and this is the great problem with religion.

Religion demotes God from being our savior to just being a rule giver.

Despite seeing the signs, Nicodemus approaches Jesus as a teacher, not as a savior.

It is a reverse bargaining that religion is.

You know reverse bargaining, you ever seen it?

I went to a gro a garage sale one time with a friend, and garage sales are great because you can get deals like my friend did.

He got four pairs of skis, and he asked the guy, how much were these pairs of skis?

And the guy said,$15.

And feeling that it was such a great deal, my friend turned to the guy and said, I'll give you 20.

That is reverse bargaining.

I don't know if you've ever done that before.

Now, this friend is also a real estate agent, and I said to him, with those kind of sales techniques, I don't think you're gonna get very far in the real estate business.

This is what religion does.

Religion takes Jesus, and while Jesus offers to be a savior, religion demotes him to a teacher, to a moral guide, to a lawgiver.

This is why at our church, and this is what needs to happen in our relationship with God, we always want to get beyond the actions, whether it's the good actions we do or the sinful habits and actions we have, we want to get beyond those to the heart.

Because when we get to the heart of our sinful attitudes, it exposes the reality that we need a savior outside of ourselves.

You understand what I mean?

Take for example, anger.

If you have anger, you can acknowledge that that is sin, but if you just focus on the action of anger, you might actually feel that you can deal with it.

You ever have that in your life?

You know, you read the secular psychology on anger, and what they'll say is this listen, when when anger comes, what you need to do is look around the room and find things, five things that are blue.

You can deal with it if you find five things that are blue.

Now, listen, I've tried that, and let me tell you, you can find things that are blue that make you really angry, okay?

And that is an external way, a pharisaical way, a religious way of trying to deal with your sin, but it feels manageable.

It is something that you can do.

But then when you start asking the questions of why am I angry, what is the heart of my anger, you start to realize this that it's a kingdom orientation problem.

It is a heart problem.

The reason why we're angry is because we care less about God's kingdom than we do about our own kingdom.

And you start to realize this is a heart problem and that you cannot change your heart.

You are helpless.

You cannot cleanse the inside.

It's an eternal, internal problem.

So Jesus is teaching us this: that if you want true life, you must come to a place where you realize religion will do nothing but leave you in darkness.

You must long for a transformation that you cannot make on your own.

You must come to Jesus not as a teacher, but as a savior.

We need him to cleanse our heart.

And so many of us are trying to deal with our sin without turning to Jesus and saying, Listen, I can't do this.

You have got to do this work.

And so long as you do that, dealing with your sin will be play like playing spiritual whack-a-mole.

You ever wonder why it's like dealing with sin is like that?

You ever wonder why, like, you know, you know you're prideful, you want to be humble, but it's like as much as you wake up every morning and say, Today I'm gonna be humble, it is like playing spiritual whack-a-mole trying to deal with your pride.

It just keeps coming up.

Why?

Because the problem is inside.

What you need is not a hammer of religion to hit the mole.

What you need is an exterminator to deal with your mole problem.

Don't settle for religion.

The second thing Jesus is teaching us is this: that we need to stop trying to control God.

If we want eternal life, we must stop trying to control God.

This is the heart of religion versus the salvation that Jesus is coming to offer us.

Is religion is really believing that we can manage our own salvation without needing Jesus.

And so Jesus cuts right to the heart of this with Nicodemus.

Notice Nicodemus doesn't even get to ask a question, and Jesus responds, knowing how Nicodemus is approaching him, saying to him, This truly, truly, I say to you in verse 3, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

What Nicodemus needs is not a teacher, it's not a knowledge problem.

What Nicodemus needs is a savior.

His problem is a heart problem.

Now, listen, I am assuming this morning that your life is not all that you want it to be.

Anyone here got their life figured out?

Because if so, we should probably change places.

There are probably relational issues in your life that are not right.

There are likely issues in, you know, even your work that you know are not right, that you want to be changed.

There are issues in your life.

And if that's not true, then at least in the world, we can all agree there is something wrong in this world.

We recognize life is not as it should be.

The question for us this morning is this what is going to solve the problem?

What is it?

Is it a raise?

Is it someone changing?

You know, someone in your life, like changing their their the way that they act and speak?

Maybe it's a piece of knowledge that we're missing.

Maybe it's found in a self-help book or idea.

What is it that we need to really experience true life?

What is it that we think other people have that we're missing that because they have it, you know, they're really living life?

Don't you ever feel like that?

You look around the room and you're like, man, everyone's doing so well, and I'm just missing something, and you feel like life is a search for that thing.

What's that thing that I'm missing?

Jesus wants us to know that the thing we need is new birth.

Until we submit ourselves to his knowledge, what Jesus is telling us is this we really know nothing.

Here's Nicodemus.

I mean, this is such an ironic thing.

Nicodemus thinks he sees the full picture.

With great arrogance, he says, hey, listen, Jesus, I know that you are a teacher because of the signs that you do.

But what Jesus wants Nicodemus to know is that he really knows absolutely nothing.

And that he, though Nicodemus thinks he can see the full picture, Jesus wants them to know you can't see the kingdom of God unless you are born again.

You must be born again.

What does it mean to be born again?

Well, in John 3, verses 5 to 8, Jesus explains exactly what it means.

John 3:5–8

It means to be born of the water and the spirit, which is a concept that is deeply rooted in the Old Testament scriptures.

In fact, we just read in our service from Ezekiel chapter 35, and there we read of, sorry, it's 36, there we read of the promise that Ezekiel, the prophet, made from God himself, where he said this, that there is a day coming where he will sprinkle clean water on his people, and they shall be clean from all their uncleannesses and from all their idols, God will cleanse them.

Ezekiel 35 · chapter mention

He says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

Now, having heard those words, what should of the the people of Israel have done?

They should have said this that if I want to deal with this heart problem, I need to wait on God.

Instead, what they said is this if I turn to religion, I can do this myself.

I can do this myself.

Jesus is again showing us the transformation we need is far beyond what we can achieve on our own.

And so listen, I am convinced of this, that we in the North American church have gotten spiritual maturity wrong.

We often look at a person who sort of on the external has their life together.

You know, they're always at church, they always read the Bible, they always pray.

We take external markers as markers of spiritual maturity.

Now, listen, those things are incredibly important.

And those fruits will be alive in every person who is spiritually mature.

But I think what Jesus is doing here is showing us that real spiritual maturity belongs to the person who is consistently dependent on God.

The person in this room who is the closest to God will be the person who feels most their dependence and desperation for God.

The person who feels in their heart of hearts, like I can't even take a step unless God will allow it.

It is that person who regularly depends on God, who says, I am nothing apart from him, who will be the most spiritually mature.

Jesus elevates this in the Beatitudes.

Remember, he says, Blessed are the poor in spirit.

I love what Augustine said.

He said, if you ask me what is the first thing in the Christian faith, I will answer humility.

He then says, if you ask me what the second is, I will answer humility.

You can guess what the third is.

He says, if you ask me what the third is, I will answer humility.

Humility, dependence on the Lord, recognition that we cannot do the work that we need to do is the core of the Christian faith.

Humility says, I can't do it on our own.

Humility embraces weakness, and we are told all throughout the scriptures that that weakness truly is our strength.

And so let me ask you this morning, how weak are you this morning?

How we how did you walk into here this morning?

Did you walk into in here with this sense of like, I'm if I don't cling onto every word of God that He speaks through His Word this morning, then I will not make it.

You know what the problem is is that we walk around with a great spiritual pride.

This is why suffering can be so good.

This is why suffering can be so glorious, because suffering pulls the rug of self-dependence out from under your feet so that you just say this, I can't do it, Lord, I need you.

That's why the closest times in your life to God are the times when you suffer.

And what we need to do is make sure that even when circumstances are going well, we have this sense of dependency on the Lord.

We need it.

God put it in our hearts that we would depend on you.

If you could summarize what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus here, I think the heart of it is this: that the work that is required cannot be done by Nicodemus.

It must be done by God.

This is what he says in verse 12 and 13.

If I had told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

Jesus comes with a heavenly knowledge.

He speaks about it again in verse 27.

John the Baptist utters these words a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given to him from heaven.

Again in verses 31 to 33, this is the nature of what John the Baptist is saying is that unless this knowledge is given from heaven, you cannot have it.

Life can only come from Jesus.

You cannot find it here on earth.

You lack the necessary requirements for salvation.

It must come from above.

I think this is why the illustration that Jesus loves when he talks about those who inherit the kingdom of God is the illustration of children.

Because in children there is just this constant dependence.

I'm reminded of it constantly.

I envy the life that my kids live.

We have a dinner bell in our kitchen, and we'll be slaving over this dinner for, you know, I mean, it's minutes and minutes because usually it's like Katie and hot dogs or something, but we're making this dinner.

And then we ring that bell, and our kids are like in a whole nother world playing.

And as soon as they hear that bell, they they run to the table, and what is magically there?

Dinner for them.

They've never made a meal in their lives.

This is like, and I I often wonder, you know, like if we fell off the face of the earth, how long could they really survive?

Like they just can't, they don't have the knowledge to be able to make what they need to survive.

That's what it means to be a child.

So it is with you.

You do not have what you need.

It can only come from Jesus.

So we turn to him with dependence and humility and a recognition that we cannot achieve, we cannot achieve what we need on our own.

Are you dependent?

Are you desperate this morning?

Like, are you looking to God?

God, I am desperate for you to do a work.

That is what we need.

And listen, in this message, there's not a lot of practical application because I uh this is not about religion.

This is not about something to do, this is about a heart you must have in order to fall at the foot of the cross.

And when you fall at the foot of the cross, that is it.

That's where everything happens.

That is where everything happens in the Christian life.

So get there.

This morning, get there.

If you're not there right now, get there.

Pray.

God, get me there.

That is what I need.

I need to be at the foot of the cross.

This leads to our next point then.

True life comes when I look to Jesus.

Now, Nicodemus is viewed as a great teacher in his day, but in reality, he knows nothing because he has no heavenly knowledge.

And what Jesus is getting at here is listen, you can have all the earthly knowledge there is.

You could read all the books in the library.

Imagine you could download all of those things into your brain and, you know, the bigger problem, remember it.

But if you have just an ounce of heavenly knowledge, you have more than all of the earthly wisdom combined.

I love what Richard Baxter says.

He says, He who has the knowledge of Christ is richer than the greatest of philosophers, for the least grace is more precious than all the world's knowledge.

And I love that.

You know, loved one, you know what's available to you right now?

If you will just turn your ear to Jesus for a moment and listen to the gospel wisdom that he brings from heaven, if you will believe it for a second, in that moment you are richer in all knowledge and wisdom than the richest earthly person, than the greatest philosopher.

It's wisdom from heaven.

This is what Jesus offers us.

It's heavenly knowledge.

It comes from above.

It's like a whole nother world.

Best way I could illustrate it is like, could you imagine if we could go back in time with all the knowledge that we have now?

I mean, if you went back like a hundred years, even a hundred years, say 200 years, and you're able to go back in time to those people, you would be like the smartest person in the room.

You could say such simple things.

You know, you could go to the hospital and say, hey, listen, guys, if you just wash your hands, we're gonna deal with a lot of stuff here.

You don't need to know a lot, and yet the wisdom you bring would be revolutionary.

And this uh on, you know, times that by a million an infinite number, this is what Jesus does.

He brings us heavenly knowledge so that if you will believe it, everything will change eternally.

What is this knowledge that he came to give us?

It is nothing other than the gospel, and the gospel is so clearly presented here in verses 14 to 17.

This is why we've come to love these verses, in particular verse 16, so familiar to many of us, because it is so crystal clear around the gospel.

And really, what John is telling us here is what the gospel is, why the gospel is true, and the so what of the gospel.

We have here the what of the gospel, the why of the gospel, and the so what of the gospel.

First, I want you to see the what of the gospel.

Look at verse 14 with me.

There, John says this as Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

Jesus here is pointing us to the story of Moses who lifts up a serpent in the wilderness and calls the people who are facing the condemnation and judgment of God because of their sin to look to the serpent and live.

And by looking at it, everyone who looks at the serpent miraculously is given physical life.

Everybody else dies.

Jesus is saying that he came to provide the spiritual equivalent, that he too would be lifted up, that we too would find life by looking at him.

This is the what of the gospel.

It is the cross.

It is the reality that in the midst of our condemnation, God has given us a way out in the cross, in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, his death, his resurrection, it is the answer to our deepest need.

It provides reconciliation with God.

And we are told then in verse 17 about the incarnation that this is why Jesus came into the world for the first place.

It says, 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.

This is why he came.

It's what his mission was to die on the cross and be raised again.

But this raises the question then, why did Jesus come?

And here we find the beautiful answer in a rightly loved verse.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

The reason why Jesus came was because of the love of the Father.

I want you to notice that this is not the love that God has for the loveliness of his people.

God didn't come to you because of your merit.

God did not send Jesus to you because you had anything worthwhile to give him.

We are told that it is the love that God has for the world that compelled him to send Jesus into the world.

And it's significant here that all throughout John, when he speaks of the world, he is speaking of a broken and corrupt system.

It is our values that oppose God.

And this is the world that God loves.

And so listen, Christian, when you feel like God will only love you if you perform, if you follow a certain set of rules, you need to know that the verse does not say, for God so loved those that could put their lives together.

The verse says that for God so loved the world.

It is not a loveliness of the person for which he sends Jesus Christ.

It is his love for broken people.

He does it for his glory.

It's the wonder of the gospel.

That God extends his love to a people who are wicked and corrupt.

You know what that means when you're confronted with your sin?

I mean, we talk about this quote all the time, and I will continue to talk about it all the time because I love it so much.

What Tim Keller says, he says, cheer up.

You are more sinful than you ever could possibly imagine, but more loved than you ever dare believe.

And this captures John 3.16 so well.

It is the world that is corrupt, dark, and lost that God loves.

This is the why.

But we must move to the so what.

What do we do in light of the reality that Jesus became?

Three times, three verses point to the so what?

Verses 15, 16, and 18 tell us that belief.

Belief is the key to receiving eternal life.

But but what is belief?

And I think this is so helpfully captured in the story that Jesus points our attention to of Moses being looked, being lifted up, lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, and the Son of Man being lifted up.

In that story, do you know what it was that saved those people?

Do you know what they had to do?

They simply had to look to Jesus.

That's what believing is.

Believing is when you have those life questions, how do I deal with my sin?

How do I find joy?

How do I find peace?

You have the trust and belief in your heart to simply look at Jesus.

And so often we find that answer too simple, and so we look for a more complex answer, but that is simply it.

Life is found in a look.

You know, one of my great spiritual um, I want to call him an idol, but I don't know if that's a good Christian word to use, but that's what I'm thinking.

Is Charles Spurgeon.

I have a, if you've ever been to my office, there's the this uh picture of Spurgeon up in my office, and it's one of those pictures where wherever you stand in the room, he's looking at you.

And I love that because I just love that Spurgeon's always watching down on me as I do my sermon prep.

I I love that.

But Spurgeon, when he was saved, he was a teenager and it was a Sunday morning.

He was on his way to church, but we know this as Canadians, it was snowing, and he was trying to walk to church, but there's just too much snow.

So he finds this little church in an alleyway and he steps inside of it to watch the service, and turns out that the preacher of that church couldn't get there either, and so it was a backup preacher who didn't have a lot of time to prepare.

And so this preacher is preaching on a verse in Isaiah 15, in Isaiah 45.

It says, Look unto me all the ends of the earth, and you shall be saved.

And the preacher begins preaching, and you'll never believe this, he did not have enough content to fill the length of his sermon.

Can you believe that?

I mean, we don't know what that's like here at this church.

And so after about 10 minutes of kind of expositing the text, he just started looking around at people in the church and making eye contact and saying, You young man, look to Christ.

You know, if he knew people by name, and I won't do it here, but he would call them by name, look to Christ.

And that, you know, it was like 40 minutes of that for the rest of the sermon.

It was by all means a horrible sermon.

But it was in this sermon that Spurgeon was saved because eventually the man got to him and he pointed him out and he said this, you young man, look to Christ.

And it wasn't anything flashy, it wasn't this amazing exposition of the text, it wasn't even from an incredible sermon.

I mean, Spurgeon would be called the Prince of Preachers, one of the greatest preachers that ever lived.

And yet it was from the simplicity of this that there is nothing more to be said, that life is found in a look.

It's a simple act of looking that he was saved, and this is the heart of the gospel.

See, you see, salvation is not complex.

It's not about doing more, it's not about doing better, it's about looking.

And so the question for us this morning is this have you looked?

Have you looked back to Jesus?

And do you look?

This is what Christianity is.

It's it's a day-by-day looking to Jesus.

It is the words of Mary, whatever he says, I will do.

This is why Jesus says in verse 35, for the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life.

But the wrath of God remains on him.

Life is for those who turn to Jesus in obedience and say, Lord, your will is my way.

I'm following you.

We look to Jesus.

The last thing we need to do if we want this light is life is to live in the light.

Live in the life.

Light.

Here's the question: if salvation is so simple as to simply look at Jesus, why don't more people look?

Why do so many remain in the darkness?

And look at what Jesus says in verse 19 to 21, and this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and the people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

This is the issue.

This is our human condition.

We don't reject Jesus because we don't understand him.

We reject Jesus, and I'm talking here, whether you're a Christian or not, in our life we reject Jesus because at the very heart of our being, we do not want the light.

This is what you and I need to understand, and this is incredibly bad news, but we cannot know the good news unless we know the bad news.

The bad news is that you and I are broken people.

We have a corruption of our heart that when light shines into the darkness of our lives, when the answer is given to us and the answer is Jesus Christ, we turn away from the light.

Because the light is too painfully exposing.

Deep down in our lives we know that things are not right.

We see it everywhere, relationships fall apart, people get sick, tragedies strike without warning.

That's external, but we know in our own life that things are not right.

We're swallowed up with selfishness and anger and fear and anxiety, and and we just know things are not right.

The issue isn't whether we see the brokenness, the issue is how do you solve the brokenness?

There's two ways we can do it.

One way is to flee.

And so many of us do that.

We we see the brokenness in life and we try to escape it.

Maybe it's entertainment, maybe it's busyness.

In other ways, we just try to fight it.

We try to Fix ourselves through good deeds or religion or self-help.

And the issue that John is telling us is this that these attempts they not only fall short, they leave us worse off in the end.

We are trying to fight darkness with darkness.

We are trying to overcome darkness with more darkness.

You can imagine the picture that John is painting here.

It's such a vivid illustration.

Sometimes we convince ourselves that staying in the dark is the best way to deal with things.

You ever do that in your house?

You ever have a room so messy in your house that instead of actually cleaning it, you just turn off the lights and go to bed?

Me neither.

I've never had that in my life.

Ever.

Sometimes we feel like the best way to solve a problem is to leave it in the darkness.

Except that doesn't actually fix anything.

Instead, it just hides the mess.

In many ways, our spiritual darkness can feel more comfortable.

It feels like less work.

It feels like less vulnerability, more control.

So we turn to fight the darkness on our own.

We can deal with this.

But instead of dealing with it, we stumble through the night.

I mean, you know what it's like to live in darkness.

I mean, the biggest obstacle I face, the first obstacle, maybe not the biggest, every day, is the darkness.

You know, I wake up before my wife and things are pitch black.

And sometimes I think it'd be funny just to set up like a nightcam just to see what I look like because I'm crawling around.

And today I was at the door and I'm trying to I was trying to find the door for like a good 20 seconds, like pawing through the air.

It was closed.

I just thought it was open, and I thought eventually I would find it.

Life is ridiculous in the darkness, but you think, okay, I can make it.

I can I can make it through.

We try to deal with the darkness.

Problem is the darkness destroys us, and what you need is light.

We need the light.

How much more is this true when Jesus, he with Jesus, he's the light that exposes the reality of our lives.

You come to him, he doesn't just show you his sin, he shows you your need for him, and he provides the way forward.

And if you're a Christian, you've experienced this before, before you knew Christ, in a lot of ways, things were simpler.

You didn't really care about character, you didn't really care about Christ-likeness.

But now you do, and if you're honest, you probably are more aware of your sin than ever.

Do you ever feel like that?

Like I think I'm worse off now than I was before.

It's not a sin issue, though, it's an awareness issue because what Jesus is doing is he is the doctor who is exposing the disease you always had but did not know about.

And he is exposing it so that he can provide healing to it.

So here's what we do: we live in the light.

We live in the light.

What does that mean?

It means to be desperate for Jesus and proclaim this.

I cannot do it on my own.

I need the cleansing of Jesus.

There's so many practical ways we do that.

We do that in our own personal confession with the Lord.

We bring our sin to the light.

We do that with other believers when we're vulnerable and bring our sin to the light and say, hey, listen, I'm struggling and I can't do this right now.

And now we have an opportunity to do this in communion.

You know, communion is this.

Communion is bringing sin to light.

Communion is taking this cup, and if you are holding this cup, which by the way, if you don't have, the ushers are coming to the front and making their way back, and you can flag them down and they'll get a cup into your hands.

But the fact that you hold this cup, do you know what it says about you?

I love this because if you're holding it, you know, you have no choice here.

But the fact that you hold this cup says you're broken, that you can't do it yourself, that you need something external from you to provide a cleansing that you cannot do yourself.

This is not a religious act.

This is a symbol that Jesus has given to us to remind us that everything we need has been provided outside of ourselves.

We could not do it ourselves, but Jesus has provided his blood and he has provided his flesh so that you and I one day will drink the cup with him in heaven.

This is a taste.

It is why it's so small, and it's why the cookie tastes so bad.

Because there is a day coming where we will feast with Jesus Christ Himself and we will look back to the communion that we had with Him, where we were reminded week after week, month after month, that it was His blood that was shed, it was His flesh that was pierced, so that we could have life.

There are a few reasons why you might pass the cup this morning.

If you aren't a believer, Jesus says that this isn't for you, this is for those who believe in him.

It is given to the church, to those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ.

Bible also says that if you have any sin that is unrepentant, that you should pass this as well, that this cup is for you, but if you're not willing to be serious about sin, you pass it as a reminder that Jesus forgives those who turn to him in faith, repentance, and confession of their sin.

You'll notice here that there's two layers.

The top layer will get you to the bread, and you can open that now as we take communion and are reminded of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread.

In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together.

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the cup.

And we thank you for the bread.

That reminds us, God, that we are not enough and that we need a salvation outside of ourselves.

And so, Lord, we receive, we receive this cup, and we are reminded of the words John in chapter one.

He said, To all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God, who are born not of human will, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.

God, thank you for new birth.

Thank you for the work that you have done, a work that has come from heaven.

And Lord, we praise you now to declare this.

God, that you are our only hope.

Our hope is not in and of ourselves, our hope is in what you have done through your son and his death and resurrection.

And so we turn to you now to give you all the praise.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.