Gospel—B. Anstey
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For six on the hem sheet.
Number six on the hymn sheet God and Mercy sent His Son.
To a world by sin undone, Jesus Christ was crucified twice. For sinners, Jesus died number six.
In the world.
Let's open our Bibles to the third chapter of John's Gospel.
John's Gospel chapter 3 and I like to read 17 verses.
Beginning with the 1St.
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher, come from God.
For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto 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, Verily, verily, I say unto thee.
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I say unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind blow it where it listeth, or where it wills, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh. And whither it goeth so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a teacher, a master, or a teacher of Israel? And knoweth not these things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak what we know, and testify what we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you of earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe? If I tell you of heavenly things? No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of man.
Be lifted up now whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever.
Or have eternal life for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Here we have an account of the Lord Jesus meeting with one of the rulers of the Pharisees.
On a dark night. And I think it's very striking and interesting to read this Gospel of John that we've read from tonight. You know, it's much different than the other gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are sometimes called the synoptic gospels because they give us a synopsis of the Lorde life from beginning to the end. John doesn't do that exactly, and there's many differences, but one that I think is so striking and interesting is that in the synoptic gospels, the first three, we find the Lord Jesus preaching to the multitudes.
And to the thousands and giving parables and teaching. And but in John's Gospel, quite the difference. We find him with individuals. Chapter after chapter we read of encounters that he makes with individuals like this man that we read here. He's not spending his time in John's gospel with the multitudes. He's spending his time with individuals. And this just tells us, friends, that God is interested in the individual.
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He's interested in you, where you are in your life, and you're not lost in the crowd with him.
Even though this world is filled with some 6 billion people, you're not lost in the crowd with him. He knows all about you and he loves you, and he cares about you, and he's interested in your blessing as an individual. You may find that hard to believe, that God can have time to think about you, just some insignificant person as you might think yourself to be. But it's true. God loves you. The Lord Jesus loves you, and he's got time.
For you. And he's interested in making a blessing in your life. You know, I heard a story one time of an old man. His name was Mr. Klein. He had lived his life in a way that I hope none of us here would do. He lived his life without the Lord Jesus Christ. He had no time for the gospel or any such things like that. And as he became an old man, still living without the saving knowledge of the blessed Savior, one day he went for a walk and he went walking along the side.
A Chapel where there was a gospel hall and they were singing on the inside some gospel hymn and the windows were slightly open and he could hear them through the window but he had no time for that. But as he ambled along in his old age, he heard them singing a favorite old gospel hymn that Jesus died for all mankind. And they sang that over and over again. Jesus died for all mankind.
Well, he thought he heard them singing through the windows. Jesus died for old man Klein, he said. How could that be? And he listened again. And sure enough, they sang that chorus again. Jesus died for all mankind, he thought they were saying. Jesus died for old mankind. Well, he couldn't stand that any longer. He thought, this is amazing that God knows about me. He's got all those people singing about me. So he thought I'd better go in and find out what's going on.
So he went inside and he heard words whereby he might be saved. And that's what we hope you'll hear here tonight. Words from the blessed Savior, whereby you might be saved. And so there's just a little incident on how God can single out an individual and make His love known to them.
In this chapter we come across a man who is a very religious leader of the Pharisees.
A ruler of the Jews were told, and he comes to Jesus by night, and he says to the Lord Jesus that he knew that he was a teacher.
And what he was looking for was some good teaching. He thought that if he could just get some good teaching from the Lord Jesus that he could live a better life and do good.
And God would be more pleased with him. But friends, it was not good teaching that this man needed.
It was a new life, and that's the same with you all. The teaching that you could get, religious teaching that you could get is not going to be something that will help you with regard to the eternal issues that your soul faces, even if you had the best teacher of all. You have a nature friend that cannot receive or perceive the things of God. And so this man, why he thought that if he could just go to the Lord Jesus and he recognized that he was a great teacher.
That if he could just get some good religious teaching from him why he would be able to please God better.
And do well and be accepted, the Lord Jesus had to tell him.
That accept a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. And in this chapter and the verses that I've read to you tonight, we have some great lessons that the Lord Jesus taught this man that I want to communicate to you tonight.
And the first one is in that third verse and that is the total depravity of man in the flesh. In the flesh is a term that is used in the Bible to describe the fallen sin nature that every man, woman and child in this world has. And what the Lord Jesus was teaching him here in this verse was the total depravity of man.
So depraved as his fallen nature.
Is that he cannot even understand things to do with the Kingdom of God.
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So marred by sin is that fallen nature that it cannot perceive or understand the things to do with God. You know, the Bible tells us that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. More than that, the Bible tells us that there is an enemy of our souls, the devil himself, who is the God of this world, who has blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them.
And so we find that men without Christ are doubly blind. The nature has no capacity for the things of God. And there is this Angel of fallen Angel, the devil himself, who is doing all he can to dilute and to blind the minds of men and women so that they do not understand the things to do with God. Even this religious leader was in the dark. But friends were here to tell you that God has power to open blind eyes.
To turn you from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God.
So how wonderful it is that we have a Savior to present to you tonight that can bring light to your dark soul and give you understanding as to how you can be saved and blessed and on your road to heaven. So He teaches him this very important lesson. This is the first lesson that we need to get a hold of, and that is that in ourselves we are totally depraved.
You know, the Bible tells us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It also tells us that there is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.
And the effect of sin has blinded the mind and the nature.
Man all together so that he cannot see or perceive the things to do.
But the Kingdom of God? Well, Nicodemus asked them, how can this be?
How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter through his mother's womb? He'd be born again. There's a testament to the fact that he was in the dark about this. The Lord Jesus was seeking to communicate some spiritual lesson to him, and he was thinking on the lines of nature, lost completely the train of thought that the Lord was teaching. And that just shows us that the natural mind receiveth, not the things of the Spirit of God. So the Lord Jesus teaches him another great point.
And that's in verse 5, when he said, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water.
And of the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. And so here with the Lord Jesus teaches him that the new birth cannot be obtained by any effort of our own.
Yes, God has two great agents by which He imparts life to men, the water and the Spirit.
And these two great agents work together.
And communicate divine life whereby a man enters the Kingdom of God. And so entrance into the Kingdom of God is by no effort by man himself. It is by the power of God and the word of God. Now we find in these two great agents the water and the Spirit. That is simply that the Spirit of God takes the word of God and applies it to the soul, and thereby is communicated.
A divine life. A new divine life that has capacity.
To understand divine things whereby a man is brought into.
The Kingdom of God. How wonderful.
There are many people that are trying to enter the Kingdom of God on their own efforts.
Seeking to turn over a new leaf in their life to get religious or at this time of year, you know where people try to have their New Year's resolutions and they figure that they're going to try to do better and hopefully that this will please God and make them a better person in this world and all that kind of thing. But it is by the word of God and the Spirit of God that a man is born again. Now, there are some people that will tell you that the water here would mean.
Baptism that you have to be baptized to get saved, and they would point to this verse. But friends, that's not what the water is referring to here. This couldn't be Christian baptism because the Lord Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus of things that he ought to have known as found in the Old Testament, and Christian baptism is not in the Old Testament. More than that, Christian baptism wasn't even introduced yet, so he could not be referring to baptism.
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When he spoke of the water. No. Water throughout the scripture is a figure of the Word of God, as we find in Ephesians chapter 5 by the washing of the water by the Word. And so when he speaks of the water here, he's not only Speaking of the instrument, the Word of God, but the effect that the Word of God has in a soul, of cleansing the soul.
What we speak of as moral cleansing, that's the power of the Word of God imparting life to a soul. Then in the next verse, the Lord Jesus taught him another great lesson, and that is the fact that the old nature and the new nature cannot be improved.
So bad is the fallen nature of man that God himself.
Has given up and any attempt to improve or to rehabilitate that nature, no God is starting all together over all together with men and gives them a new life through the new birth, he says. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. What he's saying here now is that that nature, whatever we do with it, it is always going to remain flesh as it was in the beginning. We can educate a person, we can teach them good morals.
We can.
Send them to finishing school, whatever the case may be, But at the bottom of it, the heart is still filled with sins and lusts and corruption. There's no change to the flesh. And this is a lesson that is so difficult for men to accept because they like to think that there's some good in man. But God has told us that there is no good in man, and we need to realize that the good that God can bring.
Through Christ the Savior and the gift that He has brought of eternal life. And so we find here that that which is born of the flesh is flesh.
Years ago, a man by the name of AJ Pollock told the story of a man that he knew that was passing through.
Northern Italy.
Many years ago and he was passing from 1 village to another and he was, he was getting dark and he was not going to get to the destination that he was seeking. And he realized that he was going to have to turn in somewhere and get to a place to rest for that night. And So what happened was that he spotted a little house there in the countryside and he went up and asked him if he could stay there in their place because he knew he could not get to the town which he was going.
At that late hour, they were kind enough to give them a room, and so they put them in this room.
And gave him a Lantern. And he thanked them and went to bed. And as he was getting ready to go to bed, he looked down at the floor, and he thought, this is a dirty floor. He thought to himself, maybe I should ask the woman of the house to come in here and clean this up a little bit. But then he thought, well, I better not do that, because beggars can't be choosers after all they've put me up in this house. So he went to bed, and in the morning when he got up, and the sunlight shone in the room.
And it was illuminated. And he looked down at that floor and he discovered that it was a mud floor.
And he thought to himself, now, what good would it have been if I would have asked the lady of the House to come in here and scrub this floor down?
Would it have helped? No, of course not. It would have made it worse. All the scrubbing that that woman could have done would have made that floor no better, only worse. And you know, it's just the same with the fallen nature of man. They've tried every kind of rehabilitation. There could be religion, everything in the name of religion, to make men better. But it has never been improved. Yet that which is flesh is flesh. That which is born of the flesh.
Is flesh.
Yes, we cannot improve.
That fallen nature. Let me illustrate it this way.
Suppose we had over here in the corner of this room, a big pigsty full of mud and water, just a big mucky thing over there.
And this store over here, we bring in a pig, and we bring that pig in and we bring them down to one of these chairs here. We sit them on the chair here, And if that pig could understand us, we would say to that pig. Now listen.
We understand the pigs like mud, and we know there's a mud style over there, but we want to give you some good teaching. We want to help you become a better pig.
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We hear that your nature is such that you love mud, but we believe that if we could just give you some better teaching where we could clean you up and make you an awful lot more respectable. Perhaps we get some graphs and charts up here and we give them a real good lecture as to how we can make that pig behave an awful lot better and not be fooling around with mud like that. And after lecturing that pig up and down, what would happen is he'd jump down from that chair and he would smell that mud and just go straight over there.
And take a flying leap in the mud.
All the lecturing we could do would never change his nature. And if he could speak, he'd probably say why It's my nature. I love the man, and it's true. You can't change his nature and you can't change the nature of man either.
Suppose over in this corner we had a pool of water, a little pond, and over in this door here comes in a duck.
We bring that duck in here and put them on a chair and we tell them now we know that you ducks like water. And we've been thinking about this and we feel you need some better teaching, some good teaching. And we give that duck a real lecture as to how he should stay away from water and don't fool around with water like that. It gets you all wet and everything. Whatever we say to him, what's going to happen, he's going to look up at us and say, I don't know what you mean. You get off that chair and take a flying leap in that water as soon as he had a first chance to do it, and he would say the same thing. It's my nature.
I love the water.
You can't change nature.
Now suppose through this door here we bring a man or a woman. We have them sit down in these chairs here.
And we start in on them and we tell them to listen. We want to give you some good religious teaching, you know, make you a better man or a woman in this community, make you a respectable person, really get you to be an honorable person. Now we know out there in this world, there's a lot of nightlife and a lot of sin, a lot of corruption, but we don't want you to do that anymore. We're going to correct this, and we give them all the reasons why on our boards here and maybe an overhead projector or something and a real lecture as to how they can clean up their life.
And tell them to quit this carousing and bad language and all that kind of thing.
What would happen?
If they had not Christ as their savior.
And know nothing about the new birth that we're speaking about. Tonight, they'd say, I don't know what you mean. I couldn't do that for all, my all my life. I couldn't live the Christian life. I'd fall off the wagon in a minute and we tell them that we're going to make you a clean person with all some good teaching.
They'd say you're taking my life away from me. Why, That's exactly what I love. That's my life.
And it is indeed. And so friends were not here to try to moralize. We're not here to try to present some program to rehabilitate the habits that you may have or the vices. Whatever it is that you're in ******* to, we're here to point you to Christ. And he said that he can make you free. He can set you free from the power of sin.
And even a Christian, when a person receives Christ as a savior, still that nature does not change.
No, indeed it doesn't. When I was in Ontario one time, many years ago, an old brother came up to me who had been a Christian for many years.
And he came ambling up to me and he said, you know, I've never lost my temper.
After all this time.
I thought, that isn't pride.
Here's a man telling me he's never lost his temper. Then he went on and said I've still got it after all these years.
He realized that nature doesn't change, but we're thankful to say that when you come to Christ, God has made provision.
That we can live above the propensities of the fallen nature and live for the glory of God.
But you won't be able to do it. Dear friend, if you have never been saved. You can't live the Christian life until you get the Christian life. And we're here tonight to tell you how you can be saved and have that eternal life. Well, how wonderful. The Lord Jesus goes on and teaches him another great lesson. Verse 8.
Here he says, the wind blows where it listeth or where it wills, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst tell it whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Now the Lord Jesus teaches them another great lesson, and that is that new birth is not an emotional experience, some memorable experience that we can point to in our lives. You know, people like to come to a religious meeting and have a real buzz, as they say, and have an experience.
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And to point to that as if they've had some real change in their life. But the Lord Jesus is saying here that new birth evidences itself and result. It is not something that we experience as far as something that we feel in our hearts or in our minds. Yes, when God imparts life to our soul, it is a silent work. And the point that the Lord Jesus is making in this eighth verse is that new birth evidences itself in result.
Just as the wind blows, where it goes, wherever it wants. We cannot see the wind, but we know that it's there because we see the effects of it.
Just as we see the leaves blowing in the wind, or we see snow flying and so on, we know there's wind.
We can feel it, but we can't see it. So it is as the spirit of God works with a man's soul or a woman's soul, or with a child's soul.
And so we're not to look for some experience, some feeling, some bells or whatever they talk about. No new birth evidence is itself end result. And the three great results that we like to see in a person who gets saved is this. Obedience to God, Love for the Lord Jesus.
And a desire to be with his people. I'd far rather be rather listen to a person speak about how much they love the Lord Jesus and love his people as an evidence that they have passed from death unto life than to hear someone talk about how they went to some revival meeting and they really got going and they had a wonderful time.
So we're not here to have an experienced friends. We're here to point you to Christ. We're here to point you to the Savior. We want you to have a personal relationship with him and to know what it is to have your sins put away and to have that eternal life. Well, Nicodemus is still in the dark. He says, well, how can these things be? And the Lord Jesus goes on and says that being a teacher in Israel, he ought to know these things. That is, he should have known from the Old Testament scriptures.
The subject of new birth. But apparently he did not know this. And so this just shows us that even though a person may be religious and even be a teacher in religion, doesn't mean that they have the light of the truth of the gospel of God.
There are many people in this world that are pointing, telling you that they have the way and the truth. But be wary, be careful. There are 1000 voices in this world that are all claiming to have the truth. But if it's not founded on this book that I'm reading from tonight, the word of God there is because there is no light in them. We're told from the prophet Isaiah. The Lord Jesus then goes on to speak to him about eternal life.
And he shows that eternal life is a heavenly gift, and he would desire that Nicodemus would come to know that. And for the possession of eternal life that requires 2 Things. That is the firstly, the knowledge of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then secondly to believe that testimony.
And so he goes on in verse 13 to speak about his person. Apparently Nicodemus did not realize whose presence he was in.
And I suspect tonight, if you've come in here and you don't know much about things of God, you may not realize who's present you're in here tonight too. For the Lord Jesus is here whether you can't see him, and he's here to save you, to receive you to himself. At any rate, we find in verse 13 that he reveals to him the glory of his person. He says no man has sent it up to heaven, but he that has come down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven.
Now the Gospel of John is devoted to bringing out the essentials of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son. In the first chapter we read of Him being the creator of all things. All things were made by Him, and without him were not anything made that was made. Yes, the Lord Jesus is the Creator. This brings before us the fact of his person as being.
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Omnipotent All powerful.
All the worlds are held in his hand. He spoke them into existence with his own words in chapter 2. Now in verse 25 we learned another great attribute of Christ and his glory, and that is, it says there that he knows what is in every man He needed not that any man should testify of man, for he knew what was in man. Now here we have his omniscience, that is his all knowing power and wisdom.
Not only is he all powerful, he is all wise and all knowing. He knows everything to do with man and friend. May I just remind you, he knows all about your life too. He's kept an unabridged record of your life, knows everything you've ever done. He knows where you were last night, he knows what you were doing. And he loves you.
And he wants you to be saved tonight. And then in the third chapter, the verse that I read, 13 we have another attribute of the Lord Jesus, and that is his omnipresence, the fact that he was not only in heaven, he was on earth at the same time. For he is all present everywhere. While he was speaking with Nicodemus that night He was in heaven. He is everywhere. He is a divine person and a savior.
How wonderful the Lord Jesus was now Speaking of the glory of his person.
Then he goes on and speaks in verse 14 of his work, and he points back to an incident in the Old Testament that Nicodemus should have known of and did, I believe. And that is the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, and he alludes to that as being that correlates with that, with the fact that the Lord Jesus himself was going to be lifted up on the cross and die at the end of his life. And so this brings before us the work of Christ on the cross.
This is the first reference to it I believe in the gospel.
The Lord Jesus knew that that would be the end of his life in this world.
And what was that work that he accomplished at the cross? Well, it was there that God took up the whole question of sin once and for all and forever, and settled it for his own glory and for the blessing of man. Jesus Christ came into this world to be a savior, to be the sin bearer, and was there in those hours of darkness on the cross that God meted out the judgment for sin and for sinners who would receive him as their Savior. God, who knew our sins, laid them on him, all of them.
And he bore them all under the judgment of God. And there was in his death on the cross and in those atoning sufferings that he passed through a full payment rendered to God for the whole outbreak of sin and the creation. This is what the Bible calls propitiation. And yes, the claims of divine justice were satisfied by all what the Lord Jesus passed through as a sacrifice for sin.
And that has given God the liberty to be able to come out to men freely, and to offer a pardon and forgiveness to whosoever will, because the price of sin was paid. And for every person that comes to Christ and receives them as a savior, they can know him as their substitute, The one who has taken their place under judgment and has borne in his body their sins. Isn't that wonderful? So now he brings before Nicodemus.
His work that He would accomplish. But yet there is one more thing, as I said, and that is to believe that testimony. It's not enough that the Lord Jesus has made a provision that we could be saved by going to the cross. We have to do something about that in the sense that we have to believe that testimony. So the Lord goes on in verse 15 and says that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And so now Nicodemus has heard words whereby he could have eternal life by believing.
On what? The Lord Jesus.
Who in the Lord Jesus is and what the Lord Jesus was about to do upon the cross?
And these two things, I say friends, are what are so necessary that a person get ahold of and understand that they should have the gift of eternal life. And so the Lord Jesus goes on and says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Yes, he tells him now the motive for why God would ever do this and make this wonderful provision for man is because God so loved the world.
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And friend let you remember these words were not said after God put man in the world.
No. They were said 4000 years after God looked down upon the history of man, which was nothing but sin and corruption and violence. He could say God so loved the world. You might think that well maybe he could have said that in the Garden of Eden. God so loved the world.
Or in those early years after Adam was expelled from the Garden. But no, it was after 4000 years.
Of God looking down upon fallen guilty man during his own will and sin.
And violence and corruption. He could say God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. You know there's a verse in the book of Job, chapter 34. It tells us that if God chose to gather his breath and his spirit to himself and thought only of himself and retracted his breath and his spirit to himself, that all flesh.
Would perish alike immediately.
Because the very existence of this world as it goes on is dependent on the power of God himself. God could have looked down, you know, friend, and said, I'm going to pull the plug on this whole world because it's so filled with sin and men are so dishonored. He could have thought of himself and he would have been righteous. He would have been just rather to do that. But we're here to tell your friends that God did not think only of himself. He thought of you and he thought of me and he loved you with an everlasting love.
And He did not pull the plug, so to speak, in this old world. Instead, he reached down and took the very dearest object of his bosom. The Lord Jesus Christ is only begotten Son and sent him into this world to be the Savior, to show men how interested He is in their salvation. So friends were here to tell you tonight that we're talking about a God that loves you with an infinite love so great that he was willing to send his Son to be a sacrifice for you that you could get saved.
And enter heaven and have eternal life. That's how much God loves you.
Yes, God loves you, but he hates your sins, and your sins need to be put away. And the way they get put away, friends, is coming to the Lord Jesus Christ and receiving him as your Savior and believing that on the cross he took your place under the judgment of God and has settled that question forever.
And wouldn't it be right that we should give him our thanks for doing that? And so, right now, here in this audience tonight, if you'd like to be saved, you can send up a swift prayer tonight and thank him for dying for you. Thank him for loving you, that he would spare his son to come into this world. And what did it cost his son? That you might be saved. That I might be saved all the untold agonies of Calvary when he was forsaken of God and under the judgment of God.
Because he loved you, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And he loves you too. Friends, He loves you so much He doesn't want to see you go on in your life. Because there's a time coming when you're going to have to give an account to God for the way you have behaved. And if you have not been saved, you have not had the sin question taken care of. You're going to have to bear the judgment of your own sins, because God is a just God, and every sin and transgression has to receive a just recompense of reward.
Tells us. And so either you're going to have to get right with God in an acceptable substitute, Jesus Christ the Savior, or you'll have to bear your own sins. And it makes me not happy at all to tell you that there is such a place as hell. That's a place that God had made for the devil and his angels. He had no thought that men could ever end up that we should end up there. But there are so many men that have no interest in the things of God, and what is going to happen is that they are going to end in that place. Don't let it happen to you when God has made such a provision as this.
How wonderful. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son two parts to this verse. We might say verse 16, God's part and your part.
First two things with regard to God. God so loved that He gave. God did the loving and the giving. Now your part is the latter part of the verse. Now whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You do the bleeding and the having. God has done the loving and the giving. You can do the bleeding and the having. How wonderful, How simple.
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You know this verse has been broken up so wonderfully in this way. God. Well, there's the greatest person.
So loved. There's the greatest motive the world. There's the greatest amount of people, some 6 billion. Now we understand.
That he gave. There's the greatest act, his only begotten son. There's the greatest gift.
That whosoever there is the greatest invitation that God is offering believeth in him there is the greatest simplicity.
All you have to do is believe.
Should not perish. There is the greatest deliverance. But have everlasting life. There's the greatest possession. But you know, it says believeth in him. There's the greatest simplicity. Even a child can believe in a simple way on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, one time many years ago, we were down in the downtown of Vancouver and we were passing our gospel tracts and with a brother that was newly converted and he didn't have a great depth of knowledge of the scriptures, but he knew the Lord Jesus loved him. And that's enough to be able to tell other people. I'll tell you.
We came across an intellectual man. He said I have been in, I thought he said 58 countries in this world and he was very proud of it. He had new 7 or 8 languages and this man was incredible. He was a very well educated man and he couldn't stand the idea that we told him that he needed to get saved and he was a Sinner. Well, I tried to explain to him in my, I guess in my theological way, whatever. And I was getting nowhere. Well, this brother that was with me, he looked at him and he was so earnest with him and he said, man, all you have to do is believe.
And I'm telling you, he said through two or three times, All you have to do is believe. That's all he could say. He didn't know much more. All you have to do is believe. And all my intellectual argument with this man was getting nowhere. This dear brother next to me he's pleading, was just reaching right into that man's heart. And he couldn't stand it anymore. And he turned on his heels and he walked away because the simplicity of it was too good.
Too simple for his great mind. Now friend, what's your excuse for being a Sinner and not yet have been saved?
You know, the Bible tells us that my spirit shall not always strive with man.
There's a day coming that the Lord is going to bring this world into judgment, to cleanse it all together, to set up for the righteous reign of Christ himself. And he wants you to close in with that offer of salvation before it's too late. And there's only one person that can give you that salvation. It's Jesus Christ himself, and the blood that he has shed upon the cross has made that full provision.
Many years ago there was an old sister that was in the hospital. She knew the Lord well and she was getting near death's door. And as she was getting to the last, the nurses realized that she was coming to the end. And so they called for the chaplain of the hospital to come. The man came into the room and he said, I've come to forgive you your sins. He was a Catholic.
She said what?
He said. I've come to forgive you your sins.
He said. Could I see your hand?
He didn't know what she was talking about. She stuck out his hand. She felt his hand, She put it down and she said, you imposter.
The only one that can forgive my sins has got a nail print in his hand.
And friends is still true tonight. The only one that's got the power to forgive your sins has got a nail print in his hand. And he received those wounds because he died upon the cross for you. Well, I trust that you will come in to the blessing by receiving the Savior here tonight. One more verse 17. God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Now there's the first time we read of the word saved in this account.
He's spoken about being born again. He's spoken about eternal life. Now he's speaking about saved, and that refers to deliverance. Deliverance for every kind of danger that there might be. And the danger that we're concerned about here tonight, friend, is the danger of your soul, but your soul, the peril that your soul is in, the danger of passing eternally ruined into Satan's hell. That's what the word perish means when it says should not perish but have everlasting life.
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People make an acronym out of that word. Perish, PERISH, passed, eternally ruined into Satan's hell. Sometimes your people saying sinners hell no, God didn't make sinners hell. He made a hell for Satan and his angels. Sinners get there because they refuse the gospel of God's grace. But God is not willing that any should perish but at all should come to repentance. And repentance means to have a changed mind about your ideas and about what you think about.
God wants you to have a changed mind tonight and to turn to Christ and to be saved. That 17th verse tells us this one grand thing, that when the Lord Jesus came into this world, he did not come to be a judge. He came to be a savior, and he wants to save your soul. But I'll tell you this, there are other verses in this book that I could read to you that their Christ is going to come again, what we call the Second coming. And when he comes at his appearing, he is going to judge the world in righteousness in that day.
And then that day, if you are found in your sins, he is going to have to cast you.
Into outer darkness, Yes, my spirit shall not always strive with man, he has said. There's a day coming, a day of reckoning when you're going to have to get right, going to stand right before God. And if you're not yet saved, you're going to pass eternally ruined into Satan's hell. May God give you the grace to call upon the Lord Jesus Christ tonight before it's too late. Is there someone here that would like to be saved tonight?
I'm not asking you to come down here and have an altar call or some Christians do or anything like that.
But as I pray.
You pray. You send up a swift little prayer in your own language to him and tell him that you want to be saved and to be a Christian, and to know what it is to have the joy of your sins forgiven.
Now let's pray.