Antonia Stradivari had made a vow: “Other men will make other violins, but no man shall make a better one,” that has remained true. He died in 1737 as the world’s greatest violin maker. To this day, no violin can match the rich tone of a Stradivarius. His conviction: “God needs violins to send His music into the world, and if my violins are defective, God’s music will be spoiled.” Under that conviction, every one of his instruments was his best work.
Today, Stradivari’s violins are worth over $100,000. If you have an old violin sitting around the house, you might want to check the signature on the inside. Most violinists only dream about playing “a Stradivarius.” To musicians, it’s a name that means uncommon excellence.
Let’s say we had one sitting right here. How quick would you rush up to pick it up? Wouldn’t you have a 2nd thought? Wouldn’t you wonder, “Should I put on gloves first or something?” I mean, a Stradivarius, worth over $100,000!
Well, we’re going to take up a bit of Scripture that is “a Stradivarius.” How sweet it sounds! How quickly should we rush into it to pick it up? Is there something we should do, some ceremony we should go through or something before we dare to jump into such a precious bit of truth?
Martin Luther called it, “the heart of the Bible - The gospel in miniature.”
G. Campbell Morgan said, “This is a text I never attempted to preach on, though I have gone around it and around it. It is too big. When I have read it, there is nothing else to say. If we only knew how to read it, so as to produce a sense of it in the ears of people, there would be nothing to preach about.”
For many people, their favorite verse of Scripture is the only one they know -- which makes Jn 3:16 the most favored verse in the Bible.
John 3:16-21
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
We’re not even sure if these are the words Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, or if this is John just writing in some truths that the HS inspired him to write at this point. Your red-letter edition Bible probably has these words in red. Some might consider a sermon on Jn 3:16 and the verses that follow “too elementary.” It’s a verse for children to learn. I beg to differ. When all is said and done, there are few Bible verses that say so much in such a small space. There are few words that could more important for anyone, child or adult to learn and ponder.
We went to the Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, IL a couple weeks ago. Part of the exhibits there dealt with Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, PA – the dedication of a national cemetery there. We’ve all heard of Lincoln’s address (272 words – just over 2 min.), but we don’t often hear about the address right before it by Edward Everett, one of the most popular speakers of the day. He spoke 13,607 words for over 2 hours, with all the usual oratory flair for which he was famous. Reports of Lincoln’s speech varied. The Chicago Times wrote, "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." Yet, after some time, it has gone down in history as one of the greatest and most dearly loved speeches ever made. Period. If you were to explain that to the some of the newspaper writers of Lincoln’s day, they’d say, “Huh?!”
Why is this such a widely read and loved part of the Bible? Why is it, that when we open it today, we feel like inexperienced children trying to learn violin by starting on a Stradivarius?
I think it’s because, in a very few words (26), it tells us about 3 eternal truths that we need to approach life. The first is...
I. Human Condition (vv16-18)
The test results are back. The diagnosis isn’t good.
(A. Already Condemned)
v18 says that the state of every person who hasn’t accepted Jesus is “condemned already.” That’s us, all of us, until we accept Christ. We’re condemned. It’s not something that’s going to suddenly happen on Judgment Day. It’s already there. We don’t stand condemned for not believing - we’re already there from our first sin, and we’ll remain there until that’s cured.
It’s not because Jesus was sent into the world. That wasn’t His purpose in coming. He wasn’t the One who judged man guilty.
-Ill - A visitor was being shown a famous art gallery by an attendant. In the gallery were masterpieces impossible to price -- famous works of genius. At the end of the tour the visitor said, “Well, I don’t think much of your pictures.” The attendant answered, “Sir, I would remind you that these pictures are no longer on trial. They’re masterpieces. Those who look at them are the ones who are on trial.”
The Gospel is never on trial, but those who hear it are. The Jews rejected Paul’s message (Acts 11:36) and thus judged themselves “unworthy of eternal life.”
We bring the judgment on ourselves. We’re already condemned. V18 “whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
B. Salvageable!
At certain points in history, God has said, "They’re not salvageable!" Once God chose to start over with just Noah and his family, because the rest of mankind couldn’t be recovered. With 40 days of rain He flooded the earth and washed away a human race that wasn’t salvageable. Abraham sought God’s mercy for Sodom. If there had been just 10 righteous people in Sodom, God would have spared it, but Sodom and 4 other cities were too far gone as a city, and God swept them away with a storm of fire and sulfur. That’s some OT bad news!
Listen to the good news this morning! We’re salvageable! "He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities." (Ps 103:10) For some reason, He hasn’t stormed us with fire, hasn’t said, "Enough!" Instead, God has shown patience and waited and spared us and the rest of the world with the idea of changing us!
Romans 5:6-8
"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
The good news of vv16-17 is good because of the bad news of v18.
Ill - Whenever an EMT unit goes past the building here, sirens blaring, we assume something: that someone, somewhere, needs help, or else those guys wouldn’t be going on a run. We know there’s a need because help is being sent. The sirens tell us that someone’s in serious condition.
We shouldn’t need to spend time trying to figure out whether or not we need a savior. The fact that God sent His Son ought to tell us that. The picture of Jesus on the cross ought to get it through to our heads that sin’s a serious problem that God takes very seriously. Listen to what the siren of the cross is saying about human condition! Listen to what this Scripture is telling us about man w/o Jesus!
This is also a favorite passage because it tells about the...
II. Divine Response (vv16-18)
-Ill -If you knew that having children meant every one of them would turn his back on you, most of them would never return, and that just to have some of them voluntarily return would require the greatest personal cost you had, would you still have kids?
It wasn’t a last-minute contingency God threw together. He knew from the beginning what it would cost. Why did He go ahead and do it? Parents can at least claim they didn’t really know what they were getting into so they went ahead and had kids -- But God knew exactly what He was doing, and created us anyway! So why would God do such a thing?
V16 – God loved the world in this way: He gave His one and only Son.
(A. Because of Love)
John has more to say about love than any other Bible author. If you seriously want to understand love and what it’s all about, start by reading all John had to say about it. And, just in case anyone would doubt God or His motives in this, get it straight from John why God would even launch the great human experiment in the first place:
1 John 4:9-11
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
The Divine Response is because of His great love for us.
(B. In This Way...)
And His great love for us is shown in this way: HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON. When John writes: God so loved the world, he’s simply saying, “This is how God loved the world...” Those are the words at the base of a marble statue in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. It’s a statue of Jesus, writhing in pain on the cross. “This is how God loved the world.” That’s the divine response to our human condition. If God says He loves us, we can expect that He’s going to demonstrate that love in some way that’s obvious. He has. What? That’s crazy! Who does something like that?
God isn’t the only One to do some things that seem a little crazy to other people because of love. What greater, higher motive is there for someone to do something a little crazy?
The greatest commandment, and the 2nd greatest, are to love God and love your neighbor. So, I’m just wondering, if that’s what God is moved to do by His great love for us, what kind of things will we be moved to do by our love for Him and our real love for other people?
You may have figured it by now, that along with the human condition and God’s response, this Scripture is also significant because it speaks about our...
III. Eternal Decisions (vv19-21)
Ill - Knowing how much impact they’re going to have on your future is what makes decisions difficult. When you know you’re going to have to live with some decision for the rest of your life, it’s tough to make it. Deciding where to go out for lunch is no big deal. You’ll have to live with the impact of that decision for only a short time. The decision about whom you’ll marry is a stressful thing. It’s hard. It ought to be, because that decision is going to affect you for the rest of your life.
As you consider Jesus this morning, understand this: the decisions we make regarding Him are going to have eternal bearing. That tension you feel when you think about accepting Jesus is a good thing. It’s no small decision, and you can’t treat it like it is.
So Jn 3 speaks of 2 kinds of people: saved and not saved. The difference between the believer and the unbeliever isn’t just a matter of being guilty or condemned. John records that there’s a difference of attitudes toward light and darkness, between evil deeds and living by the truth. So, there are decisions we make that have eternal weight. They make a difference in our forevers. One is the decision to...
A. Love Light instead of Darkness
John 3:19
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
One decision we need to make is to love light instead of darkness.
”Men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
Ill - When we describe some terrible thing that someone has done, we make it sound even worse when we say it was “done in broad ______(daylight),” (whatever that is!) That’s because people usually do shameful things in the dark where they can’t be seen.
1 Thessalonians 5:5-7
You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.
Have you ever noticed how that’s true? Generally speaking, people who engage in shameful living appreciate darkness and privacy. It helps them not get caught. It prevents having to face up to what they’re doing. So, evil people tend to love darkness, literally and figuratively. v20 “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
We need to decide to love light instead of darkness. v21 “Whoever loves the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” We need to not live in fear that the way we live is going to be exposed - it already is exposed to God. We shouldn’t be a people who thrive on privacy and isolation because we’re afraid what others might learn about us. That’s one reason the family of God needs to live like a family, where we know one another and hold one another accountable. We don’t belong to the night or to the darkness. We need to decide to love the light.
Another decision we need to make is...
B. "Do the truth" instead of Evil Deeds
1John 1:6
If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth."
It’s the same phrase as v21: “whoever does the truth...” Truth is more than just something we believe. We act on it. It’s something we do. Don’t tell me you believe something is true if it doesn’t move you to do something.
-Ill – 11 years ago (July 14 or so, 1996) I went fishing on the farm property of some people in the church in Hillsboro. They had trouble with wild dogs there, getting their animals. They had to shoot over 20 of these dogs. I believed that the dogs were gone. So, there I was, ½ mile from my car, armed with 2 fishing poles and a tackle box, all alone, 15 miles from town. You see, I believed I was safe, so I was acting like it. Then, about 9:00 pm, I looked across the pond and saw at least 5 dogs on the other side. As soon as we made eye contact, they headed my direction. I came to a new belief all of a sudden. I believed I was in danger, so I ran...hard, without looking back! I never once heard the dogs, nor did I see them as I ran, but I genuinely believed I was in danger. If I believe wild dogs are chasing me, I act on that belief! (If you’re having trouble getting motivated to do some exercise program, just get out in the woods with a pack of dogs chasing you! - it’s amazing what some genuine belief can do for you!)
Truth is something we act on, not just talk about. Merely assenting it isn’t good enough. That means nothing. If we really believe something, we’ll do something about it.
Ill - What if I were to tell you I’ve taped a $1 bill under a pew somewhere in here this morning? Some of you are already looking for it! I didn’t even tell you you could have it! I didn’t even say I really did it! Still, if there’s even a slight chance that I might have done that, some of you are willing to make some effort, to risk being ridiculed, all because you believe that one simple thing might be true! For $1!
If you believe heaven and hell are real, you’ll do something about it. If you really believe you’re in eternal danger this morning, you’ll do something about it. You need to decide to act on the truth. Otherwise, don’t bother saying you really believe what God’s word says is true.
So your eternal decision comes down to this:
C. Belief or Rejection
Belief in Jesus is God’s cure for our condemned state! The verb tenses here mean it’s a continuing action, not just an event. You don’t believe in Jesus, once, and that’s it! It’s not some fleeting moment of acceptance that comes & goes. v16 lit -"that whoever is believing" v18 - "Whoever is believing in Him is not condemned..." v21 "whoever is doing the truth is continually coming into the light..."
Life in Jesus is a lifestyle. It begins with an event and it’s lived out from there. And it’s on the basis of that continuing faith in Jesus Christ that we can “not perish but have eternal life.”
Conclusion: You know your condition. You’ve heard what God has done. Now you must decide what your response will be. Whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
“Having faith in” or “believing in” Jesus means two things: it means accepting Who He is; It also means trusting in Him, that He’ll do what He has said.
Acts 16 - When the Philippian jailor heard Paul and Silas’ faith in the prison at midnight and suddenly was faced with the possibility that he might die, he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.” And they told him about Jesus, and he and his household believed, and they were immediately baptized there in the early hours of the morning.
If you believe in Jesus this morning, we urge you to act on that belief. If you believe that He exists, then trust His promise to meet you in the water of baptism and to cleanse you from all your sins there. Believe in His promise to give you the gift of His Spirit living inside you when you’re born again.
