John 3:16, these are the words I believe that the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus by night.

He said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life or everlasting life,” it says in the New King James Version.

So the starting point is God, “For God so loved the world.”

Who is this mighty person called God? A supernatural being who has a heart of such affection that His love encompasses the world, the world and all its inhabitants. The starting point for everything that we want to know about God is His own revelation about Himself in the Bible. And the Bible claims to be - and is - the Word of God, the inspired Word of God. That is, it's the words that men wrote down, men who were believers in God, they were seekers after God, and their lives were governed by the truth that God had revealed to them. Men like Moses and David and the Hebrew prophets, they were in touch with God in their lives, and through them God revealed to them and to us through their God-breathed writings, the inspired Word of God, God revealed many truths about the heart of God and about the heart of man. And so there’s a supernatural power in the Word of God that's absent in every other book that you may read in this world.

When we read the Bible, we're reading the living Word of God. It says in Hebrews chapter 4:

That’s how accurate and precise the Word of God can be. It gets to the very heart of human need and thought and action.

The Bible was written in two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. It documents God’s dealings with men since the beginning of time, and it spans a time period of 7,000 years. I say 7,000 because it also looks forward to the final 1,000 years of this earth, which is still to be fulfilled. And it contains truths about the nature of God and the nature of man and their relation to each other.

So the Bible tells us that God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent. He’s omnipotent, He's all-powerful, He's omniscient, He's all-knowing and all-seeing. He’s omnipresent, He’s everywhere at the same time. And it tells us that man is mortal, and man is sinful, man is rebellious, man is proud, selfish and foolish. I could provide scripture references to support what I’m saying, but today I want to concentrate on some basic concepts about God that we find in His Word.

The very first words in the Bible reveal God as the creator of our world and the universe that surrounds us. You go back to Genesis 1:1, it says,

And in Genesis 1, you’ll find that the Hebrew word for God [Elohim] is a plural word. It's not singular, it’s more than one person. Because He says in Genesis 1:26, He says, “Let us make man in our image.” Plural. God said, “Let US make man in OUR image.”

That's why we believe that God is a Trinity. Three distinct persons, but one in essence, in purpose and in unity. The Holy Trinity, a Trinity of holiness. That’s a concept that’s beyond the ability of the human mind to understand. But we believe it because it’s both implicitly and explicitly stated in the Word of God. For instance, it's implicitly stated in the utterances of the living creatures that were seen by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah - in Isaiah 6. And he saw these living creatures above the throne of God in heaven in a vision. And they cry,

“The Lord, God, the Almighty”, three persons. “Holy, holy, holy.” - Yet did God not instruct Israel in Deuteronomy 6 through Moses, He said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” - ?

One Lord! Ah, but the word God there is the Hebrew Elohim, plural. The Lord our plural God is one Lord. So there you have the truth of the Trinity, and yet God is one, and yet God is three persons.

But back to the Gospel according to John. The very first words of the New Testament revelation of God in the Gospel by John also go back to the beginning of the world's creation and give us a deeper understanding of the identity and nature of the supreme, all-powerful Creator. So let's go to John 1 and read the first three verses.

If you go to the beginning of the book of Hebrews, the writer to Jewish Christians in the first century AD, he began his letter like this. He said,

God has spoken at the end of the ages in His Son, '“hrough whom He made the worlds.” You go back to John's Gospel and later in chapter 1 of John's Gospel, John reveals more about this wonderful person who is called the Word of God.

He says in verse 14,

So this divine person described by John as “the Word”, who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made - this divine person who was God and is God became flesh, took on a body of flesh and blood, became one of us. The hymn writer said it well,

John names this eternal person who is himself God. He says, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And then he says, “the law was given by Moses, Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

He names this person, the Word became flesh, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Another old hymn says:

"Who is He in yonder stall, 

At whose feet the shepherds fall?

Tis the Lord, the King of glory, 

At His feet we humbly fall, 

Laud, Him own Him, Lord of all.”

Yes, the child who was born of a virgin in Bethlehem was none other than Immanuel. Isaiah, foretold His coming. He said:

And the Hebrew word Immanuel means God with us. God is with us. This person came down from heaven and became one of us. And yet he's in every sense divine. He belongs to heaven. And yet he took on a body of flesh and blood. So he has a dual nature, a divine, eternal, holy nature, and yet a human nature, because he has a body of flesh and blood.

The prophet Isaiah, as I said, foretold the coming of this Almighty person. He said, “For unto us a child is born” (Isaiah 9:6).

This person is no other than God in human form. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” - “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God … The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

“We beheld His glory," says John. “Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth … Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ”. That’s the person we’re talking about.

Jesus identified Himself as God. As Neville was saying in prayer earlier, Jesus said before Abraham was, “I AM.” And he used the very same words that God used about Himself when He spoke to Moses at the burning bush. “I AM that I AM” (Exodus 3:14). And the Jews knew exactly what Jesus was saying. John 8, let’s read it. John 8:57:

Why did they take up stones to stone him? Because they believed that he was blaspheming by saying before Abraham was, “I AM.” Later they had another confrontation with the Lord Jesus where they explicitly stated that reason why they were again ready to stone him. John 10:27. Just over the page.

“I and the Father are one” Jesus said.

So in summary, the Bible, which is the inspired word of God, makes it crystal clear that Jesus Christ is the physical embodiment of the Almighty, eternal Creator. He is none other than God in human form and Jesus himself explicitly said that this is who he was. "I and the Father are one." He said, "The Father is in me and I in the Father." So this makes it imperative that we find out more about the purpose of his coming to this world that he had made.

And for now I want to just sum up what I've been trying to communicate about God and his love in these wonderful words that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus in John 3:16.

Jesus is talking about the love that God the Father has for this world, for you, for me. He so loved you, he so loved me that he gave his Son to be my Saviour, to be your Saviour. God gave his only Son, his only begotten Son.

Norma and I know what it was like to lose a son. Joel died very suddenly in front of us as we were having supper just a year and a half ago. And we were completely powerless to prevent his soul departing from the body. Nothing that we or our neighbour or the paramedics did to try and resuscitate him could bring him back. It didn't make any difference. And believe me, we did everything in our power to try and save him.

But that’s enough about us. We didn’t give our son’s life for the life of another. And certainly not for the life of a guilty person. And certainly not for the life of a guilty world.

But “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” - his only Son. For this world of guilty, rebellious, self-centred, proud sinners like you and me, He gave his only begotten Son for us.

That’s a love that goes far beyond the pale imitation that passes for love in our society today. That's what the Bible calls ‘agape’ love. The Greek word agape is the word that the Bible uses to describe the self-sacrificing love that God has shown to us when he gave his only begotten Son. It means making a deliberate choice to love, even when there's no love in return.

One of our hymns says,

"What was it, O our God, led you to give your Son, 

To give your well-beloved for us by sin undone, 

'twas love unbounded led you thus 

To give your well-beloved for us." 

NEXT ADDRESS: GOD’s LOVE

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“God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”. God gave.

God, the generous giver of good things for the benefit of mankind, gave the most precious thing that a father could give. He gave his only begotten Son.

He’s a generous God, a God who not only created a beautiful world with such an intricate ecosystem, and has not only provided all that’s necessary for our well being, but a God who gives because he loves. God richly provides us with everything to enjoy, Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:17. Luke writes in Acts 17:25, he says,

And Psalm 86:5 says,

And James writes in chapter one of his letter. He says,

We don’t need to go far to find proof of God’s benevolence. The evidence of His loving-kindness is all around us in this beautiful world. For God so loved the world that He gave gave what? He gave His only begotten Son. This is the ultimate evidence of God’s love for you and me, the fact that He was willing to give His beloved Son to take our place, to bear the punishment for our sins. This is a divine act of sacrifice, and it’s beautifully illustrated in the Old Testament record of Abraham and Isaac. So we’ll go to Genesis 22, where it says there, that “God did prove Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham’, and he said, ‘here am I’.

This was a test of Abraham’s faith in God. It was a test that was so out there, so unusual, so extreme. that God would not have asked it if He thought Abraham would fail the test. That’s a divine principle. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10,

God doesn’t tempt or try a person beyond what he has made them constitutionally able to bear. God knew that Abraham would not fail him because he knew the spiritual caliber of the man. He knew that Abraham’s faith in him was such that he would follow wherever God led him. How many of us are willing to trust God no matter where He leads? We sometimes sing, “Where He may lead me, I will go, For I have learned to trust Him so” But the secret lies in that little word trust, and we only trust people if we’ve learned to trust them. People who will never let us down. People whom we’ve learned by experience never deceive us. They never say one thing and do another.

Abraham had learned to trust God, and over many years he proved God’s faithfulness to him in the practical things of life. Through crisis after crisis in his life, he found out by first-hand experience that God was on his side. God was rooting for Abraham. God was looking after him, and Abraham learned that this God did not lie, he always kept his word - in contrast to the gods of the nations, some of whom according to the religious beliefs of the time, demanded human sacrifices in order to appease them or to ensure their continuing support.

But this God, the God that Abraham trusted in, cared deeply about his welfare. And because of God’s gracious dealings with Abraham, he came to an unshakable personal understanding that this Almighty Being who had revealed himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, (God Almighty), Abraham came to know in his heart that God always had his best interests at heart.

So then, after he had been on this progressive journey of faith, during which Abraham had proved God’s unfailing care and protection and blessing, it says this “God did prove Abraham”. He tested him. It says,

After God had proved his love to Abraham, God tested Abraham’s love for him. But what a thing to ask! “Take now your son, your only son whom you love, and offer him there for a burnt offering”!

Why did Abraham meekly obey such a request? A request that on the face of it appeared to completely contradict the promise God had given Abraham about Isaac? Because God had said to Abraham, In Isaac shall your seed be called, which meant that although Abraham was to be the father of many nations, there was only one nation in particular - Israel - that would be directly descended from Isaac. And yes, God said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” - ‘that miracle son who was born to Sarah and yourself in your old age. that son upon whose life so much depends’ And God is now telling him to offer Isaac as a human sacrifice? What a test of that man’s faith in the promise that God had made about Isaac. Why did Abraham not argue with God? Why did he just do as he was asked, even when the request must have come as a bolt from the blue? How could he square this apparently contradictory direction from the very same God who had blessed and protected him and his family until this day?

The only explanation that makes any sense is the one given in the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church of God in Rome. where he spoke about

That was Romans 4: 16-21. So the answer to the question why did Abraham not argue with God? The answer is this. Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead. He must have. That’s why as they climbed the mountain together, Abraham, the father, said to Isaac, the son, God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And that’s why when they got to the top of the hill and built the altar together, that’s why God stopped him doing the deed.

At the very moment when Abraham stretched out his hand to take the knife and kill his only son, that’s when the angel of God said to Abraham ‘Enough!' Stop!’ Verse 12: “Lay not your hand upon the lad, neither do you anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me”.

And Abraham turned round, and he found a ram caught in a bush by its horns, and he killed it in place of Isaac, and offered it up as a burnt offering on the altar instead of his son. Abraham was convinced that even if he killed his only son, God was going to keep his promise.

But then we ask, why? Why did God put Abraham through such a traumatic experience? Surely it was to lay down a marker, a symbol that would help Abraham and all who came after him to have some understanding, dim as it might have been to Abraham, some understanding of what God Himself was going to do for mankind. It was to underline in our minds the enormity of the sacrifice that God the Father was going to make around 2000 years later, when His only son, the Son of God, walked up that very same hill, Mount Moriah, to the place called Golgotha, where God gave - God the Father gave His beloved Son, His only begotten Son, whom He loved, He gave Him as a sin atoning sacrifice for this guilty world; for this world of sinners that includes you and me.

There was no ram caught in the bush at Golgotha that day. Golgotha, (the place of a skull,) that ugly place of execution, the place of death. There was no substitute for him, because he was the substitute for sinners like you and me. God revealed through John the Baptist that Jesus was “the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus had to endure the cross if we were to have any hope of redemption, because he was holy and we were not. And He gave Himself for us, voluntarily, out of love for our souls; and the decision was made within the counsels of deity, in the eternal foreknowledge of God before ever the world existed, God gave His Son, and the Son gave Himself.

The hymn says,

Who is the Son of God? The Bible tells us that he was God in human form, God incarnate, virgin-born. He was the person through whom God made the worlds. “In the beginning was the word”, John says in John 1, “and the word was with God, and the word was God”. And then he goes on to say that “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”.

So he was co-eternal and co-equal with God, and God did not withhold his only begotten Son, his beloved one.

How did God give? He gave freely, it says in Romans 6.

That means you can’t work for it, and you can’t pay for it. In John 10, Jesus said,

God gave the Son, and the Son gave himself, so that those who put their trust in him who accept by faith the free gift of God so that they will have eternal life.

What did men give to God in return for such a generous, undeserved gift? They gave him undeserved hatred, brutality and violence, a crown of thorns, nails through hands and feet. Scourging, rejection. John tells us that “he came to his own, and they that were his own did not receive him. “ The miserable religious leaders of the Jews despised and rejected their Messiah. It says in Micah 6,

And it says in Hosea 4,

And then if you read in Hosea 5 from verse 15 through to 6:2

it says,

I will go (This is God speaking)

Now notwithstanding the fact that in God’s foreknowledge his Son would be despised and rejected, and by their rejection the Lord Jesus would become a sacrifice for all mankind - notwithstanding all that, God still has a case, a controversy against both Jew and Gentile for the abominable way that men treated his son.

It says in Jeremiah 25,

“The Lord has a controversy with the nations. He will plead his case with all flesh.”

So God has a case against you and against me if we dare to turn our back on the Son of God and spurn this Mighty One who loved us to the uttermost. You know, he is the heir of all things, it says. “He has all authority in heaven and on earth.” It says of him, He is “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.” And Jesus said,

In the face of man’s hatred and rejection, God gave His Son; Jesus gave His life for you and for me, and so each one of us must respond to God’s mercy. We must decide whether to surrender - surrender our pride at the feet of the man who had no pride, or to turn away from the love of God and turn away from the eternal lover of our souls who died for us on the cross, and go on in our blood guiltiness. Because it was your sins and mine that nailed them to the cross. He died to take away our sins, to save us from eternal destruction.

Will you say from your heart “thank you,” thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying for me” - “thank you for dying for a sinner like me” - ?

So we’ll close again with the words of John 3 :16,

The old hymn says,

Oh, what will you do with Jesus?

The call comes low and sweet,

As tenderly He bids you your burdens lay at His feet

O soul so sad and weary,

That sweet voice speaks to you.

Then what will you do with Jesus?

O what shall the answer be?

O what will you do with Jesus?

The call comes loud and clear

The solemn words are sounding in every listening ear.

Immortal life is in the question, and joy eternally.

Then what will you do with Jesus?

What shall the answer be?

O think of the King of glory,

From heaven to earth come down,

His life, so pure and holy,

His death, His Cross, His Crown.

Of His divine compassion, His sacrifice for you.

Then what will you do with Jesus?

O what shall the answer be?

NEXT ADDRESS: FAITH

Whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

I’d like to explore the meaning and the nature of belief, of faith. by looking at some passages of Scripture which illustrate that meaning. First of all, Martha’s conversation with the Lord Jesus after her brother Lazarus died. You find that in John 11:21 onwards. We’ll read it together.

“Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection, on the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

Martha anchored her faith in the person of Jesus Christ. She believed on him because she had heard and seen what he said and did. No doubt she had heard from first hand witnesses, the disciples, who all testified to the truth of what they had seen him do and say. Her faith was not placed in some abstract idea, based on a blind acceptance of what he said, it was based on evidence. Here standing before her was the one who had given sight to a man born blind. Here was a man who had fed five thousand men plus women and children with five loaves and two fish. Here was the man who healed a paralysed man who lay at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem for thirty eight years. This man had spoken truth to power and refuted every attempt by the Pharisees to discredit his claim to deity. He had proved beyond all doubt that he was indeed the Messiah who had come into the world from above.

Jesus said, “If you don’t believe what I say, believe my works.”

The miracles of healing and divine power prove beyond all shadow of doubt that Jesus is the co-equal, co-eternal Son of God. He was David’s son, and he was David’s Lord, the promised Saviour of both Jew and Gentile, whose coming was foretold by the Hebrew prophets centuries before he was born in Bethlehem.

Those Hebrew prophets foretold that he was to be the Saviour not only of Jews but of Gentiles also.

Isaiah 49:6, it says

“It’s too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give you for a light to the Gentiles. that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth.”

They spoke of his divine nature, just as the angel Gabriel came to tell Mary that the Son that would be born to her would “be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High.” And in saying that he reiterated What Isaiah had foretold in Isaiah 9 :

“for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever.”

And the Hebrew prophet Micah foretold the place of his birth. He said,

“But you, Bethlehem Ephratha, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of you shall come one come forth to me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.” (Micah 5:2)

This was an eternal person who came into this world. And Martha knew the Hebrew prophets and the prophecies concerning the Messiah. And so coupling that with the evidence of his deeds and his words, when Jesus said to her,

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live And every one who lives and believes in me shall never die”.

He said to her, ‘Do you believe this’? And she said, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe”. “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God”.

The scripture says about Abraham that

“Abraham believed God and IT was counted to him for righteousness.”

His faith in God was counted for righteousness. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness”. The emphasis is not on the quantity or the quality of Abraham’s faith, but on the person in whom he trusted. Abraham’s faith was measured in terms of his trust in God. The person in whom he trusted, on whose word he trusted, was the all-important thing.

And Jesus measured faith in terms of its presence or its absence. When the disciples in Matthew 17 were unable to cast out a demon from a little boy, it says that “Jesus rebuked the demon” and the demon: “the devil went out from him and the boy was cured from that hour. And then the disciples came to Jesus. (separately) “apart, and they said, Why could we not cast it out? And he said to them, Because of your little faith.” And the Greek word for little faith there, apistia means unbelief, or faithlessness, or lack of faith.

Jesus said to them, “For verily I say to you, if you have faith as a grain a grain of mustard seed You’ll say to this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you.”

So in effect he was saying, So long as your faith is placed in the source of life, the source of power, of absolute power, so long as your faith is placed in God, it doesn’t matter how much how small or how fragile it may be, because God sees what’s in your heart - or not.

And the Lord Jesus saw the lack of faith in his disciples’ hearts, the failure to look to God who is all-powerful, to whom nothing is impossible.

By contrast, in Abraham’s case, God saw that despite the lack of human evidence, the barrenness of Sarah’s womb, and his own old age. Abraham’s trust in the promise of God was steadfast. It says in Romans 4 that

“Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised”.

That is why, as it says in Romans 4, his faith was “counted to him as righteousness”. He believed that God would be true to his promise; he believed God was able, had the power, to fulfil that promise, even if the fulfilment of that promise depended on the exercise of supernatural power: raising Isaac from the dead. And because Abraham trusted fully and completely in God’s power and promise, God credited Abraham with righteousness. not a righteousness of his own, but an imputed righteousness - the vindication that came from his trust in God being proven to be completely justified.

The scripture says, “He that believes on him should not perish”.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life. “

Romans 10, it says,

“Belief comes of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

And earlier in the same chapter from verse 8, we’ll just read it. It says there,

“the word, (that is, the word of God) is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we preach because if you shall confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and shall believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whosoever believes on him shall not be put to shame’. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek,” (or Jew and Gentile ) “for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

So faith, in what or in whom?

Faith in the Word of God. Faith in the person upon whose word we trust. If a man’s word is his bond, then how much more reliable is the word of God, who does not and cannot lie. So it can’t possibly be blind faith because it’s based on something substantial.

And what could be more substantial than the beautiful creation that God has made? Just look around at the beautiful world in which we live. A world so complex and interdependent it could never have come about by chance, by the thousands of millions of supposed happy accidents that those who put blind faith in the preposterous theory of evolution must believe in.

Creation requires a creator. A work of art requires an artist. A design requires a designer.

And if we say that faith is based on truth, well how do we know if what they say is true? Well, Jesus said - and he has his deeds and his words to back him up - He said, “I am the way “ said to Thomas the doubter, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”

Romans 10: “belief comes of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

“Whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

This is no exclusive invitation to a select few. Whosoever - whoever - means anyone, it means all, because all - all of us, each one of us - have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God and the glory of God, it says in Romans 6. “There’s none”, (or Romans 3), “there’s none righteous, no, not one”.

Isaiah again says, “All we like sheep have gone astray”, all of us. “We’ve turned every one to his own way. and God has laid on him,” on his only begotten Son, “the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53). All. Christ died for all. Therefore the invitation is open to all.

“Whosoever, - (whoever )- believes on him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.

Jesus said to Martha,

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. and every one who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?

That question comes to you now. Do you believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Do you believe that he’ll be true to his word when he promised, everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die?

So I put his question to you, “Do you believe this?” And I hope you will answer with Martha:

“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God.” I believe you died on the cross to redeem me from eternal destruction. I believe you’ll keep your promise and give me eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.“ (John 3:16)

May God bless His Word to you.

NEXT ADDRESS: NOT PERISH

or eternal life, as it says in some versions. I want to focus on the phrase “should not perish”.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life”.

Perish means to die. The opposite of life is death. And contrary to modern ideas, death is not the end. The Bible makes that clear. Many people in this world have been taught to believe that death ends all. They say in Scotland, ‘if you're deid, you're deid’, and that's it.

Well, if there's no consciousness or no existence beyond this life, then we may as well ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ - and then go to Switzerland when the the quality of life deteriorates and commit suicide. We may as well do that if there's no accountability to a higher power, to a Supreme Creator. Because if there's nothing beyond this life, then it doesn't matter how we live or what we do. And if that's true, then the death of Christ was meaningless. It was wasted. It was a completely unnecessary sacrifice.

It says in Genesis chapter 2, ‘God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’ That's unique to mankind. It doesn't say that about the animals. And furthermore, it says that God created man in His own image. So that means that we're moral beings. We have the capacity to think and reason and make choices based on our free will. We're not robots. We have a living soul, and we don't cease to exist when the body dies, and we'll prove that from Scripture today, because the Bible is the Word of God and we put all our trust in the living Word of God. There's a power in the Bible that there isn't in any other book in this world.

It says in Romans chapter 5,

So it's because we're morally and spiritually accountable to the God who made us that the King of Kings stepped down from the throne of heaven and allowed men to mock his claim to kingship, who rammed a crown of thorns on his head, it’s because he loved us and because he didn't want us to perish and be outcast from his presence forever. That's why he went to the cross and died for us.

Perish means to destroy utterly. The opposite of eternal life is eternal death. It means what it says.

So those who preach universal redemption are completely wrong. Because some people comfort themselves with the idea that because Jesus bore the sins of the whole world, of all mankind, then it follows that all mankind will eventually be saved. That's what they say. Regardless of whether they accepted him as their Saviour or rejected him, regardless of what kind of life they lived.

Another variation of this idea is the Roman Catholic belief in a place called Purgatory, a fictitious place which is nowhere found in the Bible. Where they think that people who have fallen short of the mark in this life they go through a period of suffering before they're allowed to enter heaven. So in effect, what they really believe is that they can atone for their own sins. Well, that's tantamount to saying that the atoning work of Christ on the cross wasn't enough to save them. What an insult to God's free grace! What an insult to the Saviour who gave his life and suffered for them on the cross! And what a direct contradiction of the victorious words which the Lord Jesus shouted as He gave up His spirit when He died. He dismissed His Spirit. He said, ‘It is finished!’ And then he bowed his head and dismissed his spirit. It was a finished work that the Lord accomplished on the cross of Calvary. And if he really did accomplish a finished work, ‘the work that his father had given him to do’, the Bible says - then there's no need to invent a place called purgatory. Hallelujah! A famous German monk discovered the truth of this: ‘The just shall live by faith’.

So by one act of faith in the life-giving power of the Son of Man, we have eternal life. It says in Romans chapter 10,

That's it for time and eternity. Because the Lord Jesus came from heaven to earth to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Horatius Bonner put it this way:

Upon a life I did not live,

Upon a death I did not die,

Another's life, another's death,

I stake my whole eternity.

And then some people, they can't reconcile the thought that a God of love would allow his creatures to suffer in hell, in the lake of fire, forever. But in doing so they either have to bypass the need for repentance, or they have to subscribe to the unbiblical theory that God will give sinners a second chance to repent after they die. Well, such a a doctrine or teaching is never found in the Scriptures. On the contrary, it says in Hebrews chapter 9: It's appointed unto men once to die, and after this comes judgment. That's what the Bible says. There's no thought in the scriptures of a second chance. In Daniel chapter 12 in the Old Testament, God revealed to Daniel that the day is coming when ‘those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake’. That's those whose body lies in the dust of the earth, whether you're cremated or buried, it doesn't matter. They'll awake. God will awaken them. And it says in Daniel, (God revealed this to Daniel):

And the Bible gives ample evidence of an afterlife.

Saul -King Saul- consulted a Medium, a Spiritist Medium. And she got the shock of her life when it wasn't the familiar spirit, it was actually Samuel who appeared to her. In spirit form, Samuel himself, and he said, ‘Why did you disturb me?’

Moses and Elijah appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration to speak with the Lord Jesus ‘about his decease, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’. And Peter and James and John were there. They were eyewitnesses - eyewitnesses of His Majesty.

And the Lord Jesus spoke about the day that's coming, when He will return to earth. And He says, ‘Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will sit down in the kingdom of God’.

So the Bible is very clear that there's an afterlife, that this is not the end. Death is not the end. And Jesus very clearly warned about it in Matthew chapter 25. You can read it for yourself when you have time. I'll not read the whole scripture, but we'll just turn to it and we'll read part of that passage in Matthew 25. It's reading from verse 31 - 46, but I'll skip over most of it and we'll go to verse 46:

The righteous are those who have put their trust in Jesus, who have put their trust in God their Saviour. That's what makes you righteous in God's sight, because we're not righteous of ourselves. We're sinners who need a Saviour, and God gave a Saviour,

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life’, everlasting life.

So Jesus spoke about everlasting punishment, punishment that never ends.

His apostles spoke about it in the New Testament. Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he spoke of those who shall:

He repeated it in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. You can read these scriptures for yourself.

The Apostle John said in 1 John 5: He said,

And he said in John 3, that very famous chapter from which we quote that verse, John 3 and 16. But you go to the last verse of that chapter, and here's what it also says.

And the Apostle Jude in verse 7 of his letter, he speaks about:

Eternal fire. That's without end. And he says in verse 13, Jude says that these people, some people of whom he was warning the church, who weren't believers in Christ at all, they're ‘wandering stars for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved for ever.’ That's a living, eternal death. A living death.

And the writer to the Hebrews, who may well have been Paul, in Hebrews chapter 1 speaks of eternal judgment.

And John, writing in the book of Revelation, speaks of the second death in Revelation chapter 20.

And in Revelation 14, he writes about the smoke of the torment of those who take The mark of the beast, and worship the beast who's coming, that Antichrist world ruler who is coming upon this earth. And he says that they'll be

‘tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.’ That's the Lord Jesus.

So these are very solemn truths. And so we say to anyone who's not saved, we would say Whose side are you on? You can't sit on the fence. Either you're on God's side, the side of the one who has absolute power, or you're in the side of God's arch-enemy, Satan, the Devil, the opposer of all that God stands for. And Jesus said about Satan, he said,

And Satan has sowed the lies of deceit in the minds of men. So that they think there's no accountability, there's nothing after death, but that's the lie of the Devil. God's word is faithful and true. God warns us about eternal death, the second death, eternal punishment. But that's why he sent his Son. That's why it was so important to realize, for us to realize, that ‘God so loved the world’. There was no other way that we could be saved.

He gave His only begotten Son to be a sacrifice. For our sins, for our failure.

We inherit sin from our first parent Adam, and because of that We're lost to God, and the only way He can reclaim us is through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus on the cross.

‘For God so loved the world’, he loved you, ‘that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever,’ -whoever - ‘believes on him should not perish’ (eternally), ‘but have everlasting life’, (eternal life).

God wants you to be saved. God doesn't ‘desire the death of any’, it says in the Scriptures, ‘but that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’.

And so we say to our unsaved friends, will you reach out the hand of faith today and put your hand in the nail-pierced hand of the Man who gave his life for you on the cross? He died, and he rose again victorious on the third day, and he's waiting for you to come and say:

‘Thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying for a sinner like me’.

NEXT ADDRESS: ETERNAL LIFE

It passeth knowledge, that dear love of Thine,
Lord Jesus, Saviour; yet this soul of mine
Would of thy love, in all its breadth and length,
Its height and depth its everlasting strength,
Know more and more.

It passeth telling, that dear love of Thine,
Lord Jesus, Saviour; yet these lips of mine
Would fain proclaim to sinners far and near
A love which can remove all guilty fear,
And love beget.

It passeth praises, that dear love of Thine,
Lord Jesus, Saviour; yet this heart of mine
Would sing that love, so full, so rich, so free,
Which brings a rebel sinner, even me,
Nigh unto God.

Today we speak about, or we begin with the subject of eternal life. And, when you read the Bible, you find that when it was written in Greek, the English version translates the Greek as ‘eternal life’. You can trace most of the places, I think there's one exception that I've come across, where that, the Greek puts it the other way around, and where we have eternal life, the Greek language is written as ‘life eternal’.

So what is eternal life, but it’s a quality of life. Life, it’s a quality of life, and it’s a quantity of life, it's perpetual, it’s eternal. There’s some other words that are very, very similar to ‘eternal’, sometimes we read about ‘to the ages’, or ‘the age’, ‘unto the ages’, that's how Paul wrote about eternal life. ‘The kindness of God’ that's going to be shown to us ‘unto the ages’.

So I would like to do three readings, and follow that on with another three readings, It’s just a verse here and there, so we'll begin with John 3:16, well known, I could almost quote it, but we'll read it, John 3:16,

‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life.’

Let's read the next verse to tie onto that:

‘For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.’

In John 1:4, where we read,

‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men.’

So there’s life, just spoken of by itself, but it's talking about life eternal, it’s the life that comes from God: ‘in him was life’.

Ephesians 2:7,

‘That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.’

‘The ages to come’ - that's the phrase, and, we’ll also read three other portions, in John chapter 5 and one in John chapter 20, but we'll leave that for now.

‘The world’ - ‘God so loved the world’. How wide God's love is; and how individual, how personal, because ‘whosoever believes on Jesus’, Jesus Christ, ‘whosoever believes on him should not perish but have life eternal’. That's the original reading, ‘life eternal’, that’s what we can have. The whole purpose of Jesus coming to this earth, God sending his only begotten Son, was that we might have life. We are dead, ‘dead in trespasses and sins’, but here Peter, he said, ‘To whom shall we go? - you Lord’ -you know, Jesus Christ- ‘you have the words of eternal life’ - life eternal - ‘you have the words of life eternal.’

So there’s one scripture which I find very comforting when I think over the wonder of receiving life eternal, receiving life from God, from the Son of God, and that's found in John 5:24, so let's read it.

John 5:24, (I'm sorry for being a bit slow to turn up these things, but here we are).

‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that hears my word, and believes him that sent me has eternal life.’

Now I'm just going to say it the original way,

‘has life eternal, and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.’

So there’s in the same verse we have life eternal and it finishes off, ‘passed out of death into life’. This is the life that God gives, the life that Jesus, the Lord Jesus came to bring. So continuing in John 5, let's read John 5:40. We'll read 39 to connect - when Jesus was discussing his purpose and the opposition that he was meeting with from those that questioned, ‘You're not the Messiah, we don't accept you as the Messiah.’ And here he says to them:

‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life eternal. And these are they which bear witness of me, and you will not come to me that you may have life.’

So there we link up ‘life eternal’ with life, ‘eternal life’, life. And John 5:46, we'll just continue reading on from verse 43.

‘I am come in my Father's name, and you receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe which receive glory, one of another, and the glory that comes from the only God you seek not. Think not that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?’

The things that Jesus uttered. And he directed them back to the words of Moses: ‘Moses wrote of me’ - and we remember how Moses wrote that God was going to ‘raise up a prophet just like me’, like Moses. The way that Moses had led the children of Israel, and the whole teaching that Israel was held together by as a nation, and continues on - they continue on as a nation today, though many don't know God, many atheists, both Jews and Gentiles, but that’s to digress. The writings that Moses wrote, it applied to the prophet that God was promising, the promised Messiah. ‘Moses wrote of me’ - the prophet that God would raise up, is Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And there’s many things that are written, as we go through the Gospel that was written by John, we find that there are many miracles that Jesus did and, if we turn to John 20:30, we'll find the reason why Jesus did so many miracles and why John recorded them. He wrote them down, and they've come down to us, and the reason is ‘that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing we might have life’. So let's read John 20:30, John 20 and verse 30.

‘Many other signs, therefore, did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name’.

That is amazing. They're written ‘that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing we might have life in His name’. I would like to turn and read Ephesians 2:7 again, and consider, consider what’s ahead in this life eternal that we speak about.

Ephesians 2:7, (and I’m at Hebrews and it's not working. I'm at Corinthians and I'm almost there). Right, Ephesians 2:7. So we just need to connect up from verse 4:

‘But God, being rich in mercy for His great love, wherewith He loved us’.

That takes us back to John 3:16. ‘God so loved the world’ - whosoever.

‘But God, being rich in mercy for His great love, wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ. By grace have you been saved, and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus’.

I'll stop there. That phrase, ‘the exceeding riches of His grace’ can be explained or given another word, I think, to better explain. There's a word in the Greek for exceeding or for surpassing, ‘huperballó’, something like that. It reminded me when I read it of the French class that I was in, when the teacher read out this phrase in French, ‘lance le ballon’, throw the ball. And when I considered this a bit more, there's one of the dictionaries that explains this a bit more. If you think about when we're watching the Olympics and you're watching the javelin throw, and you see the different marks for 50 meters, 60, 70, 80, 90, and very rarely someone takes a javelin, and they go beyond the 90 degrees, the 90 meters. They go beyond the 90 meters. And this is the word, ‘surpassing’, it's going beyond the mark. God is going to, in the ages to come, show the surpassing riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

‘For by grace have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, that no man should glory, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them’.

So that's just a little thought that I would like to leave. ‘The surpassing riches of God's grace’ and the kindness to be shown to us through the ages, in the ages to come.

We'll finish with John 17:2-3. Well, we'll read verse 1:

‘these things spake Jesus, and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, 'Father, the hour has come. Glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee, even as thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever thou hast given Him, to them He should give' - Now, ‘life eternal’ is how it's written in the original, so let's try and read it that way: ‘To them He should give life eternal, and this is eternal life, that they should know thee. This is eternal life, That they should know thee, the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.’

So there we have - the whole purpose for which the Lord Jesus came to save sinners was that He should give us life eternal. And what is eternal life? - but that we should know God the Father. ‘they should know thee, the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, Jesus Christ.’

So let's finish with the last three verses of hymn 249.

‘But though I cannot sing or tell or know, The fullness of Thy love while here below, My empty vessel I may freely bring, O Thou who art of love, the living spring, my vessel fill.’ So verses 4, 5 and 6.

But though I cannot sing or tell or know,
The fulness of Thy love while here below,
My empty vessel I may freely bring;
O Thou, who art of love the living spring,
My vessel fill!

Oh, fill me Holy Saviour with Thy love,
Lead, lead me to the living fount above,
Thither may I in simple faith draw nigh,
And never to another fountain fly,
But unto Thee.

And when Lord Jesus, Thine own face I see,
When at Thy lofty throne I bow the knee,
Then of Thy love, in all its breadth and length,
Its height and depth, its everlasting strength,
My soul shall sing.

Shall we begin by singing the first three verses of number 28, number 28 verses 1 to 3.

God is love, His word has said it, 

This is news of heavenly birth. 

In our hearts His Spirit shed it, 

Made us know it here on earth 

That God is love. 

Not in yonder blessed regions 

Where the Lord in glory crowned 

Reigns amid angelic legions, 

Will the brightest proof be found 

That God is love. 

'Tis on earth the Lord discloses 

All His love, how vast it is, 

Earth’s the favoured spot He chooses 

To display the truth of this, 

That God is love. 

Just those three verses.

God is love, His word has said it, 

This is news of heavenly birth. 

In our hearts His Spirit shed it, 

Made us know it here on earth 

That God is love. 

Not in yonder blessed regions 

Where the Lord in glory crowned 

Reigns amid angelic legions, 

Will the brightest proof be found 

That God is love. 

'Tis on earth the Lord discloses 

All His love, how vast it is, 

Earth’s the favoured spot He chooses 

To display the truth of this, 

That God is love. 

We’ll ask God's blessing. 

O God we give thanks for all your goodness to us. We thank you for the sunshine which warms our hearts and lights our way. And we thank you for the greater light than the sun. The one who has come into this world and who said, 'I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.' And we thank you that we can put our trust in Him and when we do so He comes into our hearts and lightens our life and not only for this life but for all eternity. And we pray for our fellow men and women that many might turn to Him in this troubled world in which we live. We pray for their souls, we pray for their salvation. And so we ask and give thanks and pray for your help and guidance as we open your word together today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now I'm just going to continue my series of addresses on John chapter 3 and verse 16 and we'll just read that well-known verse again together. But I'm going to emphasize one word.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”.

God so loved the world. Well, we could ask which world? The animal kingdom? The plant life? The ecosystem of this world that we live in? Well, of course, God loved this beautiful world that He created and set in motion for the benefit of mankind. Or if the word mankind offends your sense of equality you can substitute the word humankind for mankind. But God loves this world but primarily what John 3:16 is talking about, what the Lord is talking about in this chapter “for God so loved the world”, He's talking about the world of people.

God so loved the world, - men and women, - mankind, the children of Adam. Because the Word of God says that God created man in His own image. “In the image of God created He Him. Male and female created He them”, it says in Genesis chapter 1. So God created man in His image, in the likeness of God. That is, He created a human representation of Himself, not an exact copy. Because for a start, to highlight just a couple of differences between ourselves and God:

God is an eternal being. He had no beginning and no end. We had a beginning, although we will live on into eternity. But we had a beginning.

And God has no limits. God is infinite in power and majesty. And we are created beings, we have our limits.

But we are like God, we are created in His image. In the sense that we are rational, thinking beings with the ability to make choices based on reason.

And only people, only men and women, like you and me, can have faith, in a conscious, spiritual sense. In contrast with the animals. Because it says, "Whoever believes in Him should not perish." That's in Jesus, the only begotten Son of God. "Whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." These words imply choice. An animal is incapable of such a choice because it behaves instinctively. It does what it's programmed to do. It has no morals, no religious, spiritual, philosophical model by which it justifies its behaviour. Because it lives and acts instinctively. Therefore it's not morally accountable for its actions. That's why if a dog bites a child, we hold the owner accountable and not the dog.

"For God so loved the world."

The book of Genesis tells us that God made the world in six days. It tells us that God created man in one day. And that man Adam, was a full grown perfect specimen of a human being in his prime. If you had seen Adam a few minutes after ‘God breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living soul’ - If you had seen Adam you would have said, "He's 33 years old. He's a man in his prime." But he was only a few minutes old.

And so God created this wonderful world. This ecosystem in which we live. And it says “He created the stars also”. The vast universe of which this world, this earth is only a part. And to every scientific measure, it appears to be millions of years old. But God made it inside of a week. In six days God made the world. Because God has all power and all authority. And that's the God who has spoken to us through His word. And in the person of His beloved Son who came from heaven to earth. Because God loved the world. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”. It takes even more faith to dismiss the idea of intelligent design, and believe that the whole thing appeared just by chance.

Planet Earth, our world, the world in which we live, it hangs in space upon nothing. Job said in the Old Testament, he said, that “God stretches out the north over empty space. And hangs the earth upon nothing”. That's the invisible power of God at work. And this world that we live in is so finely balanced, so interdependent, displays the most incredibly complex macro and micro engineering, that we still only understand a fraction of it. Of how it all works. And the odds of this happening by chance, without the purposeful actions of a super intelligent being, are astronomically impossible.

So faith in the existence of a divine creator makes far more sense than the opposite idea that men propagate today, the theory of evolution. Because if there's no God, then the concept of a God who loves the world is a figment of our imagination. If this amazing world of people and animals and plants moving interactively in the apparent nothingness of space, along with all the planets in the solar system - If this amazing world is only a product of blind chance, then -and this is important - then we're not ultimately accountable to our creator. And the concept of absolute morality of right and wrong is nonsense.

If there's no God: morality is what WE say it means. Not what God says it should be.

If there's no God: the concept of absolute truth is outdated.

If there's no God:we're accountable only to ourselves.

That's the shifting sands of modern philosophy. That's the moral quagmire of cultural relativity. If I say I'm a lamp post - or a llama - or a woman. Then you better affirm my chosen identity or I'll see you in court! That's the madness of the logic of evolutionary theory. That's where it takes us. Nothing makes sense unless we acknowledge the existence of a higher power. A higher moral authority than ourselves.

Someone once said if we deny the existence of God, we're living inside a big question mark.

Therefore, I believe that there is a supremely intelligent being. An eternal almighty person who created the world and everything in it. And I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God because God says it. I believe what He's revealed there about Himself and about the world that he made. And about the world of people whom He loved. “God so loved the world”.

However, the book of Genesis also tells us about another person. It tells us about a mighty created being who Jesus called the prince of this world. Otherwise known as the devil. Satan. The opposer of God and man. This is what Jesus said about him. We're going to read three scriptures from the Gospel according to John. We'll just turn to it.

John chapter 12 verse 31. John 12:31.

Jesus said, "Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out."

And John 14:30. "I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of this world comes and he has nothing in me."

And then over to John chapter 16:8. "And he when he is come," that's the Holy Spirit he's talking about. "And he when he is come will convict the world in respect of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin because they believe not on me. Of righteousness because I go to the Father and you behold me no more. Of judgment because the prince of this world has been judged."

And back over to John chapter 8:44.

He said to the Jewish religious leaders who didn't believe that he was their Messiah. He said, "You are of your Father the devil and the lusts of your Father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and stood not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie he speaks of his own for he's a liar and the Father thereof."

So Jesus said about the prince of this world about Satan, He said: he's a murderer, he's a liar and he's the Father of lies. And he called him in another place he said he's the Evil One. The prince of this world hates God. His very name Satan means the opposer. Because he opposes God's purposes, God's purposes of grace. He's the very embodiment of evil and rebellion.

So this baleful person, the prince of this world, holds this world of fallen men and women. Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God and they fell from grace in the Garden of Eden. They fell away from God's good law, morally and spiritually. And as such we are “dead through our trespasses and our sins”, it says in Ephesians. Because Satan, the prince of this world, deceived our first parents Adam and Eve. Well, deceived Eve and then she gave it to her husband and he took that forbidden fruit and the full knowledge of what he was doing. So we are spiritually dead because sin came in. “So death passed unto all men for that all have sinned”, Paul says in Romans. And we're spiritually dead to all that's holy and pure until the Spirit of God awakens us to a sense of our fallen state through the preaching of the gospel, of the living and active Word of God and ‘convicts us of sin, of righteousness and of judgment’ which we read in John 16.

God so loved the world, the world, the whole world of people since Adam until the end of this world. He didn't just love a select few, the elect which the Calvinists love to say. No, he loved the whole world regardless of whether they would accept God's love or not. Jesus died on the cross for every single person. God took the sins of this whole world and laid them on his beloved Son. That's why it's possible for Jesus to say to Nicodemus, "Whosoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life." He died for all. He died for whosoever. We used to sing a little chorus in Sunday school, "Whosoever means me." Yes, whosoever means the whole world, the whole of the human race.

God did not place a limit on the souls for whom Christ died.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life - everlasting life”.

So he not only paid the price for the redemption of those who would believe on him, it means that he also paid the price for those who would reject him, for those who spat in his face, for those who scourged him with a Roman lash, for those who put a crown of thorns on his head and mocked him as "Hail, King of the Jews," they said - for those who hated him without a cause.

That hymn that we sung, we'll sing the rest of the verses at the end. We will sing this verse. It was written by Thomas Kelly.

Not for those who ever loved him 

did the Lord of glory die. 

"Pity to the wretched moved him. 

Who that hears it will deny 

that God is love." 

This is the measure of God's greatness. The all encompassing agape love of God. That's a Greek word that means the love that loves when there's no love in return. God loved this guilty world even when he got no love in return from it. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them” from the cross. Nailed to that cross, he said, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing."

Even when they murdered his beloved son, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”. This is not a God who tells his followers to go around chopping people's heads off if they refuse to submit to his authority. This is a God who loves a world of rebels and has gone above and beyond the demands of justice. And he's demonstrated his Grace, (undeserved kindness) to a world of proud misguided sinners. Yes, even those who are misguided enough to commit such atrocities on their fellow men and women. This is a God who holds out the offer of forgiveness, a way of escape from the eternal judgment that our sins demand. This is a God who holds out the offer of salvation,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And whosoever believes in him”, the one who died on that cross for you, “should not perish but have an everlasting life”.

Because there's a day of reckoning coming. Only those whose sins are covered by the blood of the Lamb who died on Calvary's cross can escape the eternal judgment of God. Because if we turn our backs on the Saviour, then there's no other way that we can enter into heaven. God won't allow guilty sinners, unforgiven sinners into that perfect holy place that he's prepared. And into the new earth that he's prepared for those who put their trust in his Son.

So the love of God is awesome, it's majestic, it goes far beyond the deepest love that we've ever known in this world. That divine heavenly love, the love of our Creator, caused him to send his Son to die for a world of guilty rebels. Sinners like you, sinners like me. He took my place, he took your place. And Jesus, when he offered himself to God as a spotless sacrifice for our sins, he endured the righteous wrath of the holy God of heaven against sin. We sometimes sing a hymn,

"Here is love vast as the ocean, 

loving kindness as the flood, 

when the Prince of life, our ransom, 

shed for us his precious blood." 

Another hymn says,

"The love of God reaches to the highest heaven and reaches to the lowest hell."

I think we quoted it at a previous time. There will be people in the lake of fire for eternity separated from the loving presence of God because they turned their back on Jesus Christ, on the Son of God who loved them so much that he was willing to bear the punishment for their sins. God cannot admit into heaven those who haven't bought a ticket, those who scorn the incredible sacrificial love that Jesus has shown towards them. And that's the solemn reality of the Gospel. If you turn your back on the love of God, he'll turn his back on you forever.

And so I close again with the words of God's invitation to this world, to every individual, to you, and the choice is yours to make,

"For God so loved the world." That means me. That means you. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Shall we speak to God in prayer.

Gracious God and loving Father in heaven, we give thanks for your wonderful grace. And we confess to you, O God, that we only appreciate your holiness in a small, small measure. And if people were more aware of your holiness, then they would fall down at your feet and worship. And they would acknowledge your greatness. But we pray, O God, for our fellow men and women that your gracious Holy Spirit will lift the veil from their hearts and help them to see in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God who loved them and gave himself up for them. So part us with your blessing today and be with us, we ask, for we ask in the precious name of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We'll just sing the last four verses of number 28. Verses 4 to 7.

Verse 4 says,

"Tis that man of sorrows yonder, 

object of contempt beneath, 

but in heaven of highest wonder, 

teaches fully by his death 

that God is love. 

Not for those who ever loved him 

did the Lord of glory die. 

Pity to the wretch who moved him, 

who that hears it will deny 

that God is love." 

Number 28, verses 4 to 5.

"Tis that man of sorrows yonder, 

object of contempt beneath, 

but in heaven of highest wonder, 

teaches fully by his death 

that God is love. 

His a throne, the throne of heaven, 

yet he comes to earth to bleed; 

and for man his life is given, 

this is what declares indeed. 

That God is love, that God is love. 

Not for those who ever loved him 

did the Lord of glory die. 

Pity to the wretched moved him, 

who that hears it will deny that God is love. That God is love. 

Let us lowly now adore him, 

triune God of love and grace, 

joyful bow the knee before him; 

laud his goodness, shout his praise. 

For God is love. For God is love.

NEXT ADDRESS: GOD’S SON

It was for me, yes, all for me, 

O love of God, so great, so free, 

O wondrous love, I'll shout and sing, 

He died for me, My Lord and King. 

Was it for me, He wept and prayed, 

My load of sin before Him laid, 

That night within Gethsemane? 

Was it for me, that agony? 

It was for me, yes, all for me, 

O love of God, so great, so free, 

O wondrous love, I'll shout and sing, 

He died for me, My Lord and King.

Now, the last time I was here I spoke on John chapter 3 and verse 16. And I just took the first word, "For GOD" - GOD so loved the world." Today, I want to look at the second word, main word in that verse,

"For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life."

God SO LOVED, He so loved the world that He GAVE His only begotten Son! So my message today has two sides to it. On the one hand, it's the most glorious truth that you could ever hear about, and on the other hand, it's the most solemn truth that you'll ever hear.

I want to speak today about the kind of love that God has shown to this world. Not about the world's idea of love, but about the love of GOD, which is very, very different because it's so much higher, and purer, and nobler, than the love that we may give to each other or to other people, or the love that we may experience in return from those that we love in this life. Because much of what passes for love between us flawed human beings is based on selfishness and self-interest. And the test of true love comes when the other person in the relationship cannot or will not gratify our needs. And that's often when the ugly truth about the self-centred human nature that we're born with comes out and is revealed in all its ugliness, with the hurt and misery that flows from the behaviour of hard-hearted people who are only interested in their own welfare.

But fortunately, there are many examples in this world of true love, real, genuine love. Many of us have observed selfless love among families. When my wife Norma was young, her grandparents opened their home every weekend to their daughters and their young families. And they provided them with an outstanding level of love and care. That was selfless - selfless love.

And many soldiers in wartime have demonstrated the kind of love that the Lord Jesus spoke about when he said, "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Another example of love is the love that David and Jonathan had for one another. And it was on a higher plane than the love even between a man and a woman, based on mutual respect and shared values and shared admiration for each other. Jonathan was a true friend, a true and loyal friend to David in the face of his father's treachery. That's how much David appreciated Jonathan's love.

And yet, still the love of God goes far beyond the purest and noblest and highest self-sacrificing love that's possible on earth.

A man wrote a lovely hymn, and a couple of lines from it came to my mind as I was preparing for this message. Frederick Lehman wrote this in 1917.

"The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. 

It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell." 

I always had a question mark in my head about that last phrase. "The love of God reaches to the lowest hell." I'll have more to say about that in a minute.

John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world." The WORLD? God so loved the world. He created the world, a world populated by men and women and boys and girls like you and me. He gave us a wonderful, beautiful, unique world to inhabit. And he so loved us that when our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell from grace in the Garden of Eden, he chose not to destroy the world and start over again, but to work out his purposes of grace and mercy in a fallen world. And in order to save us, God, whose essential character is LOVE, went to such lengths that it would involve untold suffering and pain to Himself.

There was a wise woman of Tekoa who once said this to King David when Joab, the captain, got her to - he put the words in her mouth, really, to try and bring Absalom back from exile. And she said to King David:

That's what God did. He devised a way back to him, a way back to the innocence and beauty and perfection of Eden, where man and woman had intimate communion with the God of heaven; before the fall, before Satan tempted Eve to disobey the clear instruction of God not to eat of the fruit of the tree that was in the midst of the garden, the tree of good and evil. And her disobedience and Adam's disobedience resulted in a catastrophic separation between God and man. Their communion was broken, "and so death passed unto all men, for that all have sinned", it says. God has made us in his image. Mankind is unique among all of God's created beings. He's given us similar characteristics to his own being, and as such we are unique and very precious to God. And he's given us the freedom to choose between right and wrong. Neville said something that stuck in my mind this morning in his prayer. He said, "God has allowed man to choose his own destiny." We have free will. God has given us the ability to make decisions based on knowledge. He's given us the freedom to choose between right and wrong. But God in his love cannot overlook sin. Sin has to be confronted and dealt with. Do you agree with that?

Every parent knows or they soon discover that it's no kindness to overlook or ignore sin in a child. That's a recipe for anarchy and rebellion and destructive - self-destructive behaviours. Children need clear boundaries and consistent behaviour management so that they learn how to behave and how to discipline themselves when they grow up, and become adults themselves. Because if they don't respect their parents, it will affect their attitude to their employers. But more importantly, if they don't respect the delegated authority of their parents - that God has given to their parents, then they're unlikely to develop respect and reverence for God, the ultimate authority, the one who has power to judge us for all eternity. Because by nature we're sinners. We rebel - we naturally rebel against authority. And we naturally rebel against God's authority. The Bible says in Isaiah 53, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way and God has laid on him" - that's on Jesus - "the iniquity of us all". So we're all sinners by nature. That's not a situation that a God of love could ignore or tolerate.

So how did the God of perfect love, who's also intensely pure and holy and righteous, how did he reconcile a world of proud, rebellious, selfish people with himself? What means did he devise to bring us back into a right relationship with himself? Well, we know from the Bible that God spoke to men and women through his dealings with a chosen people: Israel; who were a representative nation of the people of the world, a sample of the human race, and through the Hebrew prophets who were sent to Israel to foretell about the Saviour who was coming, that God was going to send to save them from their sins; God, the supreme eternal being who spans the ages, he has been working out his purposes of grace and love, stage by stage, over time. He exists outside of time. He exists in eternity. And his redemptive purposes were revealed in his own good time. "And when the fullness of the time came", it says in the Bible, "God sent forth his Son". And his redemptive purposes were revealed to a few shepherds on a hillside in Bethlehem. And the angels appeared to them in glory and they said, "There is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

It says in Romans,

Yes, "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life".

Jesus left the throne of heaven, and was born as a tiny helpless babe and laid in a manger dependent upon his mother Mary. What kind of reception did he get when he came to this world? He was given the outside place. There was no room from the very beginning, no room in the Inn. There was no room in the hearts of so many of those whom he came to save.

I want to read in Mark chapter 10. And this is breaking into the life of the Lord Jesus when he was here on earth. Mark chapter 10, and reading from verse 32.

They'll deliver him to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and they will deliver him to the Gentiles who will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, kill him and then three days later - "I'll rise from the dead".

He told all these details to the disciples before it happened. He knew every single detail of his life before it happened because he was God in human form. Only God knows the end from the beginning. And this fact alone, the fact that he carried that knowledge with him throughout his life on earth; surely that tells us something of the love that God and his beloved Son had for you and for me.

That he could go through his whole life on earth knowing how those learned men of Israel who claimed to be their spiritual leaders, they searched the scriptures daily and thinking they had salvation in the scriptures, but Jesus said, "These are they that speak of me, that testify of me." The scribes, he knew that they would reject him and yet still he was motivated by that agape love that we spoke about last time, the love which loves when there's no love in return.

"He came unto his own," the scripture says, "and they that were his own received him not." But it's great what it says next, "but to as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God even to them that believed on his name."

So he knew every detail of the shameful treatment that men would heap upon him. Gentiles - the Romans - who had no knowledge of the majesty and the greatness of the God of Israel, the God of Israel "whose love is as great as his power, and knows neither measure nor end!" He endured mocking, spitting, scourging and death by crucifixion. He knew that was going to happen to him and still he went on.

The Lord Jesus displayed the characteristics of a true martyr, didn't he? Unlike these Middle Eastern terrorists who call themselves martyrs - what a contradiction in terms if ever there was one! Because a true martyr, like the Lord Jesus, doesn't shout for the death of those who put him to death. Jesus from the very cross that he was hanging on, he said, "Father, forgive them." Dying in excruciating pain, "Father, forgive them." That's the heart of a true martyr. No anger, no hatred for those who crucified him.

They don't know what they're doing. There was no imprecations of divine retribution from Jesus on the cross because he had come "to seek and to save that which was lost". That's you and me, lost sinners. He came in LOVE - out of love for your souls and he came to die for me. To the dying thief who changed his mind about Jesus and expressed his faith in Jesus' power to save him, he said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise."

So there's a difference between those who despised the Lord Jesus in ignorance and those who knowingly rejected his authority.

Peter gave the Jewish leaders the benefit of the doubt when on the day of Pentecost he said, "You did it in ignorance." Acts chapter 3, let's just read that together.

Acts 3:14. This is the day after the day of Pentecost actually. Sorry, I made a mistake.

Acts 3:14. He said to the Jews,

And then verse 17 he says,

So, there's mercy for those who reject Christ out of ignorance or preconceived ideas about who the Messiah might be. "They did it in ignorance," Peter said, but there's an opportunity to repent and turn again and turn to the Saviour and say, "I'm sorry, I put you on that cross. My sins put you on that cross. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Please save me, Lord."

And Paul in 1st Timothy he said, "Even though I was previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor" - he put Christians to death! He said, "Yet I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief."

The God of love shows mercy to those who acknowledge their transgressions and repent. But judgment is the other side of the coin. Judgment awaits those who despise and reject the love of God. You can't trifle with God. God is not mocked. Horatius Bonar wrote this lovely hymn, but it sums up the truth of the Word of God. It says,

"The love of God is righteous love, 

Inscribed upon Golgotha's tree. 

Love that exacts the sinner's debt, 

Yet in exacting sets him free. 

Love that condemns the sinner's sin, 

Yet in condemning pardoned souls, 

That saves from righteous wrath, 

And yet in saving righteousness reveals." 

And, coming back to that line of that hymn that I quoted earlier:

That encapsulates the solemn truth that God's love is not to be taken lightly. God's love is righteous love. He's a God of love, but he's also a God of absolute justice. He will not stand by and ignore rebellion. He won't allow rebellious acts to go unpunished. In fact, those who refuse to acknowledge and repent of their sinful condition, even if they live an outwardly law-abiding life, but inwardly refuse to admit that by nature and by practice, they are self-willed sinners, self-righteous people. People like those described in the Gospel of Luke, "which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and set all others at naught".

Jesus told this parable or the story, the true story of the two men who went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a tax gatherer. The Pharisee stood like this and looked up to heaven and said, "God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. I give tithes, I give a tenth of all that I earn to the poor, and charity." And the other man, he wouldn't even so much as lift up his eyes to heaven. He bowed his head on his chest and he said, "Lord, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, - "the sinner." Be merciful - it was as if he was the only sinner in the world and he needed God's forgiveness. And God will, Jesus' comment on those two men was, "This man went down to his house justified more than the other."

So self-righteous people condemn themselves, but God will condemn them to eternal death; because the Bible says "there's none righteous, no not one". "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". And unless we repent and ask God's forgiveness for our natural sinful condition, in this life - the grace of God will be beyond our reach in the next. There's no second chances. That's the other side of the coin.

The love of God reaches to the lowest hell.

There's a heaven to be gamed and a hell to be feared. Eternal death, Jesus spoke about eternal punishment, eternal death in the Lake of Fire. Separated from the communion with God and with the Lord Jesus our Saviour whom he provided. Separated from communion with God forever. That's an awful prospect, but sadly it's too awful for some people to accept. But it's just; and it's perfectly in keeping with God's righteous love.

So if you spurn the love of God, you're making a very deliberate choice. To reject the love of the Son of God who suffered on your behalf, who took the blame for all your transgressions, who took your sins in his own body on the cross. If you turn your back on such mercy and love, then you'll bear the consequences of that choice forever. 'God has allowed man to choose his own destiny'.

And another thing, God will never allow anything unclean to jeopardise the sanctity of heaven. To endanger the security of those who have put their trust in him, in Jesus. He's going to populate the new heavens, the new earth which he's going to make - he says he's going to make new heavens and a new earth. And he's going to populate that new earth with those who are redeemed, who have put their trust in Jesus. And that's a place that will be eternally free from sin and forever free from the destructive influence of Satan, the enemy of God, the opposer of God and man. Because it says in Revelation 21,

"There shall in no wise enter into it," that's the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven, onto that new earth.

Why not? Why will God not allow anything unclean into that world? Because God is holy and God is righteous. And because God is a God of love; and God for all eternity will protect those who have put their trust in him, who have fled for refuge to the Saviour. That's the simple logic of love. And it's instinctive in every parent. Even the most docile of animals turn into fearless protectors of their young when they're threatened.

I just want to finish with a few thoughts.

A few years ago in Indiana, in America, in the United States, a 25 year old pizza delivery man was going along the road - in his car I think - and he was passing a building that was burning at midnight, around midnight. And he stopped the car, he went over and hammered on the door and woke up the family and got them out. But they said there's a little girl, a six year old girl, she's still in the house. And that 25 year old pizza delivery man went back into the house and up the stair to the bedroom or the room where the little girl was. He smashed a window and took her in his arms and he dropped to the ground with the little girl. But he broke her fall but he injured himself quite badly. He saved her to his own personal cost. He risked his life to save her. And he has marks on his body to prove it.

Jesus has marks on his hands and his feet and he's a spear wound on his side. Isaiah 52, Isaiah tells us "he was more marred than any man" - because he bore the righteous indignation of a holy God against us, against our sins. "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree".

Have you ever thought about the agony of soul that we sang about in the hymn that the Lord Jesus went through as he contemplated what lay ahead because he knew, he knew what was coming; and he kneeled in prayer, he knew that God was going to take your sin and mine and punish him instead of you, instead of me. And that was abhorrent to his righteous holy soul. The sweat fell down off his brow like drops of blood onto the ground.

"Oh my father," he prayed, "if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me. Nevertheless not my will, but yours be done."

Have you ever thought what it cost him to pay the price for your salvation? Have you ever thought how that prayer must have affected his God and father? Because the answer from God the Father to God the Son was - 'everything depends on you'. It couldn't pass away. He had to go through with it. Otherwise there was no salvation and no eternal life, no eternal future for you and me.

But today in the quietness of your own heart you can answer his question, the question that Jesus cried out on the cross at the end of the crucifixion when he laid down his life of his own accord. He said,

Can you say from your heart, It was for me - ?

"it was for me Christ Jesus died, a victim on the tree."

"It was for me, yes all for me, 

Oh love of God so great so free, 

Oh wondrous love I'll shout and sing. 

He died for me, my Lord and King."

May it be so today.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes on him should not perish" - eternally - "but have eternal life."

Shall we speak to God in prayer.

Perhaps we could just sing a one verse hymn. 146.

For God so loved the world, 

He gave his only Son,

To die on Calvary's tree,

From sin to set me free. 

Someday he's coming back,

What glory that will be! 

Wonderful is love to me.

NEXT ADDRESS: THE WORLD

“And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed his eyes with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went away therefore, and washed, and came seeing.” (John 9:1-7)

Consider Young’s Literal Translation of verses 3-4 without a full stop in between. In the originally written Greek scriptures there were no punctuation marks—no spaces between words. In Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) the sense reads as follows:

“...but that the works of God may be manifested in him; it behoves me to be working the works of Him that sent me while it is day”

A similar sense would be (I’m paraphrasing): ‘but that the works of God may be manifested in him, I (we) must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day’ [AV: ‘I’ ... RV: ‘we’] (John 9:3-4)

Why did Jesus perform so many miracles on the Sabbath day?

'“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28 AV)

And there is a far greater rest than the Sabbath: the rest that is found in Christ:

“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 AV)

Apparently the use of saliva was a traditional ‘remedy’ for blindness. The Lord mixed his spittle with the dust of the ground—there may not have been anything out-of-the-ordinary about this situation to those looking on. However, this traditional ‘remedy’ in the Lord’s hands was transformative! Then the Lord says, “Go away to the pool of Siloam and wash.” We can picture the blind man eagerly, carefully, tapping his way with his staff, heading to Siloam. John specifically tells us the meaning of Siloam: ‘sent’. The water from the Gihon Spring was sent to the pool of Siloam—descending no more than 12 inches over the third of a mile length that it travelled. There would be a much steeper descent for the blind man who was sent from the temple mount down to Siloam but the Lord would not have sent him to Siloam if he wasn’t capable of getting there. No doubt he would have been well familiar with the route.

The waters were sent from the Gihon Spring. The blind man was sent from the temple mount.

In pointing out the meaning of Siloam as ‘sent’, John may be conveying to us the far greater descent from heaven, “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” (1 John 4:14)

Miracles, signs, works: these terms describe the same thing.

So the man, blind from birth, went away and washed in Siloam and came seeing. This was a great miracle, a unique miracle:

“Since the world began it was never heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind.” (John 9:32)

This miracle and the many miracles Jesus performed made known the glory of God and showed the deity of Christ. But though he had done so many miracles before them, they were not believing on him. (John 12:37)

Jesus said, “If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.” (John 15:24)

Finally, John sums up his account of the miracles he’d witnessed:

“Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31)

Scripture References are from the Revised Version unless marked as AV 12th April 2026 - James Johnson

When all thy mercies, blessed God,

Each rising soul surveys,

Transported with the view, we’re lost

In wonder, love and praise.

Through all eternity to Thee

A joyful song we’ll raise,

But e’en eternity’s too short

To utter all thy praise.

Shall we ask God’s help?

Oh God, our Heavenly Father. We ask for the presence of your Holy Spirit. We ask that you’ll reach down into our hearts and minds with your word, your word, and bless it to us, bless your thoughts and we need The ministry of your Holy Spirit from day to day, we ask for that communion of the Holy Spirit to be with us, so we ask, in the name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.

Now ,I’ve just got four short verses to read and as usual, I’m going off piste, I’m going off script, I’m sorry, but I just want to read before I begin, a verse that comes near the end of - it comes right at the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 13. You needn’t turn to it, but you can turn to it.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost (or the Holy Spirit) be with you all.”

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

So, what I have in mind, I’ve been reading through I’ve been reading through the book of Zechariah. And there’s one or two verses there that I would like to just pick up - but we’ll get to them shortly. The first place I would like to read one verse is in Psalm chapter 2.

We know these scriptures quite well. We know what the Psalm is about.

“Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed,”

And then verse 6:

“Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.”

So we’ll move on from there to Isaiah. Chapter 9 and verse 6:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever.”

And then to Zechariah chapter 9. And verse 10. Zechariah chapter 9. And verse - well we’ll start at verse 9.

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off; and he shall speak peace unto the nations: and his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

And then over to the last chapter, chapter 14 and verse 9. Zechariah chapter 14 verse 9.

“and the Lord shall be king over all the earth. In that day shall the Lord be one and his name one.”

And finally, chapter 14 and verse 16:

“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso of all the families of the earth goeth not up unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, upon them there shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, neither shall it be upon them; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the nations that go not up to keep the feast of tabernacles.”

Well, how are we going to ... draw this together and it’s going to be probably broad brush strokes, if we’re talking about a painting to draw together what we’ve just read and the Psalms were written perhaps 900 years before. This is a prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled, what we read in Psalm:

“Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.”

Isaiah probably about seven hundred years before the Lord Jesus came to this earth. And Zechariah probably about 500 years before that we read of something that was fulfilled when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem as king, although he was rejected, but he came lowly, the lowly king riding on an ass, the colt the foal of an ass. So there are things that are that we’ve read from these three books, two of them have been fulfilled.

The two that have been fulfilled were mentioned already, going into Jerusalem riding on the ass, and of course in Isaiah “unto us a child is born, a son is given.” The child that was born of Mary, the Son of God, the Son that is given. The incarnation, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. So that’s the two that have been fulfilled. The other scriptures have yet to be fulfilled. They’re awaiting fulfilment. And we finished off with the Feast of Tabernacles, which comes when Jesus reigns as King from Jerusalem. Upon the holy hill of Zion from which he has his throne.

And the battles have been fought and won. And there’ll be some that didn’t come to fight in the I believe it would be the Battle of Armageddon. I need to go and check up on that again. But the Lord will have put down all the opposition and there’ll be those that remain of the nations that didn’t come up to Jerusalem to fight.

So, I just would like to consider the Feast of Tabernacles; we probably all can have a bit of the question as to why - why that there’s something from the Old Testament feasts of Jehovah still, still to be carried out? We might have a question about that, but the fact is that there are things that we can - we’re not ready always to take in, you know, the Lord said to the disciples, ‘I’ve got many things to tell you, but you’re not able to hear them now’, but later on they would. And when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit would teach them and bring to their remembrance the words of Jesus and tell them of things that were to come.

So perhaps, perhaps there’s a certain amount that I’ll just say for myself that I’ve yet to understand concerning the Feast of Tabernacles in the future.

Now we all know what the Feast of Tabernacles is. It’s the time when, if we look back to Israel’s history, God brought them out of Egypt and through the wilderness and he said when you come into the land, there are three feasts that all the males will appear before me. Three feasts, and this was the final one, the Feast of Tabernacles, which is when the people were to dwell in temporary shelters, ‘booths’ is another word for them. Just little temporary shelters made out of palm branches, thick trees or entwined trees, I suppose giving structure to the booth, the temporary shelter, and willows from the brook. So there was - God prescribed - He told them, this is what you’ll do, because you’ll remember how you were brought out of Egypt. And, you know, God said, the land is mine. And, you know, you’ll remember that you were brought out of Egypt and through all that wilderness. And so when you come into the land and you enjoy the produce of the land and, the Lord has blessed you. Once they were settled in the land of Canaan, the land of promise, that, they would remember what they were brought out from and what they were brought into, the blessing that they were brought into.

Now, the Feast of Tabernacles took place at the end of the agricultural year in the seventh month. So if we say our April all the way to our October, something like that. The first month Abib. So there were different feasts the Passover and then the Feast of Weeks seven weeks later and that was to do with harvest as well, but this final this final feast to the Lord it’s referred to in Exodus as ‘the feast of in-gathering’ because it was to do with once all the harvest had been brought in. And then there were . . . And it took place five days after the Day of Atonement. That’s another thing, by the way.

So they were to rejoice when they had those seven days. The first day was to be like a Sabbath. They were to do no laborious work that first day. And also, at the end of the seven days, they were to, I think it says they were to put away you know, that was then finished with the booths and there was an eighth day where they actually had returned or reverted to their dwellings, their normal houses.

There were different sacrifices that were associated with the seven days. I’m not going to go through them all, but you just probably remember when I say that on this particular celebration in which they were to rejoice before the Lord, there was to be, on the first day, thirteen bulls that were to be sacrificed. On the next day there was to be twelve bulls and they were to work their way one bull less every day until they got to the seventh day and then there would be seven bulls that would be offered on that day. And then on the eighth day there was only to be one bull offered. Now you can take that away and meditate on that because I’m not going to suggest what I’m, I’m really just dipping my toe in the water here.

So all these things, all these things that were in the past are carried forward beyond this period of time, this dispensation of grace, this day of grace in which we live, and they’re carried beyond and into the millennial kingdom of Christ.

Now, I don’t fully understand it all, but I think there’s significance that what God is doing, that there’s still this one feast that all the nations that are left, they’re required to come up and to worship the king. The King is the Lord Jesus Christ, the King ruling from Jerusalem. I’ll not even touch on where we fit in to all this. But from year to year, we’re told that all the nations that are left, they’ve to go up and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. The Lord’s name would be one, so there would be peace, the Prince of Peace and joining with his people are the nations coming up year after year. This is all God’s plan unfolding, and of course when we get to the end of, when we get to the end of this thousand years: ‘the increase of his government and of peace, there’ll be no end’. So the thousand years will not end the government of Christ, the rule of Christ and peace. It will be forever and so we think of the day of eternity. We read about that in the margin in what Peter wrote ‘to the day of eternity.’ Or the day of God, maybe we could say that that is the start of the day of eternity. But these are just as best I can, a few a few thoughts And as some preachers have said before, you know, if they only read if all they read was a certain bit well, it’s worthwhile. So, I’ve come to a shuddering halt, but there we are.

We’ll close in prayer and then we can sing 402. Okay.

Oh God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks for being able to consider the scriptures and we confess our dullness in understanding, but nevertheless, we pray that your word might do us good. And the things that we can understand that we might hold fast, and the things that we are yet to fully, or more fully grasp, that You’ll help us to discern Your thoughts. So O God, we commit each one of us into your care. You know our situation here from week to week. And so O God, strengthen us each and overrule in all our futures, for we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, Amen.

Amen.

So, I would like us to sing hymn number 402 and we’ll just sing the whole hymn.

‘I am not skilled to understand. What God has willed, what God has planned, I only know at his right hand stands one who is my Saviour.’ We’ll just sing the whole hymn.

I am not skilled to understand

what God has willed, what God has planned;

I only know that at his right hand

Stands One who is my Saviour!

I take him at his word indeed:

“Christ died to save me” this I read;

For in my heart I find a need

Of him to be my Saviour!

That he should leave his place on high

And come for sinful man to die,

You count it strange? So once did I,

before I knew my Saviour!

And oh, that he fulfilled may see

The travail of his soul in me,

And with his work contented be,

As I with my dear Saviour!

Yea, living, dying, let me bring

My strength, my solace from this spring;

That he who lives to be my King

Once died to be my Saviour.

LINK TO COMPLETE SEMINAR PLAYLIST ON THE INTERNET ARCHIVE:

https://archive.org/details/HarryKingTrack2/Harry+King+-+track+1.mp3

An illustrated A4 book giving relevant Bible references for each section of the above chart, is available on Amazon here: https://mybook.to/PropheticChart