The Bible Miniature

Tom Shrader walks through John 3:11-21, using Jesus' dialogue with Nicodemus as the backdrop for an extended exposition of John 3:16, which Martin Luther called 'the Bible in miniature.' He traces the verse phrase by phrase — God's great love, His gift of the Son, the nature of saving belief, and the consequence of perishing — drawing a parallel between the bronze serpent lifted up in Numbers 21 and the crucifixion of Christ. The message closes with a direct call to examine whether one's faith is genuine, urging those without assurance to respond in belief rather than remain in the darkness of unaddressed sin.

“For God so loved the world that He gave, and what He gave was His only begotten Son, and He gave that Son to come and to die so that we who believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2003/2004)

Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 42 min

Themes: salvation, faith, God's love, belief, eternal life, sin, the gospel, new birth, seeking assurance of salvation, new believer, doubting faith, spiritually lost, questioning Christianity, young adult, unbeliever, struggling with sin

Scripture: John 3:11-21, John 3:16, John 3:3, John 3:7-8, John 3:9, John 3:10, John 3:13, John 3:14, John 3:17-19, Numbers 21:4-9, Hebrews 1:1-2, 1 John 1:1-3, Ephesians 2:4-5, Ephesians 3, Hebrews 4:12-13, Acts 4:12

Theological Themes: soteriology, justification, regeneration, born again, atonement, substitutionary sacrifice, saving faith, divine love

Full Transcript

Introduction: The Most Famous Verse in the Bible

What we are doing is harmonizing the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — bringing them together. Hopefully, what we end up with is a very full biblical portrait of our Lord. Today, we look at verses 11 through 21 of John chapter 3. I encourage you to go ahead and turn there.

Right away, in the center of this section is a Scripture verse that may be the most familiar of all the Bible verses known to men. Saved, unsaved, pagan, heathen — those who know almost nothing about Scripture at least know this verse. It was, for a while, ubiquitous: football games, golf tournaments, any sporting event, bumper stickers, billboards. James Boyce writes this: "There is hardly a place in the world to which the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone that this verse has not become almost instantaneously known. It is the first verse that translators put into another language. Millions of people have been taught to recite it. It is inscribed on books and buildings. It is reflected in songs."

That verse is John chapter 3, verse 16. It is probably one of the very first verses you learned as a child, and one of the first verses you would memorize as a believer. We are going to take some time this morning to unpack that verse. We are going to spend a good chunk of time there and discover that this very simple and yet profound verse is so rich. These twenty-five words have produced what Luther calls the Bible in miniature. That is what we are going to look at this morning.

Context: Nicodemus and the New Birth

Building up to John chapter 3, verse 16, look at chapter 3, verse 11. Let me remind you of the context and what has taken place here. One of the Pharisees, a man by the name of Nicodemus, has come to Jesus. He says, "You are a teacher, you do these great things," and Jesus makes this pronouncement in verse 3: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God." With that statement, Jesus rocks Nicodemus's world.

Nicodemus said, "How can this be? How can I be born again? How can I climb into my mother's womb a second time?" And Jesus said, no, this is a cleansing that is going to take place — a washing of the Spirit. When He speaks of the Spirit, He says in verse 7, "Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." You see the effects of this wind. You cannot harness it, you cannot explain it, you cannot predict its path, but you cannot deny the effects that you see.

To that, Nicodemus responds — and this is the question now on the table — in verse 9: "How can these things be?" Jesus then takes this dialogue, and it becomes a monologue as He decides to answer this question. There in verse 10, it seems to me He is rebuking Nicodemus in some way. He says, "Wait a minute — you are the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?" You are the expert, and you do not get this? Let me explain it to you. That brings us to where we are this morning in John chapter 3, verses 11 and 12.

The Witness: Who Is the "We"?

"Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?"

These are not the easiest verses in all of Scripture to unpack with certainty, so I will give you what I think is a reasonable interpretation. Do you see a change here? He says, "Truly, truly, I — singular — say to you, we," and there is a shift from the singular to the plural. There is all sorts of speculation about who that "we" is.

Calvin suggests this is the Old Testament prophets. Remember, the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 1, verses 1 and 2: "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son." All of those things — over a period of perhaps 1,800 years, across 39 different books of the Old Testament — come together and produce this teaching. Calvin is suggesting all the prophets speak as one voice.

Luther said the "we" there was John the Baptist — here is what John has said, here is what I have said, we make this declaration to you. Wesley suggests the "we" is the disciples. Remember, John the Gospel writer says in 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 3 — I will read from the New Living Translation: "The one who existed from the beginning is the one we have heard and seen. We saw Him with our own eyes and touched Him with our own hands. He is Jesus Christ, the Word of life. This is the one who is the life from God. He has been shown to us, and we have seen Him, and now we testify and announce to you that He is the one in whom is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then He showed us. We are telling you about what we ourselves have actually seen and actually heard." Some suggest the "we" is the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — all testifying together.

Before we settle on who the "we" refers to, one thing must be certain: what Jesus is saying is that they bear witness of what they have seen, what they know, what they have received. This is not speculation, it is not guessing, they are not wondering. This stands in stark contrast to the tradition — and perhaps even the invention — of those gathered there, specifically the Pharisees, who were moving beyond the law and adding their own traditions to it. He says, no — we are bearing witness of what is true and certain.

The Earthly and Heavenly Things

Testifying to what we know, we can say this with great authority. Jesus says, "I've spoken to you about earthly things and heavenly things," and all sorts of speculation comes cropping out of this. Let me read to you what James Boyce writes, because I think it is helpful here.

Boyce said, "I believe the best explanation and the true solution lies in the realization that in these verses, Jesus was not speaking about the new birth itself, but about the results of the new birth. He was chastising Nicodemus, not for his failure to understand the new birth — who could understand it — but for his failure to believe it on the basis of the observable effects." In other words, Christ's words referred to the verse immediately preceding, verse 8, which says the wind blows. In this case, the earthly things refer to the results of the new birth, which can be observed by anyone through his earthly senses. Heavenly things refer to those things that can only be known by revelation — for example, the nature of the new birth itself, atonement, and so forth.

Boyce says if he were to paraphrase this passage, he would render it this way: Nicodemus answered Jesus saying, "I have never observed the new birth. I can't believe it's possible." And Jesus answered and said, "Do you mean to tell me that you have risen to the point of being a teacher in Israel, and yet you never observed the transformed life of a person who has been touched by My Spirit? I am telling you the truth. All of us are speaking about the things that we know personally and testify to the things we have observed. You don't believe this? If I have testified to transformations in others that can be observed and you do not believe, how could you believe it if I were to tell you about the things that are only known by revelation?"

Those are confusing verses, but in context we seem to be close to the meaning. When Jesus says "we," we could ascribe that legitimately to any number of referents, and certainly what Boyce says applies as well. There has been a change that takes place — something that fits the context of verse 8 and the work of the Spirit.

The Incarnation and the Lifting Up of the Son of Man

Verse 13 says, "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descends from heaven is the Son of Man." He is speaking of Himself. He is speaking of the incarnation — the very truth with which John began this whole Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things came into being by Him." He is speaking of that extraordinary moment in time when God became man and dwelt among us.

Now getting at the heart of this issue, Jesus begins His introduction in verse 14. He said, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him might have eternal life." The instance Jesus refers to here is recorded in the book of Numbers, chapter 21, verses 4 through 9.

God is leading the Jews through the wilderness by way of the Red Sea. Verse 4 of Numbers 21 says, "The people became impatient because of the journey, and the people spoke against God and Moses. Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food, no water, and we loathe this miserable food." And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many of the people of Israel died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned because we have spoken against the Lord. Intercede with the Lord that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people.

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard, and it shall come about that everyone who is bitten, when he looks on it, shall live." Verse 9 says, "And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard, and it came about that if a serpent bit a man, when he looked upon the serpent, he lived."

The Picture of the Cross

Now Jesus is connecting that event with His own crucifixion. He is saying that event is a picture of what is to come. What is fascinating is that in that instance, when those people were bitten, God does not ask them to do anything. He does not say, "Hurry up and make some sort of a vaccine" — which would have been very appealing to them, to be able to do something, to take some action, to encounter the problem on their own terms. He does not say, "Do the best you can. Resolve this through self-reformation. Go purchase something that will fix this." God does not abandon them, but He provides the only solution. It is His provision entirely. It is totally of Him. It is beyond human understanding, beyond human reasoning, beyond human ability.

What Jesus is doing is connecting that incident, recorded in Numbers 21, with His own death. He said, "So it is going to be with the Son of Man. When the Son of Man is lifted up, when the Son of Man is crucified, you are going to see the very same thing." And whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.

The Meaning of Eternal Life

That is all by way of introduction. Jesus introduces this idea of eternal life. There are ten references to eternal life in John's Gospel, and the same word is also translated as "everlasting life" eight other times. In the entire New Testament, it is referred to fifty times.

When we talk about eternal life, we need to understand that there are two aspects to it: quantity and quality. If you walk up to somebody and ask, "Do you have eternal life?" — no matter who that person is — the answer is yes. That is the quantity of it. We all have eternal life. The question Jesus is striking at is: what kind of eternal life? Where will you spend that eternal life? Will you spend it in heaven, united with your Lord, your Savior, your Master forever? Or will you spend it in hell? And it is this question that He now introduces.

God Loves

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. As I said earlier, Luther referred to this as the Bible in miniature. As I sat and studied the verse and thought about the verse and broke it apart, I came up with eight points that we can pull from it.

Here is the first one: God loves. "For God so loved." That word "so" speaks of the intensity, the greatness, the magnitude. But the emphasis here is His love. God is a God of love.

Some have taken that truth — that God is a God of love — and allowed it to obliterate everything else. When we deal with the whole idea of heaven and hell, somebody comes along and says, and you've heard it: "A God of love wouldn't send anyone to hell for all eternity." What they've done is taken the attribute of God's love and allowed it to obliterate all other attributes. But you also have to deal with God's justice, God's wrath, God's anger, and God's judgment.

In Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5, Paul writes: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive with Christ — by grace you have been saved." A little later, in chapter 3, Paul prays that we would get this, that we would understand it. He says: "I pray that you would be able to comprehend with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height, the depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you will be filled up to all the fullness of God."

It is something we are never going to fully comprehend. It is God's infinite love. There is a phrase Paul uses in Ephesians 2:4 — "His great love." That word "great" is one we bandy around all the time. We had a great meal. It was a great game. How are you doing? Great. But when applied to God's love, it speaks of a largeness and a greatness beyond anything we can truly comprehend.

God Gives

For God so loved the world — and the idea of "the world" would have upset Nicodemus' understanding of things. He thought God had a special affection for the Jews and didn't really care about anyone else. But God has a love for all races, all peoples, all places, all genders, all ages. God is a God of love, and that love is an active love.

"For God so loved the world, He gave." How do you know that God is a God of love? He gives. I've sat in my office with a husband and wife there because of some sort of crisis in their relationship. I'll say, "Would you explain to me what you think?" She says, "I don't think he loves me." I'll say to him, "Do you love her?" He says, "Yes, I do love her." And then she will say, "He says he loves me, but he doesn't show it."

Because if you really love something, you show it. If you love the Diamondbacks, you have a bumper sticker on your car. If you love ice cream, you eat ice cream. If you love someone, there will be a visible manifestation of that love. For God so loved with this love beyond all comprehension — with this great love — and so He gave. He demonstrated His love. It was visible. It was tangible.

To this day, when we look at the cross, it communicates to those who are in the know that this instrument of torture was turned into an instrument of love. If you went back 2,000 years ago, people did not have crosses on their walls. They didn't wear chains with a cross on them. The cross was an instrument of death. It would be like walking around with a noose, or an electric chair, or a guillotine on a chain — it simply never occurred to anyone to do it. It was an instrument of horror and terror. It was an awful, abominable way to die.

But God, in one moment, took that picture of agony and suffering and turned it into a great picture of love. God said, "I love you," and then He proved it. He climbed up on that cross.

Man Is in Grave Danger

The verse tells us something else. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish." Apparently, man is in grave danger. When God looks at man, He sees something differently than what we see.

Let me read what Ray Stedman writes: "When God looks at our world, He sees what we often ignore. He sees the hurt in people's lives and the shame that fills their hearts and the misery they are going through. He sees drug-wrecked lives, those who are bored and feeling the meaninglessness of life. He sees murder, violence, hatred, bitterness, and anger. He sees greed, opposition, child abuse, famine, death, tears, and depressions of every kind. But He sees more. He sees that all this anguish of life is a direct result of the attempts we are making to find fulfillment for ourselves." In other words, the agony we suffer is a consequence of our own striving apart from God.

God's Compassion Toward a Helpless Humanity

The agony we feel results from the choices we make to pursue fame, riches, power, and fulfillment. It comes from the desire we feel to make our own way, to be our own man, to use others to advance our own purposes. God sees that we are the cause of the agony we feel, but His reaction to that is not one of anger or hatred or ruthless justice. According to this wonderful verse, God's reaction is compassion. He feels sorry for us. He took pity on us.

His love moves out to the whole world — not just to the Jew, or the white people, or the rich people, or whoever. This verse flings its arms around the people of all continents, all islands of the sea, all colors and backgrounds and stages of life. God's love and compassion goes out to all. This is what this verse declares: "For God so loved the world."

Man is in danger, and man cannot help himself. God must provide the remedy, just as those in the nation of Israel could do nothing once they were bitten by the serpent. There was nothing they could do, no remedy they could provide, no action they could perform. Man is in that same situation — utterly helpless and hopeless.

The Remedy: Believing in Him

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes..." There is the remedy — to believe. That word, to believe, is also translated with the idea of to have faith. Faith or belief: we saw it three times in chapter 1, three times in chapter 2, seven times in this chapter, and ninety-eight times throughout the Gospel's twenty-one chapters. Remember why John says he is writing? "I'm writing these things, I've selected these things, that you might believe." John keeps that message in front of you again and again. Ninety-eight times the word appears in the Gospel of John, as compared to eighteen times in the Gospel of Mark and only fifty-five times in the book of Romans.

The idea is to believe — not just to believe Jesus existed, not just to believe Jesus lived or that Jesus died, or even just to believe the historical fact that He rose again, but to put my faith and trust in Him. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him..." It is a specific belief. It is an individual belief. It is not a corporate thing. It is not joining a church.

To believe in Him means to believe Jesus is who He said He was, that He has done what He said He would do, and that He will do what He has professed He will do in the future. This belief goes beyond intellectual assent.

The Golf Illustration: Faith That Acts

Consider this illustration. Imagine thinking you are good enough to play golf on the PGA Tour. So you get a group of eight guys together and play a round — nine holes with four of them, nine holes with the other four. You shoot four under with one group and three under with the next. Afterward, you get them in a room, serve them lunch, and say, "Listen, I want to go play on the PGA Tour. Do you think I'm good enough?" And those eight guys say, "You are, my friend. You're good enough to play on the PGA Tour."

Now, to actually go out and play on the PGA Tour, you need financial support. You turn to those same eight men and say, "You all said I'm good enough. You all have plenty of financial resources. I need you to write me a check to sponsor me." There is a belief that says, "Yeah, I think he can do it," and then there is — if you will pardon the pun — putting your money where your mouth is.

That is what this belief is. It is not merely mental assent. It is a trusting belief, and it is a specific belief: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him."

A Belief That Is Exclusive

We need to be very clear about this, in this world, at this time, because you meet people all the time who say, "I have faith. I believe. I just believe a little bit differently than you." Or they may say, in a patronizing way, "I'm glad you found something that works for you, but I believe something differently." Have you had those discussions? With your friends, your relatives, your neighbors, a spouse, a son, a daughter, a co-worker? Those discussions happen all the time.

This Bible verse is very clear: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, but have eternal life." And apparently what this verse is saying is that if I do not believe in Him, I will perish. You may be a very religious person or a very spiritual person. You may be very sincere in what you believe, and with all the love that can be mustered, the point must be made — you can be sincerely wrong. And your argument is not with me. Your argument is with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Alarming and Comforting

That is why this truth can be summarized as at the same time alarming and comforting. It should be alarming. There should be some sitting here saying, "I don't really believe this. I'm not sure I'm really in that camp." And if what is being said is true — and it is — then the warning is this: you will have a miserable life here. Not a circumstantial misery, but you will never find meaning or purpose in life. Your life will always be empty. There will never be enough. And then you will die and spend eternity in hell. That is very alarming.

On the other side of this is great comfort. There is a group of people who have come to that point in their life when they acknowledge who Jesus is.

Have You Believed?

If you look at that verse again, these are people who have put their faith, who have believed. If you are someone here today who knows Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have come to that point in your life where you understand who Jesus is and you have responded. There has been not just mental assent, but your life has been invested and committed to that. How do we know? There has been a changed life.

It is unexplainable, because you have tried again and again to stop this and stop that, and all of a sudden you are alive and your life is different and your actions have changed. You have seen people who were dead, and now they are alive. You have seen marriages that were dead, where the husband and the wife hated one another, and now they love one another. What happened there? You cannot explain it. It is like the wind blowing. I can give you the explanation: the Holy Spirit invaded, the Holy Spirit changed the life.

A Plea to Respond

I want to make sure we cover the full balance of this, but I do not want to go any further without asking a couple of critical questions — and you can anticipate what they would be. Do you believe this? Have you come to the point in your life where you have acknowledged Jesus Christ for who He is and what He has done?

Take a hard look at your life. First, I want to speak to an easy group of people — those of you who did not take communion, who simply say no. Can I plead with you to respond? This is not a time to be thinking about it. It is not a time to be praying about it. It is a time to be responding. Whosoever believes — it is a time to be believing. It is a time to come, a time to respond to that truth, a time to come and talk to the men and women who will be at the front of the worship center after the service. This is an issue that needs to be settled. It needs to be settled today. It needs to be settled now.

A Word to Those Who Think They Are Christians

Let me also speak to some of you who think you are Christians but are not. We have baptism tonight — three or four baptisms. Frequently, when people come to be baptized, they will say something like this: "When I came to East Valley Bible Church, I thought I was a Christian, but I realized I wasn't." We hear that a lot. We may also hear it in a different form — someone who says, "I asked Jesus into my heart at a camp when I was a student, but nothing really happened for decades after. I guess it lay dormant." No, it did not lie dormant. It was dead. You never believed. But all of a sudden your life has changed. What changed? Your belief became real.

I am asking those of you — and this is the hardest group to speak to — those of you who think you are Christians, to take this mirror, this Word, and hold it up and look into it intently to see if, in fact, you are His at all. Do you really know Him? Do you believe this doctrinal truth, and does your life reflect it? Is there life change? When people look at you, do they see a person who has been truly converted?

This is a serious issue. It is the most serious issue we have to deal with. You individually — it is the most serious issue you individually have to deal with. It determines not just heaven or hell, but it determines your life here.

Tired of Trying on Your Own

Are you not exhausted? Are you not tired of trying to do this on your own? It is a killer, is it not? It just wears you out. It wore me dry, and I mean that. I was in a church — going and doing and not doing and trying and failing — and I kept saying, "I am never going to get there. I am never going to be good enough."

It was based on an idea that somehow — and I never did exactly figure this out — God had a kind of prototype of a magnificent computer, and He was able to look at every incident in my life. The good things He would log on the asset side, and the bad things on the liability side. About the middle of my sophomore year of college, I stopped and did my own inventory, and the liability side was so much larger than the asset side. I said, "There is no way. Why even try?" I gave up.

And then I did something foolish. I decided to see how high I could get that liability pile. I went after it. That pile got higher and higher and higher. Then one day, in the midst of a moment where I could not take it anymore, I walked into Phoenix Country Club and heard Larry Wright share the gospel. When he shared the gospel, he said there is no religion, there is no action, there is nothing you can do but believe.

I remember having breakfast with him on a Tuesday — we had first met on a Thursday — and saying, "Run this by me one more time. All I have to do is believe? That is it?" He said, "That is what the Bible says. 'God so loved the world, whoever believes in Him won't perish but have eternal life.'" I could not comprehend it, because that does not fit in your thinking or mine, does it? We want to do something. We want to contribute something.

The Remedy Requires Nothing but Belief

That is why I made the attempt at the beginning to talk about the serpents biting the people in the wilderness. They wanted to do something. They would have rather heard: make a vaccine, say a prayer, do something. But there was nothing they could do. God provided the remedy and the solution, and if you accepted His solution, you lived. If you rejected it, you died.

It is the same thing here. If you believe Jesus is who He said He was and you respond to that gospel message, you live. If you reject it, you die. If you believe it, you will have a life beyond anything you could ever imagine. If you reject it, your life will be miserable. If you believe that heaven is where you are headed, that you are here for just a few short years and then you move on and spend all eternity with Him in heaven — if you reject that

The Stakes Are Eternal

If you live here for a few short years and then you are separated from Him forever, consider it this way: for those of us who are Christians, this earth is as close to hell as we are ever going to get. For those who are not Christians, this is as close to heaven as you are ever going to get. I don't know how to make it any bigger. I don't know how to say it any more clearly. The stakes are huge.

Belief and Judgment

So what do you do? How do you respond? Let me close this verse out, because as we look at it, it starts to build and it answers a question. Verse 17: "For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe in Him has already been judged." Do you see that phrase again? Believe. Believe, believe, believe. If you believe in Him, you are not judged, you are not condemned. If you do not believe in Him, you will be judged.

This is a fascinating thought. Who wouldn't respond to this? Why would you not respond to this? Perhaps there is some sort of delusion — you manufacture the idea that maybe it's not quite that simple, or that there is another way. But the Scripture answers this directly.

Loving Darkness Rather Than Light

"And this is the judgment, verse 19, that the light has come into the world." John uses the word "light" five times in these three verses. "And men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil." In Scripture, this imagery of darkness is always a picture of evil. "Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds would be exposed."

Why won't you come? Here is why: because you would rather stay in the dark. You love your sin more than you love God. You don't want your deeds exposed for what they really are — even your religious deeds.

The author of Hebrews writes this in chapter 4, verses 12 and 13: "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and the marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him."

No Place Left to Hide

I spent some time in my previous life in bars — and I don't mean casual restaurants. Real bars. One thing you find almost universally in all of them is very little light. We love to do what we do there in the dark. I stopped to get gas downtown the other day, and pulling out at the stop sign, right there was an adult bookstore. It looked like every other adult bookstore I have ever seen — not a window in the place. Even the glass doors had covering on them. We want to be in the dark. We want to hide.

But here is the deal: you have been caught. There is no more hiding. You may have fooled your friends. You may have fooled your family. You may have fooled your co-workers. You may have fooled me. You may even in some way have deluded yourself. But you cannot fool Him. That is the point. So give up. Quit. Throw in the towel. Don't try any longer.

Salvation in No One Else

For God so loved the world. He so loved the world that He gave — and what He gave was His only begotten Son. He gave that Son to come and to die, so that those who believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life, everlasting life. Peter says this in Acts 4:12: "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we may be saved."

What strikes me in all of this is the exclusive nature of this salvation. These verses are very narrow, aren't they? They are very restrictive. They say this: either you believe and you have life, or you don't and you perish. Either you come and believe in His name, in which case you have eternal life, or if you don't, you perish.

A Call to Genuine Belief

So I ask you: do you believe? Do you know who Jesus really is? Have you come to that point in your life where you acknowledge your sin and have placed your faith and trust in Him — where you believe in His name? How do we know if you have? Because your life will change. If you are someone who said five years ago at a service, or at a crusade, or at a breakfast, or at a camp, "I believe Jesus is who He said He was," and for five years there has been no difference, then you have no biblical assurance at all of your salvation.

Maybe you are here today and you are simply weary and tired. Religion has sapped the joy and the pleasure out of life. You don't need religion — you need Christ. I really ask you to take a hard look at yourself. Even those of you who would say you are Christians, even those who took communion today — stop and take an inventory. Are you truly His? If not, now is not a time to be embarrassed by that. Now is the time to run to the cross and to repent.

For those of you who would acknowledge you are not a Christian, I plead with you today to believe — to believe the gospel, to believe that Jesus is who He said He was, to believe the Bible in miniature: that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and that if you will believe in Him, you will not perish but will have everlasting, eternal life — not just quantity, but quality.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this truth. I pray especially this morning for those who are here for whom this rattles their cage — their thought, their impulse to try to do something to make You happy, something —

Closing Prayer

To please You. And You've exposed their thoughts for what they really are — vain, prideful attempts to do what only You can do, and that is pay the price for their sin. Father, I pray this morning that You would put a sense of urgency in their heart. This is not a time to think about this, this is not a time to ponder this, this is not a time to pray about this — this is a time to believe and to move.

God, open their eyes, their ears, their heart, and let them believe this truth. Let them take that extraordinary, courageous step to come and to talk to the men and the women that are in the front of the worship center, to speak to the person who invited them.

God, I pray that as a body, as a church, as East Valley Bible Church, You would give us a passion to take this message to our world. The focus of our Christian life would not be just on how much we can learn — oh, that's fine — or how much we know — that's fine — or how much real fellowship we can have — that's fine — but how we evangelize the world that we live in. God, I pray that we would continue to grow in our love for You, and as we grow in that love for You, there is going to be a desire to love people, and to carry the message of hope and reconciliation and love — the gospel.

God, we pray even now that You would prepare hearts to hear this word tomorrow at the workplace, at the family table for dinner, or on the golf course, or the store, or wherever we might be. God, put in our hearts a passion for this truth, and to take it to the world. Father, I pray that You would stir the hearts of the people who are here who might have rejected this truth before now, and open their eyes, and You do a work, and today would be a day of salvation for them. Father, we pray this to You, in Christ's name, amen.

Have a great week.