Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text for today is John 3:12-21. John 3:12-21. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have 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. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God.

And this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen that they have been done in God.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful words that we read from your scriptures today. We pray that you would do wonderful things in our hearts through your Spirit. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I’d like to talk today about body piercings, drugs, drunkenness, sexual immorality, the past, present, and the future. And hopefully I have your attention.

This text is of course the most well-known text in the entire scriptures—or contains it—John 3:16. And we want to remember as we read these words we just read that this is not a section of scripture that does not have a context. The context is a discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus. And Jesus is bringing Nicodemus to repentance. And every Lord’s day as Jesus comes to be with us with his word, he desires, I think, to cause us as well to repent of our sins and to believe the love of the Father.

One of the most difficult things—I think the most difficult thing in the Christian faith at times, at least in my life—is to believe the love of the Father. We know who we are and because we know who we are, it is difficult to believe that God loves us. But that’s what’s at the center of this text.

Now, a lot of the young people were gone last week at the rafting trip. And so I wanted to review where we’re at—we’re talking about Nicodemus, Jesus’s dialogue with him. In the context of that, Jesus declares that this new creation is what a person has to be part of to see the kingdom of God. We are our words, our attitudes toward one another. And what we do is how this new creation works itself through. God has seen fit for his spirit to work through the words of men talking to other men, women talking to women, people talking to people to advance the kingdom. That’s how it works. We are that wind that blows wherever it will. So is everyone that’s born of God.

And last week we talked about our tongues in the context of the wisdom that’s from above. And I want to use today’s text and meditate a little bit on the seven days of creation once more—which we did briefly at the end of last week—with a consideration of this wisdom from above.

This wisdom from above—James 3:17 tells us—is the motivation. It is the Spirit of God that brings this wisdom of Christ to us. So what is it like? What is it characterized by? It’s characterized by seven things.

Now children, for your outline today, I did something way different. You just have a table to fill in. And there’s numbers 1 through 7. There’s a table, or there’s a column rather, where you write in what God created on those days. Then you’ll write in these characteristics from James 3:17 of what wisdom is. And then we’ll write in some words that remind us of the flow of the text in John 3:12-21.

And we read last week that the wisdom from above is first pure. It’s pure. So it has this devotion, commitment to holiness. There’s a purity and that seems to relate to the first day of creation when God brings forth light.

So in the beginning, first day of creation, God creates a pure, shining brilliance of light. And so the wisdom from above has that purity, that brightness to it. And so the beginning of our wisdom—this fear of the Lord—produces a desire for purity and holiness in the center of our being.

Now that purity moves to a consideration of what we try to attain with the wisdom God gives us. What are we trying to affect with our speech—excuse me, with our speech one to the other? That’s the context for this wisdom. And what we’re trying to attain through these things, or what God is in the process of bringing about, is peace.

The wisdom from above is first pure and then peaceable. So peaceable is the second attribute of wisdom in James 3:17. And the orderliness of the world is reflected in the context of God’s second day of creation. He creates an order to things, a firmament with waters above and waters below. And eventually that’ll picture the fallenness of the waters below and the need for heavenly water to come from above to create right order again.

And so this—what we should do with our speech is seek orderliness, seek God’s peace. And I would ask you who were here last week or who review this Wednesday: Have our lives been attempted to be lives of purity and holiness before God? And have we been very careful in our speech to produce peace—God’s order, not the absence of conflict, but the blessing of right relationship man to man?

And we say, “Well, okay, I know I spoke hypocritically. I lied to this person. I chewed this person out unjustly, or maybe not correctly, but still I was trying to get peace.” But then the third characteristic is that the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceful. Then what? It is gentle. It is kind. It tries to entreat people. It tries to be forbearing when difficult things come along. It doesn’t move to harshness.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the purity of God. The light of God come down from heaven. In him was life and his life was the light of men. He is that purity to bring about right order. And he does it through his incarnation, his work on the cross. In every Lord’s day, he comes to us today to make us like him.

Book of Revelation. He says, “This is what I’m like. You need me. I’m going to give you me.” And the picture of all that is right here at the table. Jesus is gentle. He is merciful. He is broken. He is the hardest. He has words completely fit to the occasion. He’s not a liar. He’s not a hypocrite. His speech is not characterized by any semblance of profanity the way our speech too often is.

No, Jesus is that gentleness. And you know, we could stop right there. In sequences of seven, the first three always sort of link together.

What happened on the third day of creation? Kids, on your outline, under the third day of creation, you got light for day number one, firmament for day number two—firm, f-i-r-m-a-m-e-n-t. And then third, you’ve got what I want you to write in, and I don’t know, it’s not good, but “first fruits”—because on the third day of creation, God causes certain plants to grow up, not all plants, wheat crops basically, and fruit trees. So, a picture of the communion elements on that first day, and all the rest of vegetation comes along later, different kinds of plants and stuff. So the first fruits of plants.

Well, Jesus Christ was raised up on that third day. He is that gentleness. Gentle is the third characteristic from James 3:17. And Jesus comes to affect peace by his gentleness and his meekness of dying on the cross for sinners. And that’s really—you can leave it at that.

The first three sum up what wisdom is like, what the process of history is. It is pure, peaceable, and then gentle. But then we have a little further description, I think, an unfolding of what that gentleness is comprised of.

When people entreat us, when people come to us and say, you know, I’ve got a concern with something you’ve done, or you know, I don’t understand why you’re doing this, that, or the other thing. Are we going to get defensive and get rough? And are we going to run away and hide? Are we going to come up with, you know, eight million justifications for our sin? Or are we going to be easily entreated by people who come to us? Are we going to say, “Oh, well, let me pray about that. Think about it.” You know, or maybe you recognize right away you’ve done something wrong. Or maybe you understand that what you did was right. But in any event, you want to be easily entreated. That’s an implication of gentleness.

When people come to you, you’re to be ready to obey. Quick to obey. You know, I remember years ago—you’ve heard me say this before. I went to Howard L.’s church back in Illinois, and the pastor said that, you know, he tells his kids sometimes, and these are teenagers: don’t make me be a Philadelphia lawyer with you. When I bring to you a problem about something you’ve done, don’t, you know, talk about the specific words I use and how you can find a little loophole around them. You know, don’t make me be a Philadelphia lawyer where every word, every “is” has to be what “is” as is commonly understood.

You know what I’m getting at, he says to his kids. And you know, nine times out of ten, you young people, you know what we’re getting at when we speak to you, even if our words are not as accurate as they maybe should be. And to be easily entreated is to go for the sense of what the person is bringing to you and not defend yourself by, you know, pointing out grammatical problems with his construction.

And no, I wasn’t really quite that. I was this. Deal with the issue. Easily entreated. The word means quick to obey. Quick to obey. And if you guys are quick to obey, then you’re going to want people to tell you when you might not be obeying easily and treat it as an aspect of gentleness.

And another aspect of gentleness is the fifth characteristic: full of mercies and good fruits. You’re going to want to do things to help people. I asked last week, how many good deeds did you do for people the week before? And I’ll ask you, and I said, how many you going to do this week? And I’ll ask you again today, what good deeds did you do this last week? You know, did you see somebody who was in trouble because of what they did and pity them and try to help them? That’s what the word means, mercy here.

So, we’re to be full of it. As the earth teemed with the birds and fishes on day five, our conduct is to teem. We’re supposed to be full of good deeds for one another, merciful acts toward one another.

Four on the day of creation list is sun, moon, and stars. Four in James is easily entreated. Easily entreated—because a ruler, the sun, the moon, and the stars. This is why you start with three and four starts the cycle all over again. We have at light, firmament, first fruits, and we’re back to light. Sun, moon, and stars are reflections of light. They’re more aspects of light.

So, you see, it kind of starts over again. Well, the sun, moon, and stars represent the glory of God, but it also represents the glory of the man that he has called to rule in the context of the world. That’s you. Remember, we’re lights—lights in the midst of a dark world. We’re to be lights. And as authorities in the world, we’re to be easily entreated by those in the context of our world. And then we’re to have these fullness of good deeds.

And then there’s two negative characteristics that kind of flesh it out too. Gentleness—gentleness being meek before God and man—means being easily entreated when people are coming to us with problems. And it means being gracious as we’re trying to deal with people and help them in their problems. Two aspects of gentleness.

But gentleness is also not partial. It doesn’t split people up. It brings people together. It isn’t double-minded. It doesn’t, you know, create clicks in the context of a group that are hard to break into and people feel outside. No, it’s inclusive. It wants, you know, it doesn’t show partiality. It doesn’t treat one son or daughter different because you like them better than another son or daughter that you don’t even not like as well, or a friend you don’t like as well.

You know, the standards are the same, one law for all. And it isn’t hypocritical.

Now, see, I know what goes on, you know, in our lives. I know a lot of things about a lot of people here. And I know my life and I know that we didn’t do so well this last week. Many of you, I know some of you absolutely failed to use your tongues correctly. That’s the context.

What were the two areas of the tongue that James 3 and 4 talk about? What are the two bad things we do with our tongues? Curse, right? Curse man. And secondly, slander our fellow man.

Some of you cursed this week. Holiness, purity. If anyone in this church hears anybody else in this church uttering profanity, you should pray for them, exhort them, and encourage them to righteousness. And I’m included in that list.

And you young people, you want to stay as far away as possible. You want to be pure in your speech, right? Wise dispensers of grace with your speech. You do not want to get close to profanity. And when your other young people in the context of the church exhort you to clean up your speech, be easily entreated about that and say, “Yeah, you’re right. I need to be more gracious with my speech.” Don’t make fun of them. Don’t mock him. I know this stuff goes on here. We need to have it stopped.

We need to be people that desire a purity and a holiness before God. That’s reflected in our speech. And don’t speak evil of one another. Don’t slander each other. And don’t be hypocritical in your speech. Don’t be blown up with anger.

You know, I’m not thinking of any one person as I say this. If you think I am, please put it aside. But I know that in our day and age, venting is something that is commonly done. And in the context of the Christian community, people think it’s okay to vent, say all kinds of weird, nasty, you know, not nice, not gentle, not good speech. It is not okay to do that. It’s a sin against these requirements of wisdom—that we be gentle, easily entreated, full of mercies.

Our speech reflects our hard attitude.

Now, you see, you can walk away from all these things and say, “Well, I sure feel bad. I sure feel like a sinner.” But if we understand the flow of the creation week in the text for today, we’ll see that at the heart of the entire thing is this incredible, incomprehensible, magnificent love of God for a world that has gone to hell in a hand basket, that has gone terribly wicked.

That’s the world Jesus came to. The people of God put him to death. The Romans wanted to kill him. All of his disciples left. That’s the world. The world of man that God so loved that he sent his son to die for their sins. Okay?

What I’m saying is that if all we go away from every Lord’s day is a list of requirements that we fail to meet, and if it stops there, then we’re going to cycle down. But if we hear that through all of that, with a recognition of how awful we are with our tongues so frequently, how absent we are of good deeds and mercies toward one another, and in spite of all of that stuff, the Lord God is loving us, and he says today that Jesus comes as the gentle one of all time, of the meek one of all time, and he comes to give you that attribute.

He comes to give you his proper speech. He comes to give you an easily entreated attitude before others. He comes to give you the ability to minister to other people and a desire in our heart to do it. Then we’ll see we’ve got something to praise God and worship him for. And that’s just what this text tells us.

Let’s review this text thinking about these seven days of creation and how they sort of fit. Okay, kids, finish your list off. You got light, firmament, first fruits is day number three, sun, moon, and stars day number four, birds and fish day number five, six animals and men and seven is rest. He had most of those but birds and fish is five, animals and men is six, rest is seven.

And then these character qualities from James: Pure—like God’s light is pure. Peaceable—creating order in God’s order and blessing in the context of the world. Third is gentle, or to be gentle toward each other. Fourth, easily entreated. Big word for little kids. E-N-T-R-E-A-T-E-D. Entreated. Mom and dad come with you, come to you. Brother or sister comes to you. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Be easily entreated. Listen. Maybe you’re doing something wrong.

Fifth, full of mercies and good fruits. Full of mercy, good fruits. This is the wisdom from above. This is the new creation. This is the waters from above brought to us by the work of the Savior through the power of the Holy Spirit to change us, to change us at the core of our being.

Sixth is not partial. We don’t divide things again. We don’t divide. We try to bring peace and order. The seventh rather is not two-faced. Two-faced—you don’t come to church and pretend one thing and then go home and, you know, act like a devil or a son of a devil. Not hypocritical. Don’t smile to my face if you’re angry with me. Okay? Don’t do that. Talk to me about whatever problem you might have with me. Talk to other people. Don’t lie against the truth by being hypocritical in your approach to Christianity or to God’s image bearers in the context of the world.

Now, let’s look at John chapter 3 and go quickly through these seven elements. Verse 12, and I’ve just sort of set them up as meditations on the creation week.

Heavenly things will be declared. Verse 12: “If I’ve told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”

Jesus is going to bring some teaching here. Now, we’re told that so far he’s dealt with earthly things. Now, he’s going to deal with something that is heavenly, that comes from the sphere of heaven, that comes from those waters above, that comes from the light of God’s throne room. That purity is going to come down now in the instruction of our Savior that’s going to change Nicodemus and move him along the path toward repentance. He’s going to tell him heavenly things—heavenly things will be revealed as the purity of the Lord Jesus Christ in his word shines into the mess of Nicodemus’s life.

Secondly, verse 13. Now, so on your chart, children, you can write up there, “Heavenly things” in the third column on the right, top box. Heavenly things. Verse 12, heavenly things are going to be revealed.

How are they going to be revealed? Verse 13 tells us: “No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the son of man who is in heaven.”

You’ll notice the three mentions of heaven there. Heaven, heaven, heaven. A perfect threeness there again of what is going on.

What does this verse mean? Well, what it means is if you’re going to know heavenly things, you have to get them from somebody who’s been there. And Jesus Christ says that nobody in the history of the world has ascended to heaven, but I’m the one who has come from that place. And I’m going to bring you this heavenly wisdom. I’m the only one who can really do that because I’m the only one that’s been there. Okay, that’s what he’s saying.

No one else has ascended to heaven. I’ve come down from heaven, so I have heavenly knowledge. And in point of fact, he says, “The son of man, me, the second Adam, I am in heaven.” Now, son of man who is in heaven.

We don’t want to forget Jesus Christ is God. He’s omnipresent, right? He’s present in the context of the incarnation, but he’s also present at this point when he’s speaking to Nicodemus in heaven. He is the omnipresent triune God who is still just as much God in the incarnation. And he says that his citizenship, his place of residence is still in heaven.

So Jesus Christ is this mediator. And so you know as you think about the creation week, you’ve got this firmament with waters above and waters below. It pictures the great glory of Jesus Christ who will come to mediate heaven to earth. He’s the one with the ascension and descension and he tells Nathaniel, you’re going to see angels ascending and descending on the son of man. And he’s the mediator between heaven and earth in this ascension and descension. He’s going to bring heavenly things. And he is the only mediator between heaven and earth, okay? Between God and man. He is the bridge and he is the firmament.

The firmament represents firmament is the glory of God in the creation. God’s glory is portrayed in the heavens. And Jesus is this glory of God that comes to bring a heavenly knowledge to God’s people in the context of his teaching in his incarnation.

Remember we read in John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father, he has declared him.” No one’s been to heaven to see God. Jesus is in the bosom of the father. He has come to bring heavenly knowledge. That tells us right away, if we remember verse 18, what that heavenly knowledge is. It’s knowledge not of an abstract place called heaven, which we don’t have a lot of knowledge of. But Jesus comes to bring knowledge of the Father. He is the only begotten, he who is in the bosom of the father. He is executing him. He’s declaring him. He’s proclaiming him and he’s proclaiming him to us.

He’s been there. He has intimate relationship with the Father and he comes to bring us that knowledge. He’s the mediator. He’s the firmament bringing the knowledge of the waters above, as it were, to earth.

John 6:46: “Not that anyone has seen the father except he who is from God, he has seen the father.” And so Jesus is going to reveal this heavenly knowledge because he is the only mediator from heaven.

Now this third section—verse 14 and 15—I think now we actually get to the content. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Well, now we’re getting it. Now we’re into the heavenly knowledge and the essence of the gospel is portrayed for us in these two verses. And the essence of this heavenly knowledge is that God has provided a way of salvation for people that will flow out of a condition that necessarily necessitates this happening. What do I mean?

“Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Why must the son of man be lifted up? He tells us in verse 16: He must be lifted up. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” And then he repeats what he just said: “that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Here is the heavenly truth that Jesus reveals in this last half of the dialogue and discussion with Nicodemus. The essence of the heavenly truth is that God so loves the fallen state of man and his humanity that he redeems them. God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten son to affect salvation and to affect salvation in a way that clearly communicates the nature of God as well as the nature of those who have been redeemed by God.

It is done in such a way—Jesus says in verses 14 and 15—it is done in such a way that it clearly demonstrates that the way to the crown is by means of the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ is lifted up. The text tells us, and throughout the New Testament, the same phrase is used in two different ways of Jesus. One is to be lifted up on the cross, and clearly that’s pictured here. The incident in Numbers is being talked about.

Let’s talk about that a little bit. They were on the edge of the promised land. This was the last, as I understand it, the last miracle in the context of Moses’ ministry to the people of God in the wilderness. Now, that is significant, I think, in terms of what Jesus is telling us here. He just doesn’t pick some abstract, isolated incident from the Old Testament. He picks one that is at the cusp. It’s on the verge of entering into the promised land, the final one.

And what happened was the people fell to grumbling and, you know, they were idolatrous and complaining and God rightfully judged them and sent his wrath amongst them by means of fiery serpents who would go and bite people. And once they were bitten they would get sick and die. And so these serpents are all over the place, you know, and people are falling down dying and stuff. And Moses talks to God and God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, lift it up, and whoever looks at that serpent will be healed. They won’t die.

See, there’s no work involved on their part. It’s not something they do that’s going to save them. It’s the grace of God being pictured as coming through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross. You can’t be healed by trying to be pure or more peaceable, more gentle, more long-suffering, more easily entreated. None of that works.

The way to be saved, as the incident in Numbers shows, is to simply trust and believe that God has provided the means of salvation outside of ourselves that will have an effect inside of ourselves. The salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross, dying for the snakes that we all are.

Adam, you know, after his fall became remade into the image of the serpent and Jesus addresses the Pharisees as sons of vipers. We image the serpent now in our fallen humanity. And that serpent, fallen humanity state, Jesus takes upon himself on the cross that we would be delivered from it, that we would be healed, that we would be brought to salvation, that we wouldn’t be condemned, that we wouldn’t perish.

Apart from saving faith in the work of Jesus Christ on that cross, making full atonement for the sins of his people, apart from that, you are dead in trespasses and sins. Your baptism will not help you. Your membership of the church will not help you. Nicodemus was circumcised. He was a good church attender. He was a teacher in the church. None of it counts for anything if there is not faith in the work of the son of man.

And Jesus here begins to drive that home to Nicodemus. Because with this word, verse by verse, he begins to warn Nicodemus of his nasty state of affairs. Not only can he not see the kingdom of heaven—he’s told him that. But now he tells him that unless he has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ pictured by the faith of those people looking at the bronze serpent, unless he has that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in belief, that he’s going to perish. That whosoever believes in him should not perish but have this quality of everlasting life.

So Jesus is that third day, first fruits, lifted up on the cross to affect new humanity of men. He’s the firstborn of all the rest, right? He’s the beginning. He then ascends to heaven after his work. He then begins to take men into heaven so they can see what’s there. He takes us to our eternal home. He’s the first fruits, third day.

And here it’s pictured on the third day into Jesus Christ that third day truth is pictured in Jesus being lifted up, crucified for sinners.

So on your charts, young people, at the beginning in John 3:12-21, you got “heavenly things.” Then you’ve got “Jesus is the firmament.” The second block, he’s the only mediator between man and God. And third, “Jesus saves sinners.” Jesus saves sinners. The Lord Jesus Christ comes that we might be saved.

Now, I mentioned two liftings up—two of these liftings up—and the first way the phrase is used in the New Testament is just that I’ve talked about: the lifting up on the cross. But the other Greek phrase is also used in terms of Jesus being lifted up on high to be ruler over all things on the earth. So the same word, the same phrase is used both of the cross and of the crown.

Remember I said that the heavenly thing here is not just that people are going to be saved, but that people are saved because of who God is. And God is a giving God and a self-sacrificial God who goes to the cross for his people. That’s the heavenly reality. This incomprehensible love of God and this incomprehensible nature of God that is so unlike what we expect him to be. We expect God to demand things from us and instead God gives things to us, right?

And it is so unlike the nature of God. This is the heavenly truth that Nicodemus is going to have a very hard time believing. And in fact, of course, he cannot understand it unless the Spirit of God moves in him and he becomes a new creature.

So this is the cross and the crown. This is the revelation of the person of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Now that belief that people had in the serpent and the belief that Jesus calls for in verses 14 and 15 is an acceptance of who we are both in our fallen state and in our resurrected state. You’re in the wilderness, snakes are biting, serpents lifted up on a bronze pole and you’re looking at that and you’ll be made well.

What are you looking at? You’re looking at God’s just wrath. You’re saying, “Yeah, it was right that he sent these serpents upon us because we were wicked. And we are going to trust that this same God, this God who justly brings this wrath upon us, is now also going to in his great love for us take that wrath away from us by his work posted on that pole.”

So faith is saying yes and amen to the Lord Jesus Christ. Believing in Christ here is saying yes to his indictment of who we are in Adam. The fact that we are these miserable sinners that we are, snakes of people, and that you know don’t be surprised when that characteristic reappears in the context of your week when you do things wrong. This is who we were in Adam.

But the Lord Jesus Christ has absorbed the wrath of God for us and he now brings us into salvation. This is a repentance unto life that’s being described by way of picture in these people in the wilderness and what Jesus is calling us all to do here in the context of verses 15 and 16.

So Jesus is the first fruits. He is that serpent lifted up. He is the one that rather takes the curse of the serpent upon himself and he’s the one that produces salvation for his people and peace and salvation and the deliverance from wrath for us.

Now I mentioned that these two truths—cross and crown—are talked about and I want to read from John 12:28 and following. Jesus says, “Father glorify your name.”

Then a voice came from heaven saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Therefore the people said that stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, an angel spoke to him. And Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of me, but for your sake.”

Now he’s explaining this glorification that the Father has said he will do. “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out and I, if I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself. This he said signifying by what death he would die.”

So here we see God’s glorification of the son of man being tied explicitly to his being lifted up in the sense of dying on the cross for sinners, drawing all people to himself. And in that very act, Jesus says, “Now is the condemnation of this world.” And this is what our text goes on to speak of as well, which we’ll see in just a couple of minutes.

So three then is that this Jesus has produced this.

Now, what does this mean? This means that if we are to image our Father in heaven, if we’re born again, if we have been brought into the new creation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is who we are. We will suffer the cross that we might attain to the crown. We will not assert rights perpetually over other people. We will humble ourselves before other people to the end of again demonstrating this gentleness and easily entreated nature.

This is the essence of the Christian nature—is to reflect the image of God. And if we’ve got the image of God the Father wrong, that he’s dictatorial, he rules and he rules in an autocratic way that is not centered, has as its center love, then we end up ruling that way ourselves.

And you young people, when you sit around the house, you can’t wait, you men, to get out on your own and do a little bit of commanding yourself. I want to be in charge. I want to do the deal. But what you find out either sooner or later in the context of family life is that it is all about not the J word—justifying your silliness and self-centeredness. It is the S word: sacrifice. That’s what it’s all about.

As a husband, as a father, it’s sacrifice. It’s day after day doing things not because of what you want to do, but doing things for the well-being of your family. It’s not ruling over your children so that they will give you a nice environment to live in. It’s rather ruling over your children that they might indeed exhibit the grace of God in the context of their own home.

And you can get upset by that. And if you young men who are headed toward marriage—you know, I was talking to a guy this last week. He said he thinks one thing that happens with the young men in a church is that you’re under the covenantal headship of your dad and you understand that. And you know that you’re soon headed to becoming a covenantal head in your own family over here. And what you want is a period of time here where you’re just sort of away from covenantal headship and you just martyr time. It’s party time. You just have a good time.

You see, if you do that, you are headed completely the wrong direction. You are at the stage in your life right now where you can learn things from your dad and your mom that’ll so well prepare you for starting your own household that you’ll be miles ahead as opposed to wasting this period of several years in here where you just sort of hang out and don’t know what to do.

You know, Jesus says you’re supposed to be moving self-consciously in the context of the image of the Father and that image of the Father is with still is having a desire to serve the body of Christ. God comes here today. Jesus comes at the behest of the Father to serve us. These great gifts we’ve talked about every Lord’s day. That’s what being a man is: taking responsibility, it’s standing up, it’s not seeking your own pleasure. It’s seeking how you may serve other people.

And if you’re focused on how you may serve other people, what will you do? I mean, what impact does that have on whether you get drunk, take drugs, engage in various body piercings, don’t be careful with your sexual relationships with young women. You know, what does it say about all that stuff? How would any of that have anything to do with this image of God that we are not to reflect as Christians?

We are to be reflecting as Christians being to serve the greater community. What actions are you taking? And what do those actions do relative to your brother and sister in the pew, relative to the reputation of this church, relative to the reputation of your parents, and all of that meaning relative to the reputation of the Lord Jesus Christ and of God the Father who loved you so much that he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for you.

God suffers in that transaction. You know there’s theological stuff at play here. Some people have these ideas of God doesn’t—you know, if all we think of is this is some kind of judicial action of God by which he protected your salvation, we are missing the boat completely. Jesus comes as the revelation of a personal God, the Father. Remember we said this over and over: he doesn’t come to reveal anything but the Father.

And the Father is revealed in point four of this outline—at the center of the way I’ve structured it in this series of meditations. This Father is revealed as loving us and loving us so much, having such wondrous, great, miraculous, awesome, incredible love, that he willingly suffered by giving his only son to die on the cross for us.

Now, we were having a discussion Wednesday night and I told the young people and I told one of my sons this and it is absolutely true: that if I could make a deal with God that by cutting off my arm or my leg—pick whatever you want—if I had that ability to do that and that God would then ensure me that my children, one of my children, you know, loved God and wanted for the will, want for the rest of his life to please him and all that he says and does, I would do that immediately.

And children, every parent in this room, the ones that I know at least, and I know all of them pretty well, they would do the same thing. They would cut limbs off for you. But the Father does more than that. He takes the great object of his love, of which our love for our children is a pale reflection of the Father’s love for the Son. As great as our love as parents is, it is always incomprehensible to me to imagine how much God must love, the Father must love the Son.

And yet he takes that Son and puts him to death on the cross. You see, it’s easier for a dad to die himself. Easier for me to go down than to see one of my kids go down. The Father’s greatness of his love is reflected that he has his child, his beloved Son, the only begotten, beloved of the Father suffer all the pain and torment of hell for you.

This is the center of this. This is the bright shining light that now is reflected in sun, moon, and stars. Pictures of the greatness and the brilliance of God’s light in the middle of the seven days of creation, in the middle of this text, is this wondrous love of God for you. And God does this to affect that attitude in us as well.

Fourth, then in verse 16, the sovereign’s wondrous love is displayed. Children, on your little table there, number four, slot with sun, moon, and stars and easily entreated. God loves the world.

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

Though now, if we stop there with the verse, we don’t really get the full impact because, okay, God sends this deep object of his affection and love to the cross for the world. World. Now the world here is cosmos. Commentators differ on whether it means all of humanity, all of the physical creation. And in a way, it doesn’t matter. The point of the term is comprehensive.

God loves all of this so much that he sends his son to die so that whosoever—now this is a particular term. The world is the large term. The particular term is whosoever, or whoever—that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And now Jesus strikes Nicodemus at the center of his being. Says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life. Nicodemus, what are you going to do? I’m the guy. I’m the reflection. I will die on the cross for the snakes like you. Are you going to believe or not?

And if you do not believe, you will perish. And in fact, he’s going to tell him in a minute, you’re already perished. But if you believe, then you have eternal life. And the question comes to us today as individuals. So, whoever believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. It has universal implications. This…