Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Reading

Intro

I don’t know how many of you got and watch plays or broadway shows, but one thing that you will see is the curtain will drop or slide and that is an indication to you that you are about to enter into a new scene in order to continue the story.

The story has not changed, but the scene is different.

Maybe you are interacting with new characters or you are following along with the plot of one of the side stories, that will inevitably weave itself back into the main story.

What we read here between Jesus and Nicodemus is not a scene change.

We are still in the same place.

The conversation is the same as well, however it goes a bit deeper.

It focuses our attention on what really is the key for the conversation.

You will remember in John 20:30-31, the purpose of John’s Gospel.

This passage has at its core this basic objective.

How salvation can be got.

Body

And so we continue where we left off last time with Jesus declaring the perplexing statement that a person must be born again.

Not a physical rebirth, but a spiritual one.

Then Jesus cuts to the point on how it is that a person can be saved.

And it focuses itself on vs 14-18.

In this passage we read about our spiritual condition, the options that we have, and the destinies of each, and the transformation of the believer.

Spiritual Condition (John 3:14-15)

Jesus begins by alluding to a specific event from the Old Testament.

We are all spiritually destitute.

We, like the Israelites, have a lack of faith and sin problem.

Which leads us to point two...

Options and Destinies (John 3:16)

This is the most popular verse in all the Bible on the love of God.

And there is a lot of abuse on this verse.

Preachers can focus too heavily on one side and say that you are all damned and describe all of the torment and suffering in Hell.

They take the, let’s scare them into the kingdom approach.

Others take the love approach.

God loves you so much, please come to him.

He is infatuated by you and cannot live without you and needs you.

And so, don’t you want love.

That’s the flattery view.

You either get puffed up with pride or exalt yourself too highly or you can feel so wretched or fearful and just be doing it for yourself to escape Hell.

I am not going to take either of those approaches.

I want us to consider how eternally relevant and important this passage is.

How this passage deals with eternal life and eternal death and how this passage speaks against all the other false religions in the world.

So, let’s begin...

For God- There is only one God.

This is singular.

This affirms monotheism.

But this also puts to silence those who want to say that there is no God at all.

loved- He is a personal God.

Deists claim that God created all things, but then just sat back.

God is capable of loving.

It is a special sort of love.

A love that is extended towards those who love the Son.

the world- This is a specific love.

It is not general.

The topic of the conversation has been on being born again.

And this is really amazing here.

God’s love is not exclusively only for the Jews.

This would have been outrageous for the Jews.

They thought that God only loved them.

We see in Ex 3 and Deut 7 how God chose the people of Israel but here we read of how His love extends beyond just the Israelites.

God’s love is extended not just spatially, but temporally, temporally- across time.

He has a love for the elect ones from all over the world.

He gave- Some would say again that God has no ability or power to interact with the world.

He cannot give anything.

But this flies right in the face of this false belief.

God can and does give.

And the greatest gift that He has ever given to us is....

His One and Only Son- There is an exclusivity here.

He is not being redundant for redundancy sake.

There is only one Son of God.

There is only one second person of the Trinity.

In some translations you will also read “only begotten”.

The greek monogenes does not refer to chronology or to him being born.

But to a uniqueness in kind.

We do become adopted sons and daughters of God, but not in the same sense of Jesus.

An example we can see of this in Scriptures can be found in

Isaac was not the only son of Abraham.

Not even the first son.

It asserts the uniqueness of Jesus.

It does not in any way imply that Jesus was at any time not God.

John starts off his book by making that extremely clear.

How do we know this is talking about Jesus?

The author Hebrews continue to express the quality of “Godness” that Jesus has.

That is the author of Hebrews is saying that Jesus is God.

The exact nature and essence as God because he is God.

The Mormons, would like us to believe that all are sons of God.

In fact, Satan himself was just another son of God, a brother of Jesus.

But here we read that there is only one.

What is the way we are to look at ourselves as sons?

everyone who believes- Let’s pause again here.

This can be a tricky part of the passage, because many will assert that this verse is clear evidence that everyone can be saved and that Jesus died for the sins of the world and is just sitting in Heaven waiting and hoping for someone to believe.

But if you read this text clearly, it never asserts who will or will not believe.

It says, to those who do believe in Jesus, they will be saved.

Those who do not, they will perish.

This is a cause and effect statement.

Let me give you an example, if I run at a 1 min mile pace, I will finish a 5 mile run in 5 minutes.

That is simple math.

It is logical and it makes sense.

Everyone can understand that.

Now, having said that, does that mean I automatically can run at a 1 min mile pace?

No way!

It is just a logical statement.

The same is true here in John 3:16.

It tells us a fact.

Everyone who believes will have eternal life and everyone who does not believe will perish, context being eternity in Hell.