Sermon Tone Analysis

John Series: That You May Believe

#9 - The Bad News and the Great News

Text:

Central Truth: In order to be born again we must believe the bad news about ourselves and respond by trusting in Jesus alone for rescue.

Introduction:

Nobody likes to hear bad news…at least we say that.

I am not so sure that part of the human condition creates within us a desire to grovel or wallow in bad news.

Just listen to a typical news broadcast today and you will understand what I mean.

Bad news and tragedy are plastered all over the screen 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Bad news travels fast as people are very fast to share misfortune while the good news is never reported.

No wonder there is so much depression all around us.

But when it comes to the spiritual, there is a revolt happening in our culture as it pertains to bad news.

I believe this is a result of the humanistic and post-modern worldview that dominates our thinking, particularly here in America.

We deify and glorify self.

The modern day health and wealth heresy that tries to link itself with Christian teaching is co-opting this humanistic and post-modern worldview in order to sell books and grow their congregations.

If we return to the context, Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus, a good man by the world’s standards, that in order to see the kingdom of God there needs to a supernatural new birth or new beginning.

Jesus uses the illustration from concerning the serpents to relate how that he would be lifted up on a cross and that all who believe in him will have eternal life.

This reveals what the need is but it also tells us what the cure or solution is.

Human effort, positive thinking, physical healing, material wealth or any human ritual or religion falls short.

is perhaps the most well-known verse in all of the bible.

The verse and the verses surrounding it are proof of God’s boundless and majestic love, but it is also a proof of God’s righteous and holy judgment against sin.

John Phillips states, “The legislative work of God is summed up in ten commandments in .

The redemptive work of God is summed up in ten words here in .”

(Exploring the Gospel of John, 72.)

I.

The Bad News - Sin Has Absolutely Wrecked Us

If the world and the human race were on trial today and the goal was to provide enough evidence to prove the bible’s statements about sin, would there be enough evidence to bring a conviction?

A. The Verdict - All Are Guilty

In the beginning, () God created the world and it was perfect.

He created man and woman, and they were perfect.

But then disaster struck.

reveals to us that sin wrecked the world and the human race.

Death entered the world and everything was corrupted by the effects of sin.

Death is at work in our world.

We can see that all around us, can’t we? Famine.

Pain.

Disease.

Injustice.

Genocide.

We can feel it in ourselves: corruption; weariness; dysfunction; death.

Sin Separates People From God

Sin Distorts our Desires and Affections.

Instead of loving God and others, we love ourselves.

As a result, we are selfish.

Sin is ultimately an “I” problem.

I want to be in charge of my life and I want happiness and will do whatever is necessary to achieve what I perceive as happiness.

Now this is not the verdict you will hear from Oprah or even from many popular pulpits and churches today.

Why?

Because we don’t like to hear this kind of bad news because it is personal to us in a unique way.

Sometimes, when we have bad things happen to us, we like to promote it in order to gain sympathy or attention…this is a part of the “I” problem with sin.

But when it comes to personal sinfulness many people reject this because it draws the attention away from themselves in a way that makes them uncomfortable and also due to the fact that sin is appealing to the flesh.

Our gospel witness must return to a clear presentation of the desperate state of the human condition.

This will not make us popular, but it will make us biblical witnesses.

Francis Schaeffer, one of our country’s greatest apologists, was once asked, “What would you do if you met a modern man on a train and had just one hour to talk to him about the gospel?”

Schaeffer replied, “I would spend 45–50 minutes on the negative, to really show him his dilemma—that he is morally dead—then I’d take the last 10–15 minutes to preach the gospel.

I believe that much of our evangelistic and personal work today is not clear, simply because we are too anxious to get to the answer without having a man realize the real cause of his sickness, which is true moral guilt (and not just psychological guilt feelings) in the presence of God.”

B. The Sentence for Sin is Death (v.16, 18)

v. 16, “wil not perish” - interesting that this word is so often overlooked in this verse.

v. 18, “but anyone who does not believe is already condemned,”

, “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”

Death is a separation - The judgment of God against sin is clear.

Eternal death and separation from God and anything good.

This is hell.

Hell is a place of eternal torment.

Hell is a place of eternal darkness.

Hell is place of eternal separation and isolation.

“We have all seen people destroy their bodies with drink and drugs and with promiscuous sex with its dread harvest of disease.

But God threatens to allow sin to complete its work beyond the grave by destroying the soul.

The soul doesn’t perish like the body.

The soul is immortal.

Sinners take with them into eternity unquenchable thirst, terrible passions and appetites, mad cravings and inflamed desires, fierce longings and furious hate, lusts and loathing, white-hot temper and spine-chilling fear.

Those destructive character traits will continue to ravage the soul and will never be either satisfied or stilled.

The word perish denotes the final condition of the soul that rejects God’s love.” - John Phillips (Exploring John, p. 75)

Question: Does this mean that God is a self-centered and angry God who gets a kick out of judging humanity.

(note verse 17) On the contrary, the reality of judgment accentuates the justice and love of God.

The moral law of God is for our good, not our harm.

When we see the moral law of God we see consequences for sin and rebellion.

So many misunderstand God’s love.

We’ve covered this before but repetition is important.

Our world misunderstands love terribly..to our own peril.

Jesus said in that hell was created for the devil and his angels.

It was never designed for human habitation.

But then sin came into the world, and every sinner was left holding a boarding pass to hell.

God is not to blame for the sin in my life or the world and God is not to blame when someone dies and goes to hell to face judgment, the sinner is because of their rejection of God’s love and truth.

The judgment men reap they chose for themselves by rejecting Christ and loving the darkness more than light.

, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.”

Now we must not camp only on the bad news…this is not healthy and not the gospel.

to be “hell fire and brimstone only” is to misrepresent the gospel just as we misrepresent the gospel by never mentioning sin at all.

The story of the bible is of a loving and just God who has intervened in a world full of sin and rebellion by his grace and love.

So the bible is a love letter,

II.

The Good News - God’s Love (v.16,17)

Martin Luther states of the words in , “words which are able to make the sad happy, the dead alive, if only the heart believes them firmly.”

A. The Proof of God’s Love (v.16)

God has proven his love in the gift of his “one and only son”, “his only begotten Son.”

“so loved” or “in this way” is a reference to the manner of God’s love.

It is boundless and divine.

The verb used for love is ἀγαπάω or agapao, referencing the highest type and form of loving, as distinct from φιλέω, or phileo, the love of mere affection, friendship, and ordinary human relation.

It is not that God “liked” the world, because we know that sin is detestable and repulsive to God.

Love here is connected with his sacrificial giving.