God’s Love or the World’s Lure
Intro:
1. ILL: The fisherman’s use of lures to catch fish.
a. The world’s lure to you is the good life.
b. You’re tempted with it all around you. Just tune into the TV commercials, the junk mail & email & the street vendors.
2. God’s way seems too irrational for our modern culture. How can an event 2000 years ago have anything to do with you today? How can someone who went through a terrible execution affect you? It just doesn’t make sense!
3. There are a lot of things that affect your life that don’t make sense.
a. Natural laws affect your life every day, but you don’t understand them. You just accept them by faith!
b. You don’t have to understand everything to benefit from them.
4. God has given you a choice. You may not understand it, but you must either accept or reject it.
5. This passage helps you to understand so you can make the wisest choice!
John 3:13-21
I. v13-15 - Moses & the Snakes
A. God’s way: Num 21:6-9 - He brought snakes into the camp to bite Israelites!
1. In v7 the people pleaded with Moses to pray that God would remove the snakes.
2. In v9 God kept the snakes there - but provided a remedy.
B. Put yourself in the place of an Israelite dying of snakebite!
1. Every move you make is extremely painful.
2. Someone tells you to get up - crawl over to the door of your tent - go outside - find the bronze statue of a snake - then, look at it.
3. You reason to yourself: how can looking at a bronze snake cure snakebite?
4. You decide: that’s not worth all of the pain & effort it would take to do it! That’s ridiculous! So you die!
5. However - many go through the pain & effort - look at the snake & live!
6. They acted by faith! God spoke & they obeyed!
C. So - God’s way, even though it didn’t make sense, provided the cure!
II. v16-17 - Jesus & the Cross
A. Jn 3:16 is the most favorite & central thought of the whole Bible! W. G. Scroggie: “The heart of the Bible is the New Testament. The Book of John is its center & the 3rd chapter is its vital pulse!” Peter MacKenzie: “When God loves, He loves a world! When He gives, He gives His best!”
B. God’s way. Rom 5:12 says, Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men . . .
1. Then it quickly adds . . . because all sinned!
2. You must understand that you are separated from God because of what you did or didn’t do! It’s not because of what someone else did! You are eternally condem- ned because of that separation!
3. Life is not some kind of giant bookkeeping system. Sin results in death regardless of how good a life you think you are living!
4. But God gave - Lord Jesus went to the cross for you.
a. Have you ever thought about what Jesus going to the cross meant to His Heavenly Father?
b. ILL: My ministry to a dad whose toddler son was run over by a car.
C. What if there had not been a cross?
1. Your sin would separate you from your Creator forever.
2. You would have no way of obtaining salvation from your sins.
3. You would be without hope - heaven would be out of reach for you.
4. You would be truly lost!
D. But - the cross offers you a choice! Lord Jesus said, But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. - Jn 12:32.
1. Because of Calvary - you can have a changed life! Because of Golgotha - you can have a home in heaven!
2. Because of the cross - you can have life without end!
E. God’s way, even though it doesn’t make sense, provides the answer for you!
III. v18-21 - The Light & the Judgment
A. There will be a judgment!
1. ILL: Saving Private Ryan. “Did I live good enough?”
a. Most people go through life anxiously waiting for the final decision, “Did I live a good enough life to get in!”
b. The hope is, in the end, they will be acquitted for their sins! Most of the “Pearly Gates” jokes are based on this.
2. Here is the Gospel Message - The “Good News”!
a. You are lost or saved based on your relationship with the Lord! Jn 14:6 - I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
b. The choice you make now determines your acquittal!
B. Choosing God is not, primarily, an intellectual choice. It’s a moral one!
1. What does this mean?
a. Intellectual choice = a decision based on evidence & logic.
b. Moral choice = a decision based upon only what you want. When you choose to reject a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus it’s because you want to stay in the darkness of this world - not because you can’t believe!
2. “I can’t accept Christ because of all those hypocrites in the church!”
a. You run into hypocrites all the time in other settings - but it doesn’t stop you from going there!
b. In moments of weakness we all have our hypocritical times. You’re not perfect - just redeemed!
3. “I can’t believe because of all those miracle “fairy tales” in the Bible!”
a. Miracles happen around you every day. Just open your eyes to them! Meta- morphosis! Childbirth! The transformation of a sinner into a saint!
b. Wouldn’t you expect a book revealing the Creator of the universe to be full of miracles?
c. Don’t be conned into believing faith has been replaced with science. Some of the most brilliant scholars throughout history in every field of study are committed Christians!
4. Rejecting the Lord is because you want to stay in the world - it’s not because you can’t believe!
a. When all the smoke is cleared, the bottom line becomes apparent - rare it is that you reject the Lord purely because you can’t believe.
b. Almost always its because you don’t want to!
C. All of you have got to make a choice about God!
1. ILL: The man who refused the pardon.
2. Forgiveness for your sins was made available on the cross - but you must accept it to be pardoned!
Take the remedy for your sinful condition.
Discover the life God has available to you.
Don’t put it off!
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