We had our Youth Leaders Weekend Away, where we had five sessions thinking about the Gospel and it's relevance to youth ministry. On the first night, I just gave a talk on John 3:16. Below is mostly what I said. I did rip most of the content (you can tell by the footnotes) from the first two chapters of The Gospel by Ray Ortlund.
In our circles, we go on the gospel a lot. I’m slowly reading a book called Gospel-centered Youth Ministry. We talk about being gospel-centred all the time. We want to preach the Gospel, but I think we sometimes we overuse the world and in doing so it loses its meaning. We use the term gospel as a shorthand for something, and in doing so we sometimes obscure the meaning.
Now I wrote this before the Andrew Lubbock day last weekend. On that day we looked at four passages on what the gospel is. We probably had already read them before. But interestingly he didn’t look at John 3:16. That is like the classic memory verse. And tonight, that is all we are going to look at John 3:16.
The Gospel is something we do not want to lose, but it is also not just an idea, it is something that should change everything about your behaviour. Sometimes churches can have a good doctrinal statement, but the culture in that church can be cold and unloving. The problem isn’t what they believe, it is what they have become in practice and not realised it.[1] Ray Ortlund, who I have stolen much from him in this talk says
“The test of a gospel-centered church is its doctrine on paper plus its culture in practice[2].”It is the teaching of the gospel that drives a gospel culture. It is only by us seeing the grace and love of the father that we live out a culture of grace and love to others, and in order for that to happen, we need the powerful presence of the risen Lord to make a church gospel-centred in the first place[3].
It is not just the proclamation of the Gospel that is evangelistic, although it is necessary to use words to speak the gospel. It is also the lived out Christian community that is also evangelistic. People will see God as we build our church or youth group to have a gospel culture based on gospel doctrine, taking no shortcuts.
So let's look at John 3:16 which is pretty much the most famous verse of what the Gospel is. It is a message for us all, no matter how much you think you can memorise it.
For God so loved the world
Immediately with this verse, we encounter God. We need to know who this God is and how he has loved the world.Tozer says “what comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us”[4]
Where do you get your idea of God? Many people are misguided by who they think God is. They see God as a policeman in the sky or an absentee father, or maybe even like Santa Clause.
God has told us what he is like. Some of what he says our culture likes. They like that God is loving and merciful, he also enacts justice. But very early on in the Bible in Genesis 17 God says “I am almighty” (Gen 17:1). Almost no one really believes that God is truly almighty, which why God said it[5]. This statement comes in the context of God repeating his promise to Abraham that from this barren couple would come nations with land and kings and an everlasting covenant between his descendants and God.
Would you believe that? God says he is almighty. There is no need to reduce God’s promises to make them square with human probability. With God, there is no need to adopt some interpretation that makes it seem easier for his promises to be fulfilled. All possibilities are open with the Almighty God[6].
And the good news is we don’t have to reduce God or settle for something less. God is all-powerful, he is almighty. And in our verse, we find that this almighty God doesn’t despise the world but loves the world. That is who God really is. It is what the Bible says, so let’s believe it[7].
But God didn’t love the world because we are lovable, but because He is love (1 John 4:16). It is God’s nature. And we see the extent of God’s love more intently when we think about the world that God loves.
In John 3:19-20 we see a bit of this:
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.
It’s hard to admit, but we love the darkness. It is true. We have all done evil and covered it up[8].
Gods law shows us how sinful we are by showing us the true holiness of God. The truth is we don’t deserve as much as we think we do, and this might be a scary position to put yourself in.
But God changes the subject to how much He loves the undeserving. The Gospel helps us to stop hiding from God. It is evil people who God loves so massively[9].
Our world thinks it is too good for God. That it doesn’t need God. Our world is happy in the darkness, they don’t want their deeds exposed. It’s too touchy and defensive to accept his love. But that does not stop God[10].
But what if it did stop God? Let's have a thought experiment. What if God does give the world what it deserves? He says to the world “You hate the light and love the darkness, ok. You can get what you want. You can not have your own self-created false ideas and my love too. The relationship is over.” He could have said that. But he didn’t because He loved the world.
That he gave his only son
He loved the world so much that he gave his only son.Jesus is God’s son, the messiah, the promised one. The emphasis here is on the only. He is the only one, he is unique. There is no one like him, he is irreplaceable[11]. There is no other saviour. The world has no hope outside of Jesus. Jesus is not just a good moral teacher.
Last Sunday we saw from Acts 4:
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.God gave his own son fully, without holding back anything at all. He gave him up at the cross. He abandoned him to the desolation of hell we deserve so that forever and ever he would give us heavenly things we cannot deserve.
This is the love of God – the son leaves nothing for us unfilled. But it is focused. The Son is our only entry point back to God, the only One given by God the only one acceptable to God. There is no other.
The obedience and death of the Lord Jesus laid the foundation and opened the way for the exercise of this great and sovereign act of grace. The cross of Jesus displays the most awful exhibition of God’s hatred of sin, and at the same time the most august manifestation of his readiness to pardon it. Pardon, full and free, is written out in every drop of blood that is seen, is proclaimed in every groan that is heard, and shines in the very prodigy of mercy that closes the solemn scene upon the cross. O blessed door of return, open and never shut, to the wanderer from God! how glorious, how free, how accessible! Here the sinful, the vile, the guilty, the unworthy, the poor, the penniless, may come. Here, too, the weary spirit may bring its burden, the broken spirit its sorrow, the guilty spirit its sin, the backsliding spirit its wandering. All are welcome here. The death of Jesus was the opening and the emptying of the full heart of God; it was the outgushing of that ocean of infinite mercy… it was God showing how he could love a poor, guilty sinner. What more could he have done than this?[12]Every other hope out there is based on how good we are. Only the Christian gospel is based, clearly boldly and insistently on how loving God is to the undeserving[13].
If you find within yourself not light, but darkness and realise you can not make it thought this world on sheer determination, cleverness or entitlement, that the freedom you seek brings you to an impasse, that you have shocked yourself with your own evil inside, the God of love waits for you with open arms today[14].
That whoever believes in him won’t perish but have eternal life
The word whoever is broad. Anyone however discredited can enter in, but the words not perish but have eternal life is narrow. Perishing and eternal life are the only alternatives standing before us[15]. Everyone will go one way or another, it all depends on whether we believe in him or not.The word “believe” is not like in the statement “I believe in the democratic system”, like I agree with it. The gospel calls for more than agreement with the statement.
Greek boffins will say that in John 3:16 the line “whoever believes in him” would be better “whoever believes into[16] him”. Our belief moves us into him. We are not far off but involved. We go from self-centred into Christ centred. From self completeness into Christ completeness. This is what is called union with Christ.
When we believe we stop hiding from and resisting God. We surrender our own autonomy, We hurled ourselves at Jesus as He is our only hope. We are brought into him forever, and in doing that we can not be forsaken, because Jesus took on the forsakenness of God on the cross.
What matters to God is not what sins we have committed or not committed, but whether we have bonded by faith with his only Son. Gods final category for you is not your goodness vs your badness, but your union with Christ vs your distance from Christ.
The good news is that God has simplified this for everyone. We don’t have to be good enough, we don’t have to know all the answers. God has made the way; God has all the answers. He lovingly has provided everything in Christ. This is the good news, if we trust him with our life, he will draw us in. This is the promise of the Gospel.
But if you don’t believe you will perish.
Hell is for people who could have enjoyed the love of God but heled back. 2 Thess 1:8-9 says
He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his mightEternal life is available right now to hell-deserving sinners who are massively loved by God who gave his only son for them. The only thing he asks is that we respond to that good news by turning from ourselves and receiving Christ with our empty hands of faith[17]
Have you trusted him? Have you forsaken yourself and turned to him as your complete saviour? He offers eternal life, in himself to all who simply believe.
It is good news John 3:16. We see God’s love for sinners. And this good news is what the church has been called to do based on this doctrine.
The call of the church
Here is just a sample of verses that tells us how our church community is to behave in light of the gospel.John 13:35:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.Romans 12:10:
Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.1 John 4:11:
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.2 John 1:5:
And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.1 Peter 1:22:
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.Do you notice a theme here?
Love
I was struck by the obvious statement Francis Chan brings up in his book, Letters to the Church. He points out that the Bible doesn’t say church should have a 30 minute, three-point sermon, with 5 songs and three announcements. I could also say that the Bible doesn’t say that our youth group should have activities, discussion groups, talks from the Bible, or anything like that. But the Bible is very clear that the church itself is to be loving and united with each other. I think fundamentally, in its simplicity that is what a gospel culture is: one that loves in response to God’s love for the world.
Now I don’t think we have an unhealthy culture at Youth, in fact, I think we have a pretty accepting, welcoming, loving culture. But over this weekend I would like us to think about how we might continue to build a gospel centred culture in our youth group. What would that look like? Is there anything we are missing? To do something more I think it would be costly. It will mean more time out of our busy schedule, it may mean more emotional investment, maybe, even more, cost to us.
Love costs, it sacrifices, it puts nails in hands[18]. But we as the church should know this type of love because we know the Gospel and we are in Christ.
[1] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel: How the church portrays the beauty of Christ, p17
[2] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p18
[3] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p23
[4] Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy, p9 cited in Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p26
[5] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p26
[6] Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, p161 cited in Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p26
[7] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p27
[8] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p27
[9] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p29
[10] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p29
[11] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p30
[12] Octavius Winslow (1848), Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, p230-231, cited in Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p32
[13] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p32
[14] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p32
[15] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p33
[16] εἰς - into, in, unto, to, upon, towards, for, among. You go into a location and into something in time.
[17] Ray Ortlund (2014), The Gospel, p35-36
[18] Colin Buchanan (2017), Outside The Camp
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