It’s a Shock

Dick Lucas explores the profound and often surprising message of John 3:16. He delves into how this well-known verse encapsulates the essence of the Gospel’s impact, emphasizing the shockingly generous nature of God’s love and the transformative power it holds for believers. Lucas encourages listeners to re-examine their understanding of this passage and to experience the radical implications of God’s love in their lives.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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Be seated. It’s always a joy to be here at Emmanuel, and I hope that you can hear me wherever you are in this church at the moment. Some of the themes that I hope to touch on this morning in these few minutes are as follows: war, how to insult God if you want to do that, what it means to take the Bible literally, and why school magazines can be very depressing for old boys. But as you know from the card, our text is John 3:16.

And I would like you, if you will, to turn there because we’re going to be there all morning. Only one other cross reference and our verse is John 3:16. And the title, it’s a shock, something I never expected when I came to John 3:16. And by that I mean just the initial half dozen words, John 3:16, for God so loved, for God so loved the world. That’s as far as we’re going to get this morning.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)

And it contains a big shock.

I think those few words, “God loved the world,” must be a great surprise for anyone who carefully reads John 3:16 in its context. I was met this morning by someone who’s doing the Cornhill training course, and one of the first things you learn there, if you didn’t know before, was to look at a verse in its context. So the context of John 3:16, of course, is the very famous chapter three. And if we read the whole of that chapter in verse 16 in context, it’s a great surprise to hear that God loved the world.

Very interestingly, I discovered that this has been a knotty puzzle for certain Bible scholars. By that I mean pundits who spent the whole of their lives pondering over the text of this fourth gospel, this wonderful gospel written by the apostle of love, the disciple that Jesus loved. And the reason they’ve been surprised and felt it are not a problem is because this sentence just does not fit in. They can’t understand why it’s here. It sticks out.

And that’s because the great theme of this gospel of John is the love of the father, the love of God. And that’s going to be our theme, by the way, all through, of course, these three Sunday mornings. And the theme of John is the father’s love for the son. It’s this great relationship within the trinity of the father loving the son, and the son loving the father, and of the father loving those who submit to the son.

That is the great, clear, and consistent line that goes all the way through this gospel, and you’ll find it represented in our chapter by verse 35. I can only just read your bibles. I shall have to get one of those bigger ones I saw at the back next week. Do you see verse 35?

³⁵ The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. (John 3:35, ESV)

By the way, that’s one of the most magnificent verses really in John, isn’t it?

He loves the son and has given all things, the whole world, the future, everything, into the hands of the son.

The father loves the son. That’s the clear line throughout John’s gospel. But the world, well, what does John mean by the world? He has his own vocabulary. And by the world John means, as I’m sure you know, the world of unbelief. He means fallen mankind, perhaps in more modern terminology, he means secular society, which we’re increasingly living in. He means rebel humanity. He means God’s creatures in rebellion against their creator.

That’s what he means by the world. And nowhere else in these 21 chapters does God say that almighty God loves those who rebel against him. So this is atypical; it’s exceptional. It stands all on its own. And some of these scholars said it doesn’t belong here. Here’s the theme throughout John: that the father loves the Son, the son loves the father, and the father loves those who come to believe and submit in the Son. And then, sticking up in the middle of all this, God so loved the rebel world. Well, thank God he does.

Now, I want to say something right at the beginning of these three Sunday mornings: I want you to hold very tight to this truth that God loves the world. It’s not going to be anything like as easy as you think. So, all the way through these three Sunday mornings, I want you to hold firmly to the fact that God does indeed love this robo world. If we couldn’t hold on to that, of course, we might well go insane.

So what does this text message that we’ve got this morning say to us, God so loved the world? Well, the answer, of course, is the shocking state of the world as God describes it to us, as the word of God tells us in John 3. And we’re going to look at three elements of the state of the world as God sees it. Let’s take the toughest point first. God loves a world that doesn’t believe in him. That’s the first point. Doesn’t trust him, doesn’t obey him, doesn’t respond to him, and doesn’t reverence him.

I would think more people are in church this morning, probably than normal, wouldn’t you? I would think a lot of decent people come out to a remembrance service or are standing in their overcoat, shivering around a cross on a village green. I would think there are many doing that who normally never listen to God at all and don’t reverence him. It is, as we know, and we shall discover that from verse 16 again, possible for the individual to believe in him. That’s a relief.

And I know that’s true of many, many of you who hear this warning. But as a rule, the world does not believe in him. And it seems to me that’s undeniable in experience if you live in the real world. And the consequences of rebellion against God are quite terrible, and we have time to look at only two. Verse 17 and 18, please.

¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17, ESV)

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. You know, he never did that.

¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:18, ESV)

However, according to this verse, a world of unbelief is a world under the condemnation of God, whatever that means.

The other verse that is so clear, of course, is the very last verse of the chapter. It’s a very interesting definition here of what it means not to believe. An unbelieving world. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. That’s good news. Whoever does not believe, no, what does it say?

Whoever does not obey the Son, that is the world we live in. A disobedient world will not see life, but the anger or wrath of God remains on him or them. What does wrath mean? Here I quote from Professor Don Carson: God’s wrath is the personal response of a holy God who comes to his own world, sadly fallen into rebellion, and finds few who want anything to do with him. That’s what an unbelieving world is, few who want anything to do with him. And on that is visited God’s divine indignation.

Well, says someone, come on, be practical. What does that mean? Well, this is why this is the tough point. I hope you’re going to be able to face, therefore, what is said in my one cross reference. Turn, please, if you will. I want to hear the rustling of the leaves. I know you’re still with me. Mark 13:5. Now here is. Well, very plainly, if you read the gospel.

Here is Jesus, knowing that the world is rejecting him, knowing that ahead of him is a cross, knowing that the world doesn’t believe in his Heavenly father, knowing indeed that the church of his day is corrupt. And he has this little gaggle of disciples around him, and they tell us, “What’s the future going to be like when you’ve gone?” I can only point you to two verses, verse five.

⁵ And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. (Mark 13:5-6, ESV)

False religion.

⁷ But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows. (Mark 13:7-8, NKJV)

Now, we don’t have time to look into false religion. I’m not going to talk about natural catastrophes.

I’m going to select that one thing that Jesus said, that in the future there would be constant war, and that would be a sign of a broken world, a world that has refused to have a relationship with God. And therefore, in his indignation, God has broken human relations so that we can never live at peace together. It’s quite impossible, isn’t it, for me standing here to represent you or anybody else and compute what the suffering must have meant in the 20th century to hundreds and hundreds and thousands and millions of people.

It’s just impossible, isn’t it? The price for our own country is simply enormous, isn’t it? In two world wars and now in far-off Afghanistan. I sometimes think when we see these tragic pictures, these sad pictures of coffins coming home and the loyal people of that village standing along the high street, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if we’d had colored television in World War Two. Or what about World War One, when 60,000 were lost on one day on the Somme? Can you imagine it on television?

Every older person here in church, and I belong to that brigade, we all have our own memories, some of them very personal, some of them very painful. Let me give you perhaps a slightly less painful one from my own mind. I think of the 3 September 1939, the day war was declared. We were standing in our hall at home, mother and father and we two boys, we had on these grotesque gas masks, looking like spacemen or something.

We were waiting, standing up in the hall for the prime minister to speak, and not to be forgotten, Aunt Carrie came in from next door. In a piercing voice, in the silence just before the news came, she said, there won’t be a war. Five minutes before it was declared, Aunt Carrie said, there won’t be a war. And why? Well, because if you put it in perspective, only just 20 years before, there’d been the most terrible war, World War One, in which her family, our family, had lost its best and brightest. She couldn’t face it.

Would you blame her? We often hear, don’t we, from our unbelieving friends, indeed from the world around us, the ordinary people. How can a God of love permit war? But as we see from this chapter, it’s to omit the ultimate reason for a broken world and war. And that is man’s unrepentant enmity towards his maker. I repeat again, if we break our relationship with God and have no time for him, he breaks our human relationships. And you open your page of the paper tomorrow, and you read about broken relationships in every direction of life.

It is hypocrisy to ask God to remove all the painful consequences of our hostility toward him. It’s hypocrisy to ask him to remove the consequences if we don’t repent of our settled hostility toward him. And by that hostility, we have, in the words of the book of Common Prayer, provoked most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. So there it is alongside verse 16 in my Bible. I don’t know if it’s the same in your Bible. Alongside verse 16 about the love of God is verse 36 about the anger and wrath of God.

And if I’m to be honest with my Bible and honest with God, I’ve got to say that experience of this world will show both. What Paul called the terror of the Lord is very frightening. I think it’s frightening, don’t you? We seldom mention it. I mentioned it to someone I was talking to the other day who wasn’t a Christian. He said, you’re trying to frighten me. I said, I wish I could.

No, the idea that there’s a balmy Heavenly Father who won’t frighten everyone, well, start reading your New Testament if you think that the last book especially is frightening. It tells us about the anger of God, of those who won’t repent, of a world that won’t turn back. So, I’m afraid when we open our paper and when we look back in our memories, we shall see lots of evidence in the world in which we live of the divine indignation of God. And it’s very, very painful.

And that’s why I said at the beginning, I hope you’ll hold on to the love of God, because sometimes it’s difficult. So it’s a world then that doesn’t believe in God. The second thing that chapter tells us very plainly, there’s nothing strange about this. You can read it for yourself any day. We not only live in a world that doesn’t believe in God, we live in a world that doesn’t even listen to him. This theme of our human impertinence runs all the way through chapter three. We have time to glance at only two examples.

First, verse 31 onwards. Will you turn there? Get under a light. Can you say you can read it? I’m getting under the light. Said I can read it. Verse 31 of chapter three. You with me there at the back? Good. Right. Because these are really important words, aren’t they?

³¹ He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. ³² He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. ³³ Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. (John 3:31-33, ESV)

And isn’t this amazing?

For he whom God has sent utters the very words of God. For he gives the Spirit without measure. So when God sent Jesus into the world to speak, to teach, what Jesus said were the very words of God. And for the vast majority, no one wanted to listen. And it’s still true. Just compare that with verses 28 and 29, which I love.

Where John the Baptist says verse 29,

²⁹ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. (John 3:29, ESV)

Right? Well, I can divide you now in this church.

Do you rejoice at the words of Jesus, or don’t you listen? Well, I can’t believe there are many of you don’t listen. But if you don’t listen, you are obviously the greatest of fools. I suppose the clearest statement in this chapter. And it’s all so clear, isn’t it?

No one can mistake it. It’s verse 19 and 20. Verse 19. What a great Christmas verse this is. The light has come into the world. That’s the Christmas message. And then listen. People love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

¹⁹ And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19, NKJV)

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and doesn’t come to the light. You know those. They don’t listen. Now, we’re not talking about very wicked people as that verse seems to suggest. We’re talking now about decent people, the best of people.

The best of people, and we know them ourselves in our neighborhood, don’t believe. And the best and nicest of people in your neighborhood don’t listen. Isn’t that right? They’re not talking about criminals; they’re talking about dear Misses Fearns, her next door. She doesn’t listen, and she doesn’t believe. She has no idea that she’s under the condemnation of God. Rational, decent people prefer not to listen.

There’s no good you telling me they do, because I’ve lived for very many years, and that’s my experience all down the line, that lots of very decent, pleasant people, family relations, don’t listen. And that is the most insulting thing you can do with God. If for any of you young who are going to do a PhD in theology, would you please do one on the subject of listening to God? Because it’s very interesting right the way through the Bible. It’s one of the major themes. Will you listen or not?

I’ve just been reading the story of Rhea Boehm, what a foolish king he was. I’ve been reading Ralph Davis’s notes, which are so illuminating. You remember Rea Berm just wouldn’t listen, and God tore the ten tribes from him, and so Israel was divided forever, and in the end, the ten tribes disappeared forever, all because a young man wouldn’t listen and many others like him. My old school magazine plopped on the mat this week, and of course, it’s full. It’s produced, very expensively produced, I think, for old boys.

Hoping that we shall send children and grandchildren to school. Costs so much these days. And there are 20 pages of notes and news of the Earl boys going down through the years. And although the magazine is full of the great achievements of the school today, and all that’s very exciting, and there are wonderful pictures and all the rest of it, I have to tell you that whenever I get my magazine every year in November, I find I’m depressed. In Nadza news, you’re only given about four lines.

But there’s never any indication in my generation or the generations after that people are listening to God, until quite recently. I think it’s a sign of what God is doing in the world today. In England, today, in Britain today, I was going to say an old boy actually is a young man who didn’t leave school very long ago. He’s just been ordained. And for his notes and news, he wrote this in, and they printed it: I have just finished preaching a five-part series on Ecclesiastes.

It speaks powerfully into the increasingly secular society in which we live. You should be able to listen to them online at www. Isn’t that priceless, Dot? I wonder how many of the old boys of my school, and there must be thousands still alive, will actually look into WW and listen to those sermons on Ecclesiastes. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen in that magazine anybody invited to listen, I’m afraid. Probably in a minority. But it’s such a lovely, cheeky notice, isn’t it, that perhaps people will.

So if you want to know what is really insulting to almighty God, who sent his son into the world as the word made flesh, one of the most insulting things you can do to God is not to listen, which is what the vast majority of people today are guilty of. Finally, according to John 3, and that’s the context of our verse, our habitat, the world in which we live, doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t listen to him, and doesn’t know or understand him. It’s a world of ignorance.

I won’t ask you to read the story of Nicodemus. It’s so familiar, isn’t it? Nicodemus was a church leader, as we would say. I suppose we might call him in modern terms, a bishop. I think he was a fine man. He came by night to see Jesus and immediately showed his ignorance. So in verse ten, Jesus in amazement says, you’re a master and teacher in Israel and you don’t understand these things and you won’t understand them, Nicodemus, until you’re born all over again.

¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? (John 3:10, ESV)

Here is one of the best of men who doesn’t understand.

He’s very like the formal church in our country today, isn’t it? I’m dipping into an episcopal biography at the moment of a man I knew who was an exceptionally nice man. But he was very like Nicodemus. He was a bishop for many years, and I copied out this sentence to read to you this morning.

The reason he abhorred evangelical enthusiasm was not that he had a low opinion of born-again Christians, many of whom he liked and admired, but because their enthusiasm seemed to be bound up with the literal interpretation of the Bible that he found untenable. Oh dear, when I read a thing like that. Well, I suppose there is such a thing, isn’t there? As a crudely literal reading. I suppose you can see that in verse four, 2 Corinthians 3:4. Just look at verse four if you want crude literalism. Here it is.

Nicodemus has just been told that he’s got to be born again.

⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4, ESV)

There’s crude literalism for you. But does anybody believe that when they read and hear Jesus says you must be born again? Here’s an episcopal leader who says he couldn’t take this Bible literally. What he actually meant, of course, was that he wasn’t going to take it seriously and didn’t like the idea of the new birth.

And so he was a man who didn’t understand. So there’s the state of the world according to John 3. And that’s why John 3:16, just those six words, God so loved the world, is such a shock because it’s a world that doesn’t believe, it’s a world that doesn’t want to listen, and it’s a world that doesn’t understand God.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)

And you’ll discover that straight away if you talk to your next door neighbor who is a decent unbeliever, you will find they don’t understand the first thing about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into the world. In other words, they don’t understand that which is ultimate, that which really matters, or rather he who really matters, he who has the first word and the last word. And so we’re told in John 3:16, and we’ll come to this later on another Sunday morning, this world deserves to perish.

It’s really alarming language and I hope you’re hanging on to the fact that God so loved the world, this murky, dirty, ignorant, proud world. And it’s a big shock as you become a Christian and I think sometimes a very big shock for the young Christian just how dark the world is, because the moment we put our colors on the mast of Jesus Christ, we find that we have a hostile world around us. I like very much Jonathan’s little point earlier about the brain sergeant leaning over you in bed.

And if such an important person came to your bedside, you’d know you were very ill. Well, verse 17, which we’ll look at next week, says that God sent his son into the world to save the world.

It’s a wonderful phrase, isn’t it? Very common vocabulary at the moment, isn’t it? Gordon Brown was going to save the world from financial catastrophe, and I’m not sure he didn’t do quite well, really. It seems to get worse and worse.

Every time you open the paper, you’re told that we’ve got to save the world from climate change, we’ve got to save the world from terrorism. Let’s hope we can. And we’ve got to save the world from pandemics. It’s very much the language of today, isn’t it? Saving the world from these catastrophes.

God sent his one and only son into the world to save us from a much, much greater catastrophe than all those put together. So there is some evidence, some proof, something on which we can take our stand.

If God did that, did that to a world that doesn’t believe and doesn’t listen and doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know, then clearly God so loved the world. Amazing grace.

Let’s pray. No time for priggishness. Of course, we’re all part of that world. We still have unbelieving hearts. We still fail to listen and often fail to understand. So we’re all part, aren’t we? Of this world of ours.

And therefore, Heavenly Father, we turn to you this morning with deep thankfulness in our hearts that the coming of your one and only son into our world of dirt and mucunda and evil and war means that you so love the world. We thank you for it. In Christ’s name, Amen. Amen.

Closing hymn is number 325, 325, in the blue praise book, here is the love of Jesus. The deep, deep love of Jesus.