This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. (upbeat music) - Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. This is our day four look together through John chapter three. Yesterday we looked at John 3. 16, and today we're going to look at the follow-up, sort of the commentary on that verse, verses 17 to 21, and then skip down to verse 36 for a brief look at that verse. These verses following up on John 3. 16 are the simple facts of life. There's a lot of ways that we would like life to be. There's a lot of ways that I want to pretend life is, but God, in his love for us, writes his word to us and says, "This is the way it really is. "I want you to understand how it really is "so you can live the kind of life I made you to live "in this world so that you can enjoy the kind of life "I want you to enjoy in relationship with me "in all eternity. " I've shared these simple facts of life in these verses with a lot of people. I've heard other people share these facts with a lot of people, and I found we have different reactions to these facts of life. Some people want to react against them, obviously. I mean, we may have grown up with, developed a different set of facts of life in our mind, but in that moment, I have to ask myself, not what do I feel, not what's important to me, I have to ask myself what's really true. If I'm standing in front of an electrical socket and somebody says, "Don't stick your finger in there "because it's got 220 voltage, it'll kill you," I don't think, I don't think so. It looks like a 110 socket to me, and I've done that before. It's just sort of a big shock. It'll hurt, but it won't kill me. I'm not going to stick my finger in to find out. I gotta trust what the person is saying because they live there and they know their electrical socket. Well, God understands life a lot better than I do, and it takes humility to listen to these simple facts of life. But I pray for me and you both, the humility to hear what God has to say. What are the facts of life? Six simple facts as we walk through these verses. Fact number one, following up on John 3:16. Number one, Jesus was sent to save. Verse 17 says, "For God did not send his Son into the world "to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. " Jesus was sent into this world to save the world. Those who feel like Jesus is somehow judgmental or condemning or the reason that God sent him into the world was to somehow tell the world what was wrong with it. That's the only reason, have missed the point. Sure, Jesus is light, and if I got darkness in my life, it's going to show up the darkness, but that's not the point. The point is, he came in to show us the light. Now, most people don't blame Jesus for this. They blame the carrier of the message, not the source of the message. So they say, "Oh, Christians are judgmental," or they say, "Preachers are judgmental," or they say, "The Bible is judgmental. " Well, Christians and preachers in the Bible aren't perfect, but they're often just carrying this message of Jesus Christ. God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Fact number one, Jesus was sent to save. Fact number two is this. Belief in Jesus saves you, not believing in Jesus leaves you condemned. That's what verse 18 says. "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, "but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, "because he has not believed "in the name of God's one and only Son. " Those words condemned already are extremely important when it comes to what life is really all about. They're two of the most important words you'll read in the Bible for understanding this world as it really is. This world isn't a place where I'm born innocent, where you're born innocent, and then we figure out through this life whether we're going to be a good person or a bad person, and based on whether I'm good or bad, I get to go to heaven, I get to have a relationship with God. The Bible says we're born into this world condemned already. The moment Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, everything was lost. It was game over. Now you may not like those facts. Your emotions may react against those facts. They're the facts that God tells us. Pick up his word and read through it. It is the story of the Bible. That's why Jesus came into this world to rescue us, because we were all lost without him, condemned already. So Jesus came into this world to save anyone who will believe, and Jesus, by coming into this world to save all who will believe, also saves all those who don't have an opportunity to believe. The child who's born and dies before the age of one or two or before an opportunity to even receive Jesus Christ. Jesus, because he came into this world, takes care of their need also. Whoever believes in him is not condemned. You see, the fact number three that I have to recognize, you have to recognize is that God has shown us his verdict already. It's not like he's waiting till the end of time to show us how things are going to work. He's already told us. Verse 19, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. He tells us what happened here. Light came into the world. He tells us what happened here. Men love the darkness, and he tells us why it happens, because their deeds were evil. You might think, a lot of people think, no, no, that's not why it happens. People love the darkness because they're afraid, or they love the darkness because someone has mistreated them. You have every right to your opinion about that, but God gives us his viewpoint. God gives us his verdict, and he says we hate the light because we do evil. I think God understands a lot better than I do. God challenges me to be honest about myself. When I want to keep the light of Jesus Christ out of my life, it's because I want to do some evil. Now, you might think that these verses are just about unbelievers, and they certainly are focused on unbelievers, but if you're already a believer, there are times when you want to hold the light out of your life, when you want to keep Jesus at an arm's length. And the reason is, not because you're afraid, the reason at the core is, you may have fear, but the core reason is you don't want to change. You don't want to let the light in because you want to keep doing the evil that you're doing. Fact number four. Number one, Jesus was sent to save. Number two, belief in Jesus saves you. Not believing leaves you condemned. Number three, God's verdict. Fact number four, doing evil causes you to hate the light. Why? Because light exposes evil. So verse 20 says, "Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. " These are just simple facts of life that I think anybody would agree with when you just take a look at them for a few moments. The reason people who are doing the wrong thing don't want light put on them, they don't want the police to come over to their house, they don't want a spotlight put on what they're doing, it's because they know they're doing the wrong thing. And that's the reason that I hate the light. It's the evil in my life. I can make up all kinds of reasons why I don't like the light, I don't like God, I want to be an atheist. There are all kinds of philosophical reasons, there are all kinds of relational reasons, historical reasons, I can make it sound intellectual, I can make it sound emotional, there are all kinds of directions I can go with this. But God says, here's the facts. Just be honest with yourself, start there. The reason you're doing this is because you don't want people to see the evil things that you're doing. In fact, you don't even want to admit the evil that's in your own heart. And that's not the end of the story. Fact number five is this, living by truth causes you to come into the light. Why? Because light also exposes truth. It exposes evil, but it also exposes truth. Verse 21 says this, but whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what has been done has been done by God. You see, when I come to know his light, the light of his love, the light of his grace, the light of his power, when I come to know his light, I'm okay with people seeing me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm okay with people knowing about my weaknesses. I'm even okay with confessing my sins to others. Why? Because I know that my life is not dependent on some facade that I have never sinned or that I'm perfect. My self-image is not dependent on that, but even more important than that, the truth, the depth of who I am, is not dependent on that. When I live by the truth, I'm happy to come into the light. That is the freedom. Jesus said the truth will set you free. That is the freedom that the truth brings into your life. You can spend the rest of your life hiding out in dark corners because of that sin, or you can come into the light and experience the freedom of letting the light expose the truth. I can't describe to you, you may have experienced it, but if you haven't, I cannot describe to you how free that freedom really is. I want to skip down to verse 36 because it's just sort of a summing up of these facts of life that we've been talking about. Verse 36, well, the facts of life are in the verse. Verse 36 says this. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him. Now that makes some people uncomfortable. So they want to think, well, I don't agree with that verse. Well, you can't not agree with it. It's God speaking here. Either the Bible is God speaking or it isn't. And if it is God speaking and it is, then I have to agree with what he has said. And he has said that his wrath remains on those who don't know him. Why would God be angry with me? He's angry with sin. He's angry with sin because of what it does to the entire human race. He's angry with sin because of what it does to his creation. But God, in his essence, in his essence, has decided that he doesn't want the final verdict to be wrath or anger. He has decided that he wants the final verdict to be eternal life. That's why he sent his Son to rescue you. So you can get all caught up in, why did God ever get angry with me? I know that doesn't make me feel good. I don't like the fact that God might be angry with me. Or you can accept the fact that God hates sin. He hates it because of what it does to his creation, what it does to his people. And that God sent a rescuer because of that. He decided to rescue you out of your sin. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. As we think about these simple facts of life, I'd like to, for a moment, talk to God about them in prayer. And as you talk to God about these facts of life, you might need to ask yourself, God, am I embarrassed by these facts of life? Are they for me just too judgmental sounding in our politically correct world? Or do I want to just pretend that they're not there? Because they make me uncomfortable. They make me face some things in my own life. They make me face some realities in my family that I don't want to face. Or you might want to ask yourself, God, am I one of those people who hits people over the head with these facts in such a way that makes them think that you're judgmental instead of the rescuer that you are? Pray this with me. Pray, Jesus Christ, help me to see the world the way that you see the world so that I can care about the world the way that you care about the world. Pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Well, join us tomorrow. We're going to be looking at verses 22 to 35, continuing the story of John the Baptist.