Scripture: John 3:16
Sermon Series: John 3:16: God’s Love Language – Sermon 06

Are you a fudgie? Some years ago, I discovered that I was a fudgie. Jane and I were at Mackinaw Island for her brother’s wedding. The area is famous for its fudge, so residents call tourists “fudgies”.

You have to take a boat out to the Island. Cars aren’t allowed, only bicycles or walkers. So, we walked all around the island, checking it out. The highlight of Mackinaw Island is The Grand Hotel. It’s featured in several movies, probably the most famous was Somewhere in Time.

It costs a chunk of change to stay in The Grand Hotel. One night is over $1000. Since we were there, I thought let’s walk on the front sidewalk and take some pictures. I was shocked to learn that we couldn’t even walk on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel unless we paid for the privilege.

Remember the song Signs? It was one of those moments…

Sign, sign, everywhere, a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery
Breakin’ my mind
“Do this,” “Don’t do that”
Can’t you read the sign?

I love the last verse. And the sign said “Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down, and pray. Even a 70’s rock band understood a Whoever moment.

We’re continuing our series on John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Today we’re focusing on, that whoever believes in Him.  

Notice those two words – whoever and believes.They’re foundational to understanding and accepting God’s free gift of forgiveness and eternal life.

Most people don’t believe whoever. A survey was taken of some multi-millionaires who were asked, How much would you be willing to pay for a reserved ticket to heaven? The average answer was $640,000.

Most people believe you have to pay or do something to go to heaven. You must pay to walk the golden sidewalks. You have to be good or moral or a church attender or religious. But it’s not what Jesus said. It’s all free. That’s found in the word, whoever. Whoever is a biblical word of vital importance. It touches everyone. God so loved the world…that whoever. Let’s work through this today. If you’re taking notes…

1. Whoever means any and all. 

Our world is one where you’re excluded unless you’re part of the in crowd. If you’re not, you’re pariah. And many of us know the pain of feeling unloved. A 10-year-old boy wrote to Dear Abby about the pain of life on the playground. He said, “All my life I have been chosen last. That’s my problem…Why don’t they hang a sign on me that says, “Reject? Last one to pick gets me.”

But John 3:16 doesn’t say last one. No, it says last one, first one and everyone in between. It unrolls the Welcome Mat of heaven out to everyone.  

Jesus could’ve narrowed it a bit, changing whoever into whatever. Whatever you believe or whatever person follows me. Whoever is wonderfully indefinite. Who isn’t a whoever? God exports His grace universally. Whoever is all of us. It means God loves us all without exception.

Richard Baxter, the great Puritan, wrote that he was glad God put the word whoever in John 3:16. He would rather have whoever in the verse than his own name. I thank God for the word ‘whoever.’ If God had said that there was mercy for Richard Baxter, I am so vile a sinner that I would’ve thought He meant some other Richard Baxter; but when He says whoever, I know it includes me the worst of all Richard Baxters.

Whoever is a wonderful, loving, inclusive word that invites all. Leave your résumé at home; your qualifications don’t matter. If you live and breathe, if you were born into the human race, there’s a place for you.

Whoever is a word with implications that makes Satan tremble. It allows each person to plug his or her own name into that verse. This morning would be a good time to put your own name into John 3:16. Give it a try. Personalize John 3:16. Write it down, speak it aloud, let it soak into your heart. See how it transforms your life and eternal destination.

Whoever needs to be far reaching. The Bible teaches that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). God’s Word teaches that all are guilty before God. There is no one free of sin. No one can plead “not guilty.” All have sinned and are condemned to suffer the wrath of God.

It’s not just the worst sinners like Cain, Judas or Jezebel. Sin is the experience of the best of us. Even Mary, the mother of Jesus was a sinner and needed a Savior and praised God for a Savior. Mary cried out, My spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:47). All of us need whoever. 

Whoever is as far reaching as sin and God’s love. The Bible says, Christ died for all (2 Corinthians 5:14). It reminds us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).

We’ll circle back to whoever, but let’s look first at that word, believes.

2. “Believes” refutes all other ways of salvation. 

Our Plymouth Brethren friends believe in baptizing three times face forward. So, this guy is being baptized and every time the preacher brings him up, he asks him, “Do you believe?” “Yes, I believe.” “Do you believe?” “Yes, I believe.” The third time he brings him up out of the water, he asks, “Do you believe?” “Yes, I believe.” “So, what do you believe?” “I believe you’re trying to drown me.”

That’s not the believe here. Believing and saving faith are synonymous. The word believe is crucial. It’s the word on which the hinge of the door to heaven opens. Without believing, salvation is a closed door.

To believe, you need the cross, you need salvation and God’s forgiveness, then you must first believe that you need to be saved. Our sin and rebellion against God are infinitely worse than most of us can imagine.

Francis Schaeffer, one of Christianity’s greatest philosophers, was 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 to 50 minutes on the negative, to really show him his dilemma that he is morally dead then I’d take the last 10 to­ 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.

Believing is worthless unless you first believe that you’re spiritually dead, hopelessly lost as a sinner without Christ. We must believe that we need Jesus, need to be made new and need a new heart that desires God.

You may remember the nuclear submarine Kursk disaster. Kursk was the pride of the Russian navy. In 2000, there was huge explosion on board. The seven-ton vessel immediately took on water and plunged 350 feet to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Most of the 118 crew members died instantly. Others spent their last hours in freezing, horrid conditions.

Like those sailors, we’re helpless and hopeless, submerged not in water but in sin. We need to be lifted up. We can’t do it on our own. But suppose one of the submerged sailors on the Kursk thought of a solution and said to his fellow crewmen, “I know what to do. Let’s all press with our hands on the ceiling and push. We’ll shove the sub to the surface.” 

Can you imagine the looks his fellow crew members would give him? Push a seven-ton vessel up through hundreds of feet of water? They’d say, “You don’t understand the gravity of the situation. We don’t have what it takes to save our lives. We don’t need muscles; we need a miracle.”

In a similar way we’re helpless to save ourselves. We needed a miracle. That’s what God gave us when He sent His Son. It’s why we must believe in God’s Son and His sacrifice on the cross. We can’t rescue ourselves.

We’re saved when we put our faith in the person and work of Jesus. Jesus took our sin on Himself and gives us His righteousness. The righteousness we receive from Jesus is perfect, eternal, complete, and abundant. Everyone is saved by faith alone. It’s a gift of God’s grace.

Believing is not a good work or morality.There’s no good work we can do to earn our way into heaven. Christ is our only hope. Going to church won’t save us. Reading the Bible won’t. Giving money won’t save us. Working in a soup kitchen can’t save us. Trying to be moral won’t cut it. No good work can save anyone. We’re saved by believing, by grace in Christ alone. It’s what Jesus’ parable in Luke 18 clearly teaches. It’s humbling to acknowledge that you’re a sinner and must believe in Jesus’ cross alone. It’s a big barrier for salvation. Pride probably sends more to hell than any other sin.

Believing is not baptism whether it’s as a child or an adult. Salvation only comes through faith in Christ alone. While baptism is a step of obedience, baptism without faith is merely getting wet. Relying on ritual instead of Christ’s sacrifice is inadequate for salvation.

Easter is coming. The thief on the cross who opened his eyes in heaven wasn’t baptized. Adding baptism to salvation makes it a work. But salvation is by grace alone. Baptism is a public declaration of a transformation that’s already occurred in the heart by believing. The blood of Jesus washes away sins, not baptism. Baptism is a first act of obedience for a believer. It’s not a requirement for heaven and won’t get you into heaven.

Believing is not a feeling.Feelings can be a result of believing but feelings won’t save you. A lack of feelings won’t cause you to lose your salvation.

Salvation is an objective fact based on believing in Jesus’ finished work on the cross, not a subjective motion that ebbs and flows. We’re saved by God’s promise, not feelings. Feelings are unreliable, but the Word of God is secure. Salvation is a matter of faith in truth not rather an emotional experience. 

Faith is placed in the facts of Scripture (Jesus’ death/resurrection), which will produce feelings, not the other way around. Salvation is secured by God’s grace, not your own emotional stability or feeling forgiven. Many doubt their salvation because of feelings or lack of them.

Ours is an emotionally driven culture and it’s contaminated the church. Feelings are unreliable, emotions untrustworthy. Simple circumstances—a headache, a cloudy day, a word thoughtlessly spoken—can erode our confidence because things don’t feel right. Doubt and discouragement are often the result of interpreting feelings as if they’re the truth. They’re not.

You may not feel forgiven. We’re forgiven because we believe God’s Word, God’s facts. We’re saved by faith by believing God and His Word.

First, we must hear the gospel—the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Then, we must believe—trust the Lord Jesus and His sacrifice alone. We have no confidence in our efforts to achieve salvation.

It requires repentance, a changing of mind about sin and Christ, turning from sin to the Lord. Salvation results in a transformed life. We begin to live as a new creation. Salvation is evidenced by that transformation and trust in God’s promise to hold believers, not by emotional highs or spiritual thrills. 

There are times we may not feel God’s love. We must choose to believe Scripture that says He loves us. Scripture says He loves us with an everlasting love. He’ll never stop. His Word is true, not how you feel.

Believing is not generic faith.Biblical faith isn’t intellectual assent. It’s not just believing something is true. It’s more than believing Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior, the same way we believe Vladimir Putin is the leader of Russia. Satan and his demons believe Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior. The Devil is absolutely orthodox in his belief in the incarnation of the Son of God. To just believe the facts of Christianity isn’t salvation.  

Believing as we find in John 3:16 is relying on the fact that something is true. A chair is often used to help illustrate this. Intellectual assent is recognizing that a chair is a chair and agreeing it’s designed to support the person who sits on it. Trust/believing is actually sitting in the chair.
Believing requires intellectual assent to the facts and trusting in those facts.

Many think saving faith is faith in faith. It’s some vague faith without an object. They’ll say it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere. It’s “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual” They speak of trusting God “as you understand Him.” But we must understand that God has He has revealed Himself in His Word.

This false idea is very dangerous. It takes a good idea (the need for faith) and offers salvation to anyone who has faith in almost anything. As J.D. Greear says, The tragedy is that for a lot of people, (many of them sitting in churches like ours), their superficial faith has immunized them from understanding their need for the real gospel.

3. “Believes” is saving faith. 

Have you ridden a Ferris wheel? The first Ferris wheel was invented by George Washington Ferris and built in 1898. It was a huge wheel soaring almost 300 feet into the air. But no one wanted to ride it because it was so new and untested. And then on the first night it opened, there was a strong wind shaking the wheel. But George Ferris and his wife got in one of the cars and rode around several rotations as crowds watched. When the wheel stopped, they got off with smiles on their faces. Soon the ride became the most popular attraction at the exposition.

As an engineer, Ferris began with scientific knowledge that the wheel should work and would be safe. But knowledge isn’t enough. It was only after they got on and displayed personal faith that the Ferris wheel worked.

You may have head knowledge that Jesus can change your life and take you to heaven. But you must trust that Jesus bought your ticket. You must get in and buckle up. If you trust Him, faith will take you on the ride of your life!

“Believing” is a major theme of the Gospel of John. John uses the word 99 times. At the end of the book, he writes: These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31). 

There are three elements of “believes” or what’s known as “saving faith:

There is Knowledge. 

This is the factual basis of the Christian faith. It’s an intellectual understanding of God’s truth. You must know something to be saved. Faith is based on knowledge and knowledge is based on truth. Saving faith is intelligent faith. The gospel is information we need to know.

You aren’t saved by information but can’t be saved without it. Saving faith is not a blind leap in the dark. We’re called to believe in something, not just anything. First and foremost, we believe in Jesus Christ. We must know who He is, why He came, why He died, that He rose from the dead, and how He can be our Lord and Savior. Faith must be grounded in the facts of Scripture. Saving faith begins with knowledge but it never ends there.

There is Conviction. 

Conviction means to know something and then be persuaded it’s true. The most common word for “believe” in the Old Testament is aman, which means “to have confidence in, to regard as completely reliable.” That Hebrew word comes over into English as Amen. It means “Yes, it is true.” Saving faith involves saying “Amen” to the facts of the gospel. It goes beyond knowledge to the personal conviction that these things are true.

A man may go to a doctor who tells him he has cancer. But there’s good news, says the doctor. We’ve discovered the cure for your cancer. Do you believe it? Yes, you do. Are you cured? Not until you roll up your sleeve, let them stick in the needle and pump lifesaving medicine into your veins.

Conviction is essential. You must be personally convinced of the truth, but that alone can’t save you. There’s one final element in true saving faith.

There is Commitment. 

Commitment is the active part of faith. We could use “trust” in the sense of “relying fully upon,” such as resting with your full weight knowing that a bed can hold you up. True faith always rests upon some object. If we go to a doctor, we must rest our faith in him. If we go to a lawyer, we must put our case in his hands. It’s what phrases like “believe in your heart” or “with your heart” mean. We must “embrace” or “accept.”

We find all three elements of saving faith in 2 Timothy 1:12: I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day. I know…am convinced…what I have entrusted. Knowledge, Conviction and Commitment.

Saving faith always ends in personal commitment. These three elements of faith are like courtship and marriage. When a young man first develops a relationship with a young woman, he says to himself, “I like what I know about this person, and I want to know more.” As the relationship grows, he realizes he’s fallen in love and the thought comes to him, “I want to marry her.” That’s conviction, but he’s not married yet. He’s not married until he stands before a minister with his beloved by his side and in the presence of God and witnesses says, “I do.” Then and only then is he married. Knowledge, conviction, commitment.

4. “Whoever” means YOU. 

The most wonderful thing about “whoever” is that it means you. Your name is there! The opportunity to have saving faith is available to anyone, whoever believes in Him. In the original it’s literally “all the ones believing in Him.”

The point is: if YOU will believe in Christ alone, all your sins will be forgiven, and you will receive eternal life. The invitation is open to everyone.

We worked through a few weeks ago that God so loved the WORLD — the whole world, the sinful world, the ethnic world — people of every kind, every sin, every person, can be saved. This invitation is for everyone: WHOEVER believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, what you’ve done – whoever means you!

Conclusion

Max Lucado in his book, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, shares a wonderful Whoever believes in Him story. He writes:

“The small house was simple but adequate. It consisted of one large room on a dusty street. Its red-tiled roof was one of many in this poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the Brazilian village. It was a comfortable home. Maria and her daughter, Christina, had done what they could to add color to the gray walls and warmth to the hard dirt floor: an old calendar, a faded photograph of a relative, a wooden crucifix. The furnishings were modest: a pallet on either side of the room. A washbasin, and a wood-burning stove. Maria’s husband had died when Christina was an infant The young mother, stubbornly refusing opportunities to remarry; got a job and set out to raise her young daughter. And now, fifteen years later, the worst years were over. Though Maria’s salary as a maid afforded few luxuries, it was reliable and it did provide food and clothes. And now Christina was old enough to get a job to help out.

Some said Christina got her independence from her mother. She recoiled at the traditional idea of marrying young and raising a fam­ily. Not that she couldn’t have had her pick of husbands. Her olive skin and brown eyes kept a steady stream of prospects at her door. She had an infectious way of throwing her head back and filling the room with laughter. She also had that rare magic some women have that makes every man feel like a king just by being near them. But it was her spirited curiosity that made her keep all the men at arm’s length.

She spoke often of going to the city. She dreamed of trading her dusty neighborhood for exciting avenues and city life. Just the thought of this horrified her mother. Maria was always quick to remind Christina of the harshness of the streets. “People don’t know you there. Jobs are scarce and the life is cruel. And besides, if you went there what would you do for a living?” Maria knew exactly what Christina would do or would have to do for a living. That’s why her heart broke when she awoke one morning to find her daughter’s bed empty.

Maria knew immediately where her daughter had gone. She also knew immediately what she must do to find her. She quickly threw some clothes in a bag, gathered up all­ her money, and ran out of the house.

On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the cur­tain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.

Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture-taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo, she wrote a note.

It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.

It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a famil­iar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation.

Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home. And she did.

My friend, Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home. Will you please come Home to Jesus today? Because whoever means YOU!

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.