THE WRATH OF GOD ABIDETH ON HIM

Text: JOHN 3:1-36

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INTRODUCTION:

1. The expression “wrath of God” is found many times in the Bible.
2. Deuteronomy 29:23 says God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah “in His anger, and in His wrath.”  What about the USA???
3. Psalm 2:5 says, “Then shall he speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure.”
4. Psalm 2:12 says, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”
5. Psalm 21:9 says, “The LORD shall swallow them up in His wrath, and the fire shall devour them.”
6. Psalm 78:31 says, “The wrath of God came upon them...”
7. Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
8. Both Ephesians 5:6 and Colossians 3:6 say that “the wrath of God (comes) upon the children of disobedience.”
9. Revelation 14:10 says, “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.”
10. Revelation 14:19 refers to “the great winepress of the wrath of God.”
11. Three times in the book of Revelation, mention is made of “the golden vials full of the wrath of God” (Rev. 15:1, 7 16:1). These vials will be poured out during the tribulation period.
12. The Bible repeatedly warns of the fierceness of God’s wrath, and the fire of His wrath, and the fury of His wrath, and the rod of His wrath, and the wrath of the Lamb, and the great day of His wrath.
13. Romans 9:22 refers to sinners as “the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.”
14. What I want to focus on this morning is John 3:36, and what these words mean – “the wrath of God abideth on him.”

1. IT MEANS TO BE SPIRITUALLY DEAD
2. IT MEANS TO BE CONDEMNED BY GOD
3. IT MEANS TO BE IN DARKNESS

 

I. IT MEANS TO BE SPIRITUALLY DEAD

1. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life…” (John 3:36). There is no life because they are spiritually dead.
2. Sinners are spiritually dead and they need to be regenerated. Ephesians 2:1 says sinners are “dead in trespasses and sins.”
3. “Death” in Scripture means separation. When a person dies, his soul and spirit are separated from his body. The “second death” means eternal separation from God in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8).
4. “Death” in Scripture means separation. The Prodigal Son’s father said, “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:24). This means the prodigal son was separated from his father.
5. Ephesians 4:18 says that lost sinners are “alienated from the life of God.” This means that they are spiritually dead, and are separated from God.
6. Sinners are spiritually dead and they need to be regenerated. That is why Jesus told Nicodemus, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again (John 3:7). Not just Nicodemus, because “Ye” is plural.
7. John 1:13 says the new birth is “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” “Born of God.”
8. Six times, John uses this term in I John. “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin…” (I John 3:9; cf. 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18).
9. First Peter 1:23 says, “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.”
10. D.L. Moody often preached on the “three R’s” of the Bible:

• “Ruined by the Fall” – sinners are spiritually dead.
• “Redeemed by the Blood” – John 3:16
• “Regenerated by the Spirit” – John 3:6-8

11. The new birth is a complete transformation. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (II Cor. 5:17).
12. It is a supernatural change. The old man is put off and the new man is put on (Eph. 4:22-24).
13. According to II Peter 1:4, we become “partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
14. Just as the child bears the image of his parent; they that are born of God bear God’s image (cf. II Cor. 3:18).

 

II. IT MEANS TO BE CONDEMNED BY GOD (3:14-18)

1. “Condemned” is a terrible word.  How sad to be in a courtroom and hear the judge say: “Condemned.”  The guilty criminal’s wife and mother start crying.  It is a sad picture.
   But to be condemned by God is even more terrible (John 3:17-19).
2. The good news is that, “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (3:17).
3. Jesus said in John 12:47, “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”
4. God wants to save the world, and God sent Jesus to save the world (3:16). Jesus came to save the world, but if sinners refuse to believe in Jesus they will die and go to hell.
5. “He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (3:18).
6. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (3:36).
7. “The wrath of God abideth on him” means “condemned already” (3:18).
8. “The wrath of God abideth on him” means lost.  The Greek word translated “perish” in John 3:16 is often translated “lost.”
9. Second Corinthians 4:3, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”  Same word in the Greek text.
10. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are perishing!
11. Luke 19:11, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  Same word in the Greek text.
12. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save those who are perishing!
13. To illustrate the Gospel, our Lord referred to an incident recorded in Numbers 21:5-9 (cf. John 3:14, 15).
14. The story of the brazen serpent lifted up on the pole in the wilderness foreshadowed Jesus being lifted up on the cross as our Saviour (John 3:14,15).
15. The Israelites were condemned to die in the wilderness. Numbers 21:6 says, “And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.”
16. But the people repented. Numbers 21:7 says, “Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned…”
17. Those who looked upon the serpent of brass lived.  But those who didn’t look, died (Num. 21:8, 9).
18. Those who look to Jesus receive everlasting life.  But those who do not believe in Jesus are “condemned already” (John 3:14-18).
19. “Look and live,” my brother, live,
    Look to Jesus now, and live;
    ’Tis recorded in His word, hallelujah!
    It is only that you “look and live.” – William A. Ogden
20. Conversion of CH. Spurgeon:
21. I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. In that chapel there might be a dozen or fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning: snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. The text was, 'Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter.
    
    There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text. He began thus: ‘My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, “Look.” Now that does not take a deal of effort. It ain’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just “look.” Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, “Look unto Me.” ‘Ay,’ said he, in broad Essex, ‘many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You'll never find comfort in yourselves.’ Then the good man followed up his text in this way: ‘Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look: I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O, look to Me! Look to Me!’ When he had got about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes, he was at the length of his tether.
    
    Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. He then said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable.’ Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made on my personal appearance from the pulpit before. However, it was a good blow struck. He continued: ‘And you will always be miserable — miserable in life and miserable in death — if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.’
    
    Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can, ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ.’ There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the Precious Blood of Christ.
22. “He that believeth on him is not condemned…” (John 3:18).

 

III. IT MEANS TO BE IN DARKNESS (3:19-21)

1. Lost sinners are in spiritual darkness.  And because they love their sin, they love darkness rather than light (3:19).
2. And because they love their sin, hate the light, neither come to the light, lest their deeds should be reproved (3:20).
3. This is basic Bible truth.  Just talk to any sinner for five minutes and you will see it is true.  Sinners love drinking, drugs, gambling, cursing, dirty jokes, dirty television shows and movies, rock music, illicit sex, etc. 
4. But they do not love God.  They do not love the Bible.  They do not love going to church.
5. I heard J. Vernon McGee talk about getting soaked with rain one day while he was out hunting.  He ducked into a cave to get out of the rain.  He was very comfortable in that dirty old cave until he started a fire and noticed that the cave was crawling with snakes and lizards and spiders.  He ran out of there quickly.
6. Sinners are very comfortable in their worldly environment, but once they are exposed to the Gospel light they begin to see things differently (John 3:20, 21).
7. This is why we need to give people the Word of God.
8. “Quicken thou me according to thy word” (Psalm 119:25).  I preached this text a couple of weeks ago, and praise God people were indeed quickened!
9. “Darkness” includes intellectual darkness and moral darkness (cf. Ephesians 4:17-20).
10. There are many Scriptures which contrast light and darkness. Way back in Genesis 1:4 we read, “And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”
11. Jesus said in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
12. And again, in John 12:46, “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.”
13. The Lord told the apostle Paul that his ministry was, “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” (Acts 26:18).
14. Romans 13:12 says, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”
15. Second Corinthians 6:14 says, “What communion hath light with darkness?”
16. Ephesians 5:8 says, “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.”
17. First Thessalonians 5:5 says, “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.”
18. First Peter 2:9 says God has called us “out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
19. First John 1:5 says, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
20. There are many other Scriptures, but that is enough for now to point out that sinners are in darkness.
21. “The wrath of God abideth on him” means the man is in spiritual darkness.

 

CONCLUSION:

1. Spurgeon said that if John 3:36 said that the wrath of God was resting upon the culprits in the jails, most persons would agree with that statement, and no one would wonder at it.
2. He said that if the text declared that the wrath of God abides upon persons who live in habitual unchastity and constant violation of all the laws of order and respectability, most men would say “Amen” to that.
3. “It is true that God’s wrath does rest upon open sinners; but, oh sirs, this too is true, the wrath of God abideth upon those who boast of their virtues but have not believed in Jesus his Son. They may dwell in palaces; but, if they are not believers, the wrath of God abideth on them. They may sit in the senate house and enjoy the acclamations of the nation; but, if they believe not on the Son, the wrath of God abideth on them. Their names may be enrolled in the peerage, and they may possess countless wealth, but the wrath of God abideth on them. They may be habitual in their charities, and abundant in external acts of devotion; but, if they have not accepted the appointed Savior, the word of God bears witness, that the wrath of God abideth on them” – C.H.S.
4. It was another Englishman, Richard Cecil, who said, “Hell is the truth seen too late.”
5. Do not wait until it is too late!
6. Like the rich man in hell, who begged Father Abraham, “Have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame”
7. Do not wait until it is too late!