Again, our text for today is the Gospel of John, chapter 3, starting in verses 16 and finishing

in verses 21. The Bible says this, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that

whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 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.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already,

because he is not believed in the name of the only son of God.

And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people love the

darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. Everyone who does wicked things

hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does

what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that

his works have been carried out in God. This is the word of the Lord. All right, please be seated.

Let's go ahead and dive right in. I'm going to do my best to be a briefer today because we started

late and then we had a special prayer. yeah so I'm going to try to be

considerate here we go verses 16 and 18 are mirror images of one another that's the first thing

that I want us to notice in the text today verse 16 and 18 actually are mirroring one another

you could almost say that it seems as though verse 18 is entirely redundant and that there's no

purpose for it being there at all. That would be a bad position to hold because you don't want

to say that something in the Bible shouldn't be there. It's the Word of God. But there is a purpose

because the same principle is being stated but with different language. The difference is that

the language of life and death from verse 16 is now

transitioned to the legal language of judgment and condemnation in verse 18. Now, the significant

question arises in verse 17 in between. I'll go back to verse 16 and 18 here in just a moment,

...