Are You a Christian?
Tom Shrader examines the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3 to answer the fundamental question 'What is a Christian?' He demonstrates that even the most religious and moral person like Nicodemus cannot save himself through good works or religious activity. Being a Christian means being born again by God's grace through faith in Christ's death and resurrection, not through human effort or religious performance.
“There are a whole bunch of pagan heathens who've been confirmed, baptized, go to church, write big checks, wear robes and teach in churches.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: A Test for Eternity (1994)
Recorded: 1994
Duration: 39 min
Themes: salvation, grace, faith, rebirth, religion, morality, works, identity, questioning faith, new believer, religious background, seeking truth, moral person, church attender, spiritual seeker, doubting salvation
Scripture: John 3:1-16, Numbers 21:4-9, Acts 9, Romans 10, Ephesians 2:8-9, John 20
Theological Themes: born again, regeneration, soteriology, justification by faith, religious works, nicodemus encounter, gospel presentation, conversion
Full Transcript
One of the things you'll notice on the table is the new Pulitzer Prize winning piece of literature, and in that you'll find an explanation about priority living, some of the tapes we've done in the past, and an up-to-date schedule. The schedule has changed since we broke last time, so you'll want that information. But in here, what we try to do is take five questions that typically a new person might ask about priority living and try to answer them—a little preventive maintenance for us.
One of them is, what is priority living? What's this baby about? Our answer is this: priority living's main objective is to cause biblical life change in businessmen and women by teaching the timeless Word of God in a contemporary context. That's what we say we're about. That's what we're trying to do.
A Tale of Three Responses
At the end of July, I finished a lesson—it happened on the Thursday morning study. I finished the lesson and I'm standing there and somebody comes up and has a comment. Then typically what happens is people stack up behind them.
So he comes up and here's what he said: "You know, today you made such and such a point and you used this scripture. You know, it seemed to me if you would have used a different scripture—in fact, here's the one I was thinking," and he gave it to me. He said, "If you were to use this, I think the point would have been more effective." I said, "Well, thank you." He said, "You know, very honestly, that isn't very deep and I understand what you're trying to do. It's kind of a surface thing."
I said, "Let me ask you a question, which seems obvious to me. Clearly you are astute, intellectual. Why do you come?" He said, "Well, every other week or so I get a point out of it. Kind of a practical thing." So I said, "Terrific." You need to know you will never win. You can't imagine what people say.
The next guy comes up the next day. This is exactly—I'm not jerking you around. Here's the truth. The next guy comes up and says, "I've been in church a lot and I got to tell you something. Today was really heavy. I got to tell you, I got to get the tape and go through that a few times because I don't think I got any of what you were saying." I said, "Well, thanks. You ought to talk to the fellow who's on his way to the car, because it really was basic."
Then the next person came up. It was a lady. She said, "This is the first time I've been here. I guarantee you, I'll be back in the fall. I was raised in a home where we never went to church. We never talked about it. We never did anything. This is brand new stuff to me." We've now been at this for four or five years. To be honest with you, that's exactly the constituency we should have. It should be across the board.
Our Purpose and Approach
We are not primarily for unchurched people trying to figure all this stuff out. That happens. Nor are we trying to take you into the Greek and the Hebrew. If we were, we'd be far more on an intellectual plane. What we're trying to do is to say, wherever you are in life, we want to move you along at that pace. We pray God does that.
Almost every week, somebody will come up and say, "I've got a friend in Ohio. I've got a sister in Idaho. I've got somebody at work, and I want to give him a tape—one tape about what it means to be a Christian. What's a Christian like? He's searching. She's searching. Have you got a tape?" The answer has been no until now.
That's what we're going to do this week and next week. We're going to ask just very simple questions. We're going to ask the question this week: what is a Christian? Then next week, we're going to ask you to leave all the sharp objects at home, and we're going to ask you the question: are you a Christian? For some of you, this is really basic stuff. For others of you, we're about to go where no man has ever been before in your life.
The Big Questions
What is a Christian? Put it another way: if I went over to Fashion Square, and I set up shop, I took my tape recorder, and I said to random people, "What do you got to do to go to heaven?" After a period of time—and we're going to use those terms a little bit interchangeably, although I know technically they're different—but "What do I have to do to go to heaven?" That's a huge motivating question for me. "What is a Christian?" Those things are interchangeable for our purposes today.
If I said, "What do you got to do to go to heaven?" Because I've asked this question a billion times, I know what the answers are going to be.
Common Answers About Heaven
I'm going to get some guys that say, "Who cares? I'm 32, 22, 42, 52. I don't plan on dying until I'm 82, and I'll think about it then. I don't care." I'll get some people that say, "Well, I'm not really worried about that. All dogs go to heaven. Everybody goes to heaven." It's the dominant theme. Those of you that enjoy the theological terms, this is theologically speaking justification by death. All you got to do is die to go to heaven. All you got to do to go to heaven—that's easy—die. Because when you die, everybody goes to heaven.
Here's another answer you get a lot: "What do I got to do to go to heaven? Well, I got to be a good person." Now, you can pretty much stop that statement with one question: "What's a good person?" Then that person will get a little more reflective.
Maybe this expresses kind of this undercurrent of a lot of things. I got a conversation right before I left. A guy said, "Hey, I want to come to your study. I understand you're on break." We talk a while, and he started to kind of spill his guts, so there's guts all over the place, and all this stuff's going on. Finally, he's rambling, and I said to him, "Are you a Christian?" He said, "Sure, I've been confirmed." In other words, he's saying, "I'm confirmed." I had to say to him what I get to say to you: there are a whole bunch of pagan heathens who've been confirmed. There's a whole bunch of pagans who've...
There are all sorts of pagans who go to church. There's all sorts of pagans that write big checks and give lots of money. There's all sorts of pagans that wear robes and teach in churches. There's pagans that lead music and sing solos and teach Sunday school.
See, when you ask the fundamental question, what is a Christian, none of those answers work. There may be a subplot somewhere, but that's not what a Christian is. What is a Christian? I want to go to the Scriptures, and I want to see what is a Christian.
Going to the Gospels for Answers
Now, I'll show you how really easy this is. I'll just ask you a couple questions, and you'll be able to teach this whole thing. I want to go to the life of Christ, and I want to pull an illustration out of there. So, if I say I want to go to the life of Christ, that pretty much is going to limit me to four books. What are they? That's right. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Now, if just typically I could go to any four of them, but probably the book I would most likely go to, if I want to find Jesus talking about salvation, the book I most likely would go to would be John. And why would that be? Because John tells us in the back of the book, in the 20th chapter, at the end of the book, he says, here's why I wrote the book. He says, Jesus did many other signs which I didn't record, but I recorded these in order that you might believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and that you might have eternal life. That's the whole point of this thing.
That's why he obviously achieved this all the way 2,000 years later, because here we are sitting in what seems to me to be a very warm room, talking about it, and you know to go there. Now, let's just see how really sharp you are. If I was to pick a chapter within the gospel of John, what chapter might I select? Three. Oh, this is great.
The Most Important Passage in the Bible
So now, here we go. I'm into John chapter 3, and I'm there because in there we meet two personalities. We see Jesus, and we meet another fellow, and His name is Nicodemus. J.C. Ryle talks about this, John chapter 3, and here's what he says: "The conversation between Christ and Nicodemus, which begins in these verses, John 3:1, is the most important passage in the whole Bible. Nowhere else do we see stronger statements about those two mighty subjects, the new birth and salvation by faith in the Son of God."
We say, "Gosh, I want to give that tape to somebody because they need to hear it." That's not what Ryle says. Ryle says this: "The servant of Christ would do well to make himself thoroughly acquainted with this chapter." Why? Because if you're a Christian and you're out living this stuff, inevitably these issues are going to come up, and you have to be able to deal with them.
The object is not just to get them to the study, or the object is not to get them to church. You need to be a Christian. "Come and hear my pastor." Let me help you out here. Your pastor is a shepherd. You're the sheep. Shepherds beget shepherds. Sheep beget sheep. That's your job, not His. You should be able to. And that's what Ryle says.
Three Lessons from Nicodemus
We're going to look at Nicodemus and Jesus. In this confrontation, here's three lessons that we're going to pick up this week and next week. Here's the first one: we're going to find out that man is utterly unable to save himself. When you talk about what do you have to do to go to heaven, the first thing that becomes clear is you can't do anything to save yourself.
The second thing is this: this way of salvation has been provided by God through the death and resurrection of Christ. And then the last thing is that whatever this whole new life means, it's marked by obedience, it's born of love, and it flows out of God's love for the sinner, and then the sinner's love for God. Those are the three object lessons we want to get out of Nicodemus. And I've got to tell you something, we're going to do one and two today, and number three next week.
Who Was Nicodemus?
Here's this confrontation, and the reason I spend that five or ten minutes in introduction is because it becomes very important, very quickly, to understand who Nicodemus is. Here we go. "Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews." We can unpack this verse, and we learn a ton about Nicodemus.
Number one, we learn he was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were deeply religious people. In our culture, we have a tendency to put these guys down. They were the guys, if you will, that did in Jesus, and we see them as hypocrites, but that's not at all the prestige they held in the community. We see them as kind of these gnarly, slimy guys with one eyebrow that starts over here and goes all the way across their forehead, and they're just kind of undermining everything.
Barclay, in His commentary, says this: "In many ways the Pharisees were the best people in the whole country." The Jews, especially the Pharisees, believed the first five books of the Old Testament contained all we needed to know about God, and then all we had to do was unpack those first five books, and we would have everything we needed about God.
The Pharisees' Religious Commitment
The scribes come along, and they begin to interpret this law. They produce the Mishnah, and in the Mishnah are 24 chapters dealing with just one subject, the subject of the Sabbath. We're told that one Pharisee spent two and a half years studying just one chapter dealing with the Sabbath of 24. So literally, just understanding the Sabbath as a Pharisee was a 60-year project. These guys were committed to living every detail of the law. They were deeply religious people.
In your context, they would be the pastors. They would be the religious leaders. They would be the people you'd hold up on pedestals. But it doomed them. The Sabbath is interesting. Within the Scripture, God says on the Sabbath, you should not travel from your home on the Sabbath. So they had to begin to define this. And if I remember, the jurisdiction they had was 2,000 yards they could
Nicodemus: The Ultimate Good Man
So they lay that out. Then you've got to come back, and this is a very interesting question. Some of you in here are lawyers, and so you would ask this very probing question. The question would be this: What is a home?
I have a home in Flagstaff. I have a home in Pinetop. I have a home here. How far can I go? Well, here and there they came back, and they said, well, a home is constituted by wherever you leave your personal articles or wherever you leave one meal's provision of food.
So now the rabbi doesn't want to violate the law, but he wants to get from Phoenix to Tucson on the Sabbath. So the day before, he sends out his servant, and every 2,000 yards he drops an article of clothing, or he puts a meal so the Pharisee travels from Phoenix to Tucson on the Sabbath, just picking this stuff up, and he goes all the way down 100 miles, but he never violates the Sabbath because he never leaves home. That's how idiotic it is.
Men and women, that really is what all law does. All law is kind of yucky, and it's hard to interpret. So our canons of law within the country aren't getting thinner. They're getting larger because we need more clarification. I think that this chokes you, and it chokes your creativity.
One of the great things for me about going on vacation is I get to go to Nordstrom. I know all these women shop at Nordstrom. I'd rather be shopping at Nordstrom. Well, so would I. I love it, and I love to walk in the store, and I think it's a great place. Someone has told me, I have no idea if it's true, I hope that it is, that the Nordstrom's employee policy manual is essentially one page and essentially says, "Do what's best for the customer and don't chew gum."
The Freedom of Grace Over Law
When you unleash that kind of freedom in people and you don't bog them down in rules, you allow them to be the best they can possibly be. Those of you that run businesses, I think that's the way to run a business.
But here we go. He's a Pharisee. Here's another thing: he uses his Greek name, Nicodemus. He was highly educated in Greek philosophy and culture. He was also a politician of the highest degree. He was a ruler of the Jews.
He was part of the 70-member ruling body of the country, the most powerful men in the land. Rome had taken away from them the right to execute the death penalty and a couple other things, but other than that, they were the supreme court of Israel. He was a wealthy man. We know, we see him later in this gospel. I bet you know the scene.
Nicodemus: Wealth, Power, and Privilege
Jesus has died. Joseph of Arimathea comes to get the body of Christ and it is Nicodemus who comes with essentially a year's worth of money spent on oil and mixtures to anoint the body. He was also from a prestigious family—Rockefeller-ish, Roosevelt-ish.
His ancestors had negotiated a surrender with Rome earlier in 63 B.C. and either this Nicodemus or one of his relatives negotiates with Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. My point for spending 15 minutes on this is to get you to this: If what I got to do to go to heaven is be a good person or just be confirmed or just lead a good life or just somehow be a good citizen, Nicodemus has it in a wheelhouse.
This is not like the woman who was caught in adultery. This is not like some slime bag that we're looking at here. This is a guy who is at the top of the social ladder and he's, let's be honest, at the top also of the religious ladder.
A Nighttime Encounter
He comes to Jesus. Verse 2 says, "And this man came to Him by night." Lots of people make lots of stuff out of it. He came by night because he was intimidated and he came by night because he was timid and he came by night because he was afraid.
I got no clue why he came by night. I do know this: The rabbis believe that nighttime was the best time to study the law because that's when you were undisturbed. From a pragmatic perspective, I would guess that if you looked at Jesus' time system, a lot of A items were kind of crowding the daytime.
I don't know that. So to me, he comes at night. I guess it's significant because it's there, but I'm not going to paint this guy into a corner.
Nicodemus's Recognition of Jesus
He comes at night. Here's what he says: "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher for no one can do these signs unless God is with them."
This is really interesting. This ruling body had a variety of jobs, but one of them was to go and to examine any claim of Messiahship. Again, we sit here 2,000 years later and this seems odd to us, but there were more Messiah claimings than Elvis sightings back in those days. There were Messiahs all over the place. There were guys everywhere saying, "I'm the Messiah."
Nicodemus comes and he seems to be charged with perhaps examining Jesus, though we don't know if he represents the other rulers. We don't know if he's coming on his own. It's fun to, and it preaches well to try to make some of those assumptions, but we don't have a clue. He just comes for whatever reason or all of those reasons.
The Purpose of Signs
He says, "You're clearly different. You're clearly of God. How do I know that?" Because he says, "Nobody can do these things." Please get this. Jesus is going around—remember what John said? "I'm recording these signs. Why? So that you might believe."
That's all a sign is supposed to be. A sign is nothing more than something that points us in the direction of the real thing. The sign is not the real thing, is it? When you see a sign out here that says "entrance" with an arrow, you don't go up and try to go in the sign. You go to the door.
Jesus is doing these signs not so we worship the sign, but so we understand who He is. There's a great scene in Mark's gospel where they're out in a boat. The disciples of Jesus are on a boat, and this storm comes. It's throwing the ship all over, and Jesus is asleep, probably literally exhausted from all that's gone on. The disciples are afraid, and finally they say, "Somebody better wake Him up, because we're going to drown in this."
And they wake him up, and Jesus wakes up, and he looks around. Remember this? These guys are afraid. That's what the scripture said. They're afraid. Jesus looks around, sees them afraid, looks at the water and says, "Be calm." And immediately, it's like glass.
You know what the next line is? You think it's at this point that these guys go wild? At this point, the next line says, and now they were very much afraid. See, they were afraid before, but they're more afraid now, because they're dealing with something they don't know or understand, but they know He's got the power to say, "Be calm."
Jesus Cuts to the Heart of the Matter
And Nicodemus comes, and that's all he said. And now we get really to the meat of this. Jesus says to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Nicodemus didn't ask him about what he needed to do to be born again. He didn't ask him anything. All he said is, "You're a good guy, that's why I'm here." And Jesus looks right into his mind and his heart and knows what needs to be said. Unless you're born again, it becomes something that is definitive. You must be born again.
I don't like that word simply because that phrase, "born again," because our culture has so prostituted the word. We've got born again pizza parlors, born again used car dealer, born again all this. But I can't get away from the fact that that's the phrase Jesus used. You must be born again. If that phrase is offensive to you, understand that you're offended by Christ, not offended by me or someone else. You must be born again.
The Kingdom of God Requires Spiritual Understanding
If you're not born again, look at this. This is great. Unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. That Greek word there, translated "see," means literally to know or to become acquainted with. Unless you are born again, you cannot become acquainted with the kingdom of God.
And the kingdom of God doesn't just mean heaven. It's part of that to be sure. But it's all things relating to God. You're never going to understand anything spiritually if you're not born again. We know from Paul's writing, it's impossible to understand the scripture. If you don't have the Holy Spirit living in you, you can't have the Holy Spirit living in you unless you're born again.
Nicodemus Misses the Point Entirely
Now, if you need evidence of this, the next verse is the perfect exhibit. Nicodemus says, "How's this going to be? How can a man be born when he's old? I can't enter my mother's womb a second time, can I?" I'd say that Nicodemus didn't get it.
Nicodemus is saying, "My mother had eight kids. This is not good news for her." He's coming home for a family reunion. Mom is not excited. Well, that's not what he's saying. This is so obvious, isn't it? Isn't it obvious at least to us when we sit here? Is Jesus speaking on a human physical plane? No. He's speaking on a spiritual plane. And He said, "On a spiritual plane, unless you're born again, you aren't going to get this." And Nicodemus says, "How can I climb into my mother's womb again?" I think Jesus can say, "Duh, you didn't get it. You're not born again."
The Problem with Religion Without Rebirth
It's a fundamental question. Here's this deeply, and this is why I keep trying to shove it in your face. Here's this deeply religious good guy that's been confirmed and baptized. He's given not just a few shekels. He's given his life to his religion. And Jesus says, "You haven't got it. Your problem, Nicodemus, is you need to be born again."
So now we sit here 2,000 years later, and we ask the question, "How can I be born again? What do I have to do to be born again?" Isn't that what we would do?
Jesus Explains the Why, Not the How
Let me just stop here, because this is really important. If we're sitting over here at the first watch, and we're talking to somebody, and we say, "You must be born again," and I say, "I don't get it." We would start to tell them what they must do to be born again. Isn't that what we would say? We'd try to enter, get them, "Come on, pray with me now. Just repeat these words after me. I'll say them. And if you really mean them in your heart, you go ahead and say them too, OK?" Or we'd take them to church and get them to walk an aisle, or we'd take them to a thing and get them to check a box. All those are fine. I'm not putting down any of those things. I'm really not.
So we start over here with Kim. We go around the room. We say, "Are you born again?" You say, "Yes." We say, "How?" We're going to hear all of those things.
Jesus, though, does not take him into how to be born again. He tells you why you're born again. He does not explain the obvious. He goes behind the scenes.
The Phantom Illustration
This Saturday at 2 o'clock, I'm going to be in the fifth row, center, watching the Phantom. Life is not going to get better than this for those two hours. Right there. And I can't wait to see if they can recreate what we saw in L.A. I can't wait for the scene when the Phantom comes out. I love this. When the Phantom comes out and he's got Christine and I'm cheering for the Phantom. And the Phantom's there and he's got Christine. And we go, "How did he get her out there?" Well, he got her out there in the boat. No, see, it's not the boat. It's the pulleys. Have you ever read all that stuff? It's the pulleys and their backup system. Elaborate system.
If you take that thing, Jesus is not saying, "How must you be born again?" It's saying, "Check a box or pray a prayer." He says, "Let me tell you how this happens first." It's a very odd way, but it obviously is important in Jesus' economy.
Born of Water and Spirit
Jesus said this, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit." The Spirit there is capitalized. He's speaking of the Holy Spirit. We're not going to take the time to develop it, but I think the word water there speaks of the Word of God. Unless you're born again of the Word of God, you are never going to get into the kingdom of God. Unless you're born again of the Spirit, you're never going to get into the kingdom of God.
And then He says, "That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of Spirit is Spirit."
of man's efforts to try to come to God, to appease Him, they all fall short because they're generated by us, not by the Spirit. The problem is this, and some of you, especially those of you that are new, this is about where you check out, because I'm going to tell you that I believe that Adam and Eve really existed. And when Adam sinned, he thrust all of us into death and destruction and decay. And now I come into the world separated from God.
All of religion is some way... I mean, I'm watching the other day. I've been on vacation. I come back and I turn on A&E or Discovery, and I got Walter Cronkite saying, "I went to Africa to look for myself, and I discovered the..." Come on, are you kidding me? This is the most trusted man in journalism? This is a joke. This is a lie. That is... and I'm not saying this of Walter... that's Satan. I mean, that's evil. Evolution is evil. Because evolution totally destroys the idea that Adam sinned for you, which is exactly what Scripture teaches. And that sin separated me from God. All of religion is me trying to climb back into God's good graces, and Jesus says, you can't do that. That has to happen from the Spirit.
What Is a Christian?
We still, now, we're a half hour into this, we still haven't answered the question, what is a Christian? We can say this: being born again is essential. It's absolutely necessary if I want to see the Kingdom of God. And it's an act of the Spirit, it's not an act of my will. It's something that happens by the Spirit.
Here's what Jesus says then. He said, "Don't marvel at this." Apparently, Nicodemus had a look in his face, like some of you have at this point. And Jesus said, "Don't marvel at this. Why are you... don't marvel at this." And then He uses... oh, this is almost New Age here. He said, "The wind blows where it wishes. And you can hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit."
The Wind Analogy
This idea of being born again, He says, is very interesting. It's like the wind. We can't control the wind. It would be nice when the Santa Ana fires start, if we could bring in and somehow stop the Santa Ana winds. We can't control the wind. We can't kick the wind up or stop it. It's irresistible. You can board up your home all you want, but if you're living on the coast and the hurricane's coming, you can't stop the wind.
And there's another quality. The wind is invisible. You cannot see the wind, but you can see its effect. He says, that's exactly what it is with the Spirit. It's beyond man's control. It has nothing to do with man. It's totally of God. It's irresistible by man, and it's invisible in its initial contact, but it is incredibly visible in its effect. Perfect illustration.
Paul's Conversion
If I said to you, we need a human experience from the Bible that would somehow demonstrate this to us, who would you think to look at? Anybody? Anywhere in Scripture? Paul. Acts chapter 9. Paul's going... you hear this all the time, "My friend is so close, he's this close to becoming a Christian, he's really searching for God." No, he isn't.
Is Paul searching for God in Acts chapter 9? He's on his way to Damascus. Why? Because he's got all the Jews in Jerusalem, all the Christians in Jerusalem, and he wants to go down and get them out of Damascus. Men and women. He's an equal opportunity persecutor. He's going to get them all. He's going to round them up. He's got a letter from the authorities. Is he going to seek God? No.
Does he somehow think he's lost and trying to find a way? No. If you said, "Paul, you can have one wish, what would it be?" He would say, "I would wish Christianity out of existence." That's what he'd wish. He's on the way to Damascus.
And I taught this one time, and I say, he was knocked off his horse, and a lady who felt obligated to tell me afterwards, "Nowhere in the scripture does it say he was on a horse." So he was blinded. We hear a voice. He's blinded. His eyes open. He can't see. They take him into Damascus for three days. He doesn't eat. He doesn't drink.
And a guy by the name of Ananias is visited by God. And God says to Ananias, "There's a guy, Saul of Tarsus, down here, down the three doors to the left, over to the right. Go find Saul of Tarsus. Go in and minister to him." And what's Ananias say? Ananias says, "Wait a minute. I've got the press clippings here. This guy isn't one of our players."
Somewhere in there, and then he comes, and Paul's life is transformed. Somewhere in there, we witness Paul's conversion. And let me say to you with total confidence, unless your conversion is identical to that of Paul's, you've had no conversion at all. Circumstantially different. Substantially the same. There's a reversal. He hated God. He falls in love with God. And it was an act of God working in his life. It's like the wind.
Jesus' Response to Nicodemus
Nicodemus, this guy, he's gone. He said, "How can this be?" And then Jesus kind of shoves. This is the side of Jesus that we admire most. Cynicism and sarcasm. He says this: "Are you the teacher of Israel? You don't know these things?" Now, I don't know that He said it that way. But I like that.
And then Jesus now, appealing to him, says this: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so even the Son of Man be lifted up. And here's what it means to be a Christian, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life."
The Bronze Serpent
Jesus said, "Let me take you back. You know this. You know it, Nicodemus. Back in Numbers, chapter 21, verses 4 through 9." He said, "Remember the scene? There were fiery serpents." The nation of Israel is walking around the desert, doing what they do best. Remember, remember, remember. In fact, there's an interesting quote. Here's what they say: "There's no food. There's no water. And the food we have, we don't like."
Oh, wait a minute. This is what I would do with my kids. I'd say, "Wait a minute. How can there be no food and you don't like the food?" Well, that's what they're acting like. Some spoiled little kid. And God says, "That's..."
Fine. I sent you food. You didn't like that. Let me send you this. And He sends fiery serpents that bite them. And as they bite them, many of them die.
And they say, "Uh-oh, we're in trouble." They go to Moses. They say, "You go to God. We can't. You go to God and you tell Him we're sorry." Moses goes to God.
You can just see this. You can just see this moment. Here's Moses, and God's going to tell him what to do. And he's ready. Moses has the pen. He's got the paper. He's ready because he's thinking God's going to say, "Take two parts of this and two parts of this and mix it together. Shake it together and drink it." Or he's going to say somehow we need the EFSA, the Elimination of the Fiery Serpents Association. Or somehow, you band together. You bond together. You get the twelve steps of denying the poison. Or whatever this is, you get into all this process.
And what's He say? You remember what He said? God says, "Get a serpent and put it on a stick and hold the stick up. And whenever a person's bit, have them look at the stick and they'll be saved." Isn't that amazing? And Jesus says, "That's the way it's going to be with me."
The Simplicity of God's Salvation
And that's the magic about the stick. They were saved because they believed in the provision of salvation that God had given them.
This is a parenthesis. So now they go and the serpents go away. Some of them live. Some of them die. You remember what they do with the stick and the serpent? Remember? They began to worship it. Now they're worshiping the stick and the bronze serpent. They're burning incense and praying to the stick. And finally, a hundred years later, God sends instructions to break the serpent. That's man. That's religion.
Jesus says, "This is exactly the way it is with me, except I'm not just something that's going to be lifted up as image." Something happens. Two thousand years ago on the cross, there was a transaction that took place and God took the sin of men and women like you and me. And He traded His righteousness for our sin. That's what's significant about the cross.
The True Agony of the Cross
See, that's the agony. I hear this all the time about the agony of the cross and then they talk about how they beat Him up and they did it. Thousands of people suffered physically more than Jesus did. Some of these people—crucifixion was designed to last for days. I don't want to be gross to you, but they would take these people out and they'd crucify them and they would allow them to live for days. They'd even feed them water and a little bit, and the birds would come and begin to pick their eyes and begin to pull them open. They might even cut them and let the birds and the animals begin to eat them. Thousands of people suffered more than Jesus did physically.
The agony of the cross had nothing to do with the physical. It's what happens when this perfect God becomes the thing He hates more than anything else—sin. And when Jesus said, "It is finished," what He meant was the sin of men and women like you and I is paid for. It's a done deal for you.
And now what's it mean to be a Christian? I believe that that's true. That's what it means.
Salvation by Grace Through Faith
Here's how Paul says it, and then we got to stop. Paul says this: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."
See, lots of you think you were saved by faith. If I said to you, "How were you saved? How did you become a Christian?" You're going to talk about the faith, but you got to go one step deeper. The faith is a gift of God. And let me just help you out—He didn't give everybody on earth that gift. The faith is a gift of God. It's a result of His grace.
And let me help you. This is very, very important. Grace is defined as unmerited favor. Let me ask you rhetorically—let's say you don't, let's assume for the sake of argument, you don't know anything. If I say to you, "Why do I have to do unmerited favor?" The answer is I can't. I can't earn unmerited favor. If I earn it, it's no longer grace, it's reward.
The Mystery of God's Grace
God in His grace, for whatever reason—I have not got the foggiest idea why—but for whatever reason, nothing intrinsically in me or you that draws Him to us. I mean, it drives me nuts when I sit down with two people and I lay out this gospel and one person says, "That's the greatest news I've ever heard. How can I respond?" And the other guy says, "You got change for a dollar? I got to make a call." And I'm going, "I can't believe this. What can happen?"
Well, what's happening is God is working in one life and He's not in the other. This person at this moment is getting grace and this person is shut off. He may be shut on sometime or turned on sometime, but right now, he's shut off by grace. It's not a work.
I love you. When I say, "What did you do to become a Christian?" You start to lay this litany out about praying and all the other things. That isn't it. That didn't save you. You were saved before then by grace. And the exhibit of that, the channel of that grace is faith. The power to believe is a gift from God.
Paul's Understanding of Human Nature
And then it's like Paul understands you so well and me so well. He says, "Hey, it's not a result of works. If it was something you did, you would be proud of it and boast about it." You didn't do anything.
What does it mean to be a Christian? It means one who believes. That word "believes" means literally to stretch yourself out on—one who believes in Him, one who literally stretches himself out or herself out on Christ.
Paul says in Romans 10: "If you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you're a Christian."
What's it mean to be a Christian? It's got nothing to do with church, nothing to do with giving, nothing to do with being good, nothing to do with any of that stuff. I must confess with my mouth that Jesus is God, Messiah, and I must believe in my heart that He rose from the dead.
The Simplicity and Complexity of Faith
I must believe that God is who He says He is and I am who God says I am. That's what it means. What's it mean to be a Christian? Some of you are thinking, "It's too simple. I mean, that's too easy."
I'll never forget when somebody presented this to me because my background is a religious background and I never believed. I remember the first time somebody presented this to me, I said, "Wait a minute, I got to make sure I understand this. I pray this prayer and I'm a Christian and I can't lose my salvation. Is that what you're saying? You can't lose this. This is done deal now. This is closed. It's not just an escrow. It's closed. And now I got heaven. I got this mansion in heaven and I can't lose it. If I just pray this prayer and do this, I get to do whatever I want. Is that the way this works?"
And the answer to that is yes. If I really mean this, if I truly confess it and truly believe it, I can do whatever I want. The magic of it is God changes my wanter.
The Simple Truth
What's it mean to be a Christian? That's 45 minutes of pretty simple stuff. It means this: God works an act of His grace in you and you believe. You believe that Jesus is the Son of God that came and died on the cross for you. That's all. That's what it means to be a Christian.
The problem there is I know lots of people who said that and somehow we sense more is missing. Next week we ask the question, "Are you a Christian?" That's what it means to be a Christian. Are you a Christian? And I'm just guessing that when we start unpacking these words like believe and confess, we're going to see it's got a little bit more to do than just speaking it. There's something that takes place in your life.
Looking Ahead
Absolutely essential. It is magnificent to see you again. It is a delight to be back with you. I look forward to seeing you again next week and especially I would ask you to already begin to invite people as two weeks from today we begin what I think is going to be a terrific discussion on how to stay straight in a crooked world.
Let's pray and we'll get you on your way. Father, thank You for Your word that it's true and that it's real and it can and must be believed. Help us understand that unless we are born again, we are never going to enter and see the kingdom. We're not going to heaven. We're not going to see Your kingdom. We're not going to see it after we die and we're not going to see it on earth. Father, help us understand it is essential for us to humble ourselves, to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and to believe in our heart that You raised Him from the dead.
Father, help us see and understand that if there's somebody here, Father, who for the very first time they've heard this stuff, I pray that You would work in their life and draw them to a place where they want answers to questions. Perhaps they talk to the person that invited them to the luncheon today. Father, thank You for all that You've done for us, but especially for Your Son, Jesus. And it's in His mighty name that we pray. Amen.
See you next week.