Nick at Night
Tom Shrader explores Jesus' nighttime encounter with Nicodemus in John 3, focusing on Christ's declaration that one must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. He emphasizes that spiritual rebirth is entirely God's work through the Holy Spirit, not a human decision, and challenges listeners to examine whether they have truly been converted or merely adopted religious practices.
“You're not born again because you had faith, you're not born again because you made a decision for Christ - you were born again, and the first evidence of that is your faith.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2003)
Recorded: 2003
Duration: 45 min
Themes: salvation, rebirth, transformation, conversion, faith, belief, religion, identity, questioning salvation, new believer, religious person, struggling with assurance, pastor, bible teacher, seeking truth, examining faith
Scripture: John 3:1-16, John 20:30, James 2:19, 1 Corinthians 1:22, John 2:22
Theological Themes: born again, regeneration, holy spirit, spiritual rebirth, sanctification, genuine faith, lordship salvation, biblical conversion
Full Transcript
We're glad you're here. Second week for us in a study in the Gospel of John. So if you've got Bibles with you, I'd invite you to turn there. We said when we started we could literally spend, well we did when we taught it. We spent four and a half years in this Gospel, and we moved quickly really through many parts of it. But we're going to take 12 weeks and try to just take a satellite view of this, and obviously we cannot touch in depth at all. But hopefully it will pique your interest, and really an important study.
If you have your Bibles, open them to John chapter 1, leave your finger there because we'll be right back. But let me remind you why we're studying this book. John chapter 20, verse 30. If you are a note taker, a writer, you need them. We come back again and again to emphasize to you that's not just mental assent. That's not just submitting that these facts are true.
The Nature of True Belief
There is a debate, and I would imagine that most of you, fortunately, remain untouched by it. There's a debate that rages over whether I can merely believe who Jesus is and therefore be saved, or if that belief has to have some sort of transformation in my life. It'd operate under the idea of lordship, might be the term that you would use.
Somebody gave me this cartoon today. It's great. You can't obviously see it, but it's a guy standing by the door. He's got suitcases in his hand. There's obviously a lady and a little child, and the man is saying, "I'm leaving you and the kids to join the promise keepers." I thought this was great. So a lot of truth to this.
The answer to the question is real simple, because the Scripture teaches it really simply. That belief will always transform into action. That there's going to be a change. It's not just mental assent. James writes this in James 2, verse 19: "You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons believe also and shudder." Larry used to read that and say the demons believe and it scares the snot out of them, but that's a loose translation. But the demons believe.
As you work your way through the Gospel of John, what you'll see is Jesus encounters these demons, and these demons will essentially speak the truth. They will acknowledge who Jesus is. They'll acknowledge Him as the Son of God. They believe. Mental assent. I'm absolutely convinced that the vast majority, certainly in the country we live in, the vast majority of the people believe Jesus Christ. They believe He existed. I think they believe He died on the cross. It's a historic fact. I don't think it's disputable.
But it's not just that. It's a belief that translates into action. That's what this belief means. And John says, that's why I'm writing this book.
Why Start with John
Let me tell you again. That's why, and you may not even know why, and maybe somebody did it to you or you've done it to others and have no idea why, when somebody comes to you and they're a brand new Christian and they say, "You know, I've never been around this Bible thing. I don't know what to do. I started at the beginning. I bogged down in Leviticus and some of this stuff. Where should I read? What should I do?" And you would just say to them, start in the Gospel of John.
Why is that such a great place to start? Because of what John's purpose is. And that's that you'll believe. And that by believing you have life. By believing you have eternal life.
Understanding Eternal Life
When we talk about eternal life, there's some things we've got to remember. And we'll hit them quite a few times through here. Number one, eternal life has a quality and a quantity to it. Now, as we think of eternal life, we just tend to think of a whole bunch of life. But there's a quality of life.
When somebody comes up to you and says, "Do you have eternal life?" I don't care who you are. If he answers, yes. It doesn't matter. You can come up to the biggest pagan, heathen puke in the world and say to him, "Do you have eternal life?" And he's going to say, "Yeah. Now it's in hell." But he has eternal life. That's a very important thing to understand.
The other thing about eternal life, if we could just kind of drive it home, even though I know our intent here is to talk about other worldliness, heaven, etc. Eternal life begins today. Jesus said, "I came that you might have life and have it abundantly." And the idea was that you'd have it here. There is something about a Christian who absolutely sees colors that are brighter and a world that is different because they understand the meaning of life and the purpose of life.
In fact, the title of this series: The Essence of Life. This is the most important week of the year, Master's Week. It doesn't get any better than this. This is my very favorite week of the whole year. And I'm watching and I'm looking and I'm watching the press conference. I don't know if you saw the press conference yesterday that Huey had, but he was pretty good. I didn't sense that he was wavering much.
And there's a bunch of guys, and let's get Tiger out of the field. There's a bunch of guys who think if they could just win this tournament. Let's take Mickelson. I don't know Phil from anything. He seems like a terrifically nice man and obviously a very good
player. But he is sick as a dog of hearing about how he's the greatest player that's ever lived and hasn't won a major. Yesterday in his press conference, they're asking him all this stuff and finally one guy says, "How come all the questions that you guys field are about Tiger? I mean, do you think about Tiger that much? Is Tiger that important to you?" And he said, "You just said Tiger three times." I'm sick of this is what he's saying in a nice way.
All of a sudden for a guy like that, or Ernie Els, who since he was a little boy dreamt about winning at Augusta, there's the idea that if I win this and I hold up that master's, and I get that green jacket, I have arrived. I guarantee you, if they're not Christians, that within a short period of time they'll be just as miserable as they were before. Because life's not about a green jacket. Life's not about a deal sheet. Life's not about getting the deal closed. It's not about finding that girl.
Here you go. If I could just find her, if I can just get her to go out with me, I'll be happy. If I can get her to go steady, I'll be happy. If I can get her to engage, I'll be happy. If I can get her married, I'll be happy. If I can get a divorce, I'll be happy. I go through this whole process. I'll be happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy all the way through this thing. Happiness is found in a relationship with Christ. It's what you were designed for, to commune with Him. So that's the essence of life. And this believing is a very, very important part of this.
Beginning Our Study of John 3
Well today, as we said, if we're going to just take 12 weeks, obviously we can't spend much time in any single place. So we started last week basically with an introduction. We ask you to turn today to John chapter 3. And we have cleverly titled this chapter, "Nick at Night." And this is Nicodemus. Some of you are familiar with him and with that name.
The Setting: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
Here's the setting, and it's important. Passover time in Jerusalem, Jesus has gone into the temple, and what we're told is that they're selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers are there. Let me make sure you understand what's going on. There's sacrifices that need to be made. Doves would be a great example. But it has to have an official sacrificial stamp. It has to be not just a dove that you could buy in the street for a penny, but a dove that's endorsed by the temple proper. So that penny dove is now $3, $4, $5. They're getting rich off this.
And Jesus comes in, and Jesus throws the money changers out. To those who talk about little baby Jesus meek and mild, that's just a great scene where you see the rage and the anger of Christ. And Jesus has just done this. He has said, "You've turned your religion into business. And I'm not going to have that." And these guys are gone.
Now we're told that this discussion ensues, basically saying, "Who are you to do this?" And Jesus says, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it up." And they're thinking of this temple, and He's talking about Himself, and He's speaking about His death and resurrection.
How Faith Comes
And then He says this: "When therefore," we're in chapter 2, verse 22, "He was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered what He said, and they believed the scripture and the word which was spoken." By the way, that's how you believe, even today. How do people believe? They believe from the scripture, from the truth. You're not going to find your way to Christ by general revelation. General revelation's fine. You've got to have this word.
Almost always, when we're faced with somebody who's got bad theology, or somewhere along the way, it's because they have a low view of scripture. This is very important, and I know it's redundant. This does not contain the word of God, this is the word of God. And that is a very significant difference. This is God's word. There's no error in here. There's no difficult, there's no impossible things for us in here to reconcile. We may have difficulty from a human perspective, but we understand God wrote them, therefore it's perfect. And that's where I believe. "I believe the scripture," He says. That's how it comes to pass.
Meet Nicodemus
Now that's the backdrop. Look at verse 1 of chapter 3. "Now there was a man of the Pharisees, and his name was Nicodemus." Nicodemus was one of the Pharisees.
Let me read you what one author writes about these Pharisees. He says this: "The word Pharisee most likely comes from the Hebrew word meaning to separate. Therefore probably means separate ones. They were not separatist in the sense of isolationist, but they were puritanical. They were highly zealous for ritual and religious piety, according to the Mosaic law, as well as their own tradition, which they added to Old Testament legislation. They were generally from the Jewish middle class, most consistently of laity, businessmen, rather than priests or Levites. They represented the Orthodox core of Judaism and were strongly influential in the lives of the common people of Israel. According to Josephus, 6,000 Pharisees existed at the time of Herod the Great. Jesus condemns them for their hyper-concentration on externalizing religion rather than inward spiritual transformation."
That's what these guys are. We would use a term like legalist. They were the legalists of the day. 6,000 of these guys. If the money changers had turned religion into business, these guys had turned religion into meaningless ritual.
And so it's important, but I want you to see this. These are important guys. These are the clergy. If we could draw a parallel to us today, these are the guys that would be in the pulpits, or wearing a collar, or having a vestment. These are the religious guys. These are the people that most across the board common people would look to for religious insight, wisdom, training, direction. So there's a guy. He's a Pharisee. His name is Nicodemus.
He's the ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him."
Now there's a couple of things. Nicodemus comes and he says, listen, these signs tell us that you must be from God. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul writes this: "For indeed the Jews ask for a sign, the Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews as stumbling blocks, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called both Jew and Gentile, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." The Jews were looking for a sign. They're looking for signs and miracles and wonders, not unlike so many people that you see around you today. Show me the sign. Show me the miracle. Do something special.
Walking by Sight, Not by Faith
I really do. I am absolutely convinced. I have now spoken this probably about 15 times and it doesn't seem to have the impact on the listener that it does on me. So I'm sure that I'm saying it inadequately, but I am convinced that so much of what we see today that's called a faith movement is exactly the opposite of that. It's walking by sight, not by faith. It's saying show me this, do this. I need to see this.
And I fear that we, even as pretty fundamental orthodox evangelical Christians, even we can fall into this trap of saying I need an experience. I probably tend to be a glass is half empty kind of a guy, but I get alarmed at all this emphasis on all this kind of even mystic stuff and kind of getting away and somehow I'm going to get away and I'm going to have this experience with God. It is not at all unusual for people in the course of a week regularly to come up and say God told me, I heard God. God said this. I don't buy that for a second. He told you what He wanted to tell you right here in this word. The rest of it is your best guess. It may be accurate. It may not.
I had a lot of God told me, you know what, and I kind of come back oftentimes and say man, God just can't seem to get your life right, can He, because He sure keeps telling you a lot of different things. Well, they're looking for a sign.
Why Nicodemus Came at Night
Now a significant thing, I think, and I don't want to make too much of it, but I want to make sure we talk about it, is that Nicodemus came at night. There could be a couple of reasons for it. It could be that he's very pragmatic, and that Jesus is indeed, and this is accurate, very, very busy during the day. That there's a lot of hustle and bustle going on. That there's a lot of activity. And Nicodemus, as we can see here, has a very heartfelt, serious question. And it could be that he didn't want any distractions, and this is when Christ was the most approachable. That's a possibility.
I think the general consensus is, he comes at night for exactly the reason that John lays out in verse 1, he was a Pharisee. This is about the only time in the New Testament, in the Gospels, where we see this Pharisee operating alone. There's a sense in which, that by making this contact with Jesus, Nicodemus is really slumming. He's not about to race back to the Pharisees and sit around and say, guys, let me tell you, I went to see Jesus at night, and here's what He said. That isn't going to happen. And he's acting, as it's obvious here, all on his own. And I think there's some secretness here.
The Holy Spirit at Work
Something's going on in Nicodemus' life. We know what it is, because we see here, later in the Gospel, that Nicodemus is converted. What's going on in Nicodemus' life is that the Holy Spirit is bringing him to life. It's the same thing that happens in your life or mine. There's nobody who comes to Christ who isn't born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is moving in this man's life. And so he comes to Jesus.
Let me read it, and you've got it in front of you. Here's verse 2 again: "Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with them."
Verse 3, Jesus answered. Jesus answered what? He didn't ask anything. He didn't ask Him a question. He made a statement. It's a declaration. But Jesus knows exactly what's going on. Jesus looks beyond this surface conversation and looks right into his life.
Truly, Truly - The Foundation of the Gospel
Jesus answered. And He says, "Truly, truly," that's the new American standard. I think the King James would say, "Verily, verily." The NIV misses the boat a little bit, and they say, "I tell you the truth." And I'm always leery of people who after we've talked for 10 or 15 minutes will say, let me tell you the truth now. Well, why? I mean, what are we doing here? What was that first 15 minutes? Let me be honest with you.
When He says, "Truly, truly," He's emphasizing this point. He's drawing attention to it. It's part in a sense of a way of saying, listen to this. Listen up now. Get this. Don't miss this. This is very, very important. And indeed it is. For in reality, the rest of the gospel is built on verse 3.
Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." That's an extraordinarily important verse.
A Gas Station Encounter
When I was teaching and traveling down to Tucson, and I would get up on Wednesday morning about 3:30 and try to get out of town by about 4:15, 4:30, I'm at the Exxon station at Southern and Dobson. For some reason, I didn't have the gas in there. So I stopped to get gas. And it is self-serve. There's this big sign right above the pump that says self-serve. Well, at 4:15 in the morning, there's a guy standing next to this in an Exxon shirt that says Bud. And so he's there, but trust me, it's still self-serve.
So I'm there, and I'm trying to get this thing in, and I'm not a morning guy, so it's a little hard for me. And he said, so how are you doing? I said, fine. What are you doing? I said, getting gas. He said, well, where are you going? I said, Tucson. He said, well, how come you're going to Tucson? Are you a salesman? No. And he said, well, what are you going to do in Tucson? And I said, you know, Bud,
The Narrow Gate of Heaven
I said, "Bud, I'm going down there to teach a Bible study." All of a sudden, I felt a little change. I felt like I had the hammer in the conversation now. So I said, "Bud, do you study the Bible?" He said, "No. I've read it. I don't get it. It's real hard to understand."
I said, "Well, some parts of it are confusing, and I would confess that I find some parts hard to understand, but I think the majority of it's pretty understandable." I said, "Bud, let me read you a verse that we're going to be looking at today. Let me read you this: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.'" I said, "Bud, what do you think that means?" He said to me, "I don't know, but it sounds important."
That's where we are right now. We are at something very important. All we have to do is just take our basic understanding of the English language. The first speech coach I had, we're sitting in speech class, I'm sitting there that day and he's up there talking, and I couldn't care less. He said, "You guys will never be successful unless you conquer the English language." That's interesting.
Understanding the Word "Unless"
All we have to do here is know the English language. If you can see, we can break it apart. Jesus is saying, and He begins this statement with a very important word. The word is "unless." When I see that word "unless," then I understand that it's pointing me toward something and ultimately giving me what will be a pre-existing condition. Unless I do something, something won't happen.
Here's what He says: unless I'm born again, I can't enter the kingdom of God. When the Jews, especially the Pharisees, would hear this idea of the kingdom of God, they would certainly think of life beyond the grave, but they would tend to think of the millennial kingdom and reigning with Him. That was a big thing to them. We understand that it has encompassed in this all this idea: kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, the idea of absence from this life and quality of life thereafter.
So for our context, let's say heaven. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Indeed, old Bud at the gas station put his finger on it—this is a very important thing.
The Stakes Are Eternal
What do I have to do to go to heaven? If you get everything else that we talk about in here right, and you get this wrong, you will be in hell. You can figure out how we talk about money, how we talk about leadership, how we talk about power, how we talk about husband-wife relationships, raising kids. You can follow all of those things. But if you don't get this right, at the end of the day, your life is a waste and you spend eternity in hell. Bud is right—it's important.
What do I have to do to go to heaven? Well, Jesus gives us the answer: you must be born again. We thought Jimmy Carter invented that in a Playboy interview, that he came up with this phrase. But it wasn't, was it? It was Jesus.
The Narrow Way
What's it mean to be born again? Listen, if you're a thinking person, and you all are thinking people, I think I'd want to understand this idea of being born again. Because according to Jesus—not me, according to Jesus—if you aren't born again, you aren't going to be in heaven. That's a fairly significant point.
That's why we come back to this again and again and again. We looked at it last week in the introduction. The entrance into heaven, the gate into heaven, is a narrow way and there aren't many people on it. One of the great lies of this world is that somehow we're all praying to the same God, we worship the same God. We don't. We aren't.
If you aren't worshiping a God who has a Son, Jesus, who came and died on the cross so that His people would have eternal life, then you're not praying to the same God we're praying to. You're praying to a false god, an idol, a pagan. Very important truth. That's a very narrow way.
The Necessity of the Narrow Path
I say this all the time, and it's become a sense of a mantra for me: I want to be open-minded and I want to be as open as the Scripture allows you to be. But the Scripture says it's narrow. So let me help you out here—it's narrow. We all got into this world through a very narrow, painful birth canal. We're all going to get into the spiritual world, into the things of God, into heaven, through a narrow gate. Unless you're born again.
Nicodemus's Misunderstanding
Now Nicodemus is an interesting chap. Remember what I said? He's the guy you go to for answers. Well, here's Nicodemus's response: "Nicodemus said, how can a man be born again when he's old? He can't enter his second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?"
Nicodemus is saying, "That doesn't sound like such a great deal." The guy isn't going to like it. Mom certainly isn't going to say, "Gee, drop off your laundry and come on home." She isn't excited about this thing. Nobody's excited about this.
What's Nicodemus doing? Well, he's obviously misunderstanding a spiritual truth in a physical plane.
Born of Water and Spirit
So what's Jesus do? Well, Jesus wants to open this truth to him. Here's what He says: "Truly, truly," verse 5, "now you better get it here. I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."
When we see water, especially in the Old Testament, it's the idea of cleansing, of purifying. It's referred to consistently in the Old Testament in conjunction with the idea of spiritual renewal or cleansing, and with the idea of the spirit as well. Now what Jesus has in mind is a little different, and those of you that have the text in front of you emphasizes this even more. Unless you are born of water and the—definite article—Spirit, and in my Bible, it's a capital S.
He's not talking about some nebulous force out there, "may the force be with you." He's talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. I need to be cleansed of my sin. I need to be born again. I need to be a reborn person. Why? Because I'm a sinful person.
The Work of the Spirit in Salvation
That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. This is not a fleshly endeavor. This is a spiritual endeavor that's initiated by God, continued by God, and completed by God.
A person who's a Christian has been chosen before the foundations of the earth by God the Father. Jesus Christ came and died on the cross for that group of people, and at the appointed time, the Holy Spirit comes into a person's life, causes them to be born again. You're not born again because you had faith. You're not born again because you made a decision for Christ. You were born again, and the first evidence of that is your faith.
I'm saved by grace, how? Through faith, and that's not of myself. What's not of myself? The grace isn't of me, the faith isn't of me. That's why when we talk about salvation as a gift of God, we don't mean that somebody presented you the gospel, you figured it out and you responded. We mean that God presented it to you, it's a gift from Him, He opened your eyes, He ripped out your heart, He put in a new heart, and now you see the truth. It's entirely a work of His.
I'm not asking you to agree with it, because I'm sure some of you don't. I'm just saying, do you understand what we're saying? In the Bible I say you must be born again: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know where it comes from, you don't know where it's going, so it is with everyone who's born of the Spirit."
You can no more figure out or control the Spirit of God than you can the wind. You can see the effect of it.
The Problem with Bad Theology in Evangelism
For some of you, these next two minutes aren't going to mean anything to you, so we'll pick you up in 120 seconds. For some of you, you need to understand that because your theology is bad, as it deals with salvation, your evangelism is bad. You're trying to convince people to be Christians. You're trying to coerce them to be Christians. You're trying to sell them to be Christians like you would bottle water, or a car. You want to put them in the closing room and put the clamps on them to get a decision.
Evangelism is never a waste of time, because evangelism is not about converting people. Evangelism is about the proclamation of the Gospel. You can't convert anybody. That's the job of the Holy Spirit.
If I sit down with a man today, and he doesn't know Christ, and I share Christ, and I present the Gospel accurately, biblically, and I walk away, all we can say is, praise God, because God was glorified. The Gospel is proclaimed. God is honored in that. Whether this guy responds, that's irrelevant, because that's between him and God, not him and me and God.
That is a very important truth, and I'll tell you something, when you get that from your brain to your heart, we just freed you up for evangelism. And it doesn't make evangelism less important, it makes it as important, but it does make it very freeing, because now you can tell the truth in love.
Jesus' Sarcasm with Nicodemus
Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?" Nicodemus doesn't get it.
And then Jesus uses in verse 10 something that I find personally appealing. A little sarcasm. "Are you the teacher of Israel?" The idea here is that among these 6,000 Pharisees, Nicodemus has the position of prominence. He's probably looked at in a way of great respect by his peers and by others.
And Jesus is saying, this is fundamental. This is 101. And you're the teacher, you're the big shot, you're the guy that they come to, you're writing the papers, you're published in all of the periodicals of the day, and you write the books, and they all wait and sit and listen to you, and you don't get this? You're the teacher of Israel, and you don't get this?
You know what I infer from that? How much trouble is Israel really in? And the same thing is true in the church today.
The State of Modern Churches
I think we could go around to most churches, certainly most mainline denominational churches, and we'd have this discussion, and they'd say, "I don't get what you're saying." Well how much trouble are the poor people in that are in those churches?
That's why we say to you, if you're in a church that's not teaching the gospel, get out of the thing. Don't reform it. Don't change it. Abandon it. Let it die. Let it go away. Let it shrivel up. Let us buy the building out of bankruptcy and put a good church in there. I got carried away in the last part, but you get the sense of what I'm trying to say.
Because it's already bankrupt. It's already bankrupt spiritually, and it's just a matter of time before hopefully it will be economically, because people will desert that. Why would we pray this? Why am I talking about this? Why would we pray for these guys to continue? We pray for them to repent or get out of the way.
The Central Theme of Belief
Now, in verses 11 through the end of this chapter, if you are one who circles in your Bible or marks it, I think it's helpful to mark here the word "believe." Just circle the word "believe." And I like to do this a lot when we find a pattern here, because all of a sudden when you turn the page for me and I see these circles, I go, oh yeah. Very quickly you see that what Jesus is talking about here is the very theme of John's Gospel. You got to believe.
Here's what He says: "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak that which we know and bear witness of that which we have seen. And you don't receive our witness. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one can ascend into heaven but He who has descended from heaven, and that is the Son of Man."
I'm God. You've never been to heaven.
can't look there. I have been. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. Just as at a time of plague and a time of sickness and a time of tragedy in the life of Israel, as Moses lifts up the serpent in the wilderness and they're healed and they're strengthened and things begin to change positively, just that same way the Son of Man will be lifted up.
Jesus speaks of the crucifixion. Interesting, I think, that so early in John's Gospel, here in chapter 2 and again in chapter 3, Jesus is speaking of His death and resurrection. But they don't get it. And they don't get it at the time. Even the disciples that said they didn't get it, but they said, remember back in chapter 2, verse 22, when therefore He was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered that He said this and they believed the Scripture. He said, you need to believe this.
The Greatest Expression of Love
Verse 15, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. You live in a world that as long as I, if I go back and I go back to the first music I heard when I was a kid, sitting around on Sunday, my dad would have on the radio and we would hear the Ray Conniff Singers. And we would hear the Mills Brothers and the Singing Rage, Patti Page. And we would hear all the, our constant theme in those songs was love. We'd hear about love all the time.
And then as I grew a little older and was introduced to, you know, a more contemporary genre of music, then what I heard in there was all you need is love. You can't buy any love. And it's a constant theme. This world is continually looking for love. God gives us a magnificent picture of love here. See it?
For God so, the word so there intensifies what's coming and that is love. God so intensely loved the people, His people, that He gave. If you love, you will give. I say that. There ought to be a visible manifestation of love. If you're a husband and a wife, and guys, if you love your wife, there ought to be external evidence of it. It's saying I love you, got that figured out, but it's way more than that. It's saying it and showing it. For God so loved the world. You want to see a picture of love? God so loved the world, He gave Jesus.
The Cross: Symbol of Death Transformed into Love
If you watch any sort of contemporary, especially contemporary music people, you will see now almost all of them wearing a cross. It's ubiquitous and it's the cross. And my sense is, it's nothing more than a fashion statement like a bracelet or a ring that happens to be a cross. If you walked around 2,000 years ago with a cross on, they would have thought there was something wrong with you. It would be like walking around today with a guillotine or an electric chair or a noose on a chain. It was an instrument of torture and death.
In that day, in Jesus' day, that cross was a picture of evil, death, torture, pain. They were petrified of the cross. It was the most excruciating of ways to die. But in one single act, God turns this symbol of death, torture, evil and pain into the only and best symbol of love we have. That's love. You want to see love? Look to the cross. Flowers are fine, chocolates are better, but the cross is real love. And there it is, all captured there. For God so loved the world.
The Challenge of Believing
We've got two minutes here. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. If you believe in Him, you have eternal life. So the question is, do you believe? Do you believe Jesus is who He said He was? Do you believe that you are who He said you are?
I'll tell you, again, I sound a little tangential on different things today, but I'll tell you this. The great challenge that we face as a culture, as we move out into the non-believing world, greatest challenge we face, is not convincing them of Jesus, it's convincing them of their own sin. They all buy Jesus. You can't argue Jesus. But they don't see themselves as sinners. They don't think they're lost.
If you talk to a lot of guys, especially if you talk to successful people, and you start to talk... Here's what they're going to say, I don't have any need. And what they mean is, I've got a car. I've got a bunch of cars. I've got cars, and garages, and houses, and I can fly to the coast and play golf, and I can do whatever I want to do. I don't have any need. You know why? They don't see their sin. It's the hardest, and I'm trying to pick the word, because I don't think, cut me a ton of slack on the word, it's the hardest objective we have in speaking with non-believers in the sense of convincing them that they're sinful.
Sin: The Ongoing Challenge for Christians
And the same is true as Christians. Now we don't have time to develop this, but the same is true as Christians. What's the biggest problem you face as a Christian? I'll tell you, it's your own sin.
We've got a guy that we're dealing with right now. He came up to me on a Sunday morning, and he said, and I didn't know him, he just said, can I ask you a question? I said, sure. He said, is divorce the unforgivable sin? And I said, well, I don't know what you mean. He said, if a guy's a Christian, and he divorces his wife, is he going to go to hell? And I said, well, the answer's in the question. If he's a Christian, he can divorce her, murder her, cut her up, eat her. He can do whatever he wants in that sense, and he's still going to heaven, because he's a Christian. You see that? There's nothing he's sinned that's going to disqualify that.
Well, I wasn't exactly sure how this was going to turn out. But it seems, I should have known when he said, killer? It seems that he was in the process, and I was trying to emphasize a point here. He was in the process of divorcing his wife, and wanted to know if God could forgive her. And he absolutely will say, I'm wrong, I'm sinning, I'm going to divorce her, but God's got to forgive me. And if he's a Christian, he's going to heaven. I don't need to worry about that. But do you see what a
The Hard Question
Do you believe? Well, sure I do. And then you're going to give me your whole spiritual pedigree. Do you understand Nicodemus could have done that? You go to church, he ran the church. You study the Word, he taught the Word.
I'm not asking you if you go to church. I'm not asking you if you've been there since you were a little kid. I'm asking you, are you a Christian? Have you believed? Moved from mental assent to an action where indeed Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Because apparently you can be the teacher of Israel and not be saved.
A Difficult Truth
It's a very hard thing. For those of you that aren't Christians, it's an easier thing to at least get your arms around. But to those of you who are kind of good people and church people, pretty hard sometimes to honestly say that I've been around this for 10, 20, 30, 40 years and I'm not converted at all.
Our prayer is that the Spirit would open your eyes and touch your heart and you'd respond to this.
Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. Touch our lives with this. Help us like that guy in the gas station understand this is important. Don't let us just walk away and say, boy, I got it, I understand it, but it didn't really change me. God, we pray that you'd touch every heart that is here this morning.
For those of us who are Christians, that we'd never grow weary of this reminder that you love us and you gave your Son. For those that are here that are church people, that they would honestly, critically look at their life to see if in fact they've been converted at all. And when they talk about their relationship with you, do they talk about a church and a service and a denomination, or do they talk about an intimate relationship that they have with you through Christ? If not, they aren't Christians.
God, we ask your Spirit to apply your Word to the people's hearts. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.