3/20/22 John 3:1-17 “John 3:16!”

18 Mar 3/20/22 John 3:1-17 “John 3:16!”

3/20/22    John 3:1-17        “John 3:16!”

I’m sure that Sharon won’t disagree with me on this when I say that I do have the tendency to be a little bit stubborn.  I do come by this fairly honestly as I think my family is a touch on the stubborn side.  As a matter of fact I think that Norwegians in general are a stubborn people.  So I guess that I’m just stuck with it.  I also think that this is something that changes with age.  I don’t think I’m nearly as bad in some areas as I used to be and I might be far worse in other areas.  It is hard for me to see these things in myself.  This type of thing happens on the cultural level also.  I think that it was quite evident that the Jews in the time of Jesus were quite set in the ways of the Law and many of them would never change.  They would stubbornly hang onto to their traditions no matter what the evidence.  Of course the evidence that came along to change all of this was Jesus Christ.  He would come and change the world but this doesn’t mean that everyone was going to believe Him or go along with Him.  We are looking at a very famous passage from John today and I hope that we can see this is a change that we all need.

Jeff Strite tells the story of a preacher who wanted to demonstrate the free nature of God’s gift of salvation.  As he stood in the pulpit one morning he said, “Whoever wants this beautiful poinsettia may have it.  All you have to do is take it.”  He waited and waited and no one answered.  Finally, one woman raised her hand and said that she would take it.  “Great!” said the preacher, “It’s yours.”  The woman then turned to her son and said, “Go get it for me.”

“No,” the preacher said.  “Whoever gets this gift must come and get it personally.  You can’t send a substitute.”  The woman didn’t want to be embarrassed so she decided not to take the plant.  So they waited some more for someone to come and take this beautiful plant.  It had sat on the altar for the Christmas season and now it was free for the taking.  Someone called out, “What’s the catch?”

“No catch,” the pastor replied.  “It’s free.”  Still no one moved.  Then someone asked, “Is it glued to the altar?”  Everyone laughed.  “No, it’s not glued.  There are no strings attached.  It is free for the taking.”

One teenager asked, “Can I take it after the service?”  The pastor replied, “You must come and get it now.”  It was taking so long to give away this plant that the pastor was beginning to wish that he had never brought it up.  Finally, a woman in the back marched up and took the plant.  Then the preacher got to finally preach his sermon on Romans 6:23 where we find, “the gift of God is eternal life!”  This gift of eternal life is free.  This will be the only gift you ever receive that is too good to be true and it is free.  Anyway, after the service was over the woman who claimed the poinsettia came to where the pastor was packing up his stuff and she gave him a crumpled piece of paper.  “Here,” she said.  “The flower is too pretty to just take home for free.  I couldn’t do that with a clear conscience.”  He looked down into his hand and found a wadded up ten dollar bill.  One of the problems we have with becoming a Christian is that we are just unable to accept anything that is free.  This is a huge problem for many.

I don’t think that this is anything new.  Nicodemus also had this problem as did most of the Jews of the time.  They had this elaborate Law set up where if you did this and this and this and this, then you would be saved.  It sounds like Islam or one of the other works based religions.  But then Jesus came along, as the prophecies foretold the people, and He changed everything.  He has been changing everything ever since.

Let’s take a look at Nicodemus.  He was a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin.  This means that he was a very learned man in the ways of Judaism.  He was a powerful man.  He was a man who knew the Bible and had to investigate what Jesus was saying.  After all, he knew the prophecies and it might have seemed to him that some of these were being fulfilled in Jesus.  In his own way, he was a seeker where many of his colleagues just dismissed Jesus as another false Messiah. They were set in their ways.

In this country I think we have a problem with people who know some things from the Bible but not enough.  Here is what I mean.  If I went around to you today and asked how many of you have read the Bible in its entirety, I think we would get a smaller number than one would think from a church setting.  It is a small number and we are the churched people, the Christians.  I would guess that hardly anyone has read the Bible outside the church.  This leads me to think that our most vocal critics don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about.  These are the people who know just enough so that Satan can use them to lead people away from the Bible.  After all, if you can’t find a way to work your way to be a Christian, well then there can really be nothing to it.  And many of these thoughts come from places like the History Channel or New Age religion.  Don’t be misled by these things.  You cannot work your way to salvation!

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the only way to heaven in through the process He calls being ‘born again.’  Of course, Nicodemus is a smart man but he has no idea what Jesus is talking about.  Jesus then tells him that he must be born again of the Spirit and not physically.

This is the part we have talked about before.  The Spirit is something that we cannot measure with our science.  It is something that cannot be seen.  Therefore, according to our modern philosophers and scientists, it must not exist.  As I said before, love, compassion, feelings all exist and we cannot measure them either.  Everyone seems to be ok with these but they are not ok with the Holy Spirit.  One of the problems is that we are just too uncomfortable with something that is so much more powerful than we are.

We also have another problem in this area because the term ‘born again’ was used so much a couple of decades ago or so that it now has bad connotations.  What happened was that everyone was getting on board with being ‘born again’ and others were watching.  They saw people be ‘born again’ and act just as corrupt as they had always been.  Both Jimmy Carter and George Bush were ‘born again’ but this didn’t keep them from not being very smart and making mistakes.  The outsiders thought these people who were ‘born again’ were hypocrites.

Well, here is a news flash for anyone who thinks this today.  We are all hypocrites who come to church and so are those who don’t.  Jesus Christ promises a new life if we are ‘born again’ but that doesn’t mean that we will have a life where we don’t sin or where we are suddenly smart.  When we are born again, it means that suddenly we have a place to take our sin.  We are still the same person physically but spiritually we belong to Jesus.  This gives us a place to take our sin.  As hard as we try not to sin, we still do it and there seems to be nothing that we can do about this.  People who think that we are hypocrites because we still sin and come to church are just looking for an excuse to continue to follow their god, Satan.

I would like to say one other thing about being ‘born again.’  This is not a term that I use that often.  We now have many other ways of saying this and my favorite is having a personal relationship with Jesus.  I don’t use the term ‘born again’ very often because I know that there are people out there who get extremely turned off by this.  Therefore I try to use different terms so that they can come to know Jesus.

Now these verses are hard for us to understand.  They are especially hard for the non-believer to understand.  This is one of those things that God does that we just struggle with to understand.  To try to help Nicodemus understand, Jesus tells him that just as Moses lifted the rod up with the snake in the desert so He will be raised up.  The people of Moses time who looked up to the snake on the pole were saved from death that was all around them.  So too will the people who look up to Jesus when He is raised on the cross.  They will be saved because they believe.

Now I really doubt that this cleared anything up for Nicodemus.  After all, Jesus had not yet been put to the cross so Nicodemus would have had a hard time understanding this.  But this was written several years later so the readers would not have such a problem following because we all know the story.

But we do have another problem in this area.  Often times we try to tell this wonderful story in the language of Christianese.  We like to use terms like ‘saved by the blood,’ ‘born again,’ and just the term, ‘saved.’  These are all great terms if you were raised in the church but if you have never been in a church, then they have no meaning.  For instance, what in the world are we being saved from?  What does blood have to do with it?  That’s gross.  Or we are like Nicodemus and we say ‘what on earth do you mean by ‘born again’?’  I think that if we are going to win people over to Jesus we need to use terms like love, caring and hope.  Jesus will make our lives better and happier.  These are the types of things that connect with people and they can relate to them.  This is just my opinion and you do have permission to disagree with me but remember I am stubborn once in a while and I may keep using terms like a relationship with Jesus instead of ‘born again.’

There is one more thing I want to mention before we talk about 3:16 and that is 3:17.  God did not send His Son to condemn the world but to save world through Him.  Jesus didn’t come here to condemn homosexuals.  He didn’t come here to condemn the Muslims.  He didn’t come here to condemn divorced people, or cheaters or liars or any of us.  We like to grab onto these things and point at others, but this is all wrong.  Jesus came to save all people.  In this case all means all.  It doesn’t matter who you are, Jesus came for you and I would like to add, for you alone.  So if you find yourself in the habit of condemning these groups or other groups that are different from you, then remember that you are wrong.  Jesus is for everyone and I praise the Lord for that.  If this wasn’t so, then I would be condemned.  But instead of being condemned, I have been given new life.  You can have this also if you just confess to Jesus and ask Him into your life.  It is that simple.

Now we come to John 3:16 which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  I could talk all day on this verse.  It is a beautiful verse.  It is a verse of promise.  It is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible because it is so comforting.  But it is hard to understand.  We are all like Nicodemus in that we have a hard time understanding God.  That is just the way it is and this is perfectly ok.

Tim Zingale gives us a wonderful example of John 3:16 as he tells the story of a young lad selling newspapers in Chicago as a blizzard is setting upon him.  The boy is so cold that he doesn’t try to sell the papers anymore.  He only wants to get warm.  So he walks up to a policeman and asks, “Mister, you wouldn’t happen to know where a poor boy could find a warm place to sleep tonight, would you?  You see I sleep in a box around the corner and down the alley and its awful cold there at night. It sure would be nice to have a warm place to stay.”  (This type of thing happens every day today all over the world.) The policeman looked at the boy and said, “You go down the street to that big white house and knock on the door.  When they answer, you just say John 3:16 and they will let you in.”

So the boy knocked on the door and said, “John 3:16.”  Sure enough the lady who answered, “Come on in, son.”  She took him in and set him in a split bottom rocker in front of a huge old fireplace and then she went off.  The boy sat there for a while thinking, “John 3:16…I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a cold boy warm.”

Later the lady came back and asked, “Are you hungry?”  The boy replied, “Well, just a little. I haven’t eaten in a couple of days and I guess that I could stand a bit of food.”  The lady took him to the kitchen and sat him down to a table full of food.  The young lad ate and ate until he could eat no more.  Then he thought to himself, “John 3:16…Boy I sure don’t understand it but it sure makes a hungry boy full.”

Then the lady took him upstairs into a bathroom where there was a bathtub filled with nice hot water.  The boy soaked in this and thought, “I have not had a real bath in my whole life.  The only bath I’ve had is when I’ve stood in front of a fire hydrant as they flushed it out.  John 3:16…I sure don’t understand it, but it sure makes a dirty boy clean.

After the bath the lady came and got him and took him to a room with a big old feather bed.  She tucked him in with covers up to his neck and kissed him good night.  As he lay there for a few minutes before sleep he looked out the window at the falling snow and thought, “John 3:16…I don’t understand it, but it sure makes a tired boy feel rested.”

The next morning the lady took him downstairs again to the same big table and he ate and ate again.  Then she took him back to the old split bottom rocker in front of the warm fire and she took out her big old Bible.  She sat down in front of him and she looked into his eyes and asked, “Do you understand John 3:16?”  “No,” the boy replied.  “The first time I ever heard of it was last night when the policeman told me to use it.”  The lady opened her Bible and began to explain John 3:16.  She explained to him about Jesus and right there in front of that big old fireplace he asked Jesus to come into his life as his Lord and Savior.  Then he thought, “John 3:16…I don’t understand it but it sure makes a lost boy feel safe.”

John 3:16, I sure don’t understand it either, but it sure does make life worth living.  Praise the Lord.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.