We
have all seen the signs on a football game on television: “John 3:16.” When Tim
Tebow played for the Florida Gators he put John 3:16 on his eye black. Kids for
decades have asked their parents “What is John 3:16?” Some parents can recite
it. If you grew up going to Sunday School you may have learned it as a memory
verse. Even though I grew up as a preacher’s kid and went to United Methodist
Sunday School just about every Sunday of my life, we were not big on memory
verses. (Not like my friends at the Southern Baptist church back in Abilene
Texas). But I knew that one: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have
everlasting life.” (You had to learn it in the King James version, right?) I
can barely say it without hearing a church choir singing in my head: “God so
loved the world . . . “
But
what does it mean?
Today,
we are going to put that verse in context and dig deeper with what has become
almost so cliché that it has lost all meaning to us. We’re going to break it apart in the
message. We start with a guy called
Nicodemus. He was a Jewish religious leader, and not just a Jew but a Pharisee.
That meant that he was deeply religious and took the Jewish law seriously. He studied
that law and felt it was his responsibility to help Jewish people live by the
law. The Pharisees believed that they were paying the ultimate respect to God
by keeping the law. You could do a lot worse in the world than being someone
who guards God’s law. But they were, at times, a bit rigid. We see this in religious
rule followers in our day. Sometimes following the law needs to give way to the
spirit behind the law.
In any case, Nicodemus seems to be a
thoughtful man. He wanted to learn more from this Jesus. He came to Jesus one
night and said: “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher
straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you
do if God weren’t in on it.”
3 Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right.
Then Jesus says the most peculiar
thing. He says: “Take it from me: Unless
a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to
God’s kingdom.”
4 “How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be
born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s
womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”
5-6 Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let
me say it again.
You see, this is where that fact that
Nicodemus is a Pharisee is getting in the way. He really wants things to be
concrete. The law is concrete. Things are this way or that. There is no
metaphor to the law. There is no transformation when it comes to the law. You
either follow it, or break it.
That was what was wrong with the folks.
They had been breaking the law for a long time, and so people like the
Pharisees just kept making new laws. People were getting farther and farther
from what God intended and so the religion just kept getting more and more
rigid.
So
God sends Jesus.
God sends Jesus to turn the whole thing
upside down.
Nicodemus knew there was something
different going on with Jesus. That may be why Nicodemus sneaked out at night to
go talk to Jesus. He was confused. He knew that his ways were not working. He
was curious about this Jesus. But it’s possible he did not want the other
Pharisees to know he was going to talk to Jesus.
Jesus is trying to get through to
Nicodemus. Jesus says to him again:
Unless
a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’
creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not
possible to enter God’s kingdom.
When
you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the
person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the
Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
7-8 “So don’t be so surprised when I tell
you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You
know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling
through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s
headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind
of God, the Spirit of God.”
Jesus has just given this beautiful
picture of how, when we are baptized, or when we give our lives to God, we
invite the spirit of God to live in us and form us and transform our lives. We ask
God to form us and shape us and live in us so that we can experience God’s
kingdom right here and now on earth.
And do you know what Nicodemus does?
Rather than saying: “Yes! Give me that life. Baptize me right here and now!” He
asks more questions:
9 Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by
this? How does this happen?”
If I were Jesus I would be getting a
little impatient by now. I think Jesus had had it with Nicodemus.
10-12 Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher
of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober
truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to
what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no
hearsay.
“Yet
instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with
questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and
you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see,
the things of God?
13-15 “No one has ever gone up into the
presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of
Man. [He is referring to himself.] In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people
could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of
Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant,
will gain a real life, eternal life.
And here comes the key passage – the
one we have heard so many times: John 3:16.
16-18 “This is how much God loved the world:
God gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be
destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God
didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing
finger, telling the world how bad it was. The Son came to help, to put the
world right again. Anyone who trusts in the Son is forgiven; anyone who refuses
to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it.
And why? Because that person failed to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God
when introduced to him.
You see, Jesus is trying to teach
Nicodemus why he, Jesus, was sent by God. He was not sent to judge the world
and tell them how horrible they were. He was not sent to be the leader of the
Pharisees. Judging the people with the law was not drawing them to God, it was
crushing them.
Jesus came to tell them they were loved
and forgiven. Those who refuse to accept God’s love are already under a death
sentence. It is death to be separate from God. We experience death right here
on earth when we feel abandoned by God but God never abandons us; we abandon
God. The only mistake we can make, the only mistake we can make is to fail to
trust in Jesus.
God so loved the world that God gave
God’s only Son so that whoever trusts him will not die but will have a whole
and lasting life.
I don’t know what motivates people to carry
those signs that say John 3:16 to football games and basketball games. If I sat
down and talked to them, truth be told, we probably would not have much in
common. I would probably find them to be religious fanatics. But that does not
matter, because their message is still my message. God loves us. God loves us.
Jesus loved Nicodemus, the religious
fanatic who was bound by law and could not wrap his mind around the metaphor of
being born again, and having a new start in life.
Jesus loves us, even when we put up
barriers and find reasons why we are unlovable. We find reasons why we don’t
believe, or why we are mad at Jesus or mad at organized religion. Or we wonder:
does it really matter if I come to worship?
It matters to this person and this
person and this person. Because when I have had a hard week, it helps me to see
you and have you stand with me and sing some songs of joy. It is important to
you and me that we pray together and remind one another to pray for one another
throughout the week and to pray for our world. Coming together is important
because we remind one another as a body that God loves us – unconditionally. God
sent Jesus so that whoever puts their trust in him would not be destroyed; but
have a whole and lasting life.
I
read a story this week from David Lose. He said that because of this verse in
scripture, John 3:16, he sometimes thinks we should “add four words to our
service of Baptism to highlight the offensive, scandalous nature of the
sacrament: ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit...like it or not.’"
He
preached a sermon in which he talked about this and he writes that sometime
after he preached the sermon, “Tom, a member of our congregation, told [him] a
story. Several nights earlier, Tom's six year-old son Benjamin protested his
bedtime. Frustrated by his father's refusal to budge, Benjamin finally became
so frustrated that he said, ‘Daddy, I hate you!’”
Tom
simply said “I'm sorry you feel that way, Ben, but I love you.”
“To
which Benjamin replied, "Don't say that!" Surprised, Tom continued,
"Ben, but it's true -- I love you." "Don't say that,
Daddy." "But I love you, Ben." "Stop saying that, Daddy!
Stop saying it right now!" And then it came: "Benjamin, now listen to
me: I love you...like it or not!"
“Even
at six years old, you see, Benjamin realized that in the face of unconditional
love he was powerless. If Tom had been willing to negotiate -- "I'll love
you if you go to bed nicely" -- then Benjamin would be a player:
"Okay, this time, but I'm not eating my vegetables at dinner
tomorrow." But once Tom refused to negotiate, refused to make his love for
his son conditional on something Benjamin did, then Ben couldn't do anything
but accept or flee that love.”
God does not put conditions on the
love. God loves us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to follow a bunch
of laws. Sure, we can reject it. But God will still love us, and “like it or
not.” And if we reject God, God will accept us when we return. This is the
message Jesus was trying to tell Nicodemus that night. You can be born again.
You can have a new life in God. A life of freedom to be loved and to be someone
who loves others because you are so full of God’s love. We don’t love because
the law tells us to. We love because God loves us.
God loves us so much, that God sent
Jesus to tell us and show us and get this message into our hearts. Jesus even
died so that we would know how much God loves us. God loved the world so much
that God sent God’s only son, so that whoever believes in him would not be
destroyed but have a whole and lasting life forever.
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