Answers to Life

Introduction

This morning we will be continuing our series from the Gospel of John and looking at a curious segue that leads us into the main body of the book. If you have your bibles turn with me to through .

John 2:23–3:3 ESV

23 Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. 1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

There are three points that I would like to share from the passage that we read this morning:

Jesus loves us but doesn’t trust us.

Therefore, we shouldn’t trust ourselves.

Instead, we should trust fully in Jesus.

It seems pretty clear that

I don’t know if you guys enjoy those Dos Equis commercials with the most interesting man. They have those catchy one liners like “His mother has a tattoo that says son” and “He wouldn’t be afraid to show his feminine side if he had one.” To say that Jesus is the most interesting man who ever lived would be a vast understatement and maybe the best way to summarize the end of John chapter 2 is “Everyone trusts Him but he trusts no one.” According to verse 23, it seems pretty clear that this passage is talking about people who have genuinely put their trust in Jesus. In fact, the Greek word that is translated as believe is exactly the same Greek word that is translated as trust in the very next verse where we’re told that Jesus did not entrust himself to them. You can argue that these people’s faith was shallow or inauthentic because they believed as a response to the signs and miracles that Jesus had performed during the Passover. Some people believe in Jesus for worse reasons than that and no matter how you get there, some faith is better than no faith.

To say that Jesus is the most interesting man who ever lived would be a vast understatement and maybe the best way to summarize the end of John chapter 2 is “Everyone trusts Him but he trusts no one.” Jesus is the most loving, gracious, and accepting person that has ever lived and yet at the very same time he is the most guarded, objective, and truthful about human nature. And for some reason, he can get away with it because if you think about it, if I came up to you as your religious teacher, rabbi, priest and told you point blank, “You should put all your trust in me but I will never trust you.” That is incredibly offensive and hurtful even though it might be true. I have been in ministry for over 20 years now and the fact of the matter is “very few people are trustworthy” but unfortunately a big part of doing life in community is opening yourself up to the real possibility of getting hurt, misunderstood, and even being betrayed. But generally the way that we deal with our own relational pain is to close off our hearts and to become jaded, hardened, and cynical about people who call themselves Christian. And even with just this partial knowledge of the human heart, we begin to build walls between us and others. This is one of the main reasons why we have difficulty loving people because it’s difficult to love someone when we feel like trust has been broken. And this is what makes the love of Christ so remarkable because He knows exactly what is in our hearts even better than we do. He knows the full potential for betrayal, for the doubt that lies just underneath the surface of our confession, for the embarrassment that many of us feel about our relationship with Him. There is nothing that is hidden from him and yet He continues to loves us without condition.

And perhaps, the majority of believers look more like a Nicodemus than they do the apostle Paul. There is a reason why Nicodemus came in the middle of the night because even though he believed, at this early point in his journey of faith, he was still afraid to be associated with Jesus in the light of day. Like so many of us, he wasn’t willing to fully commit his life to Christ and to make the necessary sacrifices to follow Him completely. I bring this up, not to discourage you but simply to point out that sometimes we need to have the self-awareness to know where we stand with Jesus and the honesty to confess our lack of faith instead of just going through the motions. Eventually, we know that Nicodemus’ relationship with Jesus grows stronger.

When you think about what this passage, it really seems like a paradox because Jesus is the most loving, gracious, and accepting person that has ever lived and yet at the very same time he is also the most objective and truthful about human nature. And for some reason, he can get away with this because if anyone else aid said these things it would be very offensive. Imagine if I came up to you as your religious teacher, rabbi, priest and told you point blank, “You should put all your trust in me but I will never trust you.” That is incredibly offensive and hurtful even though it might be true. I have been in ministry for over 20 years now and the fact of the matter is “very few people are completely trustworthy” but unfortunately a big part of doing life in community is opening yourself up to the possibility of getting hurt, misunderstood, and even being betrayed. But generally the way that we deal with our own relational pain is to close off our hearts and to become jaded, hardened, and cynical and keep people at a distance, even those who call themselves Christian. This is one of the main reasons why we have difficulty loving people because it’s hard to love someone when we feel like we can’t trust them. For most of us, just having this partial knowledge of the human heart causes us to build walls between each other. In the back of your mind is this thought that if that person is anything like me, then I can’t really trust their intentions. And this is what makes the love of Christ so remarkable because He knows exactly what is in our hearts even better than we do. He knows the full potential for betrayal, for the doubt that lies just underneath the surface of our confession, for the embarrassment that many of us feel about our relationship with Him. There is nothing that is hidden from him and yet He continues to loves us without condition.

Earlier in the book of John we are told that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and that through the life of Christ the fullness of grace and truth was revealed to us.

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:

Jesus is the perfect example of grace and truth operating in the life of a fully formed human being. He shows us that we can love deeply but it doesn’t mean that we have to trust you implicitly. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Think about your relationship with your children, you are a foolish parent if you trust your children with everything. (Carissa’s ipad story.) They are not to be trusted, that is why you are their parent and guardian. Yet that lack of trust has to be buffered by the grace of unconditional love otherwise your family relationships break apart. And as you love in this way, hopefully over time your kids will begin to earn your trust. If you doubt me, I want you to think of all the untrustworthy things you did behind your parent’s back. (The apple usually doesn’t fall that far from the tree.) Whatever, you have done to break your parent’s heart usually that comes back to you through your children. God is fair and just!

Now if Jesus who knows everything that is in the our hearts doesn’t trust us then the logical conclusion is that we shouldn’t ourselves either. I recognize that this message is completely contrary to what the world tells us. Movies, ads, and self-help books all seem to tell us that we need to follow our hearts, dive into our passions, go with our instincts, do what we feel is right, you have to do you. And shockingly, I feel like even Christians buy into all of this self-centered rhetoric and forget one of the clearest teachings out of Scripture which is you cannot trust yourself.

Proverbs 16:2 ESV

2 All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit.

Luke 16:15 ESV

15 And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Luke 1

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

The Bible goes on and on about why we can’t trust our own feelings, motives, and desires but we choose to continue down this road of self-reliance, ignoring the many warnings that God gives us through his Word, and then we wonder why we have to deal with the disastrous consequences of our choices. I believe that one of the main reasons why we tend to leave Jesus out in the margins of our decision making process is because we assume that he doesn’t understand us and is unable to sympathize with what we are going through. And precisely because He is the Son of God and without sin, we assume that there is a chasm between our experience and his. We may even know what it says in Hebrews and dismiss it as being untrue.

Hebrews 4:15 ESV

15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

And yet in this verse is the hidden clue, the hidden truth of why Jesus knows us even better than we know ourselves. It’s easy to tell ourselves that Jesus doesn’t know us because he never gave into temptation and fell into sin but according to CS, this is exactly why Jesus knows us so well.

“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is....A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have always lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it and Christ because he was the only man who has never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist.”

I believe that somewhere inside the human soul, we all know that we are not the masters of our own destiny, that we need certain guidelines and rules, and we seem to know inherently that in a world that appears to offer limitless choices, we can’t trust ourselves to make the right decision.

Barry Schwarz, who is a popular psychologist on Tedtalk, has an interesting theory on what our modern world is doing to us psychologically. He opens up his talk with how the market for jeans has changed. 20-30 years ago when we bought jeans, we had 2-3 choices, Levis and Wranglers. Today we have hundreds and hundreds of brands in every cut, color, and fit imaginable and yet no one can find the perfect pair of jeans. He calls this the paradox of choice which I’ve taken the liberty to expand into its cascading effects.

Unlimited choice and freedom leads to paralysis. (Diner example)

Having more choices makes us more discontent.

The fear of making wrong choices leads to anxiety and depression.

The narrative of having no limits robs us of the very freedom it promises.

God exists to make me feel good and validate whatever choice I want to make. God has become the greatest enabler of our generation.

Anyone who has a little girl or is a little girl trapped in an adult body has probably this song from Frozen one too many times:

Anyone who has a little girl or is a little girl trapped in an adult body has probably this song from Frozen one too many times:

Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal don’t feel…It’s time to see what I can do. To the test the limits and breakthrough. No right, no wrong, no rules for me. I’m free!

The irony of that whole song is that Princess Elsa is singing all of this while building a prison of ice around herself, a kingdom of isolation where it looks like she is the queen.

5. This view of life impacts the way we relate to God.

God exists to make me feel good and validate whatever choice I feel like making. God has somehow become the greatest enabler of our generation. Again Mark Sayers, who I have been quoting from because of his insight into American Christianity writes about how:

Our culture is becoming a “feelie” world in which something is only true and real if I can palpably feel it. If I am not feeling good all the time, something must be wrong. I judge my career, my marriage, and my faith by whether it makes me feel good. Truth is reduced into that which makes me feel good. Thus we prefer a form of faith that does not ask us to encounter our pain, to deny ourselves, to grow in areas which may be uncomfortable.

What Sayers is telling us is to do is to go back to a faith that is centered around the cross of Jesus. When our relationship with Jesus is based on the cross, it begins to purify the motives of our heart and we are no longer Christians because of some ulterior motive. Your willingness to pick up your cross and follow Christ is the end game.

If you remember from last week, we looked at how Jesus angrily confronted the corruption of the temple in Jerusalem. And I pointed out that when religion becomes overly institutionalized it brings out the worst in humanity because at that point we are not encountering a living God who looks into the depths of our heart and who causes us to deal with the sickness that we find there. People generally want a superficial religion that allows us to pretend that we are holier, happier, and more whole than than we truly are. Because the alternative to that is to become uncomfortable and actually deny ourselves. But the very thing that we refuse to enter into is keeping us from our healing.

This is why in the Old Testament, one of the scathing accusations that God lodges against the religious leaders of the time.

Jeremiah 6:13–14 ESV

13 “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. 14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

Our upcoming Encounter retreat at the end of March deals exactly with this problem of shallow religion that fails to heal people. The main purpose of the retreat is encountering Jesus and the gospel in such a way that it begins the process of healing and holiness in your life. There is this incredible spiritual dynamic that happens when the power of the Gospel is released into your life by the Holy Spirit. The cleansing of sin brings healing into your life, the healing that you experience brings further deliverance from the bondage of addiction, fear, insecurity, and anxiety. It is a totally different type of retreat and I would encourage you to sign up if haven’t done so.

Going back to our text, when you see Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the middle of the night, you quickly realize that he has more questions than answers. We’ll look more closely at this dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus next week but what is clear is that even though Nicodemus has spent his entire life studying to become a religious leader, he still doesn’t have the answers to life. Jesus marvels at this and asks him:

John 3:10 ESV

10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?

Even thought he has spend his entire life studying the OT scriptures, he still doesn’t know the answers to life.

It would appear that in all of his years as a teacher of all things spiritual, he has still not found the answers to life.

The answer to lifeless religion is found in Jesus’ words as he is cleansing the old temple. “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.” In that statement, we know that Jesus is talking about his death on the cross and his resurrection after 3 days. The pursuit of God that is centered on humility and love and a life of sacrificial service to others not only prevents the corruption of religion but surprisingly that is where we find our true selves, and our true life.

It is surprisingly and shockingly simple:

If I follow Jesus because of the cross that he offers me, I can be reasonably sure that I am following him for the right reasons, for the pure reasons. If the central focus of your religion is a Savior who came to serve and to be served and to give his life as ransom and its believers follow that example, we then say that this is a religion that is pure and undefiled.

This is the cross that Jesus asks all of us to carry. A life devoted to the sacrificial love of others. (Evangelism, Social Justice, Compassion Ministry, Mission all happen when we start to live out the cross.)

But here is the unseen bonus, when you deny yourself and pick up your cross, instead of losing your life, you actually begin to find it. Isn’t that exactly what Jesus tells us? But we are so afraid of the discomfort of the cross, we don’t see it’s enormous benefits.

It I trust Jesus enough to follow him to the cross, that journey begins to purify us, because as we follow with the cross in mind, he begins to search our hearts, to dig up all of the impure motives, the corners of our heart entrenched in selfishness and hatred. And somewhere along that path, I learn not only to trust Christ fully but I come to realize that I can fully trust myself because as the apostle Paul says:

Galatians 2:20 ESV

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.