7 Words that Change Everything

A New Word from God

Jesus has a conversation with Nicodemus that presents us with a challenging idea: to be a part of the Kingdom of God, a person will need to be reborn - born from above. Imagine how this sounds to man who has always believed being born into the people of God was enough. Jesus seems to have just dramatically restricted who will be in the Kingdom. It’s like show up along with more than 400 other descendants at your billionaire great great grandfather’s reading of the will with your birth certificate and proof of identity firmly in hand only to have it announced that regardless of your proof of identity only those who are also citizens of Iceland get any of the inheritance. Good news if you’re from Reykjavík, but you’d go away feeling pretty let down.

But

Jesus makes a remarkable claim - I know what I’m talking about even if you think I don’t and you don’t know what you’re talking about, even if you think you do. Have you been to heaven? Didn’t think so. The Son has been there and has come from way up there all the way right down here — to this very spot, in fact.

This is the idea so unexpected and so revolutionary that it makes people in Jesus’ own hometown erupt in an angry mob ready to hurl him off a cliff: Not that God’s love is less than people had been raised to expect - but that it was much much greater. So great it would erase the boundary between Jew and Gentile and open the Kingdom of God up to the whole world.

And, do you remember the story of when all the people were dying and God made Moses

This is going to

So, the inside-group, the loved-by-God group is not just anyone and everyone born Jewish. You know, Nicodemus could probably accept that. After all, he’s much more rigorous in his faith than ordinary people. And, from the time we’re little, most of us pick one of the realities of how love works: If you try harder to make me happy I’ll love you more. If you perform better, I’ll love you more. If you go to church two or three times every week, I’ll love you more.

In this, God is pretty much a projection of how we see love working most of the time. I mean - think about dating - like / like alot / kind of love/ love a lot / really love / kind of irritated / frustrated / not sure I love you / like you / hate you. We all know love is reciprocal. Love is also changed by performance. Don’t we hear that growing up: Mindy, did you see your son’s grades? Josh, I got a call from the principal this afternoon. Disappointed? That’s not the half of it. If you don’t straighten up and perform better you can forget your birthday next week - in fact, you can forget birthdays from now on. OR, Mindy, did you see our son’s grades. Honors classes, advanced placement, and the Calipari called him last week with the scholarship offers. Josh, get yourself in here son, we are sooooo proud of you. Whatta you want to get for your birthday next week?

That’s pretty much how love works. If you my blood, I love you more than a strange. If you perform well, I’ll love you more. If you do nice things for me, I’ll maybe decide to start doing nice things for you. You see you need a job - let’s see here. How many times were you in church this past year? How much did you give away to the church or to the poor?

So, I’m pretty sure Nicodemus has figured out that Jesus is about the raise the bar even higher on who’s on God’s good side.

And, sure enough, Nicodemus is about to have his world rocked. More than that, I can tell you what the Bible says next is so unexpected, so controversial, that it get’s Jesus kicked out of his own home church. It’s no unexpected God has to come down in a dream in and hit Simon Peter over the head three times with a big sheet full of lizards before he starts to see it. It’s so scandalous that just the rumor of it gets Paul arrested in Jerusalem and lands him in prison for the next four or five years.

Jesus begins by drawing a picture - a picture right out a Bible story that Nicodemus knows well. It happened back when Moses has just led hundreds of thousands of formers slaves out of Egypt to journey toward the promised land. At one point in the journey, the rebellion and idolatry of the people resulted in many of them being bitten by poisonous snakes. As they cried out in fear and pain, Moses stood in the middle of them and held high over his head a great long wooden staff. And, on the wooden staff was a carefully crafted golden image of a snake. “Look at this,” he shouted. “Look and be healed!” — we’ll come back to that picture in a minute --

But then he drops a theological nuclear bomb.

Nearly everyone of you already knows the verse. But, just for a moment, listen to it like you’d never heard it before. Listen to it like Nicodemus, who worshipped and studied and prayed and exerted all that hard moral sweat at being good because he knew that God only loved those who were true blue Jews.

Jesus was going to move the bar all right - just not in the direction Nicodemus was expecting: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

There are seven words in this verse - four nouns and three verbs - that unfold the single most unexpected and startling truth of the Christian gospel as it emerged in the ancient world. Seven words that move us from religion to relationship, from flesh to Spirit, from death to life, and from being overwhelmed to overcoming.

GOD

It all begins with God. This is a huge deal. Most religions begin with someone going out and trying to find God or one of the gods or something.

Prince Siddhartha left his plush palace life in NE India to go out and seek enlightenment - after years of fasting and searching and striving he finally arrived at an understanding of how to reach nirvana and so became the Buddha - the Enlightened One.

Mohammed at around age 40 would regularly go off praying for hours in caves - until he was convinced God called him to be a prophet.

But, Jesus turns the expected picture of religion upside down - it starts with God (not with us).

- It is God who says, “Adam - where are you?”

Across the whole of human history - and in every corner of the world - there is a longing and a hungering for God.

Augustine: “Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

LOVED

When we talk about the love of God - we assume that’s no big deal. All religions talk about the love of God, don’t they? Muslims around wrists wear string of 33 beads - go around three times - the 99 names of God. None of those is love.

Bible love more than 400x. Koran less than 70x. Only 20 ref God’s love for people are all are conditional based the person’s worthiness. Loves those who do good, are pure, go into battle for his cause.

In an asylum

G.K. Chesterton - Beauty and the Beast is a great story - something must first be loved before it can ever be lovable.

1000 years ago a Jewish poet wrote words to be used in the Feast of Purim. A little over a hundred years ago a pastor in California brought the images of that poem into the third verse of lyrics he would write about God’s love: "Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade: To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole Though stretched from sky to sky."

WORLD

the world hated me first, so it will hate you

Theological point: God is not causing everything

Auchwitz, Ruwanda, Drunk Driver, layoffs

the world hated me first, so it will hate you

the world will not receive the Spirit of truth

Cosmos - throughout John’s gospel it is used to describe fallen and sinful humanity.

Theological point: God is not causing everything

Auchwitz, Ruwanda, Drunk Driver, layoffs

GAVE

That giving from heaven

- (send) not to condemn but to save

- Jesus lays down his own life for the sheep

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins

SON

Word means “one and only Son.” Not begotten but UNIQUE

PERISH

Preceded (of course) by NOT

DEATH = Separation (leave me alone)

LIFE

What God desires for you - this is not living forever. It is not about length of time. It is about quality of life. ().

- cast all your anxiety

Hold Your Place

It’s OK. I’ll hold you place, while you go off somewhere to weep

I’ll hold your faith for you, while you lift up the heavens the anguished cries of the Psalmist when he prayer - where are you? Why are you so far from me? Have you forgotten me? Have I escaped your notice?

I’ll hold your prayer for you - lifted up intercessions when your own words choked by emotion just will not come

I’ll hold you place right here - just like you have held mine - or will hold mine at some future point when I am overwhelmed.

Galatians 6:2 NIV84

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

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