Pre-requisite for heaven

Youth Video: Script

Heavenly Pre-requisites

Intro – 2.5min

What are you going to do after school? I remember the question like it was only 15years ago. This is the question that you are asked so often as a teenager isn’t it. What are you doing with your future?

I remember the parent-teacher interviews in the library. Sitting down with your parents and a teacher and looking at this very question. Hovering over Tafe and Uni course books. Somewhere in those books is the answer. What are you doing after this? So many decisions. What do I want to become? An Engineer? What type? Civil, mechanical, something called aerospace, may be electrical, or chemical? All of them require a different course and more study. Perhaps I will become an architect, a nurse, artist, go into IT, or become a lawyer: more classes, more study. Whatever the decision was, I needed to decide then, there, on that night. Why? Because there are pre-requisites. What comes next requires action now! You need math studies, English studies, chemistry, physics, legal, with an ATAR score as high as I could achieve. To get where I wanted to go, I had to work now. The pre-requisites were essential.

Take a step back for a moment and let me ask you another question? What are you going to do after this? What is next? I’m not talking about school, or uni, career or family… but life. What's next for you after this life? Have you thought about it?

Part 1 – 2.5min – Impossible

There is a story in the bible where Jesus speaks to a man named Nicodemus about this very question. How can a person enter into heaven? Just like my teacher at parent-teacher interviews, Jesus tells Nicodemus about the necessary pre-requisites. What Nicodemus needs to enter heaven. Jesus said:

“No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

“No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”

Heaven’s pre-requisite, to enter heaven, you have to have been born there. You have to be made of the right stuff, spiritual stuff. ‘what is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the spirit if spirit’.

When hearing the pre-requisites for becoming a doctor, you at least know where to start. It might take a while, and a lot of study at medical school, but it’s doable. Being born from above, though? Of spirit? Where do you even begin? We have already been born, and it wasn’t from above.

Nicodemus was equally stumped. ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can you enter a second time into the mother’s womb?’ Nicodemus was no fool, Jesus was asking for the impossible. If only people that are born in heaven will ever see heaven, he was never going to go there. He, like us, was born in the wrong place, made of the wrong stuff to meet the criteria.

How do I enter heaven? The answer seems to be, you don’t. No human could ever enter into heaven. It’s impossible.

Part 2 – 2.5min – Jesus alone

Or was it?

Impossible at least for all but one man. After Nicodemus had finished asking Jesus how this ridiculous criterion for heave could possibly be valid, Jesus spoke, of the one and only exception. One human has seen and entered heaven. One man met the pre-requisites of being born from above, being born of water and spirit. Jesus said:

‘No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man’.

Jesus was talking about himself. He was the son of God that descended from heaven to become a man. The very occasion that we celebrate at Christmas. He, unlike any other man, was born from above, born of water and spirit.

Jesus was the one and only man that met the pre-requisites to see and enter again into heaven.

What this a cruel joke. Speaking to Nicodemus about heaven that he would never see? Never be apart of? Made more heartless still by the fact that Jesus was the only person that was going to be able to?

Is it cruel that I am even speaking about it now?

Jesus is not being cruel to Nicodemus. He isn’t speaking of heaven to frustrate him. Like offering a kitten, a toy mouse only to pull it away at the last moment, again and again. No… Jesus is not taking heaven away from Nicodemus but explaining how the impossibility of heaven might be made possible. How the inconceivable pre-requisite that no man could meet can be completed and overcome. He is showing Nicodemus the way to heaven.

Part 3 – 2.5min – Believe

That way requires only that Nicodemus must believe.

Long ago in the time when Israel wandered the wilderness, there came a time when they began to complain. Now God had saved them slavery in Egypt and supplied all that they needed for their journey. He was taking them to land that was said to flow with milk and honey, an old way of saying it had a lot of food. But the people were sick of travel and began to… bitch and winge about God, and Moses their leader. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. There is no food or water, and we don’t like the food we have”. In response, God sent poisonous serpents among the people as a punishment. All the people that were bitten died. The people realised their error and repented. Pleading with God to take away the serpents. In response to the people, God didn’t take away the snakes but instead instructed Moses to create a bronze replica of the serpents and lift it up on a pole. From that day forward, anyone who was sick from the snakes could look at it and be healed.

In the story, the sick Israelites had to believe that looking at the bronze snake would heal them, and they showed this belief by turning their heads to look at it. Jesus shared this story with Nicodemus to show him two things. First that he, the only one that could enter heaven would likewise be lifted up of the earth on a cross, just like the snake. Second, that if anyone wanted to receive the salvation that heaven offers, they, like Israel with the bronze snake, had to believe that Jesus would be their salvation. Third, that Nicodemus understood that there was no other way to be saved. Only belief in Jesus would offer eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Part 4 – 2.5min – Reject

So easy right. This text applies to you and me as well. Why not merely believe in Jesus. Why doesn’t the whole world simply turn their heads to believe?

Can you imagine being bitten by a snake at the time of Moses? Imagine being moments away from certain death. And deciding not to look at the bronze serpent. Deciding not to turn your head, not to believe? And preferring death? It’s not sensible. There is no logic.

Yet, Jesus tells Nicodemus that many people would not believe in him for their salvation. Many people that would choose to die instead of turning their heads to look and receive eternal life.

Why?

Because to turn toward Jesus, is to expose and turn away from deeds that lead to death. And people love doing the things that lead to death. They love them more than they love their lives.

I’m sure there were people in Israel that didn’t look toward the bronze serpent. People knew or felt instinctively that to do so would expose the need for God, and they loved their pride. People that knew if they believed they would be admitting that God was giving them all that was needed, and they had no right to winge and complain about food and water. But, they loved good food and drink, so they didn’t believe. People that didn’t turn because they loved being a victim, and complaining so they wouldn’t turn to receive salvation. For the love of their sin today, they traded the salvation for eternity.

Conclusion – 2.5min

What are you going to do after this? What is next?

Heavens pre-requisite has been met. Not by you, but by Jesus. He alone can enter heaven, but he offers it to you. If you only believe in him.

But to turn to him is to turn away from sin. And some of the things that you currently love. Perhaps your pride. You feel you do not need anyone’s help. You know you are doing and can figure it out by yourself.

Maybe it’s your love for comfort and pleasure. Fear of losing guilt-free access to sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend, even pornography. Or the loss of being able to spend your life in front of a computer screen, or TV. Even the loss of not having to care for other people.

Perhaps you simply love self-pity.

Eternity is within your grasp. Freedom from the guilt of that comes only with sin. Turn your head and believe in Jesus. Or trade it in for today’s sin.