This is the message given at the WOW (Worship on Wednesday) service in Gettysburg on August 27, 2014. The Bible verses are John 3:1-17.
In these Wednesday night services,
we’ve been looking at “Three Sixteens”, Chapter Three, Verse Sixteen in twelve
different books of the New Testament. And of course, the sermon series
would not be complete without looking at the most famous “three sixteen” of
all, John 3:16: “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.”
I’m not
going to say that John Three Sixteen is the entirety of Christian faith wrapped
up in one sentence, but it’s pretty close. What does it tells us?
It tells us God loves the world. God loves the world so much that
he would sacrifice Jesus, the divine Son. And God did that so that anyone
who believes in Jesus as the divine Son will have eternal life. I’m not
saying that’s all we need to know, but it’s probably the most important thing
we need to know.
Nicodemus
did not know it. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. The Pharisees, as we’ve
talked about before, were the rule-makers and the rule-keepers. They did
not believe in love. I mean, they were probably not against it or
anything. I’m not saying they thought love was a bad thing. It’s
just that love as a feeling, as an emotion, did not have much of a place in
their religion.
The Pharisees knew we’re supposed to love God
with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength, but they
really did not know what that meant. To them, it meant following the
rules. You did not question the rules, and you did not worry about what
the consequences of following the rules might be. What you thought, what
you felt, what your emotions were, was irrelevant. You did not have to
like the rules. Your duty was simply to follow them, and if you did your
duty and followed the rules, you showed your love to God. And that was
all that mattered.
But no matter how hard the Pharisees tried to
live that way, they could not entirely shut off their minds, nor could they
entirely get rid of their emotions. Nicodemus could not. He’d heard
about Jesus. We don’t know how much he’d heard, but he’d obviously heard
something. He’d heard enough to know that Jesus had a message that was
different from the “follow the rules” message that the Pharisees had.
So Jesus starts telling him about needing to be
born again, to be born of the spirit. And that makes no sense to him.
That has nothing to do with rules. Having God’s Spirit lead you,
having God’s Spirit come into your heart, that idea did not fit into the idea
Nicodemus had about religion. That salvation could come from faith and
love, rather than by following rules, was a foreign concept to him.
A lot of times, it’s often a foreign concept to
us, too. We know it. We’ve read it or heard it from the Bible, over
and over again. And yet, so many times, it does not sink in. We
keep thinking we have to earn our way into heaven by following rules. We
keep thinking we’re not good enough to get to heaven, so we have to do more, we
have to follow the rules better, we’ve got to do enough stuff to make God like
us and let us get into heaven.
Why is that? I mean, we know better.
We’ve heard over and over again that we’re saved by God’s grace and
through our faith. We’ve heard over and over again that our salvation is
based on faith and not on works. And yet, it never seems to quite sink
in. Why not?
I think it has to do with the cynical world in
which we live. How many times have you heard someone say “If something
sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well, this is the ultimate
“too good to be true”, right? That our salvation is not based on anything
we do, but that it simply is by the grace and love and mercy of God? That
all we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior and we’re saved? How
can that be? It seems it cannot possibly be that simple. It cannot
possibly be that easy. It seems like there just has to be more to it than
that.
It’s the difference between our world and the
kingdom of God. Our world is based on quid pro quo. It’s based on
giving something to get something. It’s based on let the buyer beware,
look out for the ulterior motive. It’s based on there always being
strings attached. It’s based on being careful with every transaction we
make, because there’s always someone out there trying to take advantage of us.
But that’s not how God’s kingdom works. God
gives us salvation and does not expect to get anything back for it. God
has no ulterior motive in giving us salvation. God is not trying to take
advantage of us. God simply gives us salvation as a gift, with no strings
attached.
And it’s just really hard for us to accept that.
It was hard to accept in Jesus’ time, too. Nicodemus could not
accept it. The rich young man could not accept it--remember, he came up
to Jesus and asked “what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” It is
so hard for us to accept that God just gives us salvation as a gift.
After all, why should God want to do that?
What does God get out of the deal? What’s in it for God?
Think about who God is. God is
all-powerful. God is all-mighty. God is eternal. God is the
creator of everything that is, that ever has been, and that ever will be.
Why should God even pay the slightest bit of attention to us, much less
offer us salvation and eternal life?
If you look at the question based on the way our
world works, if you look at it as a business transaction, there’s no way it can
make sense. God can never get enough out of the deal for it to be fair.
There’s nothing we can ever do that would be worth the salvation that God
gives us.
But God does not look at the question based on
the way our world works. God looks at the question the way the kingdom of
God works. God does not look at this as a business transaction. God
looks at it as a love transaction. Because God is love.
And the thing about love is that love cannot
exist in a vacuum. By definition, the only way love exists is if there’s
an object of that love. The phrase “I love” is meaningless unless we say
who or what we love. It can be “I love God” or “I love my wife” or “I
love baseball” or “I love that doggie in the window”, but the phrase “I love”
makes no sense unless it is finished by saying who or what it is that we love.
The way God gives meaning to the phrase “I love”
is by saying “I love you”. God loves you. And God loves you.
And God loves you. And you and you and you. And everybody
else in the world. Including me.
And when we love someone, we do things for them
without needing to be paid back. We don’t look for the quid pro quo.
We don’t have an ulterior motive. We don’t have any strings
attached. If we do, then we don’t really have love. Love is given
as a gift. Period.
That’s the kind of love God has for us. And
that’s why God sent the divine Son into the world. To be born, and to
live, and to die, and to be raised from the dead. God did that, not to
condemn the world, but to save the world. God gave the earthly life of
the divine Son as a gift, an incredible gift to us. It’s a gift that
provides salvation to each one of us. To you, and to me. We don’t
deserve it, but God does not ask us to deserve it. We could never earn
it, but God does not ask us to earn it. God simply asks us to accept it.
God just asks us to accept this incredible gift of salvation that God is
offering to each one of us out of love.
And that’s why this is the most important “Three
Sixteen” of all. If we don’t understand it, that’s okay. God does
not ask us to understand it. If it does not make sense to us, that’s
okay, too. God does not ask us to make sense of it. God just asks
us to accept it. God just asks us to accept this incredible gift of
salvation. God just asks us to accept God’s love.
So, as these Wednesday night services come to a
close, let’s accept God’s gift. Let’s accept that incredible gift of
salvation. Let’s accept God’s love. And let’s feel the joy that
comes from that incredible gift.
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