10/22/06 Worlds In Collision
Our study of the Gospel of John
brings us this morning to a passage
in which we will find what is probably the best known verse in the entire Bible.
JOH 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
It is also the passage
that contains a phrase
that has become the foundation of modern evangelistic preaching,
“...you must be born again...”.
And the combination of these two factors
makes it in some ways
one of the more difficult passages for us to deal with.
It’s difficult because familiarity so often triggers within us
a response in which we find ourselves thinking, “Oh, I know that!”,
and as soon as we say that to ourselves
we stop thinking,
we stop listening,
we stop interacting with the passage.
So to help us with that response
we’re going to start by doing our best
to keep this passage in context.
And even though most of the passage is found in the first part of chapter 3,
the context really begins back in chapter two.
If you were with us last week
you will remember that the last part of John chapter two
records for us Jesus’ first public trip to Jerusalem
during the Feast of the Passover.
We spent the morning talking about His presentation of His credentials
to the those who held positions of power in Israel,
credentials confirming that Jesus was indeed
the fulfillment of God’s promise
that He would send the nation a Messiah,
a Savior,
a King in the line of King David himself.
We saw, too,
the way in which the national leadership
publicly and absolutely rejected His offer.
The confrontation that took place
between Jesus and the national power structure in the Temple that day
was the beginning of a war between the two
that culminated three years later
in Jesus’ late night arrest and mock trial,
followed by His being handed over for crucifixion.
That’s where we stopped our study last week,
but it is not where John stops his account of that first Passover visit to Jerusalem.
In the first 21 verses of chapter three
John allows us to listen in on a private conversation
between Jesus and a man of significant social prominence
who sought Him out late one evening.
But the real backdrop for this conversation
is found in the last three verses of chapter two,
and that’s where we are going to pick up our study this morning.
In those verses John tells us,
JOH 2:23-25 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man.
And if ever there was a passage
that blasts holes in so much of the conventional religious thinking
it’s these three verses.
You see, what John says here
simply shatters one of the major foundation pillars
of the religious marketing mentality
that is at the heart of so much of what is done in the name of Christ in our world today.
If all we had from this passage
was that first sentence,
what do you think we would naturally do with it?
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing.
Now, doesn’t that sound like great news to us?
Wow!!
Look at what’s happening among the common man!
Those power mongers in the Temple may have rejected Him,
but you can always trust the common people,
the “real” people to see the truth.
They saw those miracles,
and, praise God!, they believed in Him.
Doesn’t that sound like great success?
Doesn’t that sound like the beginnings
of just the kind of grass-roots movement Jesus surly must have wanted?
But then we read that next sentence.
But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man.
Do you see what he’s saying?
He’s saying that when the people saw what Jesus could do,
when they saw His miracles,
when the saw His healing powers,
they were drawn to Him by the hundreds,
by the thousands.
But when Jesus saw their response,
rather than reaching out to them,
and embracing them,
and bringing them into His fold,
He drew away,
He pulled back,
He did not entrust Himself to them.
Why?
Because He knew that they were coming to Him for the wrong reasons.
They were coming to Him not because of who He was
but because of what they could get.
And He knew that any relationship that began between them and Him on that basis
would last only as long as He continued to deliver what they wanted.
But once He failed to produce as they thought He should,
they would turn their backs on Him.
And in the past 2000 years
nothing has really changed, has it?
We live in a world of religion
in which, so often, the message we hear
is one that tells us what we can get from God.
Join our group
and we’ll show you signs and wonders!
Join our group
and we’ll make you feel good every time you’re here.
Join our group
and we’ll provide great programs for your every need.
Join our group
and we’ll guarantee your children will never rebel.
Look what we can give you,
look what God can give you,
look what you can get if you become a Christian.
And those who come
stay as long as the group or God seems to deliver what they want.
But as soon as some other group makes a better offer,
or God fails to deliver what they think He should,
they move on.
Now I have to be careful here
so that I’m not misunderstood.
I know that with many of us
our first response to God,
our first movement toward Him
is motivated by some need in our life.
We reach out to Him
because the turmoil,
or the pain,
or the loneliness,
or the confusion,
or the fear in our lives
drives us to cry out to Him.
And that’s great!
That’s life working the way it’s suppose to work,
confronting us with our desperate need for our Creator.
But what concerns me here
is that our religious community seems to have cultivated an approach to God
in which the focus always remains on what we can get from Him,
rather than our entering into a true, living, submissive relationship with Him.
John’s wording in these few verses is fascinating.
He tells us that these people in Jerusalem believed in Jesus because of the miracles,
but Jesus knew their hearts,
He knew what they wanted was not Him,
but rather what they thought they could get from Him,
and because of that He was not entrusting Himself to them.
Now what in the world does that mean?
I can answer the question best
by once again borrowing a few words from The Fisherman.
And since this may become a more frequent occurrence
than I had at first anticipated when we started this study of John
it might help if I preface it by stating what is probably obvious to many of you.
My imagined “Peter” in that book
is simply a thinly disguised cover for myself.
I simply used him
to allow me to put into words
thoughts and feelings about my Lord
and about what it means to live with Him,
thoughts and feelings that I didn’t know how to express any other way.
When I meet Peter face to face,
I’ll certainly offer him my apologies,
but I’m quite sure he won’t hold it against me.
You see, there are some things that I have come to know with certainty
during the past 40 years of my life with my Lord.
At the top of that list
is the understanding that what we long for the most in life,
what our spirits hunger for
is the presence of our Creator in our lives -
the discovery of His love for us
and the fulfillment that only comes
with a life lived daily in His presence.
Second, I have come to know with certainty
that the greatest enemy to our discovery of Him
is not immorality,
it’s religion.
Immorality has it’s own built-in lie detector
because it always ultimately generates
far more pain and anguish in our lives than it relieves.
It is addictive, of course - physically, emotionally, psychologically,
and those addictions are sometimes extremely difficult to break,
but it’s destructive nature in our lives is not hard to see.
The destructive power of religion, however
is far more difficult for us to see.
In fact not only is it not generally recognized as evil,
but on the contrary
it is nearly universally recognized as great good.
Religion in all its forms
promises to lead us to God
while at the same time it walls us off from Him
and from our discovery of His love for us
by offering us a system of performance that we are called to fulfill.
Which leads me to my 3rd certainty,
that discovering the difference between Jesus Christ
and religion
is the hardest battle we’ll ever face in life.
I mention this because The Fisherman is in many respects
my best attempt to reveal that difference between religion and a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
And having carefully placed my words into Peter’s mouth,
there are some places where I simply don’t know how to say it any better.
That’s certainly true
with my understanding of what John meant
when he told us that Jesus was not entrusting Himself to them.
So here’s the way Peter explained it.
From the first moment I met Jesus, I knew he was unlike any other leader I had ever met before. You see, Jesus never attempted to win people to himself. Unlike all the other leaders I’d known, Jesus never attempted to create a following.
His approach to Israel was simple: he stepped into the center of our world. Through his words and his actions he enabled everyone to see exactly who he was and what he was like. Then he allowed us to decide for ourselves what we would do about it.
His use of his healing abilities is a good example. During the time of his public ministry, Jesus healed thousands of people. But not once did he use his healing powers as a hook with which to hold another human being. Never did he say, “If you follow me, I will heal you,” or “Because I have healed you, I now expect you to follow me.” He didn’t “buy” people with his power. He didn’t manipulate people with his persuasive abilities. He just stepped into their lives, allowed them to see him as he was, and then gave them the freedom to decide what they would do with what they had seen.
Most people were well pleased to take whatever they could get from the Master and then walk away. If they wanted healing, they would take healing. If they wanted entertainment, they would join the crowd, watch the show, and listen to the Master teach. Then, when the party was over, they walked away unchanged. My brother Matthew liked to call those people “the multitudes.” It was a good name for them—an unthinking mass of humanity taking what came without charge, closing their eyes to the reality of what they were seeing and hearing.
Then there were some who hated Jesus from the moment he entered town because he threatened their power and control in the community. They challenged him whenever they could, they raised questions about the source of his power, they attacked and undermined his work whenever they had the chance, and they rejoiced when he walked out of town.
And finally, there were those of us who . . . well, those who entered into his love. There was only one requirement for this—we had to want him more than we wanted anything else. There were thousands and thousands who wanted what he could give. There were not many who wanted him. But something amazing took place in our lives when we reached that point. I can describe it only by saying he gave us himself. He allowed us to see his heart, and in so doing he created between himself and each of us a depth of intimacy unlike anything else we’d ever known before. He ceased to be just the Prophet or the Healer or the Great Teacher and became our friend. He listened to us. He laughed with us. He lived with us. He opened his heart and his mind to us, and what we saw there changed everything forever because what we saw there was ourselves. We were in his heart, in his mind. Having seen that, life could never be the same again. Most of those we encountered, however, were never able to see his heart because they were never willing to give him theirs.
During the years since his departure, I have tried hard to duplicate the pattern Jesus modeled for us when he was here. It is not my responsibility to attempt to sell Jesus to the world or rally the masses to follow his teachings. It is my responsibility to present him as simply and accurately as possible and let people decide for themselves what they will do with the Master. The few who submit to him on his terms will know his heart and his love as I have known it. The rest will walk away. Or worse, they will attempt to use him for their own ends.
Already our Christian world is filled with those who are busy building their little empires in the name of Jesus. Brother Paul made a comment in one of the letters he wrote to the Christians in Corinth. He said, “We are not like many, peddling the word of God.” And there are many. I can hear them now: “Who wants salvation? Who wants healing? Who wants peace? Step right up! Jesus can give you what you want.” The focus, of course, is always on what we want, not on what he wants. And the result is an endless river of religious sewage, flowing out of the septic system of our own selfish pride.
You see, that’s what was going on between Jesus and the masses
during that first Passover visit to Jerusalem.
There were many who “believed in Him”
because of the wonders they were seeing.
But their belief was rooted in what they thought they could get from Him.
And Jesus’ response to them was clear.
He did not entrust Himself to them
because they would not entrust their lives to Him.
It’s the submission thing, of course,
submission and trust.
Not trust in what He could do,
but trust in what He would do with their lives
if they gave themselves into His leadership.
Several weeks ago we were looking at some of Jesus’ first encounters
with the men who would ultimately make up His inner core of followers.
There are six such first encounters given to us in the last half of John chapter one.
We looked at five of those six when we were in that study,
but we skipped one that I want to return to now.
It takes up only one verse,
a verse that tells us about Jesus’ first encounter with Philip.
It’s found in John 1:43 and says simply,
The next day He purposed to go forth into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, "Follow Me."
Now I know what we typically do with a verse like that.
We revert back to our Sunday School days
and conjure up a fuzzy mental image
of Jesus the great prophet dressed in a bathrobe
going through the masses of awe-struck people,
reaching out to individuals as He passed and saying, “Follow me.”
And in response to His request
they mindlessly dropped what they’re doing
and followed.
I have to tell you, I really do hate that stuff.
Let me tell you what’s really happening here.
First of all,
John makes it clear that Jesus specifically targeted Philip.
He was looking for him,
and he found him.
And here again we have to make it personal,
because that’s the only kind of interaction there ever is between us and God - personal.
You see, He’s done the same thing with you that He did with Philip.
He sought you out,
He found you,
and He’s called you to Himself.
When Philip met Jesus that day
I’m sure that at that point
he must have felt as though their meeting
was just a really great piece of luck.
He probably thought
that he just happened to be in the right place
at the right time
so that his path could cross with the path of this remarkable man.
But John made sure we knew the truth.
There was not luck,
no good fortune involved whatsoever.
The next day He purposed to go forth into Galilee, and He found Philip.
Jesus chose to go into Galilee,
and He went there for just one reason,
to find Philip.
Do you think what’s going on right now between you and your God
is just the result of random chance?
Do you think you just happened to end up here this morning?
Do you think this God-awakening inside you,
this God-awareness that has intruded into your life
has happened by accident, or because of the culture you live in?
He has sought you out just as certainly,
just as personally as He sought out Philip two thousand years ago.
And He’s done it for the same reason.
Not because He wants to make your life religious.
Not because He’s trying to recruit you for church -
for this church or any other church.
He’s done it for the same reason He did it with Philip -
because He wants you with Him.
He wants to share your life with you.
And the call He extends to you
is the same one He extended to Philip,
and to Andrew,
and to Peter,
and to James and John.
“Follow Me.”
Do you think that was an easy call for Philip to respond to?
Don’t you think He understood
how devastating that could be,
would be to his life?
We are not told what career Philip was involved in when Jesus found him.
But whatever it was,
Philip certainly knew that Jesus’ request
would bring dramatic changes to His future.
And certainly it would not be without cost.
And if you have heard correctly
what your God is saying to you,
you have undoubtedly wrestled with the same issues.
I know I did.
I didn’t know much about what was coming,
but I knew enough to know God wasn’t just asking
if I’d agree to attend church more often.
And I could not be honest with you
without telling you that
if you agree - if you say “Yes” to His request that you follow Him,
He will profoundly alter the course of your life.
But if you agree,
I can at least give you one word of comfort.
He will not make you religious,
He will seek to make you free.
Do you know what religion is?
Religion is the place where people go to hide from God
when they refuse to respond to His call.
And it’s a truly great hiding place
because it looks so good, so pious to those around you.
But for those of us who say “yes”,
He will do for us
what He refused to do for those masses in Jerusalem -
He will entrust Himself to us.
And we will enter into the mind and the heart of God.
When we began this morning
I told you that the context for John chapter three
really begins with the last three verses of chapter two
because it is in those three verses
that John sets up the contrast,
the contrast between the masses who wanted a Messiah
who would give them what they wanted
without asking anything in return,
and a man who risked everything
just so that he could find out more about Jesus.
And we’ll look at his first encounter with Jesus next time.