In Jesus Holy Name June 3, 2012
Text: John 3:5, 14
“Who Can Be Saved?”
Charles Shultz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a Christian message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and accepted. Lucy demonstrates our human inability to love one another.
Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another:
CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.
Lucy: Are you sure?
CB: Of course I'm sure!
Lucy: You mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing?
CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean!
Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy?
CB: And then I'll be happy!
Lucy: [Lucy turns and walks away saying] I can't do it!
What Lucy cannot do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. God loves you and is telling you today, "He loves you!" "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."
A number of years ago, I read a newspaper account of a speech given by the president of a well-known university to a group of influential businessmen and civic leaders. The president told of a recent experience which he, his audience, and the newspaper reporter found humorous. The president was shopping during the Christmas season and happened to pass by a Salvation Army volunteer, standing by a “donation kettle” and ringing a bell.
As he paused to make a donation, the woman volunteer asked this educator: “Sir, are you saved?” When he replied that he supposed he was, she was not satisfied, so she pursued the matter further: “I mean, have you ever given your full life to the Lord?” At this point, the president told his audience, he thought he should enlighten this persistent woman concerning his identity: “I am the president of such and such university, and as such, I am also president of its school of theology.”
The lady considered his response for a moment, and then replied, “It doesn’t matter wherever you’ve been, or whatever you are, you can still be saved.” She was asking the question: In whom do you place your trust for your eternal address? Yourself, Your own deeds… or Jesus?
The most tragic part of this incident is that both the seminary president and his audience actually thought his story was amusing. One can imagine that if Nicodemus had been confronted by this Salvation Army volunteer, he would have thought—and said—just about the same thing as the university president. Nicodemus is the “cream of the Jewish crop.” One dare not dream of having life any better than he has it. He is a Jew, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin (the highest legal, legislative and judicial body of the Jews), and a highly respected teacher of the Old Testament Scriptures. Can you imagine being Nicodemus and having Jesus tell you that all of this is not enough to get you into the kingdom of God? Yet this is precisely what Jesus tells Nicodemus. If a man like Nicodemus is not good enough for the kingdom of God, then who is?
It is possible to be a religious person and still miss the promise of God's acceptance through His son, Jesus?
It is possible to be a religious person and be an unfulfilled person. You bet! Is it possible to be religious person and still be unsure about your eternal address? You bet! (read the story in Matthew 19:16-25)
Nicodemus has the same question. He came to Jesus at night….he did not want others to know his anxiety, his insecurity. This is basicly the conversation: “Good Teacher, Rabbi… we know you are a teacher who has come from God…., I have kept all of the rules and forms and rituals of our faith, but something is missing. Tell me what else I must do to fill this void.
One of the best photographs from the WWII era is a photo of King George the VI inspecting a bombed out section of London. He stops to talk with a little boy, who is sloppily dressed and has his cap on crooked. The King is bending on one knee and looking directly into the face of the child, and even though it is a profile shot of the king you can see that his is a look of compassion. Tell me that that child's life was not changed. Tell me that if he lived to be a hundred he forgot that day? I would suggest that once one truly looks into the eyes of Jesus, It is difficult to turn away.
If you don't believe that then ask a long parade of witnesses. Ask Mary Magdalene. Yes, it is true. I looked into his face and I became a pure woman.
Ask Matthew. I too looked into his face, and I became an honest man.
Ask Paul. When I met Jesus, I changed. My zeal for the law became a zeal for love.
Ask Peter. Change, you ask? Oh yes, I changed. After I met Jesus I had to wrestle with my prejudices against the gentiles. We are all broken men and women and our need is to be healed, changed, repaired, forgiven. The true question for this morning is not "What Nicodemus was searching for?", but what are you searching for.
Jesus turns to Nicodemus and says: “You must be born again.” Well, what does that really mean? An attractive young woman, whose career caused her to travel quite a bit, was asked if she was ever bothered by uninvited male attention. She answered, "Never. If I begin to feel pressured, I simply say five words and then I'm left alone." Of course she was asked, "What are the five words?" She smiled sweetly and said, "I simply ask, 'Have you been born again?'"
What "born again" means is literally to begin all over again, to be given a second birth, a second chance. The one who is born again doesn't all of a sudden get turned into a super-Christian. To be born again is to enter afresh into the process of spiritual growth. It is to wipe the slate of one’s past, clean. It is to cancel your old mortgage and start again.
In other words, you don't have to be always what you have now become. Such an offer is too good to be true for many, confusing for most, but for those who seek to be other than what they are now, who want to be more than the mere accumulation and sum total of their experiences, the invitation, "You must be born again," is an offer you cannot afford to refuse.
Christianity teaches what everyone knows…. Our human problem is selfishness, a failure to live up to the moral and ethical values, which is what Christianity calls “sin”, which in reality is the breaking of God’s commandments. We all know there are many different religions in the world, in our own country. Not denominations… but religions we have never even heard about growing up. But let me tell you something. There is a fundamental difference in the way other “religions” tell us we can have salvation… eternal life beyond death.
Every major world religion has had a “teacher” who prescribed codes of behavior….that if kept will allow one into the ultimate paradise beyond death. Even the “New Age” religions that blend Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity will tell you that Jesus was a man whose lifestyle should be copied. The difference is that Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life….” No one comes into my Father’s eternal home except through faith in me.
How can he say that? It sounds so intolerant? Well, it is quite simple. The bones of the creators and teachers of all other world religions are still in the ground. Jesus is different. He rose from death with a physical, glorified body.
If you are seeking to avoid sin, to live morally so that God will bless you or accept you into eternal life beyond this earth, then you might be looking at Jesus as a teacher, a model, a helper, but you are avoiding Him as Savior. If you are trusting in your own goodness…. Well, I’m better than other people I know… there fore…” rather than trusting Jesus to enable you to stand before a holy and perfect God….your heart will be anxious. Your heart will sense insecurity, and you maybe irritable because you know you are not measuring up…
Self salvation through good deeds may produce a great deal of moral behavior but inside you will know it’s not enough. Your hope has no sure foundation. If you depend on your own “good deeds” you have built your house on sand and you will worry about your eternal address. That my friends is why Nicodemus, a upright, religious Pharisee came to Jesus at night.
The moral and spiritual standards of all religions are very high. Pharisees like Nicodemus knew deep down that he was not living up to those standards. He was not praying enough. He was not loving and serving their neighbor as much as he should. The result is internal anxiety, insecurity, irritability.
First, we can say of Nicodemus he was a religious man. He clearly knew the Decalogue by heart and the Torah by memorization. In John's Gospel he is referred to not just as teacher but "the teacher", pointing to his religious pre-eminence. If anyone knew the truth about God and God's people, surely it would be this man. Yet, for all of his religiosity. Nicodemus was not a fulfilled man. There was emptiness within him that religion had not filled. Master, I know all of the commandments, but there is something missing.
Religion operates on the principle that: “I obey… therefore I am accepted by God.” The Bible tells us that I am accepted by God because Jesus died on the cross in my place. God has promised that the way to deal with human “sin”, our failures, is to transfer all of the righteousness and holiness of Jesus to us, and then place all of our broken moral failings…on the cross with Jesus, therefore out of thanksgiving I obey, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
The primary difference is motivation. In religions, we try to obey the divine standard out of fear. If we don’t obey we are going to lose God’s blessings in this world and the next. When we hold on to Jesus, the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessings of forgiveness. God has said: I will remember their sins no more… I will accept them because Jesus died and rose from the dead.
