What does God hate more than anything else?
Greed? Hypocrisy? Mindless violence? Child abuse?
He hates those things for sure
but one thing he cannot stand in particular, although it seems so right to us
is RELIGION
Religion: the safe respectable, self righteous search to be comfortable with God
Religion in the sense of people striving up to God
is totally opposed to true Christianity
which is God reaching down to us.
Religion can go hand to hand with aweful or bizarre human behaviour.
In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Huck goes to church with two families involved in a feud
the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons.
The feud has been going on for 30 years
and many lives have been lost and scarred.
Nobody seems to know or care how it started
and certainly no-one seems too bothered about stopping it.
But everyone still goes to church! Huck tells the story
"Next Sunday we all went to church. The men took their guns along,
and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall.
The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ordinary preaching
all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness;
but everyone said it was a good sermon, and they talked it over going home,
and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace'
It would be funny if it wasn't so serious!
You can have religion and not the love of God.
You can have Bible religion and not the love of God.
Aren't the feuds of Mark Twain's 19th Century America
still familiar in our 21st Century Ireland?
But people increasingly see through all of this and want nothing to do with it.
Brian Houston has written a song with the striking title "We don't need Religion."
Verse 1 is speaking about how people in our streets are ignoring "religion"
"And I've been a timber jack been a labourer
been a shipyard man and a shirker, I've been with builders building houses
and a heard a million McDonalds workers saying
we don't need religion....but we could use the love of God"
"we don't need religion but we could use the love of God".
That could be a good refrain for John 3 changing the words slightly
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LIFE OF GOD
That's what Jesus says to Nicodemus, a respectable religious man
you don't need religion, your religion, your learning is getting you nowhere
but you could use the life of God. 'You must be born again.'
Nicodemus knows a bit about God and Jesus
He has seen the signs Jesus does and he is impressed
but he lacks what we all need, a heart knowledge of Jesus,
as Jesus makes plain. "I tell you the truth,
no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
Jesus then uses a picture from Ezekiel 37
about the wind coming on the valley of dry bones to bring new life to the dead
'8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound,
but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
Nicodemus still does not understand, religious teacher though he is.
He came to see Jesus by night, out of fear of being seen openly with Jesus
and he is still in the dark and he puzzles over a question which puzzles many:
How can you be born again?
Let me say here that the words 'born again'
should not be restricted to the new fellowship churches and similar groups.
Every Christian church in its teachings has the idea of regeneration
which is a longer wayof saying in posh language 'you must be born again'
or that 'religion' will not help us, efforts to reach and please God are futile,
instead we could use, we absolutely need the life of God.
How do we find that new birth and that new life?
I advise people not to get over anxious about the new birth.
None of us controlled or induced our own physical birth, it was a gift to us
but what is in our responsibility if we areto live physically
is that we breathe and go on breathing.
None of us controls our spiritual birth, it is a gift to us
but what is in our responsibility if we areto live spiritually
is that we believe and go on believing.
That's where Jesus directs us from v14
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert,
so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
15 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
Once in the wilderness, the people of Israel had disobeyed God
and had been struck down with a plague of fiery snakes.
The Lord told Moses to raise up a bronze serpent on a pole
and whover simply looked to it would find healing
SoJesus says that the way to eternal life
is through looking to and believing in the one who will be raised up on a cross
That's the way to life.
Not through lots of prayer and bible reading,
not even through listening to sermons
not through being a kind and generous person
but by believing in the God who loves us so much
that he gave up his own dear Son to die for us on the cross.
That brings us to the next great theme in John 3
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LOVE OF GOD
expressed in the most famous verse of the Bible
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.'
To know that God loves you has to be the bottom line
in all grounded human experience
to be sure of forgiveness, of care, of provision, of affirmation.
Did not Jesus himself receive it in his life on earth?
The voice from heaven at his baptism:
'You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'
not for forgiveness which he did not need
but just to express the Father heart of God for this Son
whom soon he was to give up in his great love
for a disobedient and perishing world.
Isn't that amazing?
The world, and we are a part of it, hates God. The world has rebelled from God,
turned away from him, tries to run things on its own
The world is condemned to perish,that is its just judgement.
But God so loved us ungrateful sinful people that he offered a way out
at the cost of the suffering and death of his ownbeloved Son.
That is the measure of the love of God (as Paul says in Romans 5)
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We don't need religion
because religion suggests that there is something in us which will please God
but we need the love of God demonstrated in the cross
and the response to the love of God expressed in the second part of the verse
that whoever believes in him should not perish.
It would be false to say that because God loves the world
that therefore noone will perish.
It's part of the mystery of love that the person loved
is free to respond or to reject
We see that in every romance ever written
Boy meets girl. Boy hets interested in girl, maybe she gets interested in him.
Boy asks girl out. She can say no.
Boy asks girl to marry him, to share their lives together. She can say no.
True love implies freedom. You cannot be forced to love someone.
It is the same with God's love for us. We are not forced top love him.
It is aprt of the dignity and trgadey of being human that peiople can say No
even to a God who loved them so much that he gave up his only Son.
That's why John 3.16 ends as it does
Whoever believes, whoever responds
to that love of God expressed on the cross
will not perish but have everlasting life.
The tragedy is that so many choose to remain in the darkness.
God offers not to condemn the world, but to save the world
but some people would rather remain condemned and not believe.
They are like Nicodemus at the start of c 3 people in the dark.
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LIGHT OF GOD
a true faith, an authentic saving knowldege of Jesus
gives us life, is grounded in God's amazing love
and is open to the light
The basic choice set out in vv 19-21 is to love the darkness or to love the light
'19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world,
but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light
for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light,
so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done
has been done through God."
Some people object that the forgiveness of Jesus
somehow means that sin does not matter and you can do as you like
just as long as you believe in Jesus.
That would be a surface faith, not a saving faith.
Saving faith is easily recognised by the good things that result
when we truly appreciate what Jesus has done for us
and that we do not deserve in any way to be saved.
The new birth of the Holy Spirit and the resulting new life
makes us want to good things.
It has been well explained in this way
(by John Stott possibly quoting John Calvin):
'It is faith alone that saves
but the faith that saves is never alone - it is seen in good works.'
A 'faith' which has nothing to show for it is a faith of religion in the dark
not a faith with a vital link to Jesus, coming to his light.
If we live in the light of Christ
it does not mean that we have become completely perfect people
but it means that we are willing to let the light of Jesus shine everywhere in us
to be open to let him sift our mixed motives and challenge our hidden agendas
At Avoca Manor Holiday Week last year
somebody wrote this in our poetry workshop
about the contrast between moths who are creatures of the dark
and butterflies who love the sunshine
The night is dangerous, cold, deserted,
The day is golden, full of warmth.
Why choose to live for Christ at night
when he shines warm freedom of the day?
In devouring darkness
why do moths strive to drift by lesser light,
so easily distracted by confusing lamps
so cruelly attracted to false moons
and vague dreamy glows?
Why choose the lunar charade
when butterflies swoop int he shining day?
They taste God's nectar:
it's sweet, it's full. It's love.
Well, what are we? Moths or butterflies?
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LIFE OF GOD
Have you a living faith?
Turn to him who was raised up on the cross to save you
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LOVE OF GOD
Have you yet responded to God's invitation to love youfor ever?
How do you respond to the love whereby he gave up his only Son for you?
WE DON'T NEED RELIGION....BUT WE COULD USE THE LIGHT OF GOD
Have you a faith that goes deep and produces fruit, because it's in the light?
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him
so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit
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