Belief

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Turn with me to John chapter 3. John chapter 3. Way back in the year 1803, our forefathers in this country were worried about the people who lived along the Mississippi River.

They were worried about their agricultural goods, their cotton and their corn and all sorts of things, that they would ship down the Mississippi River in order to be able to sell them. And they’d sell them through the port of New Orleans or they would pass through there on their way to the east coast. And that was really the easiest way for them to get the agricultural goods to where they needed to be to be sold. The problem was that New Orleans had changed hands so many times, and diplomacy was in such an uproar during those days because of the Napoleonic Wars that they never could count on New Orleans being a friendly port, and they never could count on Americans being able to get their goods to market.

And so in 1803, Thomas Jefferson authorized some of the men who worked for him at the State Department to approach Napoleon and approach Napoleon’s ministers as they had just won what’s now the Louisiana Purchase. They had just won it back from the Spanish. He authorized them to approach Napoleon’s ministers with $10 million in hand and offer to buy the port of New Orleans for the Americans so that they could ship goods downriver.

And Napoleon realized that the way things were going then, he was about to lose Louisiana anyway. He’d wanted the big area back so he could try to build a North American empire. But when the British got upset with him and they were facing war with them and there had been a slave revolt in Haiti and he knew they were going to lose that, there was no point in having the Louisiana area anymore.

And so the French ministers, urged by Napoleon, told the Americans, no, we don’t want to sell New Orleans to you for $10 million, but we will sell the entire territory of Louisiana to you for $15 million. It’s an incredibly generous offer. That was three cents an acre.

Even in today’s money, it was about $230 million today, which to you and me sounds like an astronomical amount, but to our government, you know, they find that under the cushions of the couch. It comes out to 42 cents an acre in today’s money. It was an incredibly generous offer.

I don’t think the American delegation could have imagined even asking for something like that. And yet Napoleon, and I won’t pretend that Napoleon was just generous toward the Americans. He had his own reasons.

Might as well sell it to the Americans rather than give it to the British for free. But it was an incredible offer that the Americans were given. It was an incredible offer that our country was given.

Now, you may wonder, why am I talking to you about the Louisiana Purchase this morning? Two reasons you should care about it. The first being that we live in what was the Louisiana Purchase, and if they hadn’t jumped on the offer, we would be living in France or Spain or maybe Great Britain or Texas.

Who knows? The Texans might have eventually taken over Louisiana and claimed it for their own. So it’s because the Louisiana Purchase that we live in the United States today.

But also what strikes me about this, I was thinking about John chapter 3 this morning, and the way my mind works, I don’t completely understand, but I came around to the Louisiana Purchase because I was thinking about incredible offers. And in salvation, God makes an incredible offer to us. But let me ask you this, on this incredible offer that Napoleon made to Jefferson, was it enough for Jefferson just to believe that Napoleon existed?

He believed he existed or he wouldn’t have sent his people to talk to Napoleon’s people. Napoleon makes this incredible offer. Jefferson didn’t get it just because he believed Napoleon existed.

He didn’t get it just because he believed that Talleyrand, who was Napoleon’s foreign minister, I believe, that he existed. He didn’t get it just because he believed that there was a French empire somewhere, that they were willing to let Jefferson have a slice of. We preach, believe, believe, believe, but those words have come to mean something different today than what they meant when they translated the Bible into English about 400 years ago.

We preach that you’re supposed to believe in Christ, that you’re supposed to believe in God. The Bible tells us, the Bible tells us only believe, and yet that word meant something different all those years ago from what it means today. As we’ve been talking about discipleship, as we’ve been talking about making disciples, we talked last week about people who are in the stage of ignorance.

They know nothing of God or they know nothing of Christ or they may know who God and Christ are, but they know nothing of the gospel. And we talked about how to deal with them by going back to the foundations of the gospel and being equipped to talk to people about the holiness of God, being equipped to talk about the presence of sin and God’s judgment on sin and being able to come back to the gospel from its foundations. We talked last Sunday night about people who are in the stage of irrelevance, where they’ve understood God’s holy, their sin, that, you know, Christ died, that’s the gospel, whatever, it doesn’t make a difference in my life.

And we talked about how to approach them by being able to try to help them see, try to help them see the urgency and the gravity of the claims of the gospel. That if the gospel is true, it’s not just something you can shrug off and treat as irrelevant because not only does it have life and death consequences, it has eternal life and death consequences. That it’s not just something we can put out of our minds and say, I don’t have to think about that.

By not thinking about it, by not considering it, you’re making the decision to reject it. And it’s not as though somebody offered you a free car and you rejected it, I mean, you could go on living after that. If you reject the gospel, you reject it your entire life, you come to the end of life and stand before God in judgment, and there’s no other chance, and there’s eternity separated from God in hell.

And so we’ve got to, when we come to people who feel that the gospel is irrelevant, that the claims of Christianity are irrelevant to them, we need through our words and our actions to show them and to tell them that this is not just a take it or leave it proposition. This is a grave situation with eternal implications for them. This morning we come to a third group of people.

They’re not ignorant of the gospel, and they don’t believe that Christianity is irrelevant. Folks, they believe there’s a God. They believe Jesus Christ existed.

They may believe several of the things we do. But just like with Jefferson and Napoleon, simply believing that Napoleon existed and Talleyrand existed and the French Empire existed, that was not enough to get what he wanted. He had to take advantage of the offer that was made.

So it is not enough for someone to believe that God exists. I’m getting ahead of myself on the points, but that’s all right. It’s not enough for somebody to believe that God exists.

It’s not enough for somebody to believe Christ exists. They’ve got to take advantage of the offer that’s been given. We come to John chapter 3, and we’re going to look at somebody who, in spite of his religion, really his religiousness, I should say, really parallels a lot of people in our society, a lot of people that we come into contact with here in Bible Belt America who may not be as religious as him, but have some of the same fundamental beliefs.

In John chapter 3, we meet a man named Nicodemus. It says in verse 1, There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do those miracles that thou doest except God be with him.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So just to bring us up to speed here, Nicodemus is a Pharisee. We all know, probably all of us know about the Pharisees.

I won’t go into great detail, but they were or tried to be strict observers of God’s law, so strict that they actually put their own laws around it as a hedge and said, well, if God’s law says, you know, for example, if I with the speed limit, and I guess sometimes I do this, I do this going through Greenland. The speed limit says 40, I’m not going to go above 35. because I was warned when we moved out there.

It was kind of a speed trap. I’m not going to risk it. But the Pharisees would say, okay, and I do that.

Okay, the speed limit says 40. Normally, I’ll go 39 anywhere I am where the speed limit says 40. But there, I’m not going to go over 35 most of the time.

Okay, that’s all right. I want to put a hedge around the law so I don’t risk breaking it and getting a ticket. For the Pharisees, though, they would have said, if God’s law says I can go 40 here, I’m not going to go 35.

And as a matter of fact, if you go 35 or if you go over 35, you’re a bad person. You’re breaking God’s law. Now, if my wife drives through Greenland going 40, that doesn’t make her a lawbreaker.

Doesn’t make her a bad person. I would be a Pharisee if I said, well, you horrible person, I’m taking your keys away because you drove 40. No, the law allows that.

It’s just my own hedge I put around it. So the Pharisees put extra hedges around God’s law because they wanted to be so certain they didn’t break God’s law. The problem became when they held that up as a standard for everyone else.

And the Pharisees, as you know, throughout Jesus’ ministry were opposed to him for various reasons. They thought he was a lawbreaker. They thought he was, some of them accused him of being from Satan.

At one point in the Gospels, it says they were envious of Jesus. I think that really was the root of the problem, was that Jesus developed a following that the Pharisees never had. But also, I’m sure there were some among the Pharisees who genuinely thought, this man has come to violate God’s law in every precept that there is.

So it’s incredible that Nicodemus, being a Pharisee, would come to Jesus. Yes, he came to Jesus by night, and I’ve heard all kinds of sermons on that, that he was coming under the cover of darkness, kind of a cloak and dagger thing. He was coming to Jesus under cover of darkness.

He came to him by night, but just the fact that a Pharisee would come to Jesus at all tells us something special about Nicodemus. And some have concluded that he later became a follower of Christ. I’ve looked through the Gospels and so far have not come across anything that says that, spelled out. The closest I can see is that he was with Joseph of Arimathea and gave Jesus a proper burial after he came down off the cross.

But it’s an incredible thing that Nicodemus, being a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, would come to Jesus at all and call him rabbi. Some translations may say master. There are other times when the Pharisees call him master and they’re just indicating at least feigned respect for him as a teacher, not saying that he is their master or that they acknowledge him as Lord.

But Nicodemus coming to him by night and calling him rabbi indicates some respect for Jesus. It’s incredible that a Pharisee would do this. And he says, we know you’re a teacher come from God.

And I kind of read between the lines there. This is just my opinion. This is not doctrine.

But I kind of read between the lines there. You know, we all know it, even if the other guys can’t admit it. We all know deep within ourselves, you’re a teacher come from God because of the things that you do.

Nobody can do the miracles that you do except God be with him. Now later on, they would accuse Jesus of doing these miracles because of the devil’s power. And Jesus brought up the point.

A lot of people think it was Abraham Lincoln who first said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. But it was when the Pharisees accused him of doing miracles by Satan’s power that he said, I cast out devils by the power of the devil. What sense does that make?

And I’m paraphrasing, of course. But then says, a house divided against itself cannot stand. It was logical, and they knew it for a fact that he could not do the things that he did unless God was with him.

And so he approaches Jesus, and I also notice he doesn’t actually ask Jesus a question. He just says, we know that you’re a teacher come from God, because nobody could do the things you do. People can do things that look like miracles, maybe they’re a sleight of hand, some kind of magic trick thing.

But the things he did, casting out devils, healing the sick of visible illnesses, raising the dead, these are things that somebody could not do unless God was with him. And Jesus tells him, he answered him, he answered a question he did not ask, and says, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus tells him, unless Nicodemus, you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.

And that’s true today as well. Then Nicodemus saith unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born.

And he’s struggling to understand this. I mean, just the question he asks in return is kind of absurd. We know you can’t return and be born a second time.

He should know that’s not what Jesus means by being born again. Jesus answered, verse 5, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And I’ve shared with you before that there’s debate about what that means.

Some will say the water refers to physical birth. Some will say it refers to spiritual cleansing. I used to believe the former.

I’m now inclined toward the latter. But what I do know is there’s no mention anywhere in this passage of baptism. No mention of water baptism in this passage.

But except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. And he says as a result of this, Marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again.

He tells Nicodemus, don’t be surprised when I tell you, you’ve got to be born again. The wind blows where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit. And he’s pointing out there, you’re used to there being things around you that you can’t see and explain, but you take them as a given.

The wind, you don’t know where it comes from, you can’t see where it goes, but you accept the wind. So this being born of the Spirit, you can’t see it, it’s hard to perceive, and yet you should accept it. And Nicodemus answered, verse 9, and said unto him, How can these things be?

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?

He said, you are a teacher of the people of Israel and you don’t even understand. It’s not even penetrating your brain, the things that I’m telling you about spiritual things. And then he tells them, if I have told you about earthly phenomena and you have not believed what I said, how can you be expected to believe what I’ve said about the spiritual, about the unseen?

And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. One of my favorite passages of scripture. I love John 3.

16, but I think we do it a disservice by taking it out of the verses around it. One of my favorite passages of Scripture begins here in verse 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

And just because of time constraints, I won’t go in great detail about the serpent today because I’ve told you on numerous instances. But the serpent was raised up in the wilderness, a bronze serpent that they put up on a pole because the people were being bitten by snakes. And God told Moses that whosoever would turn and look at this bronze serpent on the pole would be healed of the snake bite.

And in that, we see a picture of Christ because when Christ was crucified, sin, the very thing that afflicted mankind, was put on the cross with him as he was raised up. And all people had to do was turn in faith to Christ. And at the word of God, at God’s promise, the people had to turn in faith to look on the serpent and they would be healed. that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this passage talks in vague terms about what will be made abundantly clear by the end of the book of John, about what this offer is that’s given, but we can see it already here that Jesus Christ would be lifted up, that he would take on himself the very thing that afflicted mankind. And whosoever believed in him, whosoever believed in him would not perish. They would have forgiveness of their sins, they would have eternal life, and they would have peace with God as the Bible promises.

And it says, he that believes on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already. Our default state as humankind is to be condemned because we are born in sin, and we sin because that’s our nature and we don’t know any better. And so by our very nature, we’re condemned when we stand before God.

But back to Nicodemus. As I said, Nicodemus was a Pharisee. They were strict observers of God’s law, and they believed very strongly in some things that were biblical. They had some biblical beliefs.

They believed in God. I mean, they held to God’s law because they believed in God. He refers to God when he speaks to Jesus and says, nobody could do the things that you do unless God’s with him.

We know you’re a teacher sent from God. Nicodemus believed Jesus existed. Not only did he believe God was real, he believed Jesus was real. I mean, he went to go see him, didn’t he?

I don’t spend much time tracking down imaginary people. He believed he was real. He believed he existed. He believed heaven was real. They’re standing here having a conversation about the kingdom of God, about the kingdom of heaven, and Nicodemus never questions, never raises a question.

Wait a minute, you’re talking about a heaven? There was another group called the Sadducees who denied a lot of spiritual truths, denied a lot of things like the resurrection, denied the presence of angels, denied various things. But Pharisees, as far as Judaism is concerned, were completely orthodox in their view of an afterlife.

Nicodemus believed a lot of the right things. And folks, there are people around us today who believe a lot of the right things. It brings us to our first point in your bulletins, and there’s nothing for you to fill out, unless you want to take notes of other things that I add underneath here.

But many of the unconverted have some biblical beliefs. Now, we’ve talked about people who are ignorant of the gospel. We’ve talked about people who view the gospel and Christianity as irrelevant.

There are people we can walk outside these four walls in any direction this morning, and we will find people. We will find people who have never been born again, who’ve never taken advantage of the offer that Jesus Christ made, but who think that they are okay with God because they believe some of the right things. I believe God’s real. I believe Jesus Christ is real. I believe heaven’s real. They may even believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.

And they believe his moral teachings. And they believe what the Bible says about do unto others, and they think because of that they’re good with God and they’re going to heaven. It would almost be easier if they didn’t believe those things.

Because people who believe in God and already have it in their mind that they are good with Him, sometimes it’s harder to show them, no, there’s a problem here. Many of the unconverted have biblical beliefs. Now, am I saying they’re thoroughly orthodox, they’re thoroughly doctrinally correct?

No. But I’m saying in a few areas, they have some biblical beliefs. And even though we’ve talked about people who are in the stage of ignorance or people who are in the stage of irrelevance, we still do live in a culture that we’re going to find more of these people.

They’re in this stage of belief where they have some beliefs that make them think they’re okay with God, and they’re like Nicodemus. But secondly, this morning, it is not enough to believe that God is real. This morning, some of you sitting in this auditorium may be thinking, I’m all right with God. I believe in God.

I believe God’s real. I believe Jesus is real. I believe heaven’s real. I believe all of these things. Ladies and gentlemen, it is not enough simply to believe that God is real. The Bible says in the book of James that you do well if you believe that God is real, but even the demons believe that God is real, and they tremble before him. Folks, just as the demons of hell will not be saved in the end from the lake of fire by their belief that God exists, so it’s true that mankind will not be saved from the lake of fire for their belief that God exists.

It’s natural for us to believe that God exists. Nicodemus, clearly a good religious man, believed that God existed. He took that for granted when he went to Jesus.

It was just an assumption, just not even something they had to discuss. He believed God existed, and Jesus Christ told him, if you’re not born again, you will not see the kingdom of God, even though you believe he exists. It wasn’t enough.

Folks, it’s not enough to believe that Jesus is real. Nicodemus went to Jesus believing that he’s real. That’s why he approached him in the first place. Not only believed he existed, but also believed in him as a good moral teacher and as someone sent by God. Folks, he believed those things, and yet Jesus told him, unless you’re born again, you will not see the kingdom of God.

There are people all around us in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our workplaces, who believe that Jesus Christ is real. And for years we have said what the Bible says, just believe in Jesus, only believe. And that’s true in what the Bible’s talking about, but people have taken that to mean, or people could take that to mean, just believing Jesus is real. Maybe even believing that Jesus is the Son of God. The word believe in the Bible is much stronger than that.

It’s not just mental assent to a fact. It’s not just admitting to a fact that Jesus is real. One scholar said that the historical existence of Jesus is the best attested fact in all of history. Most even secular historians will admit that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure.

That’s not going to be enough to get them into heaven. Folks, simply believing, whether it’s any of us in here this morning or our friends and neighbors, simply believing that Jesus Christ exists is not enough. Even believing that he’s the son of God is not quite enough.

See, it goes a little further than that. It’s not enough just to believe that he’s real. It’s not enough to believe that heaven’s real. It’s not enough to believe that hell is real. It’s not enough to believe his moral teachings are correct. You see, there was an offer given, and that offer is to be received before any good comes of it.

Just as Louisiana was not handed over to the Americans just because Thomas Jefferson believed Napoleon existed and believed the land existed and all that. Folks, by the same token, the offer that God has made to us is not received simply by believing that he exists. We must point people to the cross and what Jesus did to save us.

We’ve got to point people to the cross and what Jesus did to save us. Sometimes, when we’re wanting to talk to people about Christ, when we have a mind toward talking to people about salvation, we’ll come across people who say they believe in God, say they believe in Jesus, and we, oh, okay, that’s great, we can just move on now. Folks, just believing these things is not enough, because then came the cross.

And even just believing, as we’ll talk about in a few weeks, just believing that Jesus died on the cross is not, we’re getting closer, but it’s not quite enough until we believe it was for us, for our sins. when we receive him as Savior. Just admitting that it’s historical fact does us no good.

But what do we do when we come across people who need Christ and they believe Jesus is real, they believe God’s real, they believe in heaven, they believe in the Bible, but they haven’t taken that next step? Folks, we’ve got to take them to the cross. Take them to the cross.

Jesus takes Nicodemus to the fact that he would be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. And that is a clear reference to the cross. You see, each and every one of us is born with a sin nature, as I mentioned a moment ago.

Each and every one of us are born with this inherited defect called sin that we’ve inherited since Adam and Eve. And we sin because we can’t help it, but a holy God sits in heaven and looks down and says, I cannot permit that sin into my presence because he’s holy. And if you took, just say, for example, you took a nice dinner and put it on a plate, perfect.

thick juicy steak, nice salad, baked potato, all that, and you took one little pinch of something from the garbage disposal, with it turned off, of course, and sprinkled it across the plate, and it’s just a little bit in comparison to how great and how big the dinner is. Would you still want to eat it? It’s ruined the whole thing.

Ladies and gentlemen, any bit of sin destroys holiness, destroys righteousness. God is sinless perfection. And to ask Him to put up with our sin, to ask Him to cohabit with our sin, To ask him to overlook our sin is to ask him to let down the standard of his holiness and stop being God.

He said, no sin has to be dealt with. There’s a penalty incurred. There’s a price that has to be paid.

And the very thing that afflicted us was sin. And Jesus Christ took that sin on himself and went to the cross, and he paid the penalty that was due to a holy God. And God’s justice was satisfied.

And God’s mercy was shown at the cross when God the Son went and died for the sins of fallen man. And now as a result of that, it’s not just enough to believe that he exists, but the Bible says we have to take advantage of the offer that was made of God’s forgiveness on the basis of what Christ did. Now when I say take advantage, this is where belief comes in.

I’m not telling you there’s anything to do. Go clean up your life, shine your shoes, brush your teeth, and come to God and he’ll love you now. No.

If where we sit, we’re willing to admit that we’ve sinned against a holy God and that what Jesus Christ went through on the cross was for me and was for you. He didn’t die for himself. He died for me because that’s exactly what I deserved, was the punishment of a holy God for my sin.

Willing to admit that I’ve sinned and he died in my place and trust that I can’t do enough good to undo the wrong that I’ve done, undo the sin that I’ve committed against a holy God, and yet that he paid it all. He’s done everything that was necessary. And quit trying to be good enough.

Quit trying to earn my way to God. Quit thinking I’m okay with God because he’s just going to accept me however I am and trust Christ to have paid the penalty for my sin. Folks, the Bible talks about repentance.

And there are some wrong ideas about repentance today that have resulted in a lot of unnecessary debate about salvation. The Greek words for repentance really mean a change of mind. And people will say, well, if repentance is part of salvation, that means that if you’re still sinning, you haven’t repented.

And folks, we sin on a daily basis. I know it, you know it, the Bible says it. Even as Christians, we sin.

Folks, repentance means a change of mind that will produce a changed life. But the Bible nowhere teaches we have to clean up our entire lives and get sinless before we come to God through Christ. It teaches that when God’s truth penetrates the heart and we realize that you and I are sinners and in need of a Savior, and He begins to break down that wall in the heart. And we come to a point of realizing and admitting that fact.

And throwing ourselves entirely upon God’s mercy, folks, that is a dramatic change of mind from where we are in our natural state where we’re sinners and we like it and we don’t care what God says at all. And that will result in a changed life.