Week 2- Distortions
Last week we were introduced to the idea of defining moments. If you remember, we said a defining moment happens when a truth, either a new truth, or a forgotten or pushed aside truth, comes front and center in your life, and changes things. It changes the way you think or feel about something. Maybe it changes the way you act, or your outlook on life. Everyone has had defining moments. Here are some ideas if you are struggling with this.
- Divorce. Anyone who is a child of divorce, or anyone who has ever been through a divorce can easily say that it is life changing. A very prominent person in your life is no longer there in the same way. The truth that you and your spouse, or that your parents, either could not live together, or that they placed a higher importance on something other than their marriage comes front and center, and the life you know is about to change. It will be a defining moment for the rest of your life.
- Have you ever lost a close friend, or a loved one? Anyone who has lost someone they cared about, someone who was a big part of their daily lives, is going to feel great sorrow when they are gone. It changes the way we operate on a daily basis. This is a defining moment, because the life you knew before has changed, and it is never going to be like it used to be.
Think of a time where something happened in your life that changed your thinking or your approach to life.
What was it?
Today, we are going to talk about distortions.
A distortion is something that makes the truth unclear. It is something that comes along and blurs the picture, or makes it fuzzy, so that you can't see it clearly. People do things all the time because their view of life, or of God is distorted. Distortions can severely mess up your life.
- Look at Money driven people. Our world is full of them. All around you you can see people who base their entire life, and their entire self worth on making money. It is the single thing that drives them. Making money is the only way they know how to measure success. Maybe you are one of them. Is money really what you want to base your entire life on?
- Our world is also full of pleasure seeking people. People just out for themselves, just trying to get to their next fix. For some people that pleasure is a gambling addiction. For some it is drugs or alcohol. For some people it is a sexual pleasure. For some it is belittling others to make themselves feel superior. For all of them, however, it is putting a higher importance on self gratification than anything else in life. It is the "I want it all, and I want it now!" mentality. Not a healthy way to live life.
- How about the arena of terrorism? Distortions drive terrorists. If you press them to find out the truth behind why they did the things they did, in every case they say "Because I believe that God- blah blah blah" It all comes back to what they believe about God. "I believe that God hates these things, so God sanctions this, and God wants me to go kill all of the infidels that are breaking his laws." It is all about God.
Right now there is a woman in Africa awaiting trial, and she could be put to death. Do you know why? Because she had a baby out of wedlock. The sentence for this in her tribe is death. Why? We think: "How can they be so harsh?" Well, they would say that she has broken God's law, and God demands that she dies. And I know you are sitting there thinking, "That's not my God!" But hey, maybe it is. There is only one God. The problem is that so many people have a distorted image of that one God, and that distorted image is what dictates their actions. Their messed up picture of God determines what they do. They are doing things based on a blurry picture, a distorted truth. When you can't see the picture clearly, you almost always come to the wrong conclusion, and we as people do this every day. now I know you guys are not out blowing up buildings, but sometimes we are guilty of following distortions, as well. But everywhere there is a distortion about God, there is some kind of consequence. So every once in a while, in God's grace and in God's mercy, He brings truth front and center. And just like we talked about last week, if you will stand in the light of those truths for a while, and not retreat back into the darkness where is is comfortable, your eyes will adjust, and there is potential for God to change your life.
Remember Jesus walked into this kind of a world. A world where there was massive confusion about God. And Jesus shows up, and says: "I have come to explain God." Jesus spent His entire life performing miraculous signs, and helping people, and answering their questions before they asked, and telling them things about themselves that only they themselves knew. But He didn't do it to glorify himself. No, Jesus said "I have come from the Father, to explain the Father to you, because He doesn't want to remain a mystery." God wants the confusion to go away. He wants you to know Him for who He is, and not who you have imagined He is, not who you have made Him up to be, not who you have been told He is. Over and over Jesus encountered people, and taught truth about God, and lives were changed for ever.
Today we are going to talk about a man that was confronted with an uncomfortable truth. He gets blinded by a truth that made him want to scramble back into the darkness of what he had always known and believed. This truth did not sit well with him at all, and it may not sit well with some of you either. Are you ready for the truth that was so hard to grasp, so hard to handle, so hard to accept? Here it is:
"Good people don't go to heaven.
Good people don't have the promise of eternal life.
Good people will never necessarily enter the Father's Kingdom."
What? How does that make sense? Let's look at a story about Nicodemus.
John 3: 1-17
1Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. Let me stop here for just a second. Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish Ruling Council. This is a group of Jews that represented the people of Israel to Rome, and also, Rome to the people of Israel. they were the Liaison between the two. Rome ruled over Israel, and they had set up a governor who ruled and taxed the people. Rome used the Jewish leaders to communicate to the common people in Palestine. So Nicodemus has a really important job. his Job is to keep the people happy with Rome, and to keep Rome happy with the people. As long as he and his buddies did a good job, Rome paid them very well. as long as the people were calm, and everyone was paying their taxes, everyone was happy. The Roman Governors paid the Jewish leaders well to keep the peace and make their job easy. So here is Nicodemus, rich, important, knows the scriptures, trusted by the people as a Jewish Leader. This is the guy that is coming to see Jesus. The last thing he wants is a new religious leader causing an uprising and getting Rome's attention. Let's read on.
2He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him."
3In reply Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.[a]"
4"How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"
5Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You[c] must be born again.' 8The 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."
9"How can this be?" Nicodemus asked.
10"You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things? 11I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[d] 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.[e]
16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
First off, notice that Nicodemus called Jesus "Rabbi." Rabbi in it simplest terms means a respected Jewish teacher. Calling Jesus Rabbi shows what Nicodemus thought about Him. Unlike most of the other Jewish leaders, Nicodemus respected Jesus as a teacher, and even said "we know you have come from God as a teacher." Don't overlook that. It means a lot that Nicodemus has been watching Jesus, and respects Him. But, even though he doesn't hate Jesus, he is still like the average person today. Ask most people today who Jesus is, and you will get an answer like this: "I think he was sent by God, and was a pretty good guy, and taught some good things...." Nicodemus, just like most people today, does not say that Jesus is God, or the Messiah, or the Savior, or anything like that. He didn't believe that.
Nicodemus was coming to Jesus to get some questions answered. He sees Jesus as a teacher sent by God who can give them some insight into God's plan. The Jewish leaders want to know when God is sending the Messiah to get rid of the Romans and return Israel to their rightful place as the dominant power in the world. So Nicodemus shows up, and he is trying to get insight into God's plan. Now here's the thing with Jesus. Jesus always knew what everyone was going to ask even before they asked it. That's disturbing! Over and over, the Bible says "Jesus knew the hearts of men, or Jesus started telling a parable or a story, or Jesus would start teaching about their problem before they even asked a question." That's Disturbing to anyone! And even though they didn't agree with what Jesus had to say, they're thinking "How did He know? That's unbelievable!" Look back at the story, did Nicodemus ask a question before Jesus started talking? No, he was busy buttering up Jesus (or at least he thought he was) telling Him He was great, and from God... So Jesus just interrupts and says "Let me just cut to the heart of why you are here." He says "I tell you the truth." Put on your sunglasses Nicodemus. It's about to get bright. "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."
Nicodemus responds, and I think he laughed. I don't think he was at all serious. He's thinking, there He goes. I've heard He does this. He's talking about what I came to talk about before I even talked about it. He says, "How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he can not re-enter in to his mother's womb and be born a second time, HAHAHA!. WAIT! Can He?!! I mean, that's not what you are saying is it?"
Jesus says again, "No one enters the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and of spirit. If you are born of flesh, you are flesh. If you are born of spirit, you are spirit." This was offensive to Nicodemus. He was Jewish, and like the other Jewish people, he believed that if you were related to Abraham, you were in. And Jesus says, "that's not enough. you have to be born a 2nd time; be born from above. Unless you are, even you Nicodemus, a leader of God's people, will never see God's kingdom." Wow! Imagine getting blinded with that truth. But instead of retreating back into the darkness, Nicodemus pauses, and he realizes that there is a chance that he could have actually been wrong. What is his response? He asks (and I think he was a little panicked) "How can this be?" He's thinking: I'm not arguing, I just can't make it work in my head.
You see, Nicodemus believed like our world believes. He thought there was this cosmic scale that measures all of the good things we do against all of the bad thing we do, and as long as the good outweighs the bad, and you have more boxes in the green than you do in the red, that you are fine. You pass. You get in. Our entire world lives this way. The problem with this line of thinking is that people are trying to earn their way into heaven, but it doesn't work that way. God doesn't look at a scale when we die. Our good and bad deeds are not the basis of how we get into heaven. Nicodemus always thought "well there is a good God and a good heaven, and good people get in, and if I am a descendant of Abraham, then that like triples the weight of the good side!"
But eventually Nicodemus began to understand. He realized That Jesus wasn't trying to give him advice on what Nicodemus thought he already understood. No, Jesus was teaching him something entirely new and different. It's not "how to be good enough," it is "how to receive brand new life with meaning and purpose." That new life comes through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Only by believing in Him can we find that new eternal life. The days of the scale are over. in fact, the scale never really worked to begin with. Honestly, if you think about the scale system long enough you will shoot so many holes in it. You'll walk away saying "I don't know if I believe in Jesus, but that scale thing doesn't even make any sense!" You will soon realize that if the scale thing is true, then somebody made it up. where are they? If it's true, where is the God who set it up? And where is the list of things that we should do to get to heaven? And if this is the system, you'll realize that the person who made it up wasn't even nice enough to give you the list of do's and don'ts.
They never explained:
- What good outweighs what bad.
- How much you have to do
- When the time runs out
- Is there a curve you are graded on?
- Is Mother Theresa good? No? Than I am in serious trouble!
Where is the standard? You can't use the Bible or the ten commandments, because this system isn't even based on that! We have to get back to the simple message of Jesus. "Not that good people go to heaven," but simply, " forgiven people go to heaven." And forgiveness is only found through the person of Jesus Christ.
