B, Lent 4 - John3:16 "No Cliché"

John 3:16 is possibly the most well known and quoted verse of scripture in the bible and therefore has become a cliché.  And because it’s so overused it has become commonplace and boring to most who use it.  They say familiarity breeds contempt, and human nature does the same with God’s Word.

But let’s change the stakes and turn the tables on our comfortable realities a little so we might get a proper understanding on what is actually going on, first with ourselves, and, then with God.

We can do this with asking ourselves the question scripture itself asks in Psalm 116:12, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” What can I give back to the Lord for all his goodness to me?  What do I owe God?  What payment can I give?

Now let’s turn up the intensity.  Picture yourself on judgement day.  You are standing before God and God says to you, “What have you done? Give me an account of yourself!”  Before God you will answer truthfully.  There will be no fast talking to convince him you have done what is necessary.  There will be no Garden of Eden talk, Adam blaming Eve or Eve blaming the serpent.  God will open you up like a book and judge your life, for eternity with him or eternity without him.

There is really only one answer to give.  And it’s the answer we struggle to give every day of our lives.  As individuals we try to avoid giving it.  Even the church throughout history is mislead in its resistance to answer the question and it still does today as it seeks to be popular in a world of political correctness that is far from God’s truth about us.

The only answer we can give to God for all his benefits to us is no different than the Israelites in the wilderness dying from their sin as a result of being bitten by fiery serpents.  They said to Moses, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” (Number 21:7 ESV)

We have sinned.  We are sinners.  We needed to be saved from our sins. Not only do we need to confess this. We actually need to believe it.  Like the Israelites we need realisation of this truth in the inward being.  And as God teaches us in Psalm 51 it is what delights God when we confess this truth from the inward being.

But we need ask ourselves, “Why is it so difficult to confess our sin? Why is it easier for us from childhood to tell a lie?  Why is it easier for the denominations of the Christian Church to forge the line of popularity over against the confession of sin? Why is it easier for our own denomination and its leaders to ignore twenty odd years of God speaking through the synodical process, or worse, sitting in judgement over the Word of God rather than sitting in submission to it?  We do better to acknowledge our assault on his sovereignty as the broken creatures that we are. Broken, because the creature has sought to usurp its Creator!

The Israelites shame us in this text.  They turn and seek salvation. They confess and seek an answer from the Lord.  Our shame is not only written in the Old Testament.  The New Testament shows each of us our guilt. 

From James 5:16 we hear, “...confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

Take to heart what the Lord also tells us earlier in chapter 5,

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.  Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten.  Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.  You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. (James 5:1–3, 5 ESV)

And before you excuse yourselves as not being rich, remember you are standing before God as an open book, with all the things, feelings and people you hold in value over God.

Its right about at this time we begin to realise we are condemned and we only further destine ourselves for destruction by appealing to any work or presumptuous attitude we might hold to justify ourselves.  And it is here we need to take a second look at the gospel pericope today to see exactly what Jesus is saying to you and me.

First, let’s take the cliché verse John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.”  Perhaps the truth of what God is saying here might connect more clearly if this verse is paraphrased this way, “God saw that you and I were so habitually self-interested, turned in on the self, proud, pretentious, presumptuous and willing to lie about our helplessness that he had to let his Son die for you and me. 

In short, even when we make ourselves God our love shows us not to be God and we fall far short of the steadfast love which we need for life.  When we live life back-to-front it not only spells evil, it is evil. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

Second, just as Jesus gives power to Nicodemus, he empowers all people by giving us life through death.   As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, the Son of Man is lifted up.  The sin we find so easy to hide and lie about is made the centrepiece in a move only God could do or would think of doing.   The snake that bites becomes the snake that saves.  Similarly Jesus becomes the sinner lifted us that saves the sinner who believes he or she is a sinner. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

Third, God loved this broken world and lifted up his Son as a sinner that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  The truth of God is that we need to believe the reality of our brokenness is so bad, personally and collectively, it needed a loving sacrifice, so steadfast, so selfless, so generous that he let Jesus die on the cross. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

Fourth, the reality of our sin that kills God’s Son is such that if left to our own devices we could not believe this was for our good.  So Jesus himself confesses that it is not for the world’s condemnation but for its salvation.  How often do we see the sin of others on our televisions and in our neighbourhoods and join in the condemnation and the accusation of the world.  Here we need reminding that Satan is the accuser and when we accuse we are not working in the kingdom of God but rather following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

Fifth, “whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”  The little word “in” from the Greek is “en” and it means in, by and with.  So this work is completed in God, by God, and with God.  God works his work of salvation in us, for us, and because of us.  Now the Holy Spirit battles with your human spirit (the old Adam) to forgive others as God has forgiven us. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

And God, in his love, continues to put a reality checkers in place for us here too.  He calls us not to reject his grace and therefore sin against the Holy Spirit by refusing to repent and believe.  When we do we stop the work of the Holy Spirit by not exposing our sin in the light of God lifted up on the cross. 

Judge for yourselves!  Is it better to expose your sin now and live in the light or to hide it and have it exposed on the day of judgement?  If you don’t want God as the centrepiece of your life now why would you want it on judgement day?  Further more why would God want you as a part of his kingdom then?  There is only on response to God here. Lord Jesus, we are sinners, forgive us our sin!

Saint Paul writes to the church in Ephesus to encourage them not to be deceived. He says, faith is not a feeling, faith is not a commitment derived within one’s self, nor is faith a good work.  He says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV)

Another cliché appears here, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.”  But what does this mean for us?  In short this is the work of God.  For by grace (that is Jesus’ death and resurrection) you have been saved (that is judged guilty but given the sentence of eternal life) by faith (that is the work of the Holy Spirit enabling you to believe despite your sinful nature).

Then Paul says these wonderful words, “For we are his workmanship” What is this workmanship?  It is that we are restored creatures of the Creator, re-created in Christ Jesus for good works.  And what are the good works of God?  Surely they are the works that glorify God and show his justification for sending his Son to the cross!  Jesus tells us that we will do even greater works when he goes to the Father.  He says in John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”

And again, …they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”  Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:28–29 ESV)

So do what is true in the eyes of God.  We “come out” into to the light.  Don’t “come out” as the children of disobedience do who parade their sin as some sort of justification but “come out” in confession.  Confess your sins to each other and to God, remembering that we are called to forgive one another as God has forgiven us. When we lift up our sin in confession, it allows us to die. The old self dies, the human spirit suffers, but the new creature in Christ is raised in eternal life.

Judgement day is no cliché. It is coming, it will come, but it has already come to those who glorify God and his work in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Confess you are a sinner but believe you are a saint, baptised into Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, we are sinners, but we have been forgiven, we are being forgiven, and we will be forgiven forever, truly truly, Amen and Amen.