Changed Lives:
Religion to Relationship

Pastor Burcham's Sermon

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well, as many of you know, the early part of this month, the family and I took a vacation and were gone for two weeks. In fact, the last time I stood in this pulpit you may recall I gave an estimated time of departure we were leaving for vacation. I said it was going to be 12:43. I just wanted to get back to you on that. It was actually 12:57 so didn't quite make it but pretty close.

But the family and I took off for two weeks and, I'm not sure, but I don't think we've ever been gone from our house for two weeks. I'm sure we've probably had a stretch of two weeks maybe off from work but gone from the house for two weeks. So when August 7 rolled around and we pulled into the driveway, it was a good feeling. The thought of being able to sleep in my own bed, to sit in my own chair, to eat dinner at my own kitchen, it was just a glorious thought. But I have to tell you, it was pretty short-lived for me because, months earlier, I had signed up to go to a conference in Chicago the very week we got back. So I got to spend a whopping two nights in my own bed and, Wednesday afternoon, had to get back in the truck and drive over to Chicago. It was not something I wanted to do. I was questioning my sanity of why I signed up for this conference.

The good news is it was an awesome conference. It was excellent. Very applicable to our ministry here. I feel like I grew a lot and gained a lot and brought a lot back. It was at a place called Willow Creek Community Church . Bill Hybels is the Senior Pastor there. You may have heard about it, I don't know. It's kind of a small little place. They worship about 20,000 a weekend, just a teeny, teeny church. At any rate, while I was there, during one of the sessions, there was a break and I started talking to the gentleman next to me and having a nice conversation. All of a sudden, he looked at me and he said something which really took me back. He said, “You know, I'm a living testimony of the ministry of this church.” He says, “I was one of those irreligious people who is now a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.” What he was referring to is Willow 's Mission Statement is “To take irreligious people and make them fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.” And this man wanted to share with me he was one of those folks who was not connected to the church, not connected to God at all. But, because of their ministry, he was now a fully devoted follower of Christ. Now talking to the man later on, I found out he was an owner of his own business. He had a wonderful family. So, in the eyes of the world, he was very successful and he was very successful even when he joined the church but, to him, the most important thing he wanted to share with me was not about his business, not even about his family but he wanted me to know his life had been changed through the power of God, that every aspect of his life changed because now he had a relationship with the one true living God, that he was a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. God changes lives. He changed the life of this acquaintance in Chicago . And as we go through the pages of scripture, we see time and time again where God changes lives.

This morning, we're going to focus on a gentleman whose life was changed by God. Quite different from my acquaintance in Chicago , he was not an irreligious man. In fact, you would call him a very religious man. In his day, he would be called almost a super religious man. His name was Nicodemus and, through his encounter with Jesus, he discovered God was not interested in religion. He was interested in a relationship.

Now Nicodemus knew everything there was to know about being religious. Before I delve into that, let's make sure we have our terminology straight so you don't misunderstand me. When I talk about being religious or religion, I'm talking about what we do. You see, religion is all about what you do but it isn't necessarily about who you are. Whenever we use the term someone is religious or they have religion, we're talking about the actions they do, what they're engaged in, what's happening. Sometimes, we can use the term and it has no spiritual meaning at all. We can say, “He is religious about getting up at 5:00 every morning.” Or you can say, “She religiously goes to her workout every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” So you can be religious and say they have this activity and have no connection with God at all. Scripture uses it that way. When scripture uses the term religion or religious, it talks about the activities or the actions a person is doing. It doesn't necessarily talk about who that person is.

One small example, Acts 17, Paul is in Athens and he's up on the Aeropagus and he's surrounded by these monuments to all of these Greek gods and so he addresses the people there and he says, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way, you are very religious.” In other words, they were engaged in all kinds of religious activities but they had no connection with the one true God. They had no relationship with God. So religion or being religious is all about what you do, but it isn't necessarily about who you are.

Nicodemus is a case study of someone who is religious. John 3:1 reveals a lot to us about Nicodemus. It says, “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish Ruling Council.” Right there, we found out a lot about Nicodemus. We found out he is a highly influential and powerful man in the Jewish people at that time. He is a member of the Jewish Ruling Council, that is, he's part of the Sanhedrin. That would be equivalent to he sat on the Supreme Court of the Jewish Judicial System. It's the Sanhedrin Jesus would come up against. It was the Sanhedrin that sometimes condemned Paul and Barnabas and Peter and all the rest. It's the Ruling Council, the Supreme Court, of the Jewish Judicial System and Nicodemus has a seat on that Council. Beyond that, Nicodemus is a Pharisee. Now we hear that term a lot in the New Testament. What does it really mean to be a Pharisee? Well, I dug into that this week to discover what exactly is a Pharisee? In some respects, Pharisees were the best citizens of the Jewish nation. They were the best of the best. They may have been the most highly respected people of Judaism at that time. Pharisees dedicated their lives to keeping the law.

Now the law for Judaism isn't just the Ten Commandments like we might think of it. The law is the first five books of the New Testament. So the first five books Moses wrote, that's the law. And so they dedicated themselves to everything that was in the first five books. And Pharisees believe there was instruction for every aspect of life in those first five books, that every circumstance you could come under, the law had something to say about that. From the moment you get up in the morning until the moment you go to bed at night, there was some prescription, there was some guideline, there was some rule, there was some regulation the law had outlined there for you.

Now years earlier, before Nicodemus, Judaism got on this kick about following the law to perfection and so they decided they would compile a book that extracted all the rules, all the regulations, all of these principles out of the first five books and it's called the Mishnah. It's no less than 24 chapters. Not only did it contain explicitly the law that was in the first five books but also implicitly, whatever the law implied on that.

Not being satisfied with that then, a little bit later, a group took the Mishnah and they decided “we need to write a commentary on it to make sure we understand it completely” and so they wrote the Talmed. So of the 24 chapters of the Mishnah, for each line in there, there's a paragraph or two in the Talmed that further describes this. Now this is what the Pharisees dedicated themselves to. They took a vow for a lifetime taken in front of at least three witnesses that they would adhere their life in every aspect to this law, to this Mishnah, to this Talmed that had been written.

To give you an idea of how this all works, let's take for instance the Sabbath. The Old Testament says, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” That is, for six days, man is supposed to work but, on the seventh day, you're supposed to rest. And scripture says you're not supposed to work your servants or your manservant or your maidservant or any of that. Okay, that's what the law says.

Well, now the Mishnah goes a step further. What does it mean really to work? How do you define that? At what point are you going too far in your working? So it goes about to describe that. So the Mishnah will tell you how far you can walk on a certain day. If you walk further than that, you've broken the law, you broke the Sabbath. It will tell you what you can do with your livestock, what you can't do with your livestock. It will even tell you it's breaking the Sabbath if you tie a knot on the Sabbath, so you can't tie up your camels. You can't tie a knot on the bucket to send down to get water from the well. You can't do that on the Sabbath. Well, what does that really mean?

Well, the Talmed goes a little bit further than that. So the Talmed will tell you, “Well, you shouldn't tie a knot on the Sabbath if it takes two hands because if it takes two hands to tie the knot, then that constitutes work. Now if you can tie a knot with one hand, then that's not work.” Personally, I'd like to see that. I'm sure somebody could do it if they're dexterous enough. But then it's not work. Add another little stipulation, though. The stipulation was women could tie knots for their clothing, much to the relief of most of the ladies I'm sure as they tied up their clothing, or if they tie it on their hat, then that was okay.

So how did this all pan out? Let's say it's the Sabbath and you make your way over to the well and, all of a sudden, for whatever reason, the rope that's supposed to be around the bucket that you send down to get water doesn't have a knot in it. Well, now you can't tie a knot with two hands on the bucket because you would be breaking the Sabbath. So you call the missus over. She brings a whole string of her clothing because it's okay for her to tie knots in her clothing and she ties knots in her clothing and ties it onto the bucket and sends it down to the well and you have your water for the day. That's how it came down to it. Let's look for loopholes. Let's look for ways around it. That's how detailed it got. Every aspect of your life, from the moment you got up to the moment you went to bed, there was a prescription on how you should live in any and every circumstance and this is what the Pharisees dedicated their life to. So, in many respects, they were the most respected people. They were considered the most religious people of the time.

This is Nicodemus. Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Nicodemus, on the Council of the Sanhedrin. Nicodemus was a very religious individual. And he believed with his whole heart that by following the law, every jot and every piddle of it, he's serving God and it's pleasing to God. That is, until he encounters Jesus. And Jesus blows his mind. And He opens up a whole new concept for him. Think about how Jesus answered Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes up to Him and he pays Him a compliment. He says, “Obviously, you must be from God to do the things you're doing.” Jesus almost interrupts him and He comes back and He says, “I tell you the truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Well, what's He talking about here? He's talking about something radically different than what Nicodemus is used to. Well, Nicodemus still has his Pharisee hat on so he tries to understand that and he says, “What do you mean? How can an old man be born again? He can't enter into his mother's womb and come out again.” He's still thinking practical. These are the things God is laying down that I must do. And Jesus is saying, “No, you don't understand it. There's such a radical change in the way you need to think. It's a rebirth for you. You have to have a whole new outlook. You have to see God in a whole new way. You have to be born again and see God as a relationship, not as a matter of fulfilling some law and following some religious tradition down to the nth degree.”

If you look at Jesus' ministry, Jesus is always talking about a relationship of people. He's not talking about religion. He's always talking about establishing a relationship. In fact, how many times does He have problems with the Pharisees because they keep wanting to stick to the letter of the law and even beyond the law, and Jesus says, “You're misunderstanding the Sabbath.” How many times did they catch Jesus, if you will, breaking the Sabbath according to the Mishnah and the Talmed? There was one occasion. It was recorded for us back in Mark where His disciples go out to the field because they're hungry and they start harvesting some grain to bring it in so they have something to eat. Well, the Pharisees were all over that. The Pharisees come up to Jesus and start pointing their finger and getting in His face and saying, “How can you let your disciples do that? They're breaking the law. They're breaking the Sabbath out there.” You know how Jesus responded to that? Jesus said this, “Then He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'” You see Jesus' meaning there? He says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” In other words, God doesn't sit in heaven and come up with just random things He wants us to do and we're supposed to tow the line, we're supposed to follow His exact measurements in what we're supposed to do in life while He sits back and watches, so God didn't put the Sabbath there so man would have to follow it. The Sabbath was a gift from God to man. The Sabbath is for man. In other words, God in His love for mankind, His creation, says, “You can't work incessantly and never take a break.” He says, “Work six days. On the seventh day, you need to rest.” It's the gift of a loving God in relationship to His children here on earth. That's what Jesus was trying to talk about. Jesus is talking about a relationship with God, not just trying to follow rules and regulations. For the Pharisees, that was their whole life. It was to do the right things at the right time, to push the right buttons, to make sure they were living up to a certain standard, that this would be pleasing to God and, as a result of that, they would see the kingdom of God. But you know how Jesus answered that? Jesus said if you want to play that game that says you're going to follow the law of God and that's going to be pleasing to God then, in Matthew, He said “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you shall not see the kingdom of heaven.” Knowing what we know about the Pharisees, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you shall not see the kingdom of heaven. In other words, Jesus says, “Unless you are perfect, unless you follow the law to perfection and you never waiver to the right or to the left and you never have, then the game's over. You're not going to see the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus says, “Don't play that game because you lose at that game. You've already lost at that game.” Jesus says, “It's not about being religious. It's not about making sure you keep all of the laws, because you can't. It's about God coming to you and entering into a relationship with you.” He rocked Nicodemus' world, because He invited Nicodemus to change from religion to relationship.

Nicodemus is trying to keep all the laws straight. He's doing his best to make sure he follows the Mishnah, the Talmed and everything else in there and he's just losing the battle. And Jesus opens up to him a whole new truth. It's in this context of a Pharisee coming to Jesus, trying to keep the letter of the law that Jesus speaks the most famous passage in all of scripture, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have eternal life, shall see the kingdom of heaven.” He says, “Nicodemus, it's not about what you do. It's about what God has done for you.” It's not a God in heaven with a scorecard keeping track of the positives and the negatives. It's a God in heaven who loves you and cares for you, who has such a powerful love that He sends His one and only Son into this world. And Nicodemus would later find out this one and only Son had such a love for him that He would lay down His life for him, that through that debt, all of his sins, all the times he didn't live up to the law, all the times he missed a point here and a point there and a nuance here and a nuance there and even the times when he just blatantly went against God, all of that was paid for through the blood of Jesus on the cross and it was the free gift God offered to him. It was a Father offering to His son on earth the forgiveness and the promise of eternal life.

Jesus was always about a relationship with people. That's why He said, when you pray, pray “Our Father in Heaven.” That's why He said to His disciples, “I don't call you servants. I call you friends.”

Jesus doesn't want us to play the game of the rules and regulations. Jesus wants a relationship with us, of a loving God and we being His people. Nicodemus was forever changed, a dramatic change in Nicodemus. We find out a little bit later on. We don't get the picture of it in Chapter 3 because we're not quite sure what happens. It sort of leaves off there and it doesn't tell us anything more. We find out a little bit later on in John that something has happened to Nicodemus, that a change has happened. You go to Chapter 7 of John and you see the Pharisees gathered together and they've sent out a bunch of guards to arrest Jesus because they don't like His teaching and they're supposed to bring Him in. Well, the guards are so enthralled by Jesus' teachings, they can't do it. They just said, “No one's ever spoken like this man before.” And they come back to report to the Pharisees. The Pharisees are indignant and say, “Well, He's got you hoodwinked, too. Well, thank goodness,” they say, “He's never hoodwinked one of our Pharisees.” And they start condemning Jesus. Nicodemus stands up for Jesus and says this. Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing from Him to find out what He's doing?” Now he's serving on the Sanhedrin. He's a fellow Pharisee with them and yet he's saying, “Hold on there, Brothers. You can't condemn this man because you haven't heard Him.” Now what's implied there, he's not saying this, “I have heard Him and I heard what He had to say and it's life changing. Maybe you need to hear what He has to say also.”

Even more astonishing than that, though, comes in John 19. Jesus has been crucified and He is hanging dead on the cross. You recall Joseph of Arimathea ask Pilate for the body of Jesus to take and bury it. Scripture records this for us, “He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds. Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it with the spices in strips of linen. This was in accords with the Jewish burial customs.” Now think about this for a moment. Nicodemus is a Pharisee. He's part of the group that condemned Jesus. He's laying his life on the line, Folks, because he goes with Joseph of Arimathea and he takes Jesus and, beyond that, he gives Jesus the customary Jewish burial. You weren't supposed to do that for criminals. But Nicodemus had been changed. He left religion behind and he had a relationship with Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Now the person, Nicodemus, was in agreement with what he was doing and his actions that followed. Nicodemus was a changed man.

My Friends, God can change you. If God can turn a Pharisee into a believer of the Son of God, if He can turn Nicodemus' life around, He can change you. You know, it's easy for us to slip into religion and out of the relationship. It's easy for us to get just caught up in our routines and our traditions and our habits and we do things more out of obligation than out of desire or need. When you come to worship every week, do you come because of the desire and a need to hear from God and to receive His forgiveness? Or have you caught yourself sitting here out of obligation because, well, you know you should go to church and so we better go? But let's find a convenient time, whether the service is really meaningful to us or not but that way we can sort of get it out of the way and we can have the rest of the weekend to ourselves. Do you find you're doing things out of duty and not really thinking of the deeper thoughts?

Do we bring our children to be baptized because, well, that's what you do when you have a baby is you have it baptized. When it's time to get married, will you get married in a church because everyone gets married in a church? Do you catch yourself having thoughts of saying, “You know, I'm not really a bad person. I try really hard and I do my best.” And in the back of your mind, saying, “Certainly, that must count for something in God's eyes. As long as I'm trying really hard, as long as I'm doing everything I can do with it, then God's going to accept that, isn't He?”

I need to remind you of Jesus' words. “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will not see the kingdom of heaven.” My Friends, don't play that game. Don't play that game that as long as you do the right obligations, you hit the right rituals, as long as you try real hard, you try to please God that somehow that's going to get you anywhere, that's not the game Jesus wants you to play because you lose at that game. Jesus isn't interested in religion. He's interested in you. It's not about what you can do for God. It's what God has done for you. You have a God who loves you so much that He gave His one and only Son so that when you believe in Him, you won't die but you'll have eternal life.

Through Jesus hanging on that cross, He took upon Himself all of my sins, all of my failures, all of my guilt, and all of yours as well and He paid the debt for us. And when He came out of the grave, He graciously offers that to you. There's no price. There are no stipulations. There's no, “as long as you do this,” because God loves you and God wants a relationship with you. You are His children. We can call Him “Father.” We can call Jesus our friend and our brother.

It's time to leave the religion behind and to know the relationship we have with our God. Amen.

Copyright 2006 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church