A Journey To The Ends of The Earth - Part 1

Bryan Chapell: You have been on this journey of personal pursuit of what the world says will make you happy, and you have come to the edge of that and you are saying, "Well, how is that working for you?" It's not working. I have the things that are supposed to satisfy, and I'm still empty in here.
Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of Pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares a lesson from John Chapter 3. In this passage, Jesus meets with the religious leader Nicodemus. Dr. Chapell highlights the point that Jesus makes to Nicodemus: that knowledge and works do not lead to salvation. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit UnlimitedGrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Bryan's book, The Multi-Generational Church Crisis. This compelling book asks the question of the church, "What could be accomplished in the name of Christ if we could better understand each other?" Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the lesson, "A Journey to the Ends of the Earth."
Bryan Chapell: Before small was big, before thin was popular—I mean, before what we were really desiring was flatter and flatter and thinner and thinner big screen TVs, right? Before OLEDs—for the engineers, I learned what that meant: organic light-emitting diode. I can talk engineer. Four-millimeter thick TV. Now we measure the greatness of your TV by how thin it is. But there was another era, an era when you measured a family's pride by the size of its TV console. Remember those days? The big wooden cabinet, and you had in the cabinet not just the TV, but the radio—AM and FM—and the record player—33 RPM, 45 RPM, 78 RPM—and stereo speakers. And the screen on that TV was this big. As you may remember the days of TV tubes, you may remember that things didn't always last eternally there. I can remember after my family had gotten very accustomed to the TV in the evenings, our TV gave out. Because my dad had not finished researching in Consumer Reports, he was not ready to buy a new TV yet. He got some of his six kids and moved the big console out to the end of the driveway for the trash man to pick up. But that meant that evening, no TV. We were desperate. This is the land of darkness. What are you going to do? My father heard the cries of his children. Here's what he did: he grabbed his tool bag and he said to the kids, "All right, grab a flashlight," and we went out to the end of the driveway. My father took his tools and he took the TV chassis out and took the picture tube out. Then he lined up his six kids in front of the TV and said, "All right, shine your flashlights at the screen." Then he crawled up inside the console and told us the tale of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." I remember the Jules Verne story, not so much because of the vividness of the journey, but because I was on another journey. I was on a journey to discovering the heart of my father. His willingness to humiliate himself and to go in those contortions for our sake was a measure of his love. In this account of John 3, there is another journey. It's a journey to the very heart of the Son, the Son of God, as He is willing to express to us at the behest of His Father what it would mean to love people who are in darkness, in despair, and by humiliating Himself, give them eternity. How does He do that? He launches us on a journey through the experience of Nicodemus, the one with whom He is conversing. When He begins with Nicodemus, there in verse nine, you recognize that what He begins by doing is saying to Nicodemus, "You are here." It's really the way you begin many journeys in this world, whether you're at the airport and trying to find out where your gate is, or you're at the fair and you're trying to find a particular ride, or you're at the mall and you're just trying to find a particular shop. You go to the map and you look for that little red arrow that says "You are here." Jesus has already said something remarkable to Nicodemus in this passage. He said, "Nicodemus, if you want to see the kingdom of God, if you want eternal things, you must be born again." Nicodemus says, "What does that mean?" It's the whole idea of leaving the human, physical realm that you are in and entering the realm of heaven and the spirit. But of course, there are huge question marks now. Nicodemus asks an essential question there in verse nine that we begin with today: "How can these things be?" that I would leave this realm and enter another realm. Jesus just begins by asking a question that actually has two declarations in it. It's verse 10: "Jesus answered him, 'Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?'" Though it's a question, the first statement within it is, "You are the teacher of Israel." That definite article "the" is no mistake. You are the teacher. It's a statement of Nicodemus's stature in the religious hierarchy of Israel. You're not just on the Sanhedrin; you're not just a teacher. You're the man. You are the one to whom other people turn. You are scholarly, respected, able, and we're going to see in a little bit, rich as a result of all that you have. Yet, Nicodemus, despite the fact that that's where you are—you're the man—what else do we learn in verse 10? "Yet you do not understand these things." You have all the resources, all the respect, all the background, but you don't understand. That must be hard for Nicodemus to hear. "I've been trained, I've been in the church, I know these things." Yet Jesus says, "No, you don't really get it." For some of us here, we actually do identify with Nicodemus. I know the words, I know the songs, I've been in the church, I've been around church people. I recognize these phrases and I can even define basically what they mean, but it doesn't have any real meaning to me. I know it's supposed to, but this has not connected with my heart. There's no true understanding at the level of the spirit, and I know that. Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, "This is where you are." You have the background, you have the respect, you have all this knowledge, but you don't really understand yet. As awkward as it is, that's Jesus just putting the red arrow on Nicodemus and saying, "You are here." That's always important at the beginning of a spiritual journey, just to say, "Here's where I am." Francis Schaeffer, the Christian philosopher of the last generation, because he had so much knowledge and background, was once asked, "If you had only an hour to spend with someone to explain the gospel, how would you spend your hour?" Schaeffer said, "That's easy. I would spend the first 55 minutes getting to know the person and then I would spend five minutes saying what the gospel was." The first step is knowing where you are because until you have come to the edge of your experience, until you have understood really where you are, you're not willing to take the step into another realm. It's actually the definition of your true spiritual status and an understanding of who you are and where you are that gives you the ability to start the journey. Having established where Nicodemus is does not mean the rest of the journey will be easy. Because after verse 10, "you don't really understand," comes verse 11 and 12 of saying what it's going to take for you to understand. "Truly, truly, I say to you," verse 11, "we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" Nicodemus, you are wanting to understand spiritual, eternal, heavenly things. But I've told you things that are earthly, like you have to be born again, that your position and your prestige and your understanding have not really satisfied you yet and you don't really get it. Which means if you're trying to get to heavenly understanding, to spiritual satisfaction, by where you are now with all your earthly pursuits and physical dependence, you can't get there from here. To make clear what that means, what Jesus is saying is if you're depending on your earthly things to get to spiritual understanding, that's not going to work. You can't get there from here. This last week, I was coming back from teaching in St. Louis and recognizing I might have an opportunity to fish this week, I decided on my way back into Peoria, I was going to stop at the Bass Pro Shop. I'd passed by it numerous times. As I'm going to the other side of the river, I think I'm just on my way back into Peoria; I'm going to stop at the Bass Pro Shop. I pulled off the exit that seemed to be closest to the Bass Pro Shop. I got out my GPS and put on the Google Maps and followed it exactly to where it told me to go to the Bass Pro Shop. To my amazement, it took me down my exit, back around, back up on the highway, and then as I got toward the Bass Pro Shop, it said, "Park on the highway and walk to the Bass Pro Shop." I'm saying, "Well, that can't be right." I keep going down the highway. I go to the next exit and go to MapQuest rather than Google. It takes me back, I go all the way back around, make the exit again, come back, and MapQuest says, "Park on the highway and walk to the Bass Pro Shop." I've come to a conclusion now: you can't get there from here. I make the whole circle back again and go down into East Peoria. I pull up to a gas station and say, "How do you get to the Bass Pro Shop?" The person says to me, "That's easy. You just go down Riverside Drive." I'm going, "No, you don't get it. I'm new here. I have no idea where Riverside Drive is." I have another question: "Have you ever been there?" Because if you tell me you've been there, I'll know there is some way to get there. I ultimately got there, but it was with the understanding of someone who had already been there. That's exactly what Jesus is going to say to Nicodemus. Look, verse 13: "No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man." If you're trying to get to heavenly places dependent upon what you have done, dependent upon your context, your world, you can't get there from here. You're going to have to hitch your wagon; you're going to have to connect to somebody who's already been there, and that is the Son of Man, the One from heaven. I've tried to say it in a way that connects with you, but I hope you recognize that saying that we must connect to Christ in order to make our way to spiritual satisfaction does not mean this is a pleasant journey at all. If people who have been pursuing satisfaction in life through career, through money, through knowledge, through pleasure, through any other form of physical, material, earthly satisfaction after they actually have to come to the end of their world and say, "This is not going to work," that is never going to be a pleasant process. To actually come to the end of my earth to say I now have to step into a dependence relationship with Jesus Christ is not something that people are going to desire to do. So Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, in essence, "You must leave your world behind." Just understand where your world has gotten you. You have reputation and knowledge and experience and wealth, and you're not satisfied yet. Your world has not provided what you want. For some of you, what I'm saying is foreign language, but some of you know exactly what I'm saying because you have been on this journey of personal pursuit of what the world says will make you happy and you have come to the edge of that and you are saying, "Well, how is that working for you?" It's not working. I have the things that are supposed to satisfy, and I'm still empty in here. I think of one of my very good friends whom I got to know because I jogged the same route for about 20 years in St. Louis. On that jogging path, if you jog for 20 years, there are other people who get on that path in the same time of morning, and I get to meet them and get to know them over time. I'm not going to tell you my friend's real name; I'm going to call him Steve right now. Steve had been an amazing athlete in college and found enough reward in that, that after his college years, he decided that he would go into the sports apparel business. He was amazingly successful at that and made tons of money, and still wasn't satisfied. So he became a doctor and went into sports medicine. Despite his knowledge and prestige, it wasn't enough, particularly after his marriage began to crumble and an oldest son turned to drugs and his daughter began to struggle terribly with depression. My friend Steve had been put in a boarding school by a difficult mother as he was growing up. He was basically raised as an orphan in this boarding school where those who called themselves Christian abused him. He wanted nothing to do with the things of the faith. As we would run on the path before he knew entirely who I was, he was one of the most profane and angry people I have ever met. But as we would run through the months and then through the years, he would occasionally ask questions, always keeping me somewhat at arm's length until the mother that he so longed to have a relationship with died. Then despite the money and the knowledge and the success, he went with me to my mailbox and as I turned off to go home, he simply said, "Would you stop and would you pray with me? I've just come to the end. I've got everything that this world says should satisfy, and I'm empty." As we prayed, I recognized what had happened was the Lord had brought him right to the end of his world. The blessing of that is at the end of the journey of self is the Savior, the one who would hear his prayer and delight to hold him in his emptiness. It's the same journey that Nicodemus is on. I will confess to you, none of us wants to be on this journey. C.S. Lewis describes the journey to the end of our world this way: "We are such half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy awaits us. But we are like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what it would be like to accept the offer of a holiday at the beach." I haven't been there. And so somebody who offers me a holiday at the beach—because I can't imagine what that would be like—I go on making mud pies in the slum because I can't imagine what it would be like to have the joy that you're talking about. This is the experience of so many as we talk to them in the church, as some of us in the church wrestle. I'm making this pie of the things of earth. I get money and I get relationships and I get pleasures and I get prestige and knowledge and career, and I put all these things together, and it's still not all I'm looking for. It's just exactly what Nicodemus is going through. We are introduced to his journey a little bit earlier in this same chapter, verse two of Chapter 3. Do you remember? This man, this Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him." He is a leader in Israel.