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READ John 3:1-21
I want to talk about the Game Plan for the Olympics of life. In an age when meaning and purpose are thrown out in the intellectual pursuit of self-centredness. When we think of ourselves as evolved by cosmic accident, masters at best of our fate.
But that is not true. Not only is there a God, but a God who cares about you, in fact loves you. You are no accident God has a plan for you.
What I want us to think about this morning is first that God’s game plan is an eternal plan.
Second that the plan climaxed at the cross
Third that your part in the plan is to live by faith.
John begins his gospel reflecting the words of genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
He enlarges this to
In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was
with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were
made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him
was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Jesus is the Word. And he was there
at the beginning of time. He is the cause and the vitality of creation. He is
the light and the purpose for which creation happened.
And you are part of that eternal
plan.
John 3:16 says: “God so loved the world…”. The eternal plan is not mechanistic, it is about God loving you and you responding to that love.
The cross is not an after thought because of a mess-up in
creation. It was planned before creation. And throughout history, God has been
showing his love in saving his people. That is why you read of the nation of
This is the centre point of the universe. It is right and proper that we measure time either before Christ or the ‘Year of our Lord’, because it is the key event of all time and eternity.
The game plan for creation was for Jesus to come and save us because God expresses his love in grace, willingly sending his Son to die for humanity that had rejected him.
If the cross is central what of the future. The future is not on this earth because it is temporary. The permanent is heaven. And this is the exciting bit. God wants to share eternity with you!!!
You are invited to share in eternity! Our gospel is not about making life better it is about a whole new dimension of living.
So the game plan is from eternity to eternity, centred about the cross.
So the question is how do you fit into the game plan?
John 3:16 says
whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life.
You are invited to receive eternal life. You cannot earn it,
you cannot get it on the National Health or privately. It is offered freely as
a gift to be received through faith. It
is not forced on you, you have to accept it and you accept it by faith. You
have to take God’s word for it. There is no email of confirmation, no contract
sent in the post. You are asked to trust Jesus to keep his word. That is what
faith means. You believe, so you ask and you know that you have eternal life
because He who promised is faithful. You may have miraculous signs accompanying
conversion, flashes of light, ecstatic emotions, physical healing, you may
speak in tongues but that is not how you know you have eternal life. You know because you
believe the man of
Jesus explained it to Nicodemus as new birth. You were born a human being of flesh and blood, you carry the DNA of your parents and that is why you are or a flower or a frog.
To have eternal life you have to be born of the Holy Spirit of God. You have to have a spiritual birth from a spiritual father so that you have the spiritual DNA of eternity. And when you received Christ, you began eternal life. You do not have to wait for death, it begins when you believed.
So what is the Game plan for you for the next million or so years?
Well, it clearly falls into two parts. The years that you remain in your body and the eternity that you will spend in heaven.
I have a book written by Thomas Brooks - a puritan called ‘Heaven on earth’ and the whole thesis of the book is that God intends you to enjoy heaven now.
I am ¾ of the way through the book called ‘The heavenly man’ The title comes from the fact that when asked where the meeting he had just left was , to avoid giving away his family and friends he said “ I am a heavenly man! I live in Gospel village! He then shouted out that he had been arrested by the Security Police so his friends could be warned and escape. He continued to tell the police “ I don’t know where the meetings took place. I am the heavenly man! I am not from this earth!” If you want to know the rest of the story you will have to read the book.
So is your daily living firmly footed in heaven? Is your home address a place in heaven or is it too much grounded in the temporary accommodation you have in this area?
Home is heaven
What is the prize we were talking about last week?
Knowing Jesus.
10 I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his
resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death, 11
and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Knowing here clearly means sharing
with him. And not just the good bits. Paul was in prison. His life experience
was to turn from the security of good home, good family, safe religion to be on
the road, frequent beatings, much hardship. But to him knowing Jesus through
those life experiences was worth it.
Knowing the resurrection power is
what you know when you believe in Jesus. You have been raised from death to
life.
Following Jesus
Jesus calls us to follow him. To
imitate him, to behave like him, to think like him, to love like him. So the
guide book we are reading, Matthew’s gospel is full of what Jesus said and did.
It is written so that you know Jesus. You know what he said so that you can
believe and you know what he did so you can imitate him. The bible is there for
that. So you can know about God and Jesus and you can follow and imitate what
is good and avoid what is bad in the revelation. The Bible is God’s take on
history. Read it so live it out. And one of the key messages from the manual of
discipleship is “Go and tell”
Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
This new birth is a
spiritual birth. As a human being your life is defined by when you started
breathing and when you stop. So it is with the Spirit. Your spiritual life begins
when you are born of the Spirit, when you draw that first spiritual breath,
when you re moved by the Spirit in repentance and faith and receive the free
gift of eternal life. But it does not stop there. You have to carry on
breathing! And to do that you have to fill your spiritual lungs with the Holy
Spirit. In the words of the song:
“This is the air I
breathe, Your Holy Spirit, living in me.”
So you began by
knowing that you depended on Jesus alone. Have you slipped into trying to live
without breathing in the Holy Spirit? This is a call to breath in and be filled
with the Holy Spirit.
So I am inviting you
to respond to the Word of God in one of two ways. If you have never received
the new life Jesus gives, open your heart to him today. Ask for his forgiveness
of sin and breathe in the Holy Spirit for the first time.
If you are a
Christian I am inviting you today to breathe deeply and be filled with the Holy
Spirit. Seek his forgiveness for holding out on God and ask the Holy Spirit to
fill you, energise you for service of Jesus.
John 3:16 is the Game plan.
It is an eternal plan from eternity to eternity.
The centre point is our salvation
secured by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
It begins by believing in Jesus
and receiving new birth.
It tells us about our identity – in heaven.
We seek to know Jesus
We seek to follow Jesus
We need to be filled with the
Holy Spirit.
So I invite you
first to take a big physical breath. And now let us pray.