Lent: The Exhaustion of Religiosity

So we are in our second week of Lent.

Lent is the season on the church calendar leading up to Easter.

So we have taken a break from going through the book of Ecclesiastes, which we did for a couple of months, and now we are taking our different passages for Sunday morning from this historic church document called the Lectionary.

And so each Sunday we get a different passage leading us up to Easter.

And so today we get John chapter 3, this great, great story that we're gonna unpack.

John 3 · chapter mention

So when I was 12 years old, I attended my first overnight church retreat.

About a hundred middle schoolers and high schoolers from the church I was going to at the time.

We went to Panama City Beach to this nasty retreat center.

It was disgusting.

But it didn't matter.

I was in sixth grade.

They had a full court basketball court with a swimming pool next to it, which meant it was everything I ever wanted, right?

I mean, just run and run and run and play and play and play and play and then jump in the pool.

So you didn't have to take a shower all week because you go to a sixth grader, you had a swimming pool.

So you didn't have to shower all week.

And so you play basketball, jump in the pool, go seeing Kumbayan, the little gathering area with the overhead projector, then come back to the swimming pool and then go back to the you know basketball court just over and over again, all week.

And I was I was jacked up all week, so pumped up, excited, barely slept the entire week.

The end of the week comes, my parents come and pick me up, and we spend that weekend at a beach condo just down the beach.

We get to the condo, it's late afternoon.

I say, Mom, dad, I'm gonna late, I'm gonna take a nap.

I'm kinda kind of tired, kind of been run down this this week.

I've been doing a lot, been pretty active.

So I lay down late in the afternoon, about four o'clock.

I sleep all the way through to the next morning.

I wake up in the morning, my family's already down on the beach, so I go down to the beach, I spend about 30 minutes on the beach, I'm still exhausted.

And so I go back up to the condo, I go to sleep again, I sleep from that morning all the way till dinner time.

I'm not sick.

Now remember this, I'm not sick, I'm just exhausted.

I wake up at dinner time, I wake up, I eat dinner, and then I go back to sleep and I sleep all the way through to the next morning.

I sleep something like 36 hours straight, pretty much.

And I was and I wasn't sick.

I was never sick, it wouldn't have nothing to do with illness.

I was just exhausted, right?

Like it's like I couldn't catch up with my exhaustion.

Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

Some of you are feeling it right now.

Joe and Allison, you're feeling it right now because you're in the student retreat.

I can see it in your eyes.

You're about the eyes are shutting.

I can see it.

It's okay.

I gave you permission to take a nap.

It's the feeling like you can't catch up.

And maybe you felt this physically.

Maybe you have felt this feeling like I just can't catch up with my exhaustion.

Maybe you felt that emotionally because school has been hard, or friends have been hard, or romance has been hard, or marriage, or parenting, or your parents are aging and that's hard, or you're aging and that's hard, or you're sick, or you're depressed, or somebody died, and emotionally you can get just exhausted.

You can get like you can't catch up with it.

And then there's this whole other exhaustion, right?

Like so we have physical, we have emotional, then we have this whole other exhaustion, which is like this this spiritual soul exhaustion, and it's this feeling like your soul is worn out, and it's being worn out by the things you're doing.

And every once in a while you you sort of you you wake up and you you want to feel alive, like on the on the inside of you, you want to feel alive, and you just can't catch up to it.

You can't catch up to the exhaustion.

And I mentioned all of that to say I think Nicodemus in this story in John 3 may be feeling something like that.

Because he's this religious guy, and he's showing up to Jesus in the nighttime.

So he doesn't want to get caught.

He doesn't want to be, he doesn't want to be seen by the other religious guys, but just showing up.

There's some confession here, like the thing I'm doing, the way I'm living out life, uh, by rules, living up to rules, in order to feel accepted by God.

It's not working.

And so Jesus is teaching something, and I'm gonna go ask him some some questions.

Because that's different than what I'm doing.

And and I love this passage because in some way I've been thinking back to what we were talking about the last two months with with Solomon and Ecclesiastes.

If you've been around the last couple months, this this king who who had everything.

He had power, he had he had money, he's having lots of sex, he's having it all, and to all of it, he's saying, Havel, Havel, it's vapor.

I'm trying all of these things to fulfill myself and to feel whole and to feel redeemed, and all of this secular path, Havel, meaningless.

And now we get Nicodemus, a religious man, and he's going the way of religiosity and merit and living up to rules to feel accepted by God and valued and redeemed, and he's showing up going, I need some help also.

And so we have the secular way not working, and we have the religious way not working.

And Jesus comes in and he speaks to Nicodemus.

And I love it because it shows you no matter where you've been, right?

Whether you can associate with you can associate with Solomon or you can associate with Nicodemus, or you know what, you were like Solomon, and then you became like Nicodemus, or you were like Nicodemus early in life, and then you said, Oh, I'm disillusioned with all this, I'm walking away, and then you became like Solomon no matter where you've been, or a mix of both.

We all need rescuing.

We all need a path different from secular merit or religious merit.

So we get this great conversation.

So I'll reread a few verses and make some points as we go.

John 3, 1 through 3.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, so teacher, teacher, we know that you are a teacher that come from God.

For no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with them.

And Jesus answered him, Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So Nicodemus is that Pharisees living out by these rules.

If I fulfill the rules, then I'll be accepted by God.

And here's his confession.

He's showing up.

I don't have it all together.

And if anybody has it all together, at least by appearance, it's this guy.

I mean, this is the guy who has the appearance of having it together, and yet he's here.

And maybe you do feel like Nicodemus, because you've been in places, you've lived in places where you were constantly trying to hold it together.

And that is exhausting to constantly try to pretend that you're okay when you're not okay.

And see, if you're not allowed to confess your humanity, which has sin involved in it, which is your imperfection and your rebellion from God, if you're not allowed to confess that, you will always perform or pretend.

There's no other choice.

You have no other choice.

And yet here Nicodemus is, and he's been performing a lot, and he's had to pretend because he has he has some awareness of his sinfulness, and he just keeps on with these rules and living up to the rules because that's what the Pharisees did.

And Jesus begins to speak into his life.

He says, Hey, it's only by God.

You've got to be born again by God.

And then verse 4, Nicodemus says, back to Jesus, how can a man be born when he's old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

And there's probably some humor here.

Like, you know, that's a little disgusting as well, if we're just honest about it.

And he's just saying, I don't get it.

What are you like, what are you talking about?

Born again?

A second birth?

So, point number one, God's grace, God's unmerited favor to you, God's grace is not logical to our default thinking.

That's not what we're gonna start with when we wake up in the morning.

You're when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna start with self-justification.

You're gonna justify your worth and your value and even your faith by what you do.

God's grace is not your default thinking, but it is the only way you are given a new identity as God's forever beloved.

God's grace is not logical to our default thinking, but is the only way you are given a new identity and new birth as God's forever beloved.

Verse 5.

Jesus answered him, back to him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That which is born of flesh is flesh.

He's saying there's the first birth, right?

You're born from Mama, first birth, and then he says, and that which is born of spirit is spirit, so there's a second birth, and that's the thing we're all looking for.

Solomon, Nicodemus, you, me, wherever you're at on these two, we're all looking for this second birth, this new life.

We want life, we want to feel redeemed, we want to be redeemed.

Verse 7, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

On January 18th of this year, a dad with two little kids and his wife, they're at a resort in the mountains in central Italy.

And there was an earthquake.

There's about 40 people at this hotel, and they're hunkered down in the lobby of this riding out this huge snowstorm.

And then, so dad has one of his kids is sick, and so he walks out to the parking lot through the snowstorm at night, it's 5 p.m., it's dark out.

He walks out to his car to get some medicine for his son, and then the earthquake hits and he hears this rumbling.

And so he hears it, it's so jolting.

He takes off and he runs and he gets behind a tree.

And then after the rush of all of this noise, he's buried in some snow, but he crawls out, he looks back, and when he looks back, the cars in the parking lot have been kind of moved around, and then beyond the parking lot, he looks back and the hotel is gone.

It's gone.

It's under 120,000 tons of snow and trees.

And his wife and his two kids that are in there, and 36 other guests.

And so he yells out a little bit, he's yelling out into the darkness, you know, if anybody else is out there, and finally finds one other guy and they hunker in his car for 10 hours.

They get in the car and they just hope somebody shows up.

Like, is anybody gonna show is anybody gonna show up?

Ten hours later, 14 men show up.

14 men put on snowshoes through the darkness.

They snowshoe through a snowstorm through the darkness and show up at this isolated resort in the middle of the night at 3 a.m.

to come and rescue people.

Studs.

I mean like absolute studs.

Saviors is what these guys are.

And they show up and they just begin to dig.

And they start digging.

By the next morning, there's teams of 34 men coming in and out to just dig and dig and dig.

And under there, for days, under there for days, are 11 alive people.

There's 11 of them.

And for those days, they could do nothing to get themselves out.

They would never get themselves out.

They are under 120,000 tons of snow, and they're in these pockets of ice and tree limbs, and they can sort of hear each other, and so all they can do is sit there.

All they can do is talk to each other and sing some songs, but that's it.

That's all they can do.

And they have to receive rescue from outside of themselves.

It's the only way it's gonna happen.

Right?

That's my point out of this whole story.

The only way they will be rescued is outside of themselves.

And it's not that they can't do some things.

They can do some things.

They can sing.

Right?

They can talk to each other.

They can rearrange the snow.

They can do a few things, but it's very limited on what they can do.

They can't rescue themselves.

They can't regenerate life.

So the point is, is you can.

You can do some things.

Like Solomon, he did some things, like Nicodemus, he's doing some things, but you can't regenerate life inside of you.

You can't redeem yourself unto God.

The thing that we're doing, this self-justification, which is that's our sin.

That's our sin.

Justifying our souls to the world and to God by what we do, merit salvation.

It's like us being in an ice pocket, just doing a few things.

But never really, never really receiving life.

Sin is the process by which we hijack the attempt to rebirth our souls by performance.

That's what sin is.

It's the process that we hijack.

To attempt to rebirth our own souls by our performance.

And this is point number two.

We are born, and then by God's grace, we're born again.

Point number two, we are born, and then by God's grace we are born again.

I love all that poetic wording in verse six.

That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Jesus is saying, God's spirit grants life in our spirits.

And it's like Jesus knew Nicodemus and the path Nicodemus was on, all this just the religiosity, the merit.

If I just do the next thing, if I do enough, the next thing, and enough, and the next thing, then God will accept me.

Rather than God has already accepted me by Jesus' work, a gift of grace, and then out of that, what does my life look like?

Two very different lives.

One is a life of grace and peace, the other is a life of merit and exhaustion.

Maybe you're here, you relate to Nicodemus.

Maybe you're swinging between the two.

But what we need is what Jesus is teaching and what he's going to do with his life.

For years, I for years I knew I was saved by grace.

I knew that.

But I wasn't sure what it meant for today.

Like, what did it mean for Tuesday morning?

What did it mean for a Wednesday meeting?

What did it mean for me and my family on Thursday night?

What does it mean then?

Right?

I had really had not learned what it meant to appropriate the belief I had into my life.

I just had it had the belief.

Like I'm in, I'm in the dance by God's grace, and then I just really need to dance well to stay in the dance, or I might get kicked out.

So I lacked security, there's anxiety, there's judgment, I judgment on myself, and therefore judgment on others, lack of compassion, and then self-righteousness if I'm doing well, exhaustion when I'm not doing well, condemnation.

Right?

And over time, it's it's just it's a religious exhaustion.

Nicodemus is not showing up here with these real questions unless he's feeling some measure of religious exhaustion.

I've gone, like, I've been doing it this way, but you're saying a few things.

I need to ask you a few questions about this.

Verse 9, then Nicodemus says back to Jesus, How can these things be?

And Jesus answered him, Are you, are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

He's like, Hey, you're you're the one teaching people.

Like, how do you not understand this?

Jesus keeps saying, Truly, truly I say to you, 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?

No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

And then Jesus makes a point here with a story that Nicodemus would know.

Verse 14 And as Moses lifts up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

So this is a story back in Numbers.

Nicodemus would have known it.

And the Israelites are attacked by all these poisonous serpents, and and so it's strange, really, strange story.

And God comes, he says, Hey, um, make a make a bronze image and hold the image up.

Hold this image up made of metal, hold this image up, and then anybody who's bit can look up, look upon, look to the image and will be healed.

Strange story.

But the story makes a lot of sense when Jesus gets to tell it in Nicodemus right here.

All of a sudden, that story that's so strange in the Old Testament, when Jesus tells it here, it makes perfect sense because the point is life is not found in your own means to rescue yourself, but in looking outside of yourself to the gift of God, which is the Son of Man, which is Jesus.

Now all of a sudden, the number stories, you're going like, brilliant, that was brilliant.

Place it in history.

Jesus comes along and gets to tell it to a teacher of Israel for it to make sense for him.

And then Jesus keeps going in John 3.16.

You've never heard this verse before.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Verse 17, I love it just as much.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

So this word life, eternal life, this is the word zoe.

This is the word zoe.

It's life now that extends into the afterlife.

It's not just the afterlife.

It's life now that extends into the afterlife.

And it's not life, it's not life that makes up your life, uh, like your family and your work and your school.

Like that makes up your life.

That's not what it is.

This is life that makes you up.

Right?

You get the difference there?

Two different things.

This is life that makes you up.

It is your, here's the definition.

Zoe is your state as you become vital and whole and animated by God.

Your state, the core of your being as you become vital and whole and animated by God through God's Spirit because of God's Son.

And here's the last point, point number three.

The great transformative joy of life.

The great transformative joy of life is to remember that you are God's beloved by God's finished work for you.

It's not gonna be the secular path and it's not gonna be the religious path.

It's gonna be the path of the gospel of grace, the work of Jesus.

And I need this.

I was excited about telling you guys this this morning because I'm going like I'm Nicodemus.

Like I've lived out Nicodemus a whole lot.

I still live out Nicodemus a whole lot.

And none of us do this perfectly, right?

None of us do it perfectly.

You didn't last week, you're not gonna do it perfectly this week.

The hope is that you grow in your awareness that in God's grace, which is fully sufficient for you, that finished work, your secure identity, that in that you can freely confess as soon as you recognize that you're on that path of secular self-justification or religious self-justification.

You just you could confess it freely right then and return back into God's generation.

Oh, yeah, that's right, that is who I am.

I'm already redeemed, I'm already whole.

I don't have to try to find myself vital and whole and redeemed by this other path.

And there we find peace, grace and peace, grace and peace.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you grow in your awareness of the Zoe, the life, the Zoe that has been birthed in you by God's work for you.

Let's pray together.

God, would you help us to confess freely that which we use to justify ourselves rather than your work for us, the ways we find value outside of you, all the ways that manifests in unhealthy behaviors.

Would you help us to receive the Zoe that the life of God?

And to all the tired and worn places.

Some of us on the paths of religious merit religious exhaustion.

And we feel like the core of who we are spirit, spirit.