Why People Will Not Believe (2/11/18 The Book of John #17)

ATTN: The 2018 Winter Olympics opened this Friday in Pyeong Chang, South Korea. I watched the opening ceremony on Friday and couldn’t help but marvel at the advancement that the country of my birth made in just last 40 years. When I was little, I remember riding a carriage pulled by a cow on unpaved roads as a mode of transportation. But now, they are exporting millions of Hyundais and Kias all over the world. Samsung was a small 2nd rate company that made 12 inch TVs who dreamt of becoming one day like Sony. Not the conglomerate that competes with the likes of Apple and Microsoft today. When I was in elementary school, for our gym class, one of the fitness test events was “throwing.” We were given an object to throw as far as we could and the distance was measured and recorded. Do you know what the object we were made to throw was? A rubber grenade that was the same weight as the real grenade! I lived only 20 years removed from the Korean war…

Korean people attribute such precipitous rise and change to various things – such as foreign aid money, political mood of that day, or the spirit of the people, but I beg to differ. I believe it was God who took hold of that small country that was so strategically located – that’s why the russians, the chinese, the japanese and the U.S fought for it – so that it can be used to shine the light of Jesus Christ to the world. Everywhere I go in this world, I have met Korean missionaries. It is such a small country – half the size of WA State, but 2nd only to the U.S. is the number of missionaries that have gone out from them. And it might overtake the U.S. soon…  

God moves nations. The rise and fall of empires and kings are all in His hands. And He is orchestrating the world’s events to bring them to Himself before the final battle where Satan will be defeated and Jesus comes the 2nd time to bring peace for good.

TRANS: Last three weeks, we have been looking at John 3:16 – Because God loved the world so much so that He gave His only and only Son and He’s rearranging political structures and geographical migrations so that the maximum number of people would come to believe in Him and be saved.

Although, God made it so that everyone can come to Him in any condition – Christianity requires no pilgrimages, self-flagellation, extreme lifestyles, or giving large sums of money like other religions – A person who lived such a deplorable life can come to Christ on his deathbed if he will just believe. Like the thief on the cross who asked to be with Jesus in paradise on the last minute! Can you imagine if a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a requirement to be saved when you are about to die? Do you realize how ridiculous sounding that is? Imagine of you are in a basketball team and your team is losing 104 to 5 in the game that determines whether you are going to the playoffs and it’s the 4th quarter and 1 second left in the game. And you cry “mercy”. And the scorer immediately adds 100 points to your score giving you 105 and thus you win the game and make it to the playoffs. How crazy would that be? How unfair would that be to the opposing team! But that’s what Jesus did for the thief on the cross with Him. And that’s what he does for you and me.  And God in His grace, made it so that people in any condition can be saved and come to Christ for eternal life. It’s almost unfair how easy He has made it. But that demonstrates His love and grace. So eager to forgive and bestow eternal life on anyone who would come to Him!

But then, why won’t people still believe? Why won’t some people put their faith and trust in this God who bent over backwards – more than than that, had nails going through His hands and feet and a spear to His heart – to save them from hell? Why will they not come? It is baffling, if you think about it. Don’t they know death is an absolute certainty? Don’t they know that if this life is all there is, then this life is meaningless? And there is only one person who has died and lived to tell about it in Jesus. So, why won’t people believe Him? Two reasons, Jesus says: 1) Because they love the wrong thing. 2) Because of fear of being exposed. So, one is what they love and the other is what they fear. (people – useless god- he forgives)

1) They do not believe because they love the wrong thing.

8 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Jesus is that light, by the way. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) But people LOVED the darkness more. In greek, this word means to delight in, to prefer, to regard with affection. People naturally delighted in sin more than God. They loved the created things more than the Creator. They preferred darkness more than the light. Thus, they fell short of the glory of God. Rather, they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God. So, it is what we love that betrays us. It’s what we delight in, what we think will give us ultimate happiness that makes not believe in Jesus.

ILL: Put it this way: The reason why faith does not exist is because our love is on the wrong object. And what dictates our love? Our heart. It is our heart that is wrong! Listen, the reason why our unbelieving friends and family will not come to Christ is not because they have an intellectual problem with Christianity or bad past experience with some Christians, but it’s what they love instead – their heart is wicked. They love the world. They love the darkness. And if they were to come to Christ, they know that they must give up what they love, and therefore rather than giving up what they love, they will come up with elaborate excuses or doctrines as to why God does not exist or why He’s not a good God. They believe what they want to believe rather than what is real and true.

Romans 1 goes more into detail. Romans 1:19-23 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.   

Can I  modernize what that is saying? Imagine an apocalypse happened and we went back to caveman days. Imagine that caveman went fishing one day on the beach and out washed on the shore is an iphone X. He turns it on – because of radio-activity, the battery miraculously charged, let’s say – and he sees in this thing the most sophisticated gadget that he couldn’t even imagine. Now, imagine if he brought it to his friends and their conclusion was that: “After years of sand rubbing against each other and combining with rocks and salt, this sophisticated gadget came out all by chance! after all, an iphone X is made of Silicon and glass…” What would you think of their conclusion? Ridiculous! Caveman-like logic. Well, human beings are many orders more complex than iphone x, and some people believe that we are here by a natural cause – after years of material randomly colliding together and bonding….. Why would people believe such ridiculous things and create museums, textbooks and publish dissertations that are based on such ridiculous hypothesis? Because they do not like the alternative. They do not love the light.

They love the darkness. They will believe a lie if it means that they get to keep their lifestyle and call the shots. It’s that same damning attitude that had been with humanity since Adam and Eve’s fall.

With Adam and Eve, when the serpent came and said to them, “In the moment that you were to eat of it, you will become like god and that’s why he didn’t want you to eat it. Why should you submit to it? You can be equal with God. you can call your own shots. You can determine for yourself what’s rightt and wrong for yourself! Become your own god,” they bit into that lie. And ever since then, in every generation and every era, this lie had been propagated. Today, it comes in the form of, “No one can tell you what to you. Only you can decide for yourself. (someone told you that!)” “Believe in yourself. You can be anything you want to be.” And we make heroes of those who say on their dying breath, “I did it my way!” We are shaking a fist at the very one who made us and gave His Son for us.

To read the rest of romans 1: 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

2) Another reason is because they fear being exposed.

1. 20, For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.  

People intuitively know what is sinful because God has built into them a moral compass and they fear that their sins will be exposed. Therefore, the defense against that is to call it something else and make it acceptable to everyone around them. That way it won’t seem like they are doing anything wrong.

For example, rather than calling sleeping around “adultery,” let’s call it “open relationship” Rather than calling it “greed”, let’s call it “ambition.” Rather than rude and insolent, let’s call it “independent thinking and free!” Why? Because we don’t want to be exposed. We don’t want to be told that we were wrong and sinful. But the fact of the matter is that deep inside, we know there is something wrong with us. We all have skeletons to hide. We all have things we are ashamed of. You can ask the most liberal, “open-minded,” “truth is relative” type of person and he will tell you that there are things he has done that he’s not proud of. If they doesn’t fall under God’s standard, because he don’t believe in God, they fall under his own standard.

 

1. What is the remedy? What is the remedy for loving the darkness? You would think it’s loving the right thing. Or loving God more specifically. But Jesus doesn’t say, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever loves Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Rather He says, “whoever BELIEVES IN him shall not perish.” That’s strange. If the problem is loving the wrong thing as we have just discussed, then the remedy should be to love the right thing. So, shouldn’t Jesus tell the Pharisee and us that to be saved, we must love God more than the darkness? But rather than telling love Him, He tells us to believe in Him. Now, are we to love God? Absolutely. With all our heart, soul and mind. That is the most important command of all. But that is not the first step toward God. there is something that has come before love. And that is faith. Believing in God, trusting in God, comes before it grows into a full-blown love for God.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the most famous of British Preachers of yesteryears has said that when we teach our children, rather than to teach them to love God, teach them to trust God first. Simply because they understand the concept of trust better than love. Perhaps, it is for this reason, Jesus tells this man, who is not yet born again, to believe in Him.

APP: 1. Unbelievers: Do not be unbelieving, be believing. The best decision I have ever made. Is it all rosy and everything will turn out the way I want? No. but everything will turn out for my good. And i have hope beyond this world. It is a matter of time that you lose that which matters most to you. What then? But God will be with you always if you believe in Him. He willl give you eternal life to be with Him forever. And you can spend the rest of this life getting to know, growing in this Christ who loved you so much so that he died for you.

2. Believers: lest you think this message does not pertaining to you because you already believe in Jesus. Keep believing. When you first came to believe, you just made yourself a target to darkness and evil forces because you have essentially committed treason against them. And they will attack you and try to knock faith out of you. Spiritual depression, deadness. Tiredness. Despondency. Despair, hopelessness. No joy. You will come to what’s called a “crisis of belief” You will come to a crossroads where you have to decide whether you are going to rely on common sense or rely on what God says. In other words, you will be given an opportunity to act on your faith, on your belief. It is what you trust and believe in and act accordingly and you see God’s deliverance and His will, and having this repeated, you will get to know God personally and you will eventually come to love Him.