John 3:16 - Part 3

This service came at the end of our first ever Holiday Club at Belhelvie, which went really well.

We’ve had some good fun this week at Going Bananas. And we’ve had some terrible jokes too…..

What did the cookie say to his friend when he got run over? Oh crumbs!

Why did the banana go to the doctor? He wasn't peeling well!

What another name for two banana skins? A pair of slippers!

Well I have a slippery word that I want us to try and grab a hold of this morning. And it’s the word “Believe”.

Over the summer we’ve been looking at just one wee verse, but it’s probably the most famous verse in the Bible. And it’s John 3:16 which says

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

But what does it actually mean to believe in something or someone?

When people in our part of the world hear the word ‘believe’ or ‘beliefs’, straight away we start thinking about the mind and the opinions that we hold.

When people ask you whether or not you believe in God, or whether you believe we’ve got through the worst of the recession, or whether you believe Craig Brown will last another year at Pittodrie, they’re really asking “what do you think? what’s your opinion, given the evidence we have to go on?”

Now is that the kind of believing that John is on about here?

Is all he’s asking of us that we believe in God’s existence, or Jesus’ existence?

Statistics show that if you walk down a typical high street in Britain and ask the folk there if they believe in God, something like 70% of them will say ‘yes’.

And very often it’s a kind of gut-level belief. They wouldn’t be able to give you much in the way of evidence, but on balance, they think there’s probably some kind of divine being at work in the universe.

And many of them would feel the same way if you asked them whether ghosts exist, or whether there’s life on other planets.

And people often assume that that’s all God wants from us. He wants us to believe that he exists. And of course, if we call ourselves Christians, it goes without saying that we have to believe that God exists!

But I’m pretty sure that’s not the whole story when it comes to believing.

You see, I believe in health and exercise.

I know that these things exist. I’m sure about it!

Doctors tell us that if we eat sensibly and take at least 5 pieces of fruit and veg a day; if we don’t drink to excess, and don’t smoke; and if we take three 30-minute spells of exercise every week, we’ll be in good health.

And I for one, believe that 100%

But my belief won’t change a thing, unless I’m allowing those beliefs to shape the way I live. Unless I start eating those 5 pieces of fruit and veg, and taking those 30 minutes of exercise, my belief won’t do me one bit of good!

It’s not enough to simply believe that God exists. The question is – how is that belief changing you? Has it filtered through to your heart and will and soul? Is it changing how you choose to live your life?

If I could I’d change that word ‘believe’ in John 3:16 because in some ways it’s not helpful. It’s become all about the mind, when the root of that word in our language has much more to do with the heart.

If you go back into the roots of our language, the word believe used to be be-love, and its original meaning was ‘to hold dear, or to love something or someone”

Believing, in that sense, has much more to do with loving or trusting someone than simply believing bare facts.

In John 3:16, John is asking us not just to believe in Jesus’ existence; he’s asking us to trust him with our lives.

I was trying to think of a way to illustrate that and then I had a brainwave……

(at this point I showed a short video clip of a pole vaulter making it over the bar)

Sitting in front of the telly watching the athletics in the comfort of your own home, you or I might believe intellectually that a sufficiently bendy pole could hold our weight and throw us over a 5 metre bar.

But it’s a very different thing to pelt down the track, ram the thing into the ground, bend it half double and throw yourself into the air, in the faith that this piece of plastic is going to do what it’s been designed to do.

It’s a leap of faith, quite literally for the pole vaulter, but also for the person who’s beginning to think about what it means to be a Christian.

We live in times when if you do believe in that second kind of way, you’re going against the flow. There are so many other ways you could live your life, many of them far easier. It’s not a popular choice to be a person who believe with some passion. Why would you bother?

I can’t answer that question for you. All I can say is that for me, it was a slow realisation that the God I’d been taught about from childhood, had flirted with through adolescence and had walked away from in my later teens, was knocking on the door of my heart. And I took that leap of faith. I drew back the bolts, and asked him in.

And though I’ve regretted more than a few things in my life, I have never once regretted that decision. It set me on a pathway that’s engaged all of me, body, soul, heart, will and mind. And though the more I come to know this God the less I realise I know, what I do know is more than enough to make it worth the risk of believing.

And what do I know?

Well in the themes we’ve picked up on this week with the kids – I know that I have value – to God I’m special. I know the measure of his love for me by the height and breadth of the cross, and I know that he works through ordinary people like you and me, even when we find it hard to believe.

That’s what I know. That’s how I believe. And if that makes me bananas, then I’m glod to be so.