At the start of this series on the teachings of Jesus
I said there is no church on Earth that is teaching people to obey Jesus.
Nevertheless, there are a few things that Jesus said
which ARE talked about in a lot of churches.
The one verse that is most widely taught all over the world...
the most famous verse in the Bible--is John 3:16.
Listen to it.
"God loved the world so much, that he sent his only begotten son, so that whoever receives it
"will not perish, but will have everlasting life."
Because this is the most famous verse in the Bible,
I assume many of you know that I changed a couple of important words in it.
Did you see it?
But can you see how horrendous that change was?
Look more closely at the verse.
It finishes, down here, with what I will call the gift. It certainly is an amazing gift.
It says that everlasting life is available for everyone on Earth.
What an incredible possibility!
It is the best gift that any one of us could ever hope to receive.
Just imagine it: Living forever.
And, up here, at the start of the verse, we see the source of that gift.
God, the Creator of life and the Creator of the universe
loves us humans so much, that he sent his son, Jesus, to Earth to make this amazing offer.
God is the most reliable source anyone could imagine for such an otherwise impossible gift.
As the Creator of the universe,
He has the credentials to fulfil such a wonderful promise.
How exciting!
These two parts of the verse... the gift and the source...
sum up the greatest news that anyone could ever imagine.
Surely this is the gospel. The word 'gospel' means 'good news'.
And this is the greatest news the world has ever heard.
To show his great love, God has made eternal life
available to you, me and everyone else on this planet.
That is what Jesus Christ came to tell us.
BUT... there is a piece between the source and the gift that often gets overlooked.
That is the part I changed. I did it to show how seriously
such a small change can distort the true meaning of the whole verse.
I call this middle part of the verse "the condition". The gift of everlasting life depends entirely on this condition.
It is the all-important dividing line between those who receive eternal life...
and those who do not.
We cannot claim that we have eternal life
if we have not, in fact, met the condition for receiving it.
So what is this condition?
In my opinion, the real condition is consistently ignored.
Many of you, would not have noticed the difference between what I said
and what they picture, even when they hear John 3:16 being quoted correctly.
In other words, even when the verse is quoted as it is written in the Bible,
what people hear is closer to what I said.
The misquoted version appears on your screen at the moment.
Look closely at what I said.
I said that all you must do to get eternal life... the only condition... is just to receive it.
The only thing you need to do to receive eternal life, is to receive eternal life.
It is lying out there, free for anyone...no strings attached...unconditional.
You want it, you got it.
Have you ever heard that word 'receive'?
Have you ever heard it used in relation to salvation?
It goes something like this.
Receive Jesus as your personal Savior. You can have eternal life right now.
It is as easy as receiving it. Reach out and take it. Nothing to do; nothing to change. Nothing to pay.
Jesus did it all for you. Go on, it's free. It's yours. Just take it, please. Take it, please!
But, that is not what the real John 3:16 says, is it?
It says that we need to believe Jesus.
I will put the right words in there.
"Whoever believes on Him". That is Jesus. That is the part that is missed...
through interpretation if not through translation.
We need to believe Jesus. And this is a very very big condition.
Preachers everywhere at least imply that there is no need to even LISTEN to Jesus,
much less BELIEVE Him. Just receive Him.
People everywhere, including many of you who are listening to me now,
almost never go home and open their Bibles to see if Jesus really did say it that way.
Look at this phrase: "Receive Jesus as your personal Savior."
It is cleverly worded so that you do not have to receive Jesus himself.
You just receive a specific part of Him.
You supposedly receive the part that SAVES you.
In other words, I'm saved, because I said I'm saved.
Jesus is my Savior because I said He is my Savior.
Do not talk to me about anything that He said. I do not need to worry about that part.
I only have to believe that He saved me.
Some people in a few small denominations have argued
that you need to receive Jesus as your Lord, too.
That's good. I feel much closer to those people and to those churches.
But what I look more closely, I see that they never take the time to listen to Him either.
They certainly do not teach people to do the sort of things that Jesus taught His disciples to do.
Someone else is always telling you what you need to do to prove that Jesus is your Lord.
Stop smoking. Stop drinking. Stop doing drugs. Stop using four-letter words. Stop telling dirty jokes.
Get a job. Pay your bills. Join a church.
Give some of your money to the church; and above all, be respectable.
Don't question your leaders.
Do you see how Jesus himself never gets a chance to be heard?
The churches don't want Jesus meddling with their business.
They know that you don't want Him meddling with your plans for your life either.
If you start following His rules, no one knows where it may lead.
So there is a quiet conspiracy to shut up anyone, like me,
who tells you to listen to the real Jesus: the Jesus in the Bible.
Not the one they say is your Savior.
What they want and what you want is eternal life, painlessly and instantly.
That part is appealing, so they keep it in, like they do with John 3:16.
But they tell you that this incredible gift of eternal life is absolutely unconditionally free to anyone.
Or, at least, to anyone who follows the rules of their church.
Grab your free ticket and run. Get away from what He taught as quickly as you can.
And one of the best ways to do that is to go to church.
They will never bother you about the things that Jesus taught.
They will give you a hundred reasons why you don't need to literally obey him.
For the rest of your life, you will be able to boast that Jesus is your Savior.
Why? Because you said He was.
You said that you received Him as your Savior, and so He has to be your Savior now, whether He likes it or not.
But that is not how it works.
Believing Jesus does mean that you will receive him as your Lord.
But not just by saying he is your Lord.
And not just singing a lot of songs where you call him 'Lord, Lord' from start to finish.
I mean really making him your new Boss, listening to Him and doing anything He asks you to do.
Later, when HE decides, all the personal Savior stuff can come in his good time.
Jesus wants to see evidence that you really do believe HIM.
Not some religious authority who says you don't need to obey Him.
In a rush to get our free ticket, our entitlement to eternal life, the entire church world has trampled all over Jesus.
We don't know Him. We don't even know what He taught, do we?
We could hardly believe what He taught if we haven't taken the time to hear it.
All we know is what our religious leaders have told us.
Very often our religious leaders are only repeating what their religious leaders told them.
It has been going on for so long now, that hardly anyone even thinks to question it.
How can you possibly believe someone who you have never listened to?
One could as easily be saying that God so loved the world that He sent Billy Graham
so that whoever believes Billy Graham, or believes Francis,
or believes Kenneth Copeland, or anyone else teaching this false gospel...
Whoever believes them, will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
Certainly it was someone other than Jesus that you listened to,
and that you believed, if you thought you could get eternal life
just by saying that you want it and that you receive it, without even taking the time to listen to Jesus.
I hate to spoil your enthusiasm, but Jesus never made such an offer.
He gives eternal life to whomever HE chooses.
The choice is not up to you.
He is looking for people who will listen to Him... people who will believe Him...
even when He makes difficult demands on them.
Are you prepared to do that?
Jesus said that the way to life is very narrow, and very few people will find it.
But the road to hell is wide and great crowds of people travel on it.
I know this is disappointing for many of you.
But it is better to hear that now, than to be hit with it after you die.
The churches have sold you a lie. It's as simple as that.
Until you recognize that, you will never listen to Jesus and hear the gospel as it really is.
This is the place in a sermon where the music goes all soft and the preacher says,
"I want every head bowed and every eye closed. No one looking around."
And then he asks you to quickly put your hand up while no one is looking.
Put it up and put it down, and if you do, then you get salvation, free and easy.
They ask you to say a little prayer, asking Jesus into your heart,
and ACCEPTING Him as your own personal Savior.
Obviously I am not going to do that.
[...Ripping sound...]
God is not that desperate. He wants people with more integrity than that.
But I am going to ask you to do two things.
First, I will ask you to resolve, right now...
that you will not go back to your pastor and ask his opinion on this.
We already know his opinion.
You have known him for some time, and he has not told you that you need to obey Jesus, has he?
Ttrust me. He is not going to tell you to listen to, believe, or obey Jesus now.
He'll give you an excuse for not doing it.
And the only reason anyone would go back to their pastor at this point...
would be because you are not prepared to put Jesus first.
Okay. That is the first decision I'm asking you to make: Listen to Jesus and not to your pastor.
Shocking I know, but vitally necessary.
And the second thing I'm going to ask you to do, is to get your Bible out and read through the four gospels...
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all alone, over and over if necessary, and with a pen and paper nearby.
List a few dozen things that Jesus told his followers to do.
They won't be easy; I still struggle with a lot of them myself.
But as you study them, ask God for the courage to at least try
to practice the things that He told His followers to do.
If you will do that, then you can make a genuine decision to follow Jesus,
without me or any other human mediator getting in the way.
If you want some encouragement, please contact me. Tell what you have decided.
I'll do what I can to encourage you not to give up on that decision.
You will find that when you move closer to God in that way, He will move closer to you.
You will experience a transformation in your spirit.
You will see just about everything in a whole new way.
Think about the context of John 3:16. Jesus was talking to a religious man named Nicodemus.
Nicodemus' religion had not led him into a personal relationship with God.
But it wasn't just Nicodemus' special problem. It is your problem too.
Forget religion. Get things right between you and the only begotten Son of God.
It is your decision now, and it may not be an easy one,
but if you can meet that all-important condition in the middle of the verse...
the one about believing Jesus and no one else, you will not perish, but you will have everlasting life.
Trust Jesus and you will not go wrong. And that is the gospel truth.