JOHN161 - A Bad Case of the Mondays

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And I know that for those of you who are listening to this in real time, those of you who are current with the podcast, you are going to be getting this episode on a Monday morning. Mondays can be a difficult day of the week. I'm not sure they're as bad anymore as they were when people made all the sayings about I hate Mondays and I've got a bad case of the Mondays.

I think now, yeah, for a lot of people, work is kind of spread out a little bit more. Or yeah, maybe, maybe you like your job and Monday's something you look forward to. Maybe some of you don't like Mondays very much and you need pick-me-ups on Monday. The first half of this episode is not going to be that pick-me-up, because the first half of this episode today is going to be dedicated to talking about the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves as human beings hurtling through space on a rock that from outside appearances would seem to be out of control, but the hope that we find is that it is under control.

And in the second half of this conversation we're going to have today, we're going to talk about the hope part, the good part. But the bad part is we're on a sinking ship here. We really do have we have a real problem here in life. Yes, there's beautiful things, transcendent things, there's love, there's all this stuff that is the fingerprint of God that is upheld as he sustains the world, that it makes stuff work around here.

Then we get these little glimpses and tastes of beauty, and it's wonderful. But there's always this very discreet touch of sadness behind beauty, because we are temporal beings and the clock is always ticking, and beauty fades. Maybe we'll outlive the beauty, maybe the beauty will outlive us, but either way, we're not going to be on screen for a real long time together.

And there's tragedy in that. A situation where we stand condemned already when we come into this world. The band cake puts it as simple as, as soon as you're born, you start dying. Now their conclusion is so you might as well have a good time, but the Bible's conclusion is, well, different. Job, the author of Ecclesiastes, Habakkuk, they all run up against this same question.

It's a question that's run into people in ancient times all the way up until right now, as you and I are having this discussion, and everybody who comes after us is going to wonder the same thing. We've all looked at life, seen the beautiful stuff about it, even found great meaning in the toil and the struggle of it, but we've all had the same villain sitting at the end of the race waiting for us, and that is death.

Death is the taking time bomb that always goes off. It is the defining reality of the physical world. It's the defining reality of life. Life is beautiful, death occurs. Like I said, this is the first half of this is going to be tough for Monday. If you were already sad about Monday, I'm sorry for all of that.

It really does get better. I remind you of this, I promise. So the default setting of the world is it's very bad. It's condemnation, sinking ship. Well, unlike the band Cake, who said, as soon as you're born, you start dying, so you might as well have a good time. Job tries to figure out the meaning of the world in the face of great suffering and great blessing.

He'd experienced both. And in the end, he decides, man, the only thing to do is trust God, is to behold God and believe in him. There's just no other play. Now, Job gets a tour of the cosmos from God himself. So he's got a nice front row seat to kind of advantage Job on that one, but disadvantage Job in terms of all that he had to go through to get there.

Either way, his conclusion is as soon as you're born, you start dying. So trust God, because that is our only hope. Habakkuk has some really serious questions for God later on in the Old Testament about God's justice and his goodness and how all of these the suffering and death and how it all fits together.

Then God answers Habakkuk's questions, and in the end, Habakkuk is like, yeah, all right. Yeah, my only play here is to trust God. I trust God for his power, I trust God for his goodness. Habakkuk looks at the problem. As soon as you're born, you start dying, and he says, All right, well, I'm gonna behold and believe and trust that I'll have life in his name.

There you go. The author of Ecclesiastes, probably Solomon, his life goes so dang well that he can't find meaning in it and doesn't know what to do with life and death and the passage of time and the same riddles that plague everybody else. And he gets to the end after displaying remarkable God-given wisdom, and his conclusion after musing about all of it, and the only play here is behold, believe, and trust God for life.

Trust God is my only play. My friends, this is all over the Bible. Now, in modern life, we throw unbelievable amounts of money and life energy at not thinking about exactly what you and I are talking about right now. When we do think about death in our stories and our art, overwhelmingly the most popular versions of that art, that tritify death.

They make it sweet and cute. This isn't something we like to wrestle with, and I get it. The way life works makes it seem like life should last longer, like it should last forever. Death is both the most natural thing in the world, but also there's something deep down that says it is profoundly unnatural.

That we were made for something more, that we were made by someone with whom we are supposed to spend eternity. So what gives? Like that's the friction, right? Has existed throughout all of time and will continue to exist. If we're really honest about our situation, a truth that I think we have to admit is that the world was condemned when we got here, and barring the intervention of God once and for all in the end of history, it will be a sinking ship when we leave.

That squares with what we get in John chapter 3. Jesus is talking with Nicodemus, and at no point in their conversation is there any underlying assumption other than sinking ship. We got a real problem here. The world is condemned, but by the end of the conversation between the two, Jesus is articulating very clearly in language Nicodemus can understand, hope.

Hope in Jesus, hope in the Son of Man. He likens himself to that bronze snake that Moses lifted up in the desert. Once again, behold, believe, have life. And then we pivot to John 3:16, which again assumes the bad part of what we're talking about. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

I mean, well, that's just beautiful. There's no bad part to that, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Well, wait a minute. Okay, that's a beautiful treasured verse of the Bible. But if we look a little closer, I've got a pen here in my right hand. I'm gonna underline one word in there perish.

Well, that word kind of takes me out of the happy stuff that I get from John 3.16, because that makes it seem like anything other than beholding and believing means that I would perish. But then we step back to the conversation you and I are having, and well Yeah, because the world stands condemned already.

Let's see if we get any clarification here as we move forward. Verse 17. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Well, why didn't God send Jesus to condemn the world? Well, for one thing, it would be redundant. It's already condemned. That is the state of the world.

The judgment of God has already been made known through what God has done, through the prophets. It clearly does not meet up to the standards of God for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It's abundantly clear. But again, verse 17 is a positive verse. For God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Yet yet this verse is crucially important to understanding the reality of the situation. We're not in a situation where everything is absolutely fine, and then God stepped in and did a special favor to a few people to make it even finer. No, we're in a situation where death is inevitable, physically and spiritually, and somehow here through Christ, God is making a way out in the same way that God made a way out from the venom of those snakes in the desert that was through something as surprising as just a bronze snake lifted up on a pole.

Okay, well, let's see if we get some more clarity here. Verse 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. Now that verse right there, that's gonna stick in a lot of cross in the modern mindset.

The modern mindset flies in the face of the reality that all of humankind has observed for all of time, which is we have a problem here. The modern mindset says if there were a God, it would be inappropriate for him to say that we are condemned. But again, the reality of our existence says God doesn't even really need to say it.

Look at what happens to our bodies, look at what time does, not just to our bodies, but to things and to memory and to beauty. This is a sinking ship, and we're all on it. So verse 18 then is explicitly saying that the default setting of life isn't just that we're headed toward physical death, but that we are by default separated from God and will remain in that state apart from Christ, in the same way that the people out in the desert were by default gonna get bit by a snake, and they were by default dead unless they looked at that bronze snake that God had provided, that way out, and beheld and believed.

Verse 18 is also very troubling for the modern or the contemporary mind, because it indicates that there are only two things that can happen. To summarize what the text is clearly saying, apart from Christ, there is judgment. In Christ, there is life. If I were the one doing the judging or setting the ground rules, it would be completely unacceptable.

Because at best we are peers. More likely, I'm worse than you. I think that because I know me better than I know you, I suppose. But I'm not in any position to be the judge of the world. My judgments would all be wrong. I'm not qualified, I don't want this burden. Maybe every now and then in my pride, I secretly long for this, but I would be a monster.

I would be a terrible judge. And respectfully, even though I might really like you, so would you. You would be a terrible judge. You lack the knowledge and capacity and perspective to judge rightly, to meet out grace properly, and so do I. We just can't do it. But with God, we're talking about something completely other here.

We're talking about the being who is being. We're talking about the being who never learned anything, has always known everything, is surprised by nothing, knows the motives and intents of our hearts better than we know it ourselves. Nothing is hidden from this God, and all his judgments are correct.

He is somehow perfectly just and perfectly gracious, and that is the God who has made a way off this sinking ship. How does God's judgment exactly work? What are the mechanics of it? What's the exact decision-making matrix for how he does justice? I have some ideas from what I see in the text and what I can reason to, but ultimately I don't know.

Justice is the Lord's and grace is the Lord's. That, biblically, is non-negotiable. But in a way, it's kind of like there is a negotiation that happened. There is, maybe a better word would be an intervention that occurred, and that is Christ. That is the Son of Man. That is the metaphorical snake on the pole being raised up in the desert.

And John is pleading with his audience, including you and me, to say, Behold, believe, have life. We are in dire circumstances, and apart from this, we remain, not become, but remain condemned. Part of me just wants to rush to the end of this passage and this other little passage that I want to take us over to in 1 John, just to be like, oh, there we, you know, we come, we got it all done today.

But this is it's weighty, it's important, and it just deserves our attention. So we're gonna linger on this passage for one more day and round it out tomorrow, picking up right where we left off. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.

JOHN161 - A Bad Case of the Mondays

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