Today, I may be going off on a tangent. The scripture reading is John 3:1-15: Nicodemus' close encounter with the Lord of the Universe, and the idea of a spiritual dimension that does not depend on the physical but parallels it, with its own demands. And, as I was considering the implications of this, I recalled a series of conversations that I have had with "seekers" here. One in particular dealt with death, dying, and sin. And the thought that stood out most pertained to the concept of suicide as a sin.

Now sin is truly a thing that we should strive to avoid in our lives. I want to make this very clear. Its affect on our lives is always crippling, and if you do not understand what I mean by that then please take a look around you at people who are crippled. It is a burden to be crippled. Sin will cripple you. It is not a pleasant or minor experience. So I say that, it is very wise to run from sin once we have detected its presence.

Anyway, we are human. After a sin has been committed, what then? By what rules are we to be punished? And, with this question in mind, let's look at the sin of suicide. The Bible reveals to us that God is the author of life, from Genesis 1 on. It is God's perrogative when we shall be born, and when we shall die. And yet, inspite of this, we have the complete freedom to disobey the Lord of Life and take our own. This freedom to do so does not nullify God's right and authority. No, not at all, but rather by such actions, do we become criminals in God's court. Now, if we disobey God -- what then? By divine law, we are to die. But, we have just committed suicide -- our bodies have already died. Well, as we have just been alerted to today, there is another life that we had ought to have; another life that was made available to us! And this life is not of the physical variety that we have been living on earth. No. It is a spiritual life -- born of God's Spirit!

Now, I want you to understand this. The key that we must grasp here is that it is God's Spirit, and the spiritual life that we ought to have comes from God, the Provider. Can you imagine dying physically only to realize the very real failure of not obtaining this spiritual life? How did we lose out on it? Well, we disobeyed God. We said "stick it in your ear" to Lord of Life! We said "We don't need you!" When, in fact, we do. What a horrid situation to be in! Well, thanks be to Christ! And truly I say, "Thanks be to Christ!" For, He has already paid for our disobedience. If we ask for our Father's forgiveness, and let's not fool ourselves any more. There is only one Father in Heaven, and we know it in our hearts. If we ask for His forgiveness, we shall be forgiven by the act of Christ's death on our behalves. Do you see the significance of this?

The Spirit goes where it wills! We can not see it! We can not pin it down! We can not pronounce sentence on what is out of our grasp, and truly, out of our sight. That's true, isn't it. Now the Spirit comes from God, not man. Not you, not me, not from anyone else. We have no control over it; none of us has any control over it. It is in God's hands. And, those of us who choose to let ourselves be controlled by the Spirit are like this too. No, I am not pointing now to some sort of anarchy. This is not a form of dissidence. An odd thing happens when we obey God -- we begin to do the things that we ought to do. It's true that sometimes we do the things that we ought to do without God, without openly obeying God's will, but there is a difference because at those times, we are seeking to serve our own interests, not God's. And, I think we've all done this. Sometimes to get what we selfishly want for ourselves in our lives we do the right things, but it is painful sometimes, and, not exactly what we would like to be doing, when we think about it. And so I say that obeying God with our heart and soul is different from this -- because it is easy, and things work! God works through our lives, and seeing this is fun. More over, and this is very true, Great Things happen. We do not always see them; these Great Things, but we are a definite part of their successes! Our participation never goes unnoticed with our Father. Our participation is vitally important, and it is registered for eternity on God's Heavenly records. To live in the spirit, or rather, to live in active knowledge with the Spirit of God, is to go beyond what can be measured by our physical bodies. It is to simply trust in God's superior plans and move out in them. Always trusting, always moving and of course praising Him in sheer joy for the realization of the parts we are playing. And, as we do so, God talks to us -- revealing to us the unknowable things because we are in communion with Him.

We should follow Him, shouldn't we?

For the author's homepage, see Shido
For a Japanese sermon based on John 3:1-15, see: Oita Evangelical Christ Church
For Oita Evangelical Christ Church sermon indicies, see: cHaPeL nOaH sErMoN iNdEx