If you would grab a Bible and open it to John chapter 3, we'll
read God's word together. John chapter 3, take one more
pass through it before I pray for us.
John chapter 3, starting in verse one.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a
ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night
and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher, come from
God, for no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with
him. Jesus answered him Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom
of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a
man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered truly, truly.
I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is
flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you
do not know where it comes from, or where it is where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be?
Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel?
And yet you do not understand these things?
Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak of what we know and bear
witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our
testimony. If I have told you earthly
things and you do not believe, how Can you believe if I tell
you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so
must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him
may have eternal life. These are the words of God.
Would you pray with me? Our Father in heaven, we come to
you like Nicodemus came to Christ seeking wisdom.
God, we need to know what only You can tell us that, that we
need that information that comes from beyond the earth, beyond
our life. We need wisdom on eternal life.
And so we pray, Lord, that you, by your Spirit, would take up
your word, would take up your servant, and that you would
teach us, that you would speak to us, that we might hear your
voice this morning. Would you bless this time in
your word? We ask it in Jesus name for his
sake, Amen. So our culture is one that is
forever asking, what must we do? What do we do now with our money
so that when we're old we have enough of it, right?
What do we do with our health right now so that we can live as
healthy and as happily as we can for a long period of time?
What can I eat? What can I drink?
What what medicine can I take? What things can I avoid?
What do we do to live life well? That's our question.
And all of these different questions are micro versions of
the great question that is asked in Scripture of the Lord.
What must I do to be saved? The Bible says it is appointed
for a man who wants to die, and then comes judgment.
So all of us at some point or another are going to die, and
all of us will stand before our Maker and offer Him the totality
of our life, and He will pass judgment.
He'll look at it at everything we've done in the body, and
he'll pass judgment on us. And so the great question for
every person that knows that that judgment is coming is this,
What must I do to be saved? How do I pass that test?
How, as CS Lewis put it, how can on that day, how can God look at
me and all of my life and somehow that I wouldn't just
pass, but that I would be one of the ingredients in the divine
happiness. They would look on me with
pleasure, look on my life with pleasure.
If you have not posed that question, you ought to.
This is what the Scriptures talk about.
Teach us to number our days, that it may, that we may attain
a heart of wisdom. It may sound ridiculous, but
little old me, I'm going to give you the answer to that today.
So if that's your question, you've come to the right place.
Then it's not me, it's Christ. Yeah.
So Christ is going to teach Nicodemus, and then we're going
to learn second hand what we must do in order to be saved.
And so as we think through this text together, I'm going to
point out some things to you. And I want you to see that Jesus
gives a bunch of negatives. It's not going to be done this
way because he needs to peel our fingers back from the things
that we're holding onto so that we can grasp that real eternal
life. The question is, how do we come
to eternal life? How do we get there?
OK, so the first thing that Jesus is going to tell Nicodemus
in in verses one through 3 is that eternal life is not inside
of us, but it's outside of us. It's not something we find
inside you. Give that a lot.
You want eternal life or love or peace or whatever.
Just just look into yourself. Go meditate wrong 100 times
over. Eternal life is not found inside
you, it's found outside of you. So look at verses one through
three with me. There was a man of the
Pharisees, so a law keeper. So many believe that in the word
of God, you have in the scriptures, you have the very
word of God, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a ruler of
the Jews. There's kind of a play in in, in
Greek on his name, Nico and Demas means a ruler of the Demas
where we get democracy, a ruler of the people.
And then he's, John says he's Nico Demas, a ruler of the Jews.
So he's really, really important.
He's as big as they come. And this man came to Jesus by
night. OK, So if you, if you think
about this in the Gospel of John, you have this dichotomy
between the darkness on earth and the light of the world that
comes into the world to shine in the darkness.
This is Christ. And so you have this, you have
this light that is the gospel of the Lord Jesus, and you have the
darkness that's dwelling in the on the earth Judas when he when
he leaves Christ's presence to go betray Christ, we're told
this detail that it was night. So this is a, this is a light
versus darkness kind of a thing. And Nicodemus comes by night to
Christ. And so I take this as Nicodemus
realizing, and you can tell by his words, his introduction to
Christ, realizing that there's something special about Christ
that he doesn't know. And so he's not coming for
baptism yet. He's not all in chips are not
all on the table. He's kind of investigating.
Let's go talk to this, this new teacher and let's see what he's
about. He comes at night so he doesn't
cause a stink. He doesn't he's not outed as a
follower of Christ. He comes by night and he says to
Jesus, and I want you to listen to these words.
It's very respectful. Rabbi, we know that you're a
teacher, come from God, for no one can do these signs that you
do unless God is with him. So he's very, very respectful.
But Jesus cuts right to the heart of the matter and actually
rebukes the disrespect that's there in Nicodemus words.
Look, in verse 3, Jesus answered him truly, truly.
I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom
of God. So Nicodemus again intends to
show respect to a mere man, a prophet or a teacher.
That you see this all the time in our world that when people
talk about Jesus, they they say, obviously he's one of the
greatest men to have ever lived, a great prophet, a great
teacher. I mean, you hear all of these
things, but what has never entered into Nicodemus's wild
imagination is that Nicodemus is talking not to a man with whom
God is. We know that God is with you.
He says nobody can do the stuff you do unless God is with him.
It's never entered into Nicodemus his imagination that
God is not just with Christ, that Christ is Emmanuel.
Christ is God with us. OK, so Nicodemus hasn't come
into the presence of a good teacher with whom got it, who
got his blessing. Nicodemus has come into the very
presence of God. He is attempting to have a
little chat, a friendly meeting of the minds with an upstart
teacher, but he finds himself in the holy of holies, talking to
his Creator. He is standing like a clod
hopper with muddy boots in the presence of the burning Bush.
He has ascended into Zion's cloud, into Sinai's cloud, in
his talking shop with the living and the true God.
Nobody should be surprised that Nicodemus is as wrong footed as
he can possibly be. But Jesus says something very
important that we need to, that we need to sit in.
He says unless one is born again, he cannot, that is, he is
unable to see the Kingdom of God.
This is as big a mystery to Nicodemus as the identity of
Christ is. How can we be born again when we
didn't have a hand in our birth in the 1st place?
So let me just let's do a thought experiment.
I invite you to think about your birth.
Jesus says you must be born again.
So we might ask, how were we born in first place?
Something that none of us want to think about, might not like
to think carefully about it, but all things being the same, your
birth took place something like this.
Two people came together without your permission and they made a
very interesting plan that resulted in you first coming
into the womb and then coming into the world long before you
ever realized that you were a you, long before you ever
realized that you were in the world.
You were born. How does that grab you that you
exist? You were born passively.
You didn't ask raise your hand. Any of you guys asked your
father to bigot you? No, you weren't there.
That's the point. Dad is making a plan.
Mom's making a plan or not. What however, that however that
worked? But you come into being based
upon the actions of another without your permission.
Eternal life is the same. It isn't something you can
accomplish within yourself. It has to come from without
yourself. What must I do to be saved?
Stop asking that question. It doesn't come from you, it
comes from outside of you. You must be born again.
It has to come from outside of yourself.
You didn't accomplish your birth, you received it.
Being born again is the same way.
Eternal life is not within you. It is without you.
And I don't mean I don't mean it is done without you there.
I mean it is done outside. It's a preposition.
It's done outside of you where God does something inside of you
that will result in eternal life.
So eternal life is not something that happens within you, but
it's something that happens without you.
Secondly, Jesus tells Nicodemus that eternal life is not
something that we see, but it's something that we can see.
By Louis's favorite or famous description, I know that
Christianity is true. I know that Christ is Lord, not
because I can see him, but because by him I can see all
things he said. It's like the sun.
I, I don't look at the sun, I look at all things by the sun.
Eternal life is the same way. Look in verses 4 through 8,
Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?
He can't enter a second time into his mother's women be born.
Perish the thought. And Jesus said truly, truly, I
say to you, unless one is born of water in the Spirit, he
cannot enter the Kingdom of God. And I just want to point
something out to you that first he says unless one is born
again, he cannot see the Kingdom.
Now he says truly, truly, unless one is born of water in the
Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom.
That which is born of flesh is flesh that was just born of the
Spirit is Spirit. So you have born again, born of
water in the Spirit, born of the Spirit.
All of these ways in which Jesus is talking about the same
reality that theologians called the regeneration of the Holy
Spirit, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and God
sovereignly quickens us. He makes us alive together with
Christ. By grace we have been saved.
So he says truly, truly. I say to you, unless one is born
of water in the Spirit, he cannot enter.
Not only can he not see, he can't enter the Kingdom of God.
Then he says that which is born of flesh is flesh.
If you go, if you could figure out a way to go be reborn of
your mother, you're still going to be the problem.
You're still going to be fleshly.
Don't marvel it. I said, you must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you
do not know where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
So you cannot enter, you cannot see unless you have been born of
the Spirit. And he gives us this, this great
picture. The wind blows where it wills.
Wind in Greek again is a play on word in the Old Testament,
ruach, the word ruach is it can be translated spirit or wind.
So when you talk about the Spirit of God, you talk about
the ruach. When you're talking about the
wind, you're, you say the word ruach and same thing in, in the
New Testament, in, in Greek, numatas is wind, Numatas is
spirit. So when we talk about the Holy
Spirit in Greek, it's it's some combination of Numatas and
Hagias, the spirit which is holy.
You can also translate it the wind, which is Holy Spirit
Numatas. He says the wind blows where not
where you wish it, but where it wishes.
And you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from
or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit. It doesn't blow because you bid
the wind. Your eyes have never think about
this. Your eyes have never seen the
wind. What do you see?
How do you know that the wind is blowing?
Well, you hear it and you hear the effects of it.
You see the wind affecting the world around you and you
conclude that there is an invisible force at work around
you. And Jesus says, so it is with
everyone who is born of the Spirit.
So just think about, you don't have to look around yet, but
when we come to the communion table, you must look around.
In a few moments we're going to come to the Lord's table.
And I would just invite you to look around at the effects of
the wind. How many of us were born and
spent years of our life totally indifferent or antithetical to
the person of Christ? And yet here we are, like how
many times, how many, how many days, weeks, months, years of
your life did you just not care about Christ?
Some of you grew up in the church.
You've always known love and trusted Christ, and God be
praised. But some of us grew up against
Christ, not believing in Him, disbelieving in Him, neutral to
Him, and yet here we are. In a few moments I'm going to
say, this is Christ's body broken for you.
This is His blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
If you want him, come in faith and we're all going to get up
and run to the table. Why?
Because it's the effect of the wind.
The Holy Spirit has sovereignly moved to awaken faith and love
in US. OK, so so we were.
Many of us were born and spent years of our life totally
indifferent to the person of Christ.
And yet here we are, bending and thrashing about in the fury of
His love like trees under a highwind.
Glory to His name. He is here with us and you are
all undeniable proof of that fact.
God be praised. Eternal life is not something we
can see, it's something we can see by.
I didn't see the Holy Spirit form Christ in you.
I didn't see Him awaken you, but I can see that you love Christ
And so I can say the wind has blown.
Christ has saved us. Amazing eternal life is also not
new. It's very, very, very old.
Look, in verse 9, Nicodemus asks a very understandable question.
So he comes what the idea is, what must I do to be saved?
And Jesus says, you got to be born again.
You got to be born again. And he keeps saying you got to
do something that you can't do. And so Nicodemus asks what we
all have to ask when we realize the impossibility of what God
requires. How can these things be?
You're telling me I can't do it, I can't affect it, I can't make
it happen. How can that be?
And Jesus says something very interesting.
He doesn't say, Nicodemus, look in the Old Testament wasn't this
way, but but now there's something new and you're just
going to have to bear with me. Watch what he says.
Are you the teacher of Israel? And yet you do not understand
these things. This is the way it's always
been. Old New Testament doesn't matter
if you've ever if anybody has ever been saved, it's because
the Holy Spirit has regenerated them given them faith in the
word of God. Are you the teacher of Israel
and yet you do not understand these things Jesus is saying
this is this is faith and relationship and covenant with
God. One O 1.
It's like coming to a mechanic's shop and they don't know what a
wrench is right? Going to a plumber and they
don't know how to use primer and glue.
It's like, dude, this is 101, right?
You have to understand this. And so Jesus rebukes Nicodemus
for not understanding his Old Testament.
Are you the teacher of Israel? And you don't understand these
things? Truly, truly.
I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what
we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.
And he says in verse 12, this is wild.
If I have told you earthly things, this doesn't sound like
earthly things. It sounds like mystery, right?
Born again, invisible work of God.
That sounds really mysterious. Jesus says no, this is earthly
stuff. If I tell you the the
Christianity 101 and you don't believe, how Can you believe?
If I tell you heavenly things like I'm going to take your sin
upon myself and die on your behalf, how will you possibly
understand that verse, Verse 13, He says very interesting phrase.
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from
heaven, the Son of man. OK, Eternal life is not new.
It's very, very old. There's a tendency to see the
words of Christ as describing something brand new.
And he talks about regeneration and being born again, that it's
new on the scope of God's redemptive work.
But don't make this mistake. In the Old Testament you you
should hear an illusion when we read Jesus saying no one has
ascended except for he who descended.
Does any text come to mind? You don't have to shout it out.
Just think. Just think about it does.
Is that biblical language or is Jesus just coming up with
something? The first time to my knowledge
that we come across this phrase ascending and descending is when
Jacob is running from his murderous brother.
He lays down on a rock in a place that he named Bethel, the
House of the House of God. And in the night he sees a
vision of a ladder that goes into heaven.
And the Lord is at the top of the ladder, and he sees the
angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder.
Right? We see it again and I want to
read this text to you. This is this is from Deuteronomy
chapter 30, where Moses, they're just getting ready to go into
the into the land. He re preaches the law to them.
And I want you to hear what he says.
What he says. This is you don't have to turn
here. It's Deuteronomy 30 verse 6.
If you want to write that outside beside ascending and
descending, here's what Moses says.
And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the
heart of your offspring. 2 things he's going to do 2 works.
He's going to circumcise your heart.
Circumcision is something you can do right?
We can do that with a knife. How many of you can circumcise a
heart with a knife? Answer you can't.
Moses is saying God is going to do some work inside of you to
make you right with God and the promise.
And This is why we've baptized our offspring, because of
promises like this that are ours in Christ.
The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the
heart of your offspring. It comes as promise.
This is what he's going to do, so that you will love the Lord
your God. Notice it's not that you love
the Lord your God and then he circumcises your heart.
You don't love unless and until He does that work inside you.
OK, now listen to what Moses says in in verse 11.
He says for this commandment that I command you today is not
too hard for you be perfect as your Father in heaven is
perfect. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as yourself every moment of every day for
the rest of your life perfectly. And Moses says it's not too
hard. You can do this.
What? What are you talking about?
He says it's not too hard and it's not far off.
It's not in heaven that you should say who will?
Here's our phrase, who will ascend heaven for us and bring
it to us that we may hear it and do it.
Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will go
over the sea for us to bring it to us, that we may hear it.
He says, But the word is very near you.
It's in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it.
The human heart is hard wired to earn and to accomplish, right?
So when my favorite authors said this week, I heard him say that
in the Old Testament, when you look at the law, there's two
ways of looking at the law. There's a Pharisaical way that
you look at the law and you see a ladder of ascending into
heaven, that if you'll just do this and do this and do this,
you can climb your way and you will despair for the rest of
your life. There's another way to look at
the law, that when you look at the law, what you see is the
portrait of Christ, of who Christ will be for us.
And that's Jesus's word to Nicodemus, the ascending and
descending. The human heart is hardwired to
earn and accomplish, but as a fallen race, all we can do to
affect our salvation is receive. It's not something we
accomplish, it's something God gives us.
Corporately, this is very important.
Corporately, the people of God are feminine.
We're the bride of Christ. OK, we take from God and by his
grace multiply that grace out into the world.
But so often we transgender our salvation like we do everything
else in life. We make ourselves the initiator.
How many times in youth camp were you told if you'll just
take that first step, God will take the other 99?
Baloney. You will never take that first
step unless God awakens faith in you.
God is the initiator. God is the masculine.
God is the sower of seed. We are the receiver and we can't
get that swapped. We become the givers.
God may receive from us. That is not the way of
salvation. If you would be saved, God must
give you Himself and you must receive Him by faith.
It does not happen any other way.
This is the way it has always been.
Eternal life is not new. It is the only way God has ever
saved people. And so back in John chapter 3,
it's not something that comes from within you.
It is not something that you can accomplish.
It's something that only God can do.
And so all of us should say this should leave a frightful taste
in our mouth thinking about, OK, So what can I do right?
If if it's nothing that I can, that can that I can affect, what
should I do? And Jesus is finally going to
give us the answer, the positive.
Here's what you do. Would you be born again?
Would you pass that test? Would you stand before Almighty
God and have a look at your life and approve and be pleased with
what you have done? This is the way.
And verse 14, Jesus says to Nicodemus, as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted
up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Oh, you must be born again, which is something you can't do.
And so all of us ought to throw up our hands and say what then?
Can we can be done? If I need outside help, but I
can't force that outside help any more than I can force the
wind to blow, is there any hope for me?
Are you telling me that I'm literally just sitting here at
the mercy of God? Yeah, that's what I'm telling
you. All of us are literally sitting
here waiting on the mercy of God.
And you know what? There's no safer place for human
beings to be than waiting upon the mercy of God.
Jesus anticipates, and he answers that question for us.
God, you're saying it. There's nothing I can do.
Yes, I'm saying there's nothing you can do, but here's one thing
you can do. He answers this question by
reminding Nicodemus of a Seminole moment in Israel's
history. And I'm going to read it for
you. Don't turn with me, but right in
the margin of your Bible, numbers 21, four through 9,
Beautiful story. Jesus says as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness. And we would say, well, how did
Moses do that? Listen to this.
It won't be long from Mount Hor. That's HOR, not WHOR, just in
case, since you're listening and not reading from Mount Hor.
They set out by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of
Edom. And the people became impatient
on their way. And the people spoke against God
and against Moses. And here's what they say.
And I want you to listen very close.
Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the
wilderness? That's what God does.
He rescues us from slavery to kill us in the wilderness of
something worse, right? Why have you done this?
And then they say, watch this, there's no food.
They've had manna every day for 40 years, but there's no food.
There's no food. There's no water.
The rock that follows them is Christ who feeds them, gives
them water at every turn. There's no food, there's no
water. And then they turn directly
against manna, the heavenly bread that Christ says is Christ
himself, the bread from heaven that we don't know about, that's
mysterious, that comes to us, that tastes like wafers and
honey to feed more than or somewhere around 2 million
people in the middle of the wilderness when nothing else is
there. They turn to manna and they say
we loathe this worthless food, this food that Christ says that
was me feeding my people. They use the word loathe, A
literal translation of the Hebrew.
Our souls hate this. And when they say worthless
food, it's contemptible, it's disgraced.
They hate. What are they hating?
They're hating Christ and the Lord says, aw shucks, I'll be
patient. No, the Lord sent fiery winged
in Hebrew. It's both.
It's seraphim. It's where we get our word for
seraph, burning winged serpents among the people, and they bite
the people so that the people of Israel are dying.
If you want to see cobras, that's fine, you can do that.
But I think it's Dragons. Maybe I'm all by myself, but
it's winged fire serpents, and they're biting the people, and
people are dying. And so the people come to Moses
and they say we've sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord
and against you. Pray to the Lord that he takes
away the serpents from us. They are, think about this in
Moses's life, who is the one that reaps A plague from not
obeying God's word? And he sends a plague to them
and they say we've sinned, please take it away.
Who is that? It's Pharaoh.
The people are now the new Pharaoh.
They're saying we we've had enough of serpents.
Pray to the Lord that he takes them away.
And so Moses prayed for the people, and I want you to watch
this. This is marvelous.
God could have done it any old way.
He doesn't take the serpents away.
What he does is he sends them a weird rescue.
Moses prayed and the Lord said to Moses, I want you to make a
fiery serpent out of bronze. So I want you to make something
in the image of what is killing my people.
And I want you to put it on a pole and I want you to lift it
up so that everybody who is bitten, when he sees it, he
shall live. Do they know the mechanism
there? Are they saying, well, when you
look, what's happening is the mitochondria and the Golgi
bodies is working. They don't have a clue.
You just look to what God has provided for you and you will be
saved. And the text says, so Moses made
a bronze serpent, something in the image of what is killing
God's people, and he put it on a pole and he raised it up.
And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent
and he would live. So Jesus, how can we be born
again? Just as Moses made a bronze
serpent in the image of the judgement of God which was
killing sinful men, Moses made that image of judgment and he
put it on a standard, and he lifted it up over the people of
Israel so that they could look at it and be saved.
In the same way, the Son of Man must be made into the very image
of sin and lifted up on a Roman cross so that whoever is dying
in their sin might merely look to him.
And by looking to him in faith, crucified for sinners, we might
have eternal life. What must you do?
Just look to Jesus. That's the only hope you have.
That's the only hope I have. So fret not yourself over much
about how you can be born again. You, you don't have to
understand the mechanism. Water spirit.
It's a baptism. How does the, how does the wind
look? Forget all of that stuff or not.
Don't forget it, certainly don't forget it, but just don't worry
over the how. Look to Christ, lifted high upon
a Roman cross, made to be sin on your behalf, that you might be
made the righteousness of God on His behalf.
Look to Him and be saved. And dear brothers and sisters,
there is no greater picture available for us today than this
table that is before us now. This bread is the body of Christ
broken for you. This wine is the blood of Christ
shed for you. You come to this table looking
outside of yourself to the salvation of God, and looking
away from yourself, fix your eyes on Christ and feast your
eyes upon him who is lifted up, that you might have eternal
life, not as an earning, but as a gift of grace.
So come to life himself. Come and welcome to Emmanuel,
welcome to King Jesus, welcome to eternal life, O Sinner, and O
Christian, won't you come to Christ?
Let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we we thank you for
your wisdom in these words to put salvation so far outside of
our reach as to cause wild panic in US, and then to show us that
you've already put salvation in our pocket.
It's there, It's there. We need to look in faith to you
outside of ourselves. There's no hope there, there's
only despair that we would turn our eyes to You who in love for
sinners took our sin upon yourself and suffered yourself
to be nailed to a Roman cross and to be killed as a punishment
for our sin. We thank you for your
resurrection. We thank you that the salvation
that we have comes solely to us as a gift, and we return thanks
and we take it with grubby hands, and we say thank you.
So would you draw near to us now at your table for those who are
downtrodden and despairing? Would you give them by the power
of your spirit, the ability to look away from themselves and
where they will find no hope to to fix their eyes on you, on
your cross, on your resurrection, on your ascension
into heaven, and at at your current rule, where you sit at
the Father's right hand interceding for those who come
to you by faith? Would you minister to us now by
your Spirit at the table? We ask it in Jesus name, Amen.