Jesus Teaches Nicodemus | John 3:1-21

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That was just beautiful to hear those words spoken in Ukrainian. We pray for peace in that space. And thank you for sharing with us. That was beautiful. I don't really know what to say. I was completely surprised. And so thank you all for your kind words, for your just your generosity as a church.

This is a joyful place to be. And just very thankful. That we get to do this kind of thing together regularly. We're in this series on John, and when you get a passage like that, sometimes I think the appropriate response is just, there we go. You heard it. We get to go home early. It's just such a vibrant passage.

Alive with just the very heart of what it is what the Christian faith is, what the Jesus story is, but we're gonna kinda wrestle with it just a little deeper. I think one of the things that it's important to remember. When we have passages like this, the writer think a theologian, c. S Lewis said decades ago that sometimes as a people we need to be taught.

We learn new things and sometimes we just need to be reminded. We get to hear some words spoken that are so much words of our childhood. Perhaps you remember the first time you heard this passage. If you grew up in a Christian home, maybe it was the first passage that your parents said, we're gonna give you a dollar to, to memorize this thing depending on how old you are, then maybe it was much less.

It could be almost anything but what we're gonna do is we're gonna, we're gonna remind ourselves. Of this truth. And I'd love us to start with this question. Have you ever given a gift? The answer should be yes. If anyone here is not then come see me afterwards. We're gonna deal with some issues that you clearly have, but not just have you having given a gift.

Have you ever given a gift? That wasn't wanted. Or maybe there's another way to ask that question. Have you ever given a gift that wasn't valued? I have this abiding memory of maybe the first time as a youngish adult, I was buying gifts with my own money. You have some of your own resources.

It's not a lot. And we have a big family, so there's a lot of people to go and buy for. And I remember going out and shopping all day with my parents and I'm counting the gifts off something for Mom of course. Something for Dad. Absolutely. For siblings Easy buys. And then we're about to go home and I look down at the money that I have, and it's really, I'm down to about $2.

And I've got one present left to buy. It's for my brother who's notoriously hard to buy for. And so in the last store that we go to before finally making our way to the car, I see it. The gift I'm gonna buy him. It's a book on ghost stories. Now, you should know this about my brother. He has never expressed any interest in ghost stories or in fact in reading at all.

This is just not a gift for him. But it was there and it was affordable and it was cheap. So I grabbed it, wrapped it up, and I remember the feeling. On Christmas Day as we're approaching his gift to be opened. I can see it there sitting under the tree, and I can picture him opening it and I can remember the look on his face, which was something along the lines of, what on earth is this?

What is wrong with you? If you were gonna buy the opposite gift of something that he would value, this was the thing. And I remember as he lifted it up and showed it to me and went, yeah. Great gift and just stuck with me. Maybe for you it's a gift you took to something like a wide elephant.

You know the thing where you have the presence in the middle and someone opens your present first, and then you watch as nobody steals that present. You just, this person got the number one pick in the draft and now they're out of the game for good. Just holding the used candy from Halloween. He threw in a box and just presented as an offering.

And then maybe you've had moments where you've taken your time and you've prepared the perfect gift. It's exactly what is needed or wanted, or at least you think so. And you wrap it beautifully and someone opens it, but it's still not really appreciated by the person that it was given to. Ultimately, this passage is actually about gift giving.

It's about a God who is deeply generous, who gives of his absolute riches, and it's about navigating through what it is to have a people for whom the gift was given that don't really appreciate it at all. In John chapter three Nicodemus, this character approaches. Jesus. Now, there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus.

We learned quite a lot about Nicodemus really quickly. He's a Pharisee, a group or sect of Judaism that gets lambasted in the narratives, the biographies of Jesus life. Probably because in actual fact. In some ways, theologically, they're very close to Jesus. If you were to pick a sect that Jesus would seem to fit most comfortably in it's the Pharisees.

But what Jesus finds intolerable about the Pharisees is this word hypocrisy. He sees some right beliefs, but none of the follow through, none of the genuineness of heart, none of the actions. And Nicodemus comes as a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus. Who is a member of the Jewish Ruling Council? A significant position in this world that didn't detach politics and religion?

If you think we have some too much attachment there, this is a different level. Everything came back to religion here, and so Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus. He came to Jesus at night and said, rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. He comes at the nighttime. It comes when nobody else is around.

Some people have suggested that Nicodemus comes with ulterior motives. Couple of the the commentator, especially Andreas Berger, if you want to dip into some of the commentaries around this passage, he suggests that this is actually just a follow on from John chapter two, where we finished off last week where we read, but Jesus would not entrust himself to them for knew or people, and he did not need any testimony about mankind.

He knew what was in each person. So some of the writers have suggested this is just a follow on, but I don't read Nicodemus that way. As we press into his story, I think he's a man that comes with a genuineness of heart. He talks too little to be someone who comes with ulterior motives. If you read the other stories around Pharisees, they talk talk.

They press these questions that are somewhat obnoxious, but Nicodemus seems to be there to listen. But he's a man who is definitely confused about Jesus. Nicodemus, I would suggest arrives in the dark, looking for light, darkness, and light play on both a physical and metaphorical level. In this passage, it is dark.

But he also comes in a spiritual place of darkness and uncertainty. He wants that illumination. He wants to understand just who Jesus is and what he means, and he comes because he's seen something. He came to Jesus at night and said, rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who's come from God for no one could perform the signs you were doing if God were not with him.

He's seen enough of Jesus to know that something's going on. But Jesus comes outside of the sort of spaces he would expect someone sent from God to come from. He comes from the wrong place, and he doesn't come with this kingly demeanor. He comes more on a spiritual level, and Jesus straightaway, this is one of the things I love about Jesus, just throws him a huge curve ball.

He asks this question or makes this statement, and Jesus says this to him. Jesus said, very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born, and you might have again, but I've put from above. I'll explain that in just a moment, to Nicodemus. As a Pharisee, every Jewish person had access to the kingdom of God.

All he had to do was to live some kind of a right life. You had to obey Torah and you'd experience resurrection. In the New Kingdom and now Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God that has a different level of access. As we look. It's no longer about where you are born, but some other element.

No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born from above. There's a complication in how we talk about this passage, and maybe you've heard the phrase being born again. It's a phrase that became really popular during the mid 20th century, especially. In the US it's a perfectly good phrase, and you can hold onto it if you want but there's a problem with it and it's this, the word no.

Then it means above, but it also means, again. So you can talk about the language of being born again. So long as you realize that this word has this like spatial quality, it has this kind of like heavenly element to it. This is not born a again on human terms. And this is exactly the confusion that Nicodemus will have.

Jesus teaches about being born from above and Nicodemus replies this way. How can someone be born when they are old? As soon as Jesus says this, Nicodemus picks up on the earthly level of it. It's like there's no second birth right? He actually phrases it very specifically, like surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born.

And everyone says of course not Nicodemus. It's, Jesus teaches about being born from above and Nicodemus can only understand this physical level of can you actually be born again in, in some kind of physical. Realm. Jesus keeps pressing him, keeps adding more elements to his understanding of of being born again.

Jesus censored very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and spirit, and there's been all sorts of arguments over the years by what he means by water. And Spirit, does he mean baptism? Does he mean actually the process of birth? Like the birthing what is, but without getting too graphic on it, 'cause kids in the room and stuff most people have come to the conclusion that this is the physical element of sex that's required to be born.

But then in Jesus' term, there's a different kind of birth. And that thing is not a physical thing, it's not an earthly thing, but it's a spiritual. Thing, and he actually unpacks it again in the next verse, flesh. Gives birth to flesh. Physical gives birth to physical, but the spirit gives birth to spirit.

And that's capitalized there if you like, because he's now talking. In Greek, pneumas gives birth to Numa. The spirit of God gives birth to your spirit. He's talking about some experience that awakens the soul in a whole new sort of way. Jesus talks to a man who has expectations about what the kingdom of God will look like and who's included.

Remember last week when we talked about the temple and about how Jesus is suddenly expanding? Who gets access to that? Concerningly, at least to begin with. The Nicodemus. Suddenly now he's talking about who has access to God at all? Who has access to this kingdom? Jesus is saying it's not about where you were born, it's about who you were born to on a spiritual.

Level. And so you should not be surprised at me saying, you must be born from above. You must be born again by that spiritual experience. Jesus is not talking about earthly things it seems. It seems Jesus is talking about physical things, and to help us understand that, he gives us one big overarching metaphor.

Which if you've stepped outside probably makes sense. He gives us one metaphor to work with the wind. He goes on to say, this experience can be seen in that the wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.

This is an experience where you might see it. In the aftermath, you might see the change of life that this spiritual encounter brings, but you can't watch it happen in the flesh. This is a distinctly other realm thing that he's talking about. So it is with everyone who was born of the spirit. It's like the wind that kind of blows and you don't know where it's going or where it came from.

You don't know why it blows in different directions, but you hear it and you get the results of it. And after all of that, Nicodemus simply replies with his only question that he has left. How can this be? We're now in completely different categories than anything Nicodemus has experienced. Nicodemus knows where you are born and who you are educated by, and now Jesus tells him everyone can have their own experience of God for themselves.

Jesus has been seen as a rabbi. Nicodemus even calls him a rabbi. And everyone knew what it meant to follow a rabbi, and some of that is true of Jesus. But now Nicodemus is starting to understand that following Jesus will not look like Nicodemus expected. All bets are off when it comes to Jesus. There's no normality, no expectations.

It's all fresh or new life. When he expresses this, Nicodemus gets this answer from Jesus. You are Israel's teacher. Said Jesus, and you do not understand these things you should understand shortly. Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.

Jesus feels like Nicodemus should understand the level at which Jesus is talking and then he gives him this. That's his final phrase. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe how then will I speak? How will then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? Jesus says, Nicodemus, I'm telling you about something that happens here on Earth, and yet there's this whole heavenly realm that's well beyond that.

How will you understand that if you don't understand this? Verse 13, no one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven. The son of man, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the world. And as so the son of man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

Jesus is referencing an old story back in a book called Numbers The Children of Israel, the Jewish people have sinned, they've been bitten by snakes. Lots to that story, but not time to cover it today. And God tells Moses to hold up a bronze. S so serpent. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, then.

When anyone was bitten by the snake, a snake, and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. I'm just gonna give you that story at face value. That's the story Jesus references. He says that somewhere, his story resembles this one, Leslie Newgen. Writer on the book of John, brilliant book called The Light has Come.

If you are interested in going deeper on this book, it is not an ascent into the heavens to receive dominion and glory and kingship, but a very different kind of lifting up. He must share the place of sinful God, forsaken man only so the righteousness of God can become. Hours. So that is as quickly as I can a summary of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

And as important as this conversation is, I think it's what comes next, that the real magic is if Jesus's words are taken at face value here, something happens on a spiritual realm. There is some kind of new access to God that he's talking about. But I have a question for us, is Jesus burying. The lead, maybe you've heard this expression.

It's a writing expression, a journalism expression when you write about something for a newspaper, for an article. The most important thing you can do is start with the most significant piece of information. Nora Efran. The writer, former journalist, film writer maker, says this in her journalism class, she was presented with a piece of information.

Next Thursday, May 28th, the faculty of this high school will attend a special training in Sacramento, featuring the anthropologist, Margaret Mead and others. The faculty will learn new teaching methods. The principal announced. Today, this group of journalism students were presented with this article and told to write an article on this piece of information.

So they went away and thought about what was presented here, and they came back with their answers, with their piece of writing, and the journalism teacher took every one of their papers and ripped them up. Gotta fail instantly. They all talked about all of the details. Of what were presented here. They talked about the special training.

They talked about Margaret Mead and what she meant to education, and talked about the new teaching methods that would be installed, and the teacher told them all that they had all missed the lead. They'd all buried the lead in journalism speak, and the teacher said this, the lead is clear to me. The lead is, this school is canceled on Thursday the 28th.

There's no school without teachers. You have to have someone there to teach somewhere that gives us an image of what it is to lose the main point. And when you think about everything we've learned, as important as it is, compare that to what comes next. Now, if you've got an older version of the scriptures in front of you, you might see these next words in red.

A lot of them, more modern versions tend to think that this is John's commentary on what Jesus says. But this is where we get to in verse 16. There really is the heartbeat of this passage, I think, for all of us. For God so loved the world, for God so loved the cosmos. It's actually where we get the word cosmetology from, which means to put in order.

I'll leave that with you. I'm not sure where to go with that for God so loves the ordered spaces. God so loves this wider world. Again, brand new information to someone like Nicodemus who would've strongly believed that God loved specific portions of the world, but certainly not the whole thing. The good news begins here.

This is the foundational point for it all. The good news begins here. God so loved the world somewhere in an eternity past the God of the universe. Purpose to make himself. A people and knowing all of the ways that they might fail and become broken, they were loved. God made people like you and I and knowing all the ways that we might fail as individuals, we were loved.

Isn't that an incredible gift ev? Everything that you have done, God had some sense of this was perfectly possible and you were loved. And everything that you will do in the future, God knew, was perfectly possible and you were loved. That's quite startling. I think when you actually take time to process it in all the ways that you might have failed and you've had some sense of surely, God can't just re-up on me as a person, that was all fully expected and no surprise whatsoever.

The good news begins here with God so loved the world. The first focus is on the one who gives the gift. The first focus is on the one who gives the gift, not the gift itself. We'll get there. It initially starts with who God is, the writer, Carl Bart, who just put together one of the most incredibly in depth excursus on theology in general.

His church dogmatics comes in multiple volumes and almost no one has read all of it. He's the most extensive writer, perhaps in history, was once walking through a seminary. And because of how famous he was, suddenly hundreds, if not thousands of students were following along wherever he went. And they would throw question after question at him as he walked.

And finally one student got close enough to ask a question that was deep in their hearts and they said this. Dr. Bart, after everything you have written, after everything you have studied, what is the single most important theological piece of knowledge that you can share with us? And Carl Bart, quick witted as ever off the tip of his tongue, simply said, Jesus loves me.

This I know for the Bible tells me. Brilliant answer to a really silly question. It's it's the central piece to everything. Wendell Berry, the poet theologian, said this. I take literally the statement in the gospel of John, that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love.

And that insofar as it is redeem redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that di divine love incar and in dwelling in the world, summons the world always towards wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God. The foundation of all good news is in this passage.

As I was preparing this, I thought about all the different levels that the metaphor works, and simply this was the only lead that I could come up with. God loves the world. Usually in the weeks I'm preaching, I'll wake up in the middle of the night on Saturday night and just think about what I have to say.

And this week I didn't think about anything. I just sat there or lay there in bed feeling the depths of this, that you are wonderfully loved. You are wonderfully loved. Only then does John focus on the gift the giver gives for God so loved the world that he gave extraordinary extravagantly at just the right time.

He's won and only son. That whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. That's the gift. Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have this life eternal. Something Nicodemus would've found very difficult to believe, but the last line stands out to me too.

Because perhaps you've experienced religious condemnation at its worst, you felt that sense of guilt that can be brought to church, that can land in these kind of spaces. And when we read words like this, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn it, but to save the world through him. We wonder why it is.

That churches can be such awfully condemning places. The whole point of this mission is to bring life and light, not condemnation, and yet that's where we often land. This good news is extensive and runs all through the rest of the New Testament. In Romans 15, a writer named Paul, a follower of Jesus says this, the spirit you have received does not make you slave so that you live in fear again.

Rather the spirit you receive brought about your adoption. Does sonship an air kind of thing that suggested you get to inherit something and that's why we get to cry. Father, when we talk to God, the good news is not just simply that God gave his son, but we get to join in this beautiful family story that's being written.

A friend of mine some years ago said to me, I understand adoption. In this terms more better than almost anyone I've come across. His father had left when he was just 18 months old, and so his mom had remarried and there came a time when he was told by his mom and his stepdad that they got to choose as brothers whose name they would have as their surname.

His two older brothers that had a closer relationship with his dad before he left, chose to keep their biological father's name. But Matt, not remembering, his biological father distinctly chose to keep. His stepfather's name. All of that was a simple legal process that just got signed off and instantly his name became his stepfather's last name.

But that wasn't enough for his stepfather. His stepfather came to him one day and said, I love that you want to take my name, but I have a question for you. Would you let me adopt you? I'd love you to be my son, not just in name, but in reality. To change the name cost a few dollars to submit some court documents to adopt cost thousands.

But to his stepfather, the price was well worth paying. This is the kind of news we read here, that God at incredible costs chose to make us his children in a very specific way. This is good news that you are not just. Loved you. Ado are adopted. Part of the family CS Lewis once said this about what happens here and about how good this good news is.

He said he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only. I understand this world. I feel it just like you do, the sense to the need to achieve, to own things, to build a reputation for yourself. And what it seems we're told here is all of that, while it might matter to a degree, will never increase your status in kingdom eyes.

The man who has nothing and God has just as much as the one who has God only. Somewhere. This is a thing that I can talk about all day and I'm not going to, but you can't ultimately know outside of God sharing with you personally. There's a reason that Paul writes in a letter called Ephesians. I Long and I pray for you to understand the love of God, but it's so high, so wide and so deep and that you could never really understand it unless God shares it with you himself.

He goes on to say this in John, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned. Already. This isn't to criticize people that struggle with faith. That's not the purpose. Jesus, here in the terms, oh, John here in the terms believe is really talking about who is willing to participate in following Jesus.

All of his disciples struggled with what it was to believe in what Jesus was doing and who he was, but they stayed with him. And if you are someone here would, that will put your hand up and say, this thing to me just comes hard. It's just so difficult to believe. Stay on the journey with Jesus. Keep pursuing him.

Keep following him. We don't have time for this. I'm gonna have to skip it out. This is the verdict, John says in verse 19 to 20, light has come into the world, but people love darkness instead of light because the deeds were evil. Anyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light. So they may plainly be seen that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. The gift is beautiful. We have been given a rare gift, but don't lose sight of the giver in the joy of the gift. The giver in this passage comes first. We are deeply loved by the God of the universe, and his gift to us is him.

His life. Nicodemus doesn't get this straight away, he leaves without understanding, but one day he will understand. When we read in John chapter 19 at Jesus crucifixion that John Joseph of Aaron Athea was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who had earlier visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of Mer and Aloes, about 75 pounds somewhere.

Nicodemus not understanding straight away. Continues to stay close to Jesus. And that's my reminder, my invite. Wherever you find yourself in this journey of uncertainty, stay close to Jesus, continue to pursue after him. And I believe that somewhere just like Nicodemus, you'll experience the life that God has for you.

Jesus, thank you for this passage. A beautiful lead story. You love us. You love this world as broken and messed up as it might be. You care for us deeply. Help us to experience that in new ways, despite the fact that it's height, it's depth, it's width, far beyond anything we can grasp. Help us to come to know that deep truth.

We are deeply loved by the good God of the universe. Amen.