[Music]
Those were made for our hymns. I don’t know why it got an extra verse, but I didn’t skip. We didn’t skip one, did we? I didn’t think so.
Okay, if you would, please turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 3.
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 are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these 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 the flesh is flesh, and 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 its 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.’
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 to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.’
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Please pray with me. Lord, you have given us your Word. You have given us the testimony of your Spirit within that confirms your Word. Help us to accept and believe these earthly things. Help us so that we may trust the spiritual things, the heavenly things of which this Word promises to us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now remember, Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews. He was an important and influential person, and he was concerned with people’s perception of him. Thus, when he went to inquire of Jesus, a mere Galilean carpenter whom people were believing to be a teacher come from God, he went to see him at night. Perhaps he was greatly concerned about his own reputation and didn’t want to be seen humbling himself before this new Rabbi from the backwoods.
Perhaps he went to test Jesus to learn for certain whether or not he is the real deal, as he seems, or if he was just another populist pretender preparing to promote revolution. Or perhaps Nicodemus feared what public knowledge of his visit might do for Jesus, that people might consider it as public support or affirmation of what he taught, thereby granting Jesus an official endorsement — a seal of approval from the religious establishment that would give him social legitimacy. Any of which would be exceptionally problematic if Jesus was not who or what he seemed to be.
Nicodemus’ initial confession, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him,’ can also be understood as a subtle challenge to Jesus, even as it affirms him, effectively saying, ‘Show me a sign and prove that you actually are a teacher come from God.’
Considering this perspective and attitude, Jesus’s declaration, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,’ carries a different kind of weight and authority. Here, Jesus, speaking as a prophet of God, challenges and contradicts the worldview of Nicodemus and the Pharisees, as well as the great Jewish presupposition that the kingdom of God was meant to be carnal and worldly, consisting of an earthly Israelite kingdom filled with Abraham’s descendants.
That kind of assumption is why so many Jews and why so many other people today miss the truth about Jesus, because they truly believe that heaven can be made or found here on earth, while the good things of this life and of this world are God’s true plan and hope for us. By contradicting and correcting Nicodemus’ carnal perspective about God’s kingdom, Jesus reminds him and us that the kingdom of God was, is, and always shall be, first and foremost, a heavenly and spiritual kingdom, even as it is expressed here on earth.
Thus, he explains the requirement of being born again, of being born spiritually alive to both be able to see and enter into the spiritual kingdom, God’s heavenly rest. To reinforce his point, that God is the only person able to grant us and perform this spiritual birthing, not through our logic or reason or even by moral living, after Jesus insists that we must be born again, he goes on to say, ‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its 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.’
Reminding us that just as we cannot capture or control the wind, claiming it for ourselves, so too we cannot capture, control, or claim God’s Holy Spirit unless it comes intentionally and directly from the Lord God himself.
Now, naturally, Nicodemus was shocked and surprised by this. He was incredulous, because what Jesus said went against everything he had ever been taught and believed. Certainly God chose their exalted father Abraham, renaming him Abraham, the father of many, and gave him many promises for him and his descendants. Yet Jesus was saying that neither natural descent from Abraham nor just following his obedient example was enough to merit entrance into the kingdom of God.
So his response of, ‘How can these things be?’ is completely understandable and expected. ‘What do you mean I cannot work my way or deserve my way or inherit my way into heaven?’
Jesus answered him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’
See, Jesus’ reply is more indicative and rhetorical rather than a question. It’s better understood as, ‘You are a teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things.’
Jesus knew who Nicodemus was and he knew what this Pharisee misunderstood better than Nicodemus could. Thus, Jesus was willing and wanting to spend this time with him to correct him, to teach him, and to help him better understand for his own good and for the good of others.
Just as Nicodemus had earlier remarked, ‘Rabbi, we know that,’ referencing others of like mind to himself, Jesus also speaks in the first person plural as he continues, ‘Truly, truly, 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?’
But Jesus wasn’t using a royal ‘we’ here. The context is clear that he’s speaking about himself and his followers, the believing disciples and other witnesses to his divine signs. He and they were speaking about what they know, telling about what they had seen and heard, what they had experienced and received, what they had felt. They were testifying and giving evidence about Jesus, God, and his kingdom. They were telling it to everyone who would listen.
They were sharing the good news that they had received, as a starving man will tell other hungry people where they may find and receive bread. They were preaching hope as dying men will preach to those who are perishing. However, their words and evidence were apparently being rejected, denied, or just plain ignored by some — by Nicodemus or others like him.
Later on in John 9, we find a story about Jesus healing a man born blind, and in that story, the disbelief of the Pharisees sees his unfold display. They disbelieved the testimony of people who knew this guy and were witnesses to his healing. It was not until they heard the testimony of the man’s parents, who affirmed his congenital blindness, that some of them finally believed that a miracle occurred. They believed the fact that a miracle happened without believing how or by whom, without believing the cause.
So it seems that even then, people disbelieved the factual occurrence of Jesus’s practical miracles, which leads us to wonder, when Nicodemus came to meet Jesus, did he come believing or disbelieving the signs that he had seen or heard about? Did he suspect Jesus of faking his miracles and all his good works? Was that what prompted him to come? Was Jesus no better than someone like the false prophet and deceiver Benny Hinn?
But whether or not Nicodemus was believing when he came to Jesus, we are confident that faith was confirmed within him before he left that night. When Jesus asked him, ‘If I have told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ Jesus was not being mean or harsh; he was helping Nicodemus to understand and reason out the faith that was beginning to grow within him.
Jesus forced him to think about it, asking, ‘If you do not believe these truths that you can see, feel, hear, smell, then why or how can you believe it when I tell you truths that you cannot see, feel, hear, smell?’ Believing the latter without believing the former is irrational; it is illogical, especially when it comes from the same source. Because if the first is unconvincing, then the second has no basis for credibility.
The only thing which can convince us to believe the second but not the first is the blindness of sin, a willful blindness, a complicity with Satan’s deception by denying the reality in preference of fantasy. But is that not what many people in the world accuse Christians of doing — preferring fantasy to reality?
I would instead accuse them of projecting their own fantasies and falsities onto us. They say that we worship a God whom we cannot see, feel, hear, or smell, whom we cannot know is real and true, when they freely admit that the things that they worship are certainly not divine, nor all-powerful. They laugh at us because we believe in an omnipotent and sovereign God who created the universe and everything in it.
That we believe in an unchanging God who created mankind in his image as two immutable genders, male and female. A gracious God who took on flesh, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died an excruciating death, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven to rescue his beloved chosen children from our bondage to sin and Satan.
They say that we cannot know any of this is true when the evidence for it surrounds us. The universe, therefore, had to be created by someone. Out of nothing, nothing is produced, or to say another way, no thing comes from nothing. It did not spontaneously create itself, because if it did, reasonably it should happen again, and it should happen often.
If the universe was not created, then there’s no purpose in it. If the universe was eternal and not a creation, then it has no implicit value. Life, human life especially, would not matter. The propagation of the human race happens only through the union of male and female, of sperm and egg. No matter how much they try to mutilate the human form, only men can produce sperm, and only women generate eggs. Their visible lie cannot transform the underlying truth, and even those who argue most emphatically against this will ultimately deny it, because their t-shirts are only sold in men’s and women’s sizes on Amazon.com.
Look it up.
Regarding the humanity of Jesus, his virgin birth, miracles, death, and resurrection, although we don’t possess any physical archaeological evidence of him, we do have enough testimony to be confident both in the fact of his existence and why Christians believe he is who he says he is.
The eleven apostles and Paul all willingly suffered torture and martyrdom without recanting. They died as witnesses to the truth that they knew, believed, and proclaimed. No person would suffer their deaths for something that they knew was a lie. Even the opposition records his existence. Jesus is mentioned in the Jewish Talmud, a fifth-century document, where he and his teachings are condemned. He is condemned as a sorcerer.
The beliefs of Christians in Jesus are also mentioned in correspondence with the Roman Emperor Claudius, the one who expelled the Jews from Rome, which included Priscilla and Aquila, where Jesus is ignorantly called ‘Cresus’ and named as the instigating cause of a series of riots in Rome.
So you see, because we can see and believe these earthly things, we also have the confidence to believe the heavenly things, the promises of God that scripture proclaims to us. Meanwhile, our detractors, they trust the science, right? They may suggest that since they can point to a mountain and identify the different types of rock that comprise it—verifiable, visible facts that we can believe—then they can also argue that they can describe the things that make up the rocks, you know, elements and atoms, things that are comprised of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are comprised of even smaller components, all of which the average person among us will never see or be able to verify as the truth.
I mean, believing that takes faith.
But while they continue to split and divide physical matter into even smaller constituent parts, science cannot tell us what the most base unit of being is, but our reliable faith does — the eternal Word and power of God, which sustains all things.
They argue that the universe was created by a Big Bang. They argue that all matter, all that is or ever will be, long ago was condensed into the single, tiniest point as a singularity in non-space when it suddenly exploded and began expanding further and further apart, randomly colliding and smashing together to form planets, stars, and solar systems. But they cannot tell us where this singularity came from, nor can they tell us why it exploded, but our reliable faith does — by his word, God first created and then he said, ‘Let there be light.’
See, all those who remain outside of Christ find it easier to believe things like that, things that cannot be proven and require more faith than faith in Jesus because their faith lacks a foundation upon truth. They believe in things that cannot be proven, and they disbelieve the evidence which is plainly displayed before their eyes.
Seeing is believing, but it’s not necessarily so with the things of God. Believing them takes the faith given us by the Holy Spirit and regeneration, allowing us to believe and trust what we cannot see except with the eyes of faith. If you do not or cannot believe the physical and observably real things which our God has done—creation and his works of providence, or the miracles and the many signs and wonders that Jesus performed—then you cannot and will not believe in or trust in the spiritual things that he has promised his children.
If you do not receive and believe, trust in, and have faith in the real Jesus — the Jesus of the Bible, the Son of God and Son of Man, the Jesus who is born of a virgin, miracle lived, a sinless life, moral exemplar, performed many public signs and wonders as a prophet of God, again miracles, who raised the dead to life and died a criminal’s death, unjustly convicted and executed, who raised himself from the dead and ascended to heaven to reign at the right hand of God the Father, giving him sovereignty over all things — if you can’t believe that, then you have not been born again.
You have not received forgiveness for your sins. You are not at peace with God. You do not possess eternal life, and you are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and the Lord God is not your Father, nor is Jesus your brother. But nonetheless, he remains your king, and you will be judged by him.
Jesus will later tell Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,’ and that’s us. We have not seen or encountered Jesus in the flesh, and yet we believe. We believe because we possess the evidence and the apostles’ testimony concerning what they knew.
Here in scripture, it is trustworthy, reliable, and true. It contains truth and it is reasonable. Furthermore, it’s God’s Holy Spirit who confirms its truth within us so that we may believe and have faith.
So while we cannot know what degree of faith Nicodemus had when he visited Jesus, we can be sure that he was not all the way there yet. Surely he did not yet believe in Jesus’ day as the Lord God Almighty, but he certainly believed that people were saying things about Jesus as a prophet, a man of God — things which would have brought him searching. Although he seems to have been starting to believe the things they were saying about Jesus, he does not yet seem to believe all of Jesus’s words.
What he said was about to change — and we can be certain of that because the very next thing that Jesus said to him was like a theological nuclear bomb. After asking, ‘If you will not believe me concerning the things you can see, then how will you believe me when I tell you about things you cannot see?’ Jesus tells Nicodemus, ‘No one has ascended to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.’
Now, maybe that statement does not carry the same weight for us anymore, or possess the same shock value because of our familiarity with the gospels, but that statement would have struck Nicodemus and rocked him to the core.
Because Jesus first suggests that he does possess the authority to speak concerning heavenly things and be trusted. Then he suggests that only someone who came down from heaven can speak about those things reliably — reaffirming that no one has ascended to heaven to become able to speak about such things except for he who has first descended from heaven.
Remember Elijah? He ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire after his ministry as a prophet when he spoke the word of the Lord, but he did not first descend. Enoch? He was translated or taken away into heaven by the Lord because he walked with God, but he did not first descend. Even Moses — Moses ascended to meet with the Lord, but he did not cross a threshold and enter into heaven to bring down God’s law and covenant.
The only person in Old Testament scripture who may be described as descending from heaven is the Son of Man, from one of Daniel’s visions. Jesus implies that because he can say these things, that because he knows these things, then therefore he must be the Son of Man.
We know that the Son of Man was one of Jesus’s favorite expressions to use whenever he taught. We understand from the other gospel writers that whenever he used it, he meant it in regards to himself, even as his recorded words did not often directly claim the title, thus avoiding causing extra offense.
So what is so special about the Son of Man? Why would Jesus’s claim of it be shocking, offensive, or dangerous, especially to the mind of a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews like Nicodemus?
To understand this, we need to know where the importance of the term and title comes from. First, throughout most of the Old Testament, ‘Son of Man’ is an expression used in reference to a generic, hypothetical person, as a general human. Secondly, throughout the writings of Ezekiel, it’s used by the angelic beings to identify him whenever they spoke to him during his visions. They are always calling Ezekiel ‘Son of Man.’
There’s a third use, and this instance is what gives the title the substantive weight that Jesus drew on. It’s rooted in Daniel 7:13-14. During one of Daniel’s apocalyptic visions, he writes, ‘I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of Man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.’
Daniel saw in his vision one like a Son of Man. He saw a divine person — not an angel or a man — but someone who appeared as a man. Then this divine Son of Man went to the Ancient of Days, the Lord Yahweh God the Father, where he was given glory and everlasting dominion over the whole of creation. He was made sovereign over all things and given the authority of God. He was given a kingdom that shall not be destroyed, echoing God’s promise to King David: ‘When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.’
Also echoing God’s declaration to the prophet Isaiah: ‘To me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear allegiance.’
So Daniel describes an event — which Paul, another good Pharisee, will interpret as being fulfilled in Jesus. ‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’
This one who was like a Son of Man must also be the Son of David, heir to the kingdom of Israel, and also Yahweh’s divine throne itself.
So here, while speaking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, Jesus, calling himself the Son of Man, declared himself to be the Christ, the Messiah, the rightful heir to David’s throne, and the sovereign over all creation as the Lord himself. Here is the crux of the matter: what Jesus said to Nicodemus, if untrue, was expressed in total blasphemy. Minimally, by assigning himself this title, Jesus just claimed to be equal to God, if not the Word himself.
So Nicodemus was faced with a binary decision: believe or disbelieve. Nicodemus faced C.S. Lewis’s dilemma concerning Jesus’s identity, forced to decide whether he is a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.
Nicodemus had only two possible responses after this. He could believe, trust Jesus, and continue to listen, or he could decry Jesus as a blasphemer, as an apostate, close his ears, and immediately flee, and then work to see Jesus brought to justice for offending God’s honor. Because his testimony — Nicodemus’s testimony alone — would not be enough to convict him.
But what did he do? He stayed and continued to listen to Jesus, not to trap him, but to learn from him, to receive Jesus’s testimony, to trust and believe him. Nicodemus, a guy who should know best, responded to Jesus’s claim positively with faith and trust, even as he still lacked understanding.
This shows that it is okay for someone to believe, but yet still not understand what they believe. We all believe that our cell phones work, but not one of us really understands how they work. Our faith in Christ is kind of like that. We do not have to understand all of the hows, whys, and whats of what we believe, but we should still try. Nicodemus tried; he kept on listening and studying, trying to understand what it was that he was believing about Jesus.
So if it is okay for Nicodemus to believe in Jesus, then it is okay for us, too. He did not have to set aside reason or logic, nor did he have a blind faith.
He became convinced in both his heart and his mind that Jesus is the Son of Man. Jesus came down to earth from the heavens above to tell us about the things of God; to awaken us and our hearts to the spiritual reality of our sin alongside our need of forgiveness, as well as God’s gracious love for his chosen people.
He came down from heaven to tell us about heavenly things, and so to help us believe them, he showed us the earthly things. Then, after showing himself alive to the disciples after he had been dead and buried, he ascended back into heaven, where he now rules over an everlasting dominion until such time as he returns to set all things under his feet.
Paul writes, ‘For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed is death.’
Then, those of us who believe and trust in him, who have been regenerated by his Holy Spirit, born again, will be raised up and resurrected into eternal life with him in his glorious kingdom forever and ever. Amen.