Wycliffe Hall, Oxford November 1999
My text this morning is taken from John 3:1-12
A. John 3:1-2
It is the well known story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus.
He comes secretly by night to have a chat with Jesus.
Why?
i) Was it because he wanted to speak to Jesus in quiet?
ii)Or was it because he did not want it known / that he was speaking with a Galilean carpenter?
He is very polite: "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him". (John 3:2).
B. John 3:3
Jesus’ reply is to toss him an intellectual hand grenade. "You must be born again".
Not: " Well thank you Nicodemus for your kind words. So what can I do for you?
A bomb shell. " You must be born again"
1. Why did Jesus speak so abruptly to Nicodemus?
I think it is because Jesus knew his man.
He saw behind Nicodemus’ question.
Nicodemus, like many earnest Pharisees, / was looking for the day/ when the Kingdom of God would come.
So Jesus gets to the heart of the matter:
You want to see the kingdom of God - You must be born again. Straight to the point.
How did Jesus know his man?
I think the answer is two-fold
1. He spent a lot of time in prayer with the Father.
Let me give you a couple of examples
i. We read in Matt 14:23, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus
"....went up on a mountainside by himself to pray."
He needed time out during his heavy schedule to spend time with his Father.
Story: If Martin Luther had a heavy schedule on a particular day, he would get up a couple of hours earlier to spend more time with the Lord.
ii) My second Example is on the night before Jesus was crucified, he went out to the Mount of Olives as was his custom - to pray. (Luke 22:39-46). You recall his words:
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done" (Lk 22:42).
2. He spoke on His Father’s authority
Having spent time with God, he was intimate with what the Father was doing. He knew his calling and who had sent him.
We read of this, for example in John 14: 10 where Jesus says:
"...the words I say to you / are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing his work."
I have three application points this morning.
Application # 1
The greatest challenge that we are going to have in parish ministry is to find time to be with the Lord in a heavy schedule.
We are going to have pressures / that will keep us from prayer.
And if we go away from prayer/ we will lose our spiritual sharpness.
If we want to be effective in ministry, we need to have time for the Lord. This is the only way that we will have insights into the issues that people bring to us.
It is only then that we - like Jesus - will we "know the man".
Jesus knew his man and he got Nicodemus’ attention.
2. What was Jesus trying to do?
From the passage we can see that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a theologian. We read in verse 10 that he was Israel’s teacher. He was a member of the ruling Jewish council.
In other words, he was no intellectual slouch!!
He obviously recognised the authority Jesus had - by the signs and miracles Jesus performed.
Jesus gave him something to go away and think about.
Nicodemus’ whole mind-set was being challenged.
What was the key paradigm that Jesus was challenging?
It was that the Pharisees thought / that they made themselves fit for the Kingdom of God / by keeping the Law of Moses.
We can see this attitude reflected in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Gather in Luke 18:9-14
"The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself.
God, I thank you that I am not like other men - robbers, evildoers, adulterers - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get".
Jesus was challenging one of Nicodemus’ paradigms. Nicodemus, you can’t earn salvation , it is a free gift of God.
Application # 2.
My second application point is that it is easy for us to get stuck in our ways, especially the longer we are in ministry.
We need to be open fresh insights that God will show us.
Nicodemus was an old timer - he must have thought he had his theology cracked. I believe that is why Jesus challenged his mind-set.
For God says "For my thoughts are not your thoughts and neither are your ways my ways" Is 55:8
Story: When I was in Switzerland / working for Sandoz, a Swiss multinational / one of the questions I was asked - when they put me on a promotion list - was: "Is there anywhere in the world, you would not want to go?".
I went home that evening and discussed it with Maddy and rather rashly said to her:
"Well, I’ll never go back to England.
But if I ever go back to England, I’ll never go to an Anglican church.
And if I ever go to an Anglican church, I’ll never become a vicar.
"Your ways are not my ways" says the Lord.
3. What effect did Jesus’s words have on Nicodemus?
C. John 3:4-9
Nicodemus clearly was out of his depth. We see it in his response
"How can a man be born again"? he asked.
So Jesus explains: I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and of the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to Flesh and the Spirit gives birth to the Spirit.
As I was thinking about Jesus’ reply, it struck me that we can do nothing to earn it. IT IS A FREE GIFT FROM GOD
We can no more influence our spiritual rebirth / than we can choose our parents or the family into which we are born.
Birth comes through the Spirit - all you can do is experience it.
Just as our physical birth is a gift from our parents, so eternal life is a gift from God.
What effect did this have on Nicodemus.
We see he is still no wiser; ’How can this be?’ Nicodemus replied. (v.9)
And Jesus replies: " I tell you the Truth, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony."
In short, it requires a revelation from God. You recall in Matt 16:17, just after Peter has declared that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus says: Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah
FOR THIS WAS NOT REVEALED TO YOU BY MAN. BUT BY MY FATHER IN HEAVEN.
Although he could not comprehend these matters, despite being the outstanding teacher in Israel (v.10), I believe that Nicodemus went away thought about what Jesus said - and in time he became a believer. My reasons for thinking this are:
i) Firstly because the next time that Nicodemus appears in the Bible (Jn 19:39), he is with Joseph of Arimithea asking to bury Jesus’ body.
ii) My second reason is more circumstantial. There is no account of any one else being present at this interview with Jesus. So how did John find out about it?
Was he there - even though his presence was not recorded or was this part of Nicodemus’ later Christian testimony?
Application #3
My final application point is that in ministry, we must not be afraid to giving challenging answers. So often we spoon feed people and so we don’t stretch them.
Jesus’ explanation still left Nicodemus dazed!
We have to be careful to treat people as individuals - and to respond to them where they are.
When Jesus challenged he did it at the level they were at. Nicodemus was challenged at the root of his thinking. J
esus in John 4 challenged the Samaritan woman at the emotional level. He amazed her by telling her her life story.
If he’d said to the woman that she needed to be born again, it would have been as useful as explaining to her Einstein’s Law of Relativity!
As we are close to Jesus, we will listen to him and respond to his promptings.
We don’t need to be afraid when people don’t understand.
We need to be open to God’s prompting and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.
There are people who need to go away challenged - to wrestle with the what the Word of God says.
Nicodemus was one of them. Give time for the Word sink in.
As Alexander Pope said: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
Remember, we are not in the "quick-fix" business.
In conclusion I would like to remind you of my three points.
If we are going to share our faith successfully, we need to:
1. Know our man.
We can only do this if we spend time with the Lord
2. Be prepared for God to change our mindset.
3. Be prepared to challenge people when appropriate.
