Reborn
Notes
Transcript
Have you ever experienced total darkness?
Perhaps as you remember a time as a kid, when you went into the closet, closed the door, and turned off the light? Or maybe, you have spent time climbing through a cave and decided to try turning off the lights for a few minutes?
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a podcast on dark retreats. Invited on the show was a man who has built bunkers in the ground that are designed to be a functional space to live in total darkness and without any sound. Some people go on retreats for a day, others for several days, and others up to a year.... Can you imagine not being able to see or hear anything????
I don’t know about you, but I am not particularly interested. And before I go on, I want to make sure I make this clear, I am not advocating for “Dark Retreats.” Some people may have good intentions but these retreats are tied up in a meditation practice that ultimately elevates self, to find the god within, and the god they are talking about is not Jesus.
However, I share this with you for two reasons. One is to simply alert you to something you should probably be aware of in our ever changing culture. Secondly, because I listened to this podcast wondering if this practice could possibly be built on a distorted truth.
When the founder of this “Dark Retreat” was asked, “Why would someone want to go on one of these retreats?” Listen to what he said: He said “People emerge from the dark and they have heard phrases like “be here now” or “be present” but it is a whole other thing when you live it moment after moment and day after day. There is no escaping the reality where all that exists is right now: is you in a space where nothing is going to come to deliver you to freedom or to bring you happiness, so you ultimately really get intimate with this question, “What are you waiting for?”
This is a profound question. But it is only a profound question when it is asked in the appropriate context and there is adequate time to evaluate your heart posture before the Lord. This morning, without going into a cave, I want to ask you to stop and take a step back, ask this question of yourself before the Lord, “God, what am I waiting for?”
We have been in a series called “Light in the Darkness.” In this series, we are considering a background idea, how we as people can live busy lives, fun lives, focused lives, all in all, distracted lives. Distracted by everything around us from the one thing we should devote our focus and attention. Today, we are taking a look at John 3, where a man comes to Jesus with questions. In the interaction between them, it is almost as if this man is trying to stop and evaluate his heart and his mind by asking a question. Interestingly, Jesus responds in a way where it seems He may be asking the same question to this man “What are you waiting for?”
For context, lets start by recalling that we started this series in John 1. If you were to continue to read from where we left off, you would find that only a few things have happened. Jesus is just beginning His ministry, in fact, it is likely that only a few months have gone by since He was baptized by John.
Take a look at John 2:23–25 “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.”
Its curious, how many believed, yet Jesus didn’t meet them in their belief. They saw the signs, they recognized the authority and the power. They saw with their own eyes, the power of God. So they believed. But was their belief genuine? Did they believe in Jesus in the sense of trusting Him as savior? Or did they have a shallowness of faith, and simply believed that he was a man sent from God?
When I was 15, I found myself asking God over and over again to just show me a sign. For several months I found new ways to express my question to the Lord and several weeks into asking this of the Lord, the Lord revealed something to me. It was about my heart posture. I wanted so badly to see some miraculous sign from the Lord, proving that He was real enough. I wasn’t questioning if He was real or even if He was present. I knew He was both real and present.... I was questioning if He was real enough! Real enough for me to trust Him. For me to surrender my life to Him. Real enough to actually forgive me of my sin and help me work through my daily struggles. I wanted to know that if I jump on this ship, committed, all in, will He get frustrated and give up on me before the end of the journey.
You can know all about God and never know saving faith. You can witness God’s power on display through the un-imaginable, miraculous miracle, and never learn to trust God. The question for all of us is, “What are we waiting for?” What is holding us back from truly embracing and trusting Him?
This is the question that Nicodemus has in the core of his being as he comes to Jesus, wondering, probing, wrestling with the reality that Jesus might be the light that the Jews have been waiting for since the fall of Adam and Eve.
John 3:1–2 “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 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.””
Nicodemus comes as a pharisee, who is a ruler of the Jews. A man who comes with great zeal for carrying out and following every last commandment of God’s law. He was likely morally upstanding, a powerful leader, we see that in his interaction with Jesus he is both kind and respectful, but as a teacher of God’s law, Nicodemus is extremely knowledgeable.
Exalting Jesus in John Nicodemus’s Religious Credentials (John 3:1–2)
If Nicodemus were around today, here’s what you would think: Man, I wish we had hired him instead of our pastor. He’s got much better credentials. He’s more serious about keeping the law. He’s made far fewer mistakes. He’s more humble. He knows the Bible better. He comes from a more prominent position. He’s everything a church would look for in a pastor and more.
He comes to Jesus saying “We know that you are a teach come from God.” There was no question about where Jesus came from. But there were still many questions.
John 3:3 “Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.””
immediately, Jesus responds to Nicodemus and lets him know that even as a teacher of the law, as a morally strong individual, as someone who is following and taking God’s law seriously - these “Credentials” are not enough to save him. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or where you come from. You must be born again.
John 3:4-15
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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 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.”
9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 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. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
In these verses, Jesus makes it clear that the only way to get to heaven, the only way to be with God, is to be born again. It doesn’t matter if you are most moral or the least. Salvation is when you have received the Spirit of God which has been made available to you through the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross. And a litmus test of your salvation could be to consider this question
“Is the Spirit of God transforming you from the inside out?”
There are far to many “Religious people,” far to many “Christians” who are going to hell. Its almost as if Jesus is sitting with Nicodemus as a representation of Him sitting before us here this morning. Many of us may be like Nicodemus, we are moral, we grew up in the church, who know what they should say, what they should think, how they should respond. They know the information of the word of God but they are not experiencing the power of the word of God. They spend time reading their Bible and not in prayer. They learn from the word of God and change outwardly but their heart posture remains the same.
Its as if we want to be close enough to the light to see, but not too close to the light that it exposes our sin. We are okay acknowledging that we are not perfect but we struggle to have genuine times of confession with the Lord and other people.
Notice how Jesus moves from verse 15 and then into 16:
John 3:14–18 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
You might be asking “What is Jesus talking about?” If you go to Numbers 21:4-9, we see the Isrealites wondering through the wildness. God sent Moses to free them from slavery in Egypt and now they are tired. Freedom is not as easy as they thought. Traveling with all your possessions is difficult and challenging. So they complained. Against God and Moses. So the Lord sent serpents and many people died. Then in verse 7 it says:
Numbers 21:7–9 “7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
Its a reminder that God has not abandoned us. In fact, God is with us and is providing for us. But as we see in this passage we have to remain humble. We have to acknowledge and confess our sin before God and those we have sinned against. Then, we have to obey, by turning to the Lord and stepping out in faith. In looking at the bronze serpent up on the tree, people were healed - not because of their strict adherence to the law of God, but because they had obedient faith that believed God would save them.
Jesus is now saying to Nicodemus, to be born again means to have obedient faith. Beyond that, to be born again also means to be healed. You have to confess your sin, even if you are moral you are still a sinner and you still sin every day. You need to stop and look up at the tree where Jesus died in your place, for your sin, believing that God will save you.
Look at verses 16-17
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Consider how far God has gone for you! Consider, that His love is so vast and deep that He was willing to break perfect unity with His Son, by allowing Jesus to take the debt of your sin and place it on Himself.
Medical healing story
God is not trying to get you to be a rule follower or hold you to a standard that you cannot measure up. If you want to try you can, He wont force you to believe. But you will never be good enough. You will never come close to measuring up. Because its not about what you do or what you don’t do. Its about the fact that there is a sickness in your heart and the prognosis is damning. But out of His great love toward us, He sends Jesus as the antidote.