In Search Of A Fresh Start

Introduction

How do you get to heaven? How do you get to the good place in the afterlife?

Now I know some of you might be sat there straight away thinking, well there's no such place, there's no such thing. Well humour me for a minute, if there were a place like heaven, how would you get there? What would be the entry criteria? Caroline and I watched a comedy a few years ago called The Good Place, that's the picture in the background behind that part there and they, part of the show was that they had an interview to see if they could stay in heaven and the questions were as follows, have you ever committed a serious crime such as murder, theft or arson? Have you ever had a vanity license number plates like mama's BMW Lexus for Liz or cool dude? Have you ever taken your shoes and socks off on a commercial airline flight? Have you ever reheated fish in an office microwave? Have you ever paid to hear music performed by the California funk rock band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers? And then the final question was, have you ever appeared on the American TV show The Bachelor or any of its spin-offs or suggested on social media that you were invested in any of the relationships on that programme? Now imagine for a second if those were the real questions. I'm especially worried because I own an album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

But imagine if that was it, if this was really what it was all about. You know, the criteria of whether you have a personalized number plate, that would be a scandal for eternity, wouldn't it? But Jesus here actually in this passage that we're looking at this morning shows us that the real question is even more shocking than that. The question that gets us into heaven is this: how many times have you been born? How many times have you been born? That's the question that Jesus poses us here. And if the answer is one, then Jesus says you cannot see the kingdom. You cannot enter the kingdom of God. You cannot go to heaven. Now if that sounds bamboozling, you're in good company. Jesus in our passage is talking to a man who's given the grand title of the teacher of Israel. He was the nation's teacher. And he doesn't get it either. So you're in good company if you're confused. But Jesus is going to teach him about this new birth that he's talking about. And he's going to teach that however religious or righteous or unrighteous or unreligious, all of us need a new birth, a fresh start with God. And so our first point is you must be born again. Have a look with me at verses one to three again.

You Must Be Born Again

"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 from no one can do these signs 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."

Jesus gets a visit after dark from a man called Nicodemus. Now Nicodemus, as we said, is no ordinary man. We're told here that he was a ruler of the Jews. That means he was basically a member of their parliament, if you like, called the Sanhedrin. It was a religious parliament. And it was made up of 70 of the most respected, most devout people in what was a very devout country. He was about as religious as you could get. On top of that, Nicodemus was a Pharisee. There were three main groups in Israel at the time, the Herodians, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. And the Pharisees were seen as far and away the most holy group in Israel. There were really, in many ways, the ancestors of what we call today ultra-Orthodox Jews. They took their religion very, very seriously. And Nicodemus was seemingly a leader amongst them, a rabbi, a teacher, the teacher of Israel. He's one of the most prominent religious figures of his day. Not quite the Archbishop of Canterbury, if it was in the sort of UK setting, that would have been the high priest who led the Sanhedrin, but maybe somebody like the Archbishop of York. If anyone was in the kingdom of God that Jesus was talking about, well, this would have been the guy. That's what people would have been thinking.

So Jesus gets visited by this ultra-holy Archbishop. An Archbishop who, despite Jesus' lack of formal education, he calls Jesus rabbi, teacher. He says that he knows that he's come from