Introduction
A man was preaching to a church in Australia. The congregation had big black Bibles and severe expressions... And they knew their Bibles, and were proud of that. It was a smallish group, so he decided to engage them in dialogue:
’Who knows who the Pharisees were?’ They did. ’The Pharisees got a pretty nasty press in the New Testament - particularly Matthew.’
’Now tell me all the *good* things you can think of about the Pharisees:
The Pharisees knew their Bibles; were disciplined in prayer; fasted twice a week; gave about a third of their income to their church; were moral (very moral); many had been martyred for their faith; they attended ’church’ regularly; they were orthodox; and evangelistic.
There was a deep silence. Someone sitting at the front said ’That’s us!’ ’Is it?" the preacher responded. ’Then you’ve got a problem: Jesus said these sorts of people are children of the devil!’
I am still trying not to be vague! We are still thinking about describing the Kingdom. So let me summarise what we have seen so far about what the kingdom is in a very unvague, specific way.
Kingdom = God’s Rule, God’s will being done one earth as it is in heaven, God’s Shalom, it is God’s dreams being realised for the world, the poor being fed, the sick getting better, peace on earth, people knowing God, loving one another, God’s planet being looked after properly. This is what Jesus came to bring, this was his Gospel, this kingdom rule is available now through me, so change and believe it, be part of it. The message of Jesus was to a world ravaged by sin and evil that a revolutionary new way of living and acting that would bring healing and hope to world was at hand, so join the party. That message is so desperately needed again.
To get another angle I want us to look at what John records. He records very little about the Kingdom. One of the few places where John talks about the Kingdom is here in his conversation with Nicodemus.
1. Meet Nick the Pharisee
Nick is a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish ruling council, powerful, wealthy, clever, godly & deeply religious. The Pharisees were the dominant religious force at this time though they were no more than 10% of the population. Alarmingly shared many attributes of evangelical Christianity of today.
- Are you a student of the bible? Beware you could be a Pharisee, especially if you preach! Pharisees were professional teachers of the Law, the Bible.
- Are you zealous for God? Beware you could be a Pharisee? Pharisees were zealous for the Lord especially the Law of God. They tithed, some giving up to a third of their income to God. There must be no compromise. Adulterers should be stoned, sinners shunned. If only people could be more like us they believed. They looked for converts and would travel great distances to do so.
- Do you want to guard against Christians becoming too much like the world? Would you like Britain becoming a 100% Christian society? Beware you could be a Pharisee. They wanted zealously to guard against the nation becoming pagan and forsaking the Lord and sooner or later they would throwing off the pagan yoke and get rid of the Romans. That was their agenda, that was their vision of the kingdom of God. They tended to relate only to other Pharisees, wanting to avoid contact with “the world”. They were judgemental of those who didn’t follow. They excluded those who were sinners because they were the reason that the nation was oppressed. It was their fault; they were going to hell all right.
They were the religious right, the moral majority of their day. They shared many attributes of evangelical Christianity of today. “The trouble oftentimes with religious people is that they try to be more spiritual than God himself.” When we read the story of Nicodemus we see it in terms of Jesus telling a sinner how to get saved. He isn’t talking to us but someone else. When he may be talking to us, as respectable, moral, godly, bible believing, heaven bound people. What is the message of the Kingdom for us?
2. Becoming a Baby Again
Nick is a leader of this group. He is the crème de la crème. But he is curious about Jesus, he is clearly from God but his message is so different, disturbing, jarring, so out of sync with everyone else. He talks about the kingdom (doesn’t everyone, but not like everyone else). He is vague and he wants clarification. We’ll never know what was he about to ask Jesus – are you the one to sort out the Romans? Jesus cuts across him by telling him if he wants to see the Kingdom he has to be born again.
What does this phrase mean? I have long thought that we have taken a single instance of Jesus talking about being born again and made it into the defining statement of what it means to be a Christian. When what Jesus was simply saying was that he, Nicodemus, if he wanted to see God’s rule needed to start all over again. Though he thought in his scheme that he would be at the front of the queue, he was on the right track, he had to go back to the beginning. It’s another way of saying what Jesus said in Matthew 18:3-4 “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” I don’t think this verse is saying we have to have simple faith. I think it is saying we need to be like children in being teachable, with a fresh start, ready to learn and be taught. Some translations prefer “born from above” which again means a fresh start from God, from his kingdom and by his Spirit. To even see God’s rule you’ll have to start again. Nicodemus saw God’s kingdom in terms of we’re in and the rest are out, Jesus said it was at hand and available, close to all. Pharisees saw it in terms of the ungodly getting smashed. Jesus saw it in terms of “God so loved (v.16ff) the world” not just Israel. God so loved the world, sinful mankind not just the religiously and ethically pure. God so loves the Romans, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors. Start again Nicodemus you re way off. My kingdom is not about destroying the Gentiles; it is about welcoming them in. I haven’t come to condemn the world but to save it.
The message was and is this: you think you know it all; you’ve got it all sewn up. You think you are so right, you know who is going to hell and those who are going to heaven. I’ve got news for you, unless you change, unless you become like a little baby and start all over again you’re not going to get anywhere near God’s kingdom. That word challenges me. I am a person who has become skilled in handling God’s Word, if any of you have had questions there haven’t been may times when I haven’t had an answer. Today I have more questions and less answers than I used to, I am comfortable with that. I have had to come back to the Message of Jesus like a little child and set aside some of what I have known and let Jesus teach me all over again about his kingdom, to realise that my neatly defined categories, my ideas about who’s in and who’s out are not as black and white as I thought. I wonder if sometimes the way we use hell is more akin to the Pharisees than Jesus e.g. I heard of a teenage girl who was told by some Christian young people that because she swore and had had under age sex she was going to hell. That was just the sort of thing the Pharisees did. They used it to threaten people who didn’t go their way. Jesus turned it back on the Pharisees and said they were the ones in most danger of hell! Can I suggest that some of us need to be born again!! We need to unlearn some of what we have learned, to start afresh with Jesus and see the Good News in a fresh light. Like Nicodemus we need to start over again.
Conclusion
In some ways I fear that some of our Christianity has merely been Pharasaism, but Jesus and his kingdom is everything they were not. God’s kingdom is about what’s going on in our hearts. It’s about justice for the poor and oppressed, peace with God and others, joy, fulfilling life-enriching joy. It is about mercy not judgmentalism, compassion not condemnation, love not hate, forgiveness not bitterness, love for God and love for others. It is about treating others as we want them to treat us. It is about telling them how much God loves them not threatening them with hell. It is realising that we are truly loved by God and so are they. We need to get our information about what God is like, about how much he loves people, how to approach the world and sinners and life from Jesus. He is the Word of God. He is God in the flesh. He is the kingdom in the flesh. He said come to me, my burden is easy and yoke is light, learn of me & find rest for your soul.