Because of Daylight Savings Time, some of you probably feel like you got up an hour early today. Some of you may be here and not even know it because you are not awake yet!
I’ve told this little story before, but I’m going to tell it again because it helps to make a point I want to make later.
A scientifically-minded kid one time tried to figure out what happened when the sun went down in the evening. Day after day he asked himself, “Now, where does the sun go? It comes up in the east, goes down in the west, and comes up again in the east. Something strange is going on.” He became so curious, he decided to watch the sun go down to see what happened.
So he did. It was a nice warm evening and he sat outside watching the sun go down in the western sky. It got dark. The stars came out. He waited all night. And finally, it dawned on him!
Most of you know that I take humor seriously. I enjoy funny stories, jokes, and words with double meanings. In fact, for a while when I was teaching in college, I taught a whole course on humor. It was the funniest thing I ever did.
In order to appreciate words with double meanings, you need to be able to hold two different ideas in your mind at the same time. Words with double meanings can be funny, of course, but they don’t have to be. Sometimes they carry a serious message, as they often do in the book of John. That is especially true in the story of Nicodemus.
Today, I want to focus on three of those words because they are so important to our understanding of the gospel. But keep in mind that, in spite of the double meanings and ambiguities in John 3, there is nothing uncertain about the message of this chapter. As we study the story of Nicodemus and his encounter with Jesus, one thing remains crystal clear: until the truth of Jesus dawns on us, we remain in the dark.
So who was Nicodemus? Verse 1 says that he was a Pharisee. Regardless of what you have heard about the Pharisees, they were some of the best people who ever lived. They had high moral and religious standards, and they tried to live by them. These were men who took a vow to obey every law of God as perfectly as they could. To them, God’s law was the most sacred thing in the world and the first five books of the OT contained it. (William Barclay)
According to Wm. Barclay, their reasoning went something like this: “God’s law tells us everything we need to know about how to live the way God wants us to live, so in the law we should be able to find a regulation for every possible situation.” So they set about trying to obey God’s law down to the very last detail, resulting in some ridiculous behaviors. For example, the fourth commandment (Ex. 20:8) says to keep the Sabbath holy and to do no work on that day.
How do you define work? They had lots of rules. For example, tying a knot in a rope was work, especially if it required two hands. But, if you could tie the knot with one hand, it was not work. And that is just the beginning. For the Pharisees, real religion meant following all the rules. They thought following strict rules like that was pleasing to God.
So here was Nicodemus, one of these upright men, trying to obey every sentence of the law. He thought he understood what God expected. But then he started to watch the Son of God rise into prominence because of his teachings and his miracles. Nicodemus had probably heard about the wedding in Cana we examined last week, in which Jesus transformed something common into something wonderful. He may have seen with his own eyes the passion with which Jesus chased those dishonest money changers out of the temple. God seemed to be doing something and he couldn’t understand it.
I don’t know if any of you have tried to live like Nicodemus, carefully following all the rules, doing this and not doing that, thinking that was the way to please God. There was a time when I came close. But when you hear Jesus say that you can’t enter the kingdom of God unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees (Mt. 5:20), you realize you are doomed. How could you do better than these people who spent their entire lives trying to obey every detail of God’s law? The fact is, until the truth of Jesus dawns on us, we remain in the dark.
Night. So Nicodemus went to visit Jesus. And he went at night. Thus we come to the first word with a double meaning. The first meaning, of course, is that the sun had gone down. It was physically dark around him. They didn’t have daylight savings time. Nicodemus probably needed a lantern to see.
But it wasn’t just night around him, it was night within him. He was in the dark, spiritually. Again and again in the book of John we read about people who were living in darkness. They were blind; they had lost their way. We read in 3:9 that “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” I often think of that verse when I walk past certain establishments in town that keep their lights dim. Why would they do that? From what we know, Nicodemus was living a morally upright life, but according to Jesus, he was living in darkness. The contrast in this chapter couldn’t be greater. There he was on a dark night, talking with the light of the world.
The situation Nicodemus was in is a description of every one of us because until the light of Christ dawns in our souls, we are living in darkness. On Friday night we talked with a man who used to be a coal miner. Now he is afraid of the dark. Some of you kids may be afraid of the dark. You like to have a light in your room at night. That light may not be very big, but as soon as you turn it on, the room is no longer completely dark. John 1 says that Jesus has come to a dark world and that he shines in the darkness. When he comes into our lives, he brings light.
There is no halfway transformation just as there is no partial sunrise. Jesus wants to shine in our hearts and dispel the darkness. Maybe you are experiencing darkness right now. Pretending everything is o.k. won’t cut it. In I Jn. 1 we read, If we say we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. I invite you to let the light of Christ dawn in your soul.
Born. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus begins and in v.3 we run into the second word with a double meaning – born. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” And Nicodemus seems to misunderstand because the word has three meanings. In English, it is not possible to put all three meanings into the same word.
The basic meaning is to come into this world as a baby. This is the meaning of the word when I ask you, “When were you born?” And that is the meaning Nicodemus seems to take at first. Remember that birth is traumatic for a baby because of the radical changes the baby experiences. The infant enters a world where he/she can see, where he/she experiences touch. It’s a whole new world.
But obviously, that is not what Jesus meant. Some Bibles use the words “born again,” an expression that many Christians use, but unfortunately it has been used carelessly to judge or compare themselves with others.
Some of you may recall that when President Jimmy Carter described himself as “born-again,” back in the seventies, it caused quite a sensation in the news. In 2005 (12/27), a Fox News correspondent interviewed him about his faith on the Brit Hume news show. The first question went like this:
JONATHAN SERRIE: You’ve described yourself as a born-again Christian, a term that is often closely associated with the religious right. Is that an unfair stereotype, or are you unique?
JIMMY CARTER: No, I’m not unique. I think almost every Baptist Christian with whom I grew up as a child and even the Methodists and the Lutherans and others who lived around my hometown considered themselves to be born again.
Carter went on to say:
In the Book of John, when Christ was questioned by one of the Pharisees, he said, "You must be born again to have a new life as one of my followers." So being born again is just like breathing for us. It was a phrase that we used without question for the first 50 years of my existence. So I look upon this term not as a matter of liberal versus conservative, or fundamentalist versus progressive, but as a standard description of someone who is a believer in Christ and who follows the Bible.
Some of you may remember what happened in 1976 in the famous Playboy interview when the reporter said, "Since you are a born again Christian, I guess that means that you consider yourself to be superior to most of the other people in this country, that you’ve escalated yourself above others on a moral basis."
Carter said, "No, that’s not the case at all." And he tried to explain using verses from the Sermon on the Mount.
Born again is one of the familiar meanings of this word, but, unfortunately, it has become misused and misunderstood.
Another way to translate this word is “Born from above.” From above means “from God.” In other words, God radically changes the way you understand things, the way you do things, the way you treat others. We might say the emphasis here is on what the king of the universe does in your life. The problem with Nicodemus was that he was locked into an earthly way of looking at things. He thought if he could just do this Pharisee thing a little better, everything would be o.k.
In some ways Nicodemus was like a drug addict trying to find a couple more dollars for his next fix. The only thing the addict knows is that he has to find a way to get his next fix, so he spends all his time figuring out ways to do that: by asking for money, selling things, or by stealing. It never occurs to him that what he needs is a new life that doesn’t require drugs. He needs to go back and start over like a child. That is why Jesus told Nicodemus he must be re-born in the way only God can accomplish it. He had to let God change him.
Some of you may be stuck somewhere in your understanding of God like Nicodemus was. And maybe you realize that if you keep on doing the same thing, living the same way, running in the same rut, life will just be more of the same. Jesus told Nicodemus some hard words: “either be born from above or give up on the idea of seeing God’s kingdom.” Because until the truth of Jesus dawns on us, we will remain in the dark.
Spirit. Let me quickly mention one other word with two meanings in v. 8.
This word, wind, was used two ways: to mean wind and to mean spirit. On the one hand, I’m sure Nicodemus understood what Jesus meant when he talked about the wind blowing. It may have been breezy that evening. But did he understand that the Spirit of God was also blowing? Do you? Can you recognize that God is present in our world, in your life, often in ways you don’t realize? I can recall times when I have tried to explain something about the Bible or the way God works and the person I’m talking to is totally unable to comprehend. They don’t feel the spirit blowing. And it is so sad because until the truth of Jesus dawns on them, they too will remain in the dark. But God’s spirit is blowing. Let’s keep our eyes open for what He is doing.
We don’t know for sure about Nicodemus, but in John 19 we read that when Jesus died, Nicodemus brought spices for his burial. Maybe he recognized that the spirit was blowing and allowed God to change him.
The other evening, when Sue and I ate out, I saw a man who sat down alone with his food. I watched him hold his palms up and bow his head before he ate. Afterwards, our paths crossed in the restroom and I thought about how to comment on what I had seen. Should I say, “You must be walking in the light?” Should I say “You must be born again?” Should I say “The Spirit must be moving in your life?” I finally said, “You must be a believer. I saw you pray.” He said, “I sure am. And thanks for noticing.”
Now it is your turn. Maybe you know someone who needs to be introduced to Jesus. During the music, I invite you to come and pray for that person.
Maybe you recognize the darkness in your life and you want the truth of Jesus to dawn in your life. I invite you to come. Someone will pray with you.
Maybe you just want a chance to nail your sin or your burden to the cross. I invite you to come and do that now.
