Title: Get A Life!
Text: John 3:1-17
Thesis: The new birth is an invisible reality with visible out workings.
Introduction
Let me begin by defining a couple of terms I am about to use.
1. “First Life” refers to your real life or the life you are living.
2. “Second Life” refers to an imaginary life you wish you were living.
3. “Outworld” refers to the real world in which you live your First Life.
4. “Inworld” refers to an online world where you live your imaginary Second Life.
I had never heard of Second Life until I read about it in Homiletics Magazine. “Second Life is the internet equivalent of ‘playing make believe.’” When you join Second Life you create the person you wish to be in this new “inworld.” You are really living in the “outworld” we call reality but you create a make believe person and a make believe life in the “inworld.”
In this Second Life you live in a $3.5 million dollar, 9,000 square feet, rural Mediterranean style home in Niwot (featured in The 2009 Parade of Homes: Denver Luxury Home Tour), work your dream job or be a rock star, play golf at Pebble Beach, shop in the trendiest boutiques, be debt free, do business, vacation in exotic places, get plastic surgery, have interesting friends, drive an expensive GM automobile with a warranty complements of the American taxpayers, attend a great church, etc. In this online “inworld” life, you create the life you wish you could live. And all the while you are creating this imaginary Second Life; you are living your real first life in the “outworld.”
The need to create a second life suggests there is something lacking in one’s real life. The need for a second life suggests that a person would really like to be living a different life.
Change begins with a vision of a new and different life.
A. Nicodemus was discontented with his old life.
After dark one evening, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to speak with Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you.” John 3:1-2
Nicodemus had a life… an old life, so to speak. He was Jewish by race and religion. He was a religious leader and a Pharisee. In verse 10 Jesus acknowledges that Nicodemus was a respected Jewish teacher. That was his identity. That was his reality. Nicodemus was living the life of a Jewish religious leader. This was his public life. This was his outworld life, so to speak.
But Nicodemus was also beginning to live a second life under the cover of darkness.
Living two lives is a popular theme in fiction.
Wealthy nobleman and master swordsman, Don Diego de la Vega spirits out of his hacienda under the cloak of darkness dressed in black and wearing a mask, rides his black horse and wields his rapier as Zorro, defender of the downtrodden.
Mind-mannered reporter Clark Kent slips into a phone booth to transform himself into Superman… faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and capable of leaping tall buildings.
The X-Men have evolved from Marvel comic book characters to big screen X-Men with X-tra Powers who live in X-Mansion and morph from normality into mutant characters to fight the powers of evil.
However, most people do not live a dual life of super heroism… but that is not to say that we would not like to be transformed into new and better people.
The man in our story was not unlike many of us. He was curious about another way of life. Nicodemus had a public life but privately, he was curious about another way of life.
B. Nicodemus desired a new life.
After dark one evening, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to speak with Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you.” John 3:1-2 “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” John 3:4
Nicodemus had heard Jesus teach and he had seen sufficient signs of a miraculous nature to convince him that God’s presence, blessing and power were with Jesus. He admired Jesus and was drawn to him and wanted to be like him.
Certainly Nicodemus’ life and/or circumstances do may not mirror any of our lives. But his experience may likely be transferable in the sense that our current reality may not jibe with the reality we wish our lives could be.
Some of us seem to be living good lives. Publically we may seem to have a satisfying job, a great marriage, fulfilling hobbies and interests, and sufficient affluence. But privately we would love to have a career that is meaningful, a marriage characterized by loving consideration and communication, something to do that would spark our interest and lift us out of boredom, and to be debt free. Others of us are hiding shameful and embarrassing lives. Some of us are living private lives we are not proud of and would like to God to do a work of transformation in our lives so that what others see is who we really and truly can be in Christ.
Nicodemus was not trapped in a self-destructive, demeaning, or degrading lifestyle. He was not living a life of sin and decadence. Nicodemus simply found his religious experience lacking. He wanted a vibrant spiritual life.
For Nicodemus the big questions was, “How can I be born again?”
So whether the desire is to be transformed from living a sinful or shameful private life to living a public life of spiritual integrity or to simply seek God’s best in moving us from a good life to an even better life… it is dissatisfaction or discontent with where we are and desire for something better that moves us along in the process.
Thus far:
• We understand that meaningful change begins with discontent with the way things are.
• We understand that discontent leads to desire for something better.
And now we understand that desire moves us to do something about it.
C. Nicodemus did something about it.
After dark one evening, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to speak with Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you.” John 3:1-2
You have heard the old Confucian adage, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” There are varied translations of that thought including, “A journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” The implication is that “even the longest journey must begin where you stand.”
Nicodemus began his spiritual journey from where he was standing and then we began to act in ways that moved him along in the process of life change.
This is what Nicodemus did:
• Nicodemus went to see Jesus in John 3:1-2.
• Nicodemus listened to Jesus tell him he needed to be born again in John 3:3
• Nicodemus asked Jesus understanding questions in John 3:4 and 9.
(In John 3:4 he asked, “What do you mean?” And “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” And then after Jesus explained himself further Nicodemus asked again in verse 9, “What do you mean?”)
Change begins where you are. It begins with discontent and grows into desire and from desire to doing something about it.
Susan Boyle is an example of a discontented life. Susan Boyle has become a household name as a result of her performances on Britain’s Got Talent. When she was born she was briefly deprived of oxygen and as a child diagnosed with learning difficulties. She was bullied as a child and nicknamed “Susie Simple” at school. She was the youngest of six children. Susan never married and devoted her life to taking care of her parents. Her mother died in 2007 at the age of 91 years. Prior to her audition she had only sung in her church, local pubs and some local talent contests.
Before she died her mother had urged her to go on Britain’s Got Talent but Susan resisted because she believed people were being chosen for their looks. (Imagine that!) But to honor her mother and to seek a career in music… she auditioned at the age of 47 singing, "I Have a Dream."
Her performance garnered 2.5 million views on YouTube in the first 72 hours. Within a week 66 million had watched her audition and by the 9th day there had been 103 million video views. Her brother says of Susan, “She always wanted to be taken seriously as a singer.” (Wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Boyle)
Real life change is a process:
• It begins with - Discontent with the way things are;
• It develops into - Desire for things to be different;
• It results in - Doing something about it.
Conclusion
Our text does not indicate anything beyond the fact that Nicodemus went under the cover of darkness to talk with Jesus. Despite Jesus’ talk about being born again, there is no indication that Nicodemus moved from being a seeker to being a devoted follower of Jesus Christ that night.
In fact, when his name pops up again in John 7, he is still a Jewish religious leader. And we do not hear about him again until after the crucifixion of Christ. The story picks up in John 19:38-42 with Joseph of Arimathea, who had been a secret disciple of Christ and Nicodemus who had come to Jesus at night, claiming, embalming and burying the body of Christ… not done under the cloak of darkness but in broad daylight.
(Remember the closest, most devoted, and public followers of Jesus Christ are strikingly absent and in fact in hiding while Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus tend to the care of Jesus’ body.)
What we see in the secret follower of Jesus and the seeker who came under the cloak of darkness to see Jesus is a bold demonstration of life change and transformation that can take place over a period of time. What they did that day is a visible demonstration that God, who had begun a good work in their lives would indeed bring it to completion on the day when Christ returns. Philippians 1:6 What they did was visible evidence that neither man was any longer living a Second Life, but that both men now had a new life.
This business of being born again is a mysterious thing. It was confusing to Nicodemus and I suspect it is confusing to many of us.
• In John 3:3 Jesus said that a person who wants to see the Kingdom of Heaven must be born again. The hint is that this new birth is from the beginning, i.e., being born all over again.
• In John 3:5-8 Jesus spoke of being born again from above, i.e., the Spirit gives us new life from heaven.
• Jesus is saying that being born again is something God does. It is an inner and invisible new birth that results in a visibly changed new life.
• The person who is reborn does not get a Second Life. The person who is reborn gets a new life.
A pastor here in the Denver area told of a conversation he had with a Ukrainian friend who would only believe what he could see with his eyes, hear with his ears and touch with his hands. He could not see God and therefore would not affirm the existence of God.
The pastor was at an impasse. He had no argument sufficient to convince his friend otherwise. But as they sat there, a gusty wind storm kicked up. Outside the window a tree bent in the wind and the windows rattled…
Seizing the metaphor of Jesus he asked his friend, “Do you or do you not see the effects of the wind?” Two minutes passed and then his friend answered, “That very much makes God a possibility.”
No one in this room has ever seen wind. We have only seen the effects of wind. No one in this room has ever seen God. We have only seen the effects of God’s presence and activity.
The invisible work of God in us results in visible outworkings. What people see is the evidence or the effects of a new life or the new beginning.
The invitation today is extended to all who are discontented with your real life, who truly desire a new life, and who are willing to do something about it. The invitation is to all who will take that first step and come to Jesus who will begin an invisible work in you that will result in the visible new life you desire.
This new life is described by the Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 5:17 where he said, “What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!”
