I apologize this morning if you hear me coughing a bit – I’ve been suffering from some sort of the plague. Of course, I haven’t suffered enough to go to the doctor – I am, after all, a guy. I’d like to believe that my suffering has a purpose. That it makes me more of a man. And, when it comes to allergies, not going to the doctor really just makes me sick. Probably if I would just get over myself and go, I’d could be a new man.
Well, this morning, we have a text in which a very manly teacher wants to get better too. He’s a Pharisee – a good, religious man. If he were a Baptist, we would have called him a deacon. If he were an Episcopalian, he’d be on the vestry. He is sincere in wanting to be a new man in God’s own image.
And, being a good, religious man, he’s even figured out that this Jesus guy clearly knows a thing or two about how to be that better man. Unfortunately for Nicodemus, however, Jesus says, You can’t just be a better man – you need to become a new man altogether. You need to be born again, only this time, not as an earthly minded mass of flesh, but as Spirit.
And the news is going to get even stronger – if you want to be that new man, you are going to see a lot of suffering. But unlike my allergies, that suffering is going to have a purpose. Jesus’ prescription for Nicodemus isn’t to try to better man, it is to be a wholly new kind of man – not the sickly, fleshly kind, but to be the glorious kind who is born of the Spirit – born from above – born not as a man but born as a child of God.
And if you are going to be glorious Spirit, suffering will follow you from the cradle to the grave. But you know what? It’s going to be worth it. Your flesh will never amount to anything more than a mass of meat destined for death. But your Spirit, born as part of his Spirit, will be full of glory, if you’re willing to see the purposes he has for you.
Let me show you what I mean. Look with me, if you will at John 3. My plan this morning is fairly simple. I want to look at the purpose of suffering in the life of one born of the Spirit. John 3:3 – 6 is going to speak of the birth of the Spirit, 7 – 13 are going to speak of the day to day life of the Spirit, and verses 14 – 17 speak of the final hope of those who live in the Spirit. In each one of these moments, there is suffering – but suffering with a purpose. I am going to finish by contrasting that with the suffering of the flesh – suffering of a whole different kind –
Being Born in the Spirit
But, I need to start at the beginning, so look with me at verse 3: “Truly, Truly, I say unto you, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Again, you notice that it does not say, “Unless you are good enough and try hard enough, you cannot see the kingdom of God;” it says, “unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Our default way of thinking is that if we can just get clean we can get right with God. We think that it is incumbent upon us to make this relationship right. We think we can keep ourselves from stumbling, and present ourselves before the Throne of God blameless with great joy. It is almost is if we think we can swim the sea that divides us from God’s presence.
I mean – after all, we look at the guy next to us and say, “well that guy couldn’t even swim a mile – but I’m an athlete.” The only problem is that the sea that divides us isn’t a mile or 10 miles – it’s the entire Pacific Ocean. I don’t care how good you think you can make yourself – you can’t swim it. You need a boat or a plane – someone or something to carry you to other shore.
If you think you can make yourself holy enough to be able to stand in the presence of the Most Holy God, you don’t understand how Holy God is. Look back at the OT lesson if you would for a moment. It’s a famous passage – Isaiah’s vision of God, the one in which he is called to be God’s prophet. In a dream, Isaiah is brought by God into heaven, and his first reaction is the right one: “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the land of a people of unclean lips.” In other words – I am a sinner. There is no way that I can stand in the presence of God with this sin. If God is radiating Glory, he’s like the core of a nuclear reactor. My sinful flesh is so thoroughly torn apart by his goodness that I cannot stand.
If you look through the Old Testament, you will see that every encounter with God fits that pattern. In Exodus 33, when God lets Moses see just his backside, he warns Moses, you can’t actually see my glory and live. It’s like looking at the Sun. If you stare at an eclipse, what’s left of the Sun is so bright that it overwhelms your retinas to the point where that Sun is last thing you will ever see. So it is with God’s glory.
Now, I know you might be saying, well – maybe that is true for Moses and Isaiah and everybody else – but I’m really good. Well, let me draw your attention to just a little detail in Isaiah 6:2, where the text is going to speak of seraphim – those are just angels. I’m sure when you hear the word ‘Angel,’ you’re thinking of a guy with two wings flying around on the clouds, right? Well, we get that from Isaiah 6:2, where it mentions the wings. But if you look carefully, angels don’t have 2 wings, they have 6. And what are they doing with four of those wings? They are covering themselves up. They are shielding their feet, they are shielding their eyes – even Angels are not able to stand in the presence of God without something to keep them from seeing His full Glory.
Like I said earlier, I think the reason is simple. One look at his glory, one thought about how woefully short of that we fall, and the pain of standing in His presence is unbearable. So, we have a choice. We can suffer that pain, try to shield our sinful natures – or we can do what Isaiah did. He suffered a momentary pain of being made clean in order to be made fit for standing in God’s presence. The problem is, your flesh cannot stand up to that – only your Spirit will survive. If you have not been born of the Spirit, what is there left?
Living in the Spirit
As the epistle tells us in Romans 8:16, it is the Spirit that bears witness that we are children of God. Children, of course, are part of a family. They didn’t ask to be born, but once they are born, they grow up to be just like their parents. Even if they say, “I hate you, I never want to be like you,” you know that they will grow up to be just like you. Children of alcoholics are much more likely to be alcoholics themselves; and if they don’t it is because they think about alcohol and its power much more than most folk. Both are keenly aware of drink’s power.
We get it backwards when we think that we need to get cleaned up to be part of God’s family. It is completely the opposite. When we become part of God’s family, the natural course is that we get cleaned up. Jesus never says, “If you keep my commandments, I’ll love you.” No – Jesus is clear, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
The deal of being born again is that you get a new family. You are a child of God, and if you are a child of God, you’re an heir. You are going to inherit the riches of the Father. As John is saying, you are going to bear witness of the things you see and hear as part of his family.
But understand: being part of Jesus’ family is not a walk in the park. Blessed are you when men persecute you and revile you and speak all manner of evil against you falsely – because that’s how they treated me. Is it any surprise that if you are going to live in the Spirit, you are going to be treated differently than a world that thinks it is only flesh? I remember telling someone once that getting all mankind to live in peace and harmony with one another is simple – just find some enemy alien species that we can all fear and hate more than each other. And the truth is, if we are Spirit, we are that alien species.
Immediately after our Gospel comes John 3:19. This is the judgment – that men love darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. Fleshly men do like seeing that they are nothing more than rotting meat. They want to think that they are manly men who don’t need The Great Physician. They’re going to do it themselves, right?
If you are a part of the family of God, you are throwing light into darkness. People will saw “Shut that window! Close the shades!” They hate the idea that God needs to save us. They want to think they’re ok.
And you will suffer far more than this. You will be cursed, you will be hated, you’ll end up just like the rest of family: outcasts who only have their family to look to. But your family if God, have you really lost anything? When the rest of the world turns its back on you, you will be drawn only to the one who has His arms spread out wide for you. When only God is left, you understand that God is all you need.
The epistle says that if we are born of the Spirit, we are part of the family of God. We have his blessings. I wish the epistle lesson had just one more verse in it – Because Romans 8:18 sets the context. It says, “I do not compare our current sufferings worthy to be compared to the Glory that will be revealed in us.” In other words, the suffering that we get as being born of the Spirit is so outweighed by the benefits that it isn’t even worth weighing. In time, as the abuse of the world pushes us closer to God, we even have to ask, is that suffering or is that a blessing?
The Ultimate Hope
Indeed, as we suffer, we become more like Christ – which is the thing that Nicodemus, and the thing that I think we who are born of the Spirit wanted all along. We suffer.
Jesus knew that Nicodemus knew his Bible. And so that’s why he makes what may be an obscure reference in John 3:14. He says look – Nicodemus – you remember back in Numbers, when the people of Israel started complaining about what God was doing in the wilderness? You remember how a bunch of snakes started coming up and biting the people and killing them off? You remember how God was using that to bring his people in closer communion with him? Well guess what – we’re going through that again. I know that you are living in a world where people are dying in all sorts of ways around you. Mentally, Spiritually, physically. And guess what, God is going to do the same thing again.
You’ll remember, Nicodemus, that God told Moses to make an image of the snakes that were killing you and to set it up on a pole. When you see that symbol of your suffering, I, God will intervene and heal you. You simply need to look at that symbol of your suffering, and you will be made whole.
Your flesh is dying. Your flesh is being killed. Well guess what. One of these days, it’s going to be my flesh on a pole. And if you will just get over yourself and look at that symbol – you can be made whole.
In all of the camp of the Israelites, you know there were people who refused to look at the snake and be healed. They pulled out their anti-venom kits. They washed themselves up with soap – they did everything but look. And it’s the same with us. Until we are willing to look on Jesus, we’ll only be flesh. If we want to be healed of what’s really killing us, we need to be Spirit.
“Born Right the First Time?”
I was walking through the parking lot about a month ago when I saw a bumper sticker that just nailed this. The world mocks us when we speak of being “Born Again,” and I’m sure that’s what they were thinking about when somebody put on this bumper sticker. It said “Born Right the first time.” They probably thought they were being funny, and I’m sure they thought they were so much more open-minded and tolerant than us backward, narrow-minded born again bigots!
I’m sure they thought, “Why should I be born again?” Are you saying that I wasn’t born good enough the first time? Well, the final offense is this: You weren’t. Seeing God’s love is the ultimate suffering. It is the offense of the flesh that says that only God’s ultimate love for us is the only thing that can put us back to being right with him.
They know that accepting Jesus’ life-giving atonement means denying the National Anthem of Hell, sung by Frank Sinatra himself: “I did it my way!”
You cannot and will not be born your way. You can only be born in God’s way. Simple physics dictates that you cannot be stronger to stand in God’s presence – you must be born of different stuff.
The ultimate offense – the ultimate choice is this: Will you let your suffering have a purpose? Will you let God put your flesh to death in order that your Spirit can live? Will you let God so radically change the way you live your life that you are a new man?
If you want to hold on to the notion that you were born right the first time, you can. Sure would be a waste. Why not go to the Doctor who can give meaning to your suffering, make your life whole. It means suffering the indignity of not being your own. But I always thought he was better anyway. Would you pray with me?
