NICK-AT-NIGHT
JOHN 3:1-21
It’s nighttime. Darkness has fallen like a blanket on the city. A thick fog hangs in the air.
A man nervously glances at his watch. 6:30pm.
It’s safe to leave now.
The man knows that most of his co-workers have already left the office for the evening and have headed home.
Normally on a night like tonight, he would be sipping coffee with some of his colleagues debating their favorite subject: THEOLOGY.
Not tonight. Tonight he had different plans.
In a stroke of good luck, no one had even asked him what he was doing tonight.
The fact that he hadn’t had to lie to anyone comes as a relief.
With his important position, he can’t afford to lose his integrity.
He quickly exits the building and whistles for a cab.
“5th and main” he quietly says to the driver, hoping his voice will not be recognized.
He asks to be dropped off 2 blocks away from his destination. He pays the driver, and glides along the empty street.
Staying close to the shadows he arrives at a tall wooden building.
He ascends the stairs and makes his way to the 4th floor.
Leaving the stairwell and walking briskly down the hall he suddenly stops in front of room 402.
He hesitates. “Should I go through with this?” he thinks to himself.
Feeling a sudden surge of fear he turns to leave. But then something catches his eye.
It’s the key he arranged to have left for him in front of the door.
He picks up the key, opens the door to room 402 and sitting in front of him on the floor is the man he’s come to visit.
The man on the floor looks up from behind the scroll he’s been reading and says with a smile on his face, “Nicodemus, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Let’s pick up the story as the Apostle John tells it in John 3:1-21.
READ JOHN 3:1-21.
The way John tells this story it kind of sounds like a James Bond movie.
A secret rendezvous by two men.
One a respected teacher of Israel. The other a freshman miracle-worker who has recently caused quite a stir with His radical teachings and Non-traditional behavior.
Nicodemus, we’ll call him Nick, has heard this man Jesus give speeches on several occasions.
At the end of each speech, Jesus concludes his talk by performing a set of miracles.
At one Jesus heals a blind man. At another Jesus heals a diseased woman. Each time Nick attends one of these events, his curiosity grows.
At last He can’t help himself. He has to know more about this man they call Jesus.
But he’s afraid. His peers, his colleagues, are beginning to show open hostility toward Jesus.
They don’t like what he’s saying and they are jealous of his popularity with the people.
But Nick is different. He’s always prided himself on the fact that he keeps an open mind to new things.
This Jesus has come and has started saying things he’s never heard before.
• Jesus says things like, “In order to find your life you must lose it.”
• Jesus says things like, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
No one has ever talked like this before.
Jesus seems to talk less about rituals and rules and observances and more about things of the spirit. Things that have to do with actually knowing God personally.
On one occasion Nick actually heard Jesus say that He was “the way, the truth and the life, and that no one could come to the father unless they came through Him.”
Nick’s peers raised their eyebrows at that one. They mumbled underneath their breath that Jesus was just being blasphemous.
But not Nick. Something about Jesus and the way He talked had struck a nerve in Nick, a nerve long forgotten and buried under a pile of memories.
Finally Nick decided to arrange a meeting with Jesus.
But how could he meet with Him without his friends finding out and turning on him, possibly forcing him out of the Pharisee Club.
Nick came up with a plan and arranged to have a secret meeting with Jesus at night.
Jesus, always compassionate, always willing to work with people, agreed to meet with him under the clandestine conditions.
Nicodemus was a member of the Pharisees.
For Nicodemus, that meant he believed 3 important things.
• He believed that spirit beings such as angels and demons really did exist.
Once he had watched with his own eyes as Jesus performed an exorcism, making the evil spirit come out of a little boy who’d been possessed. Nick had remembered being amazed at Jesus power over these evil spirits.
• He believed that people would be rewarded or punished in the next life based on how they behaved in this life.
Nicodemus knew that it was important to live for eternal things now rather than wait until he died to think about his eternal future.
But most importantly and what was driving him now to talk with Jesus personally.
• He believed that men had the freedom to make their own choices, but that God could and did at times interpose His will upon them.
What had been bothering him of late was this third belief that God did interact with men on a personal level.
“Could this man Jesus actually be God revealing himself to mankind?” He wondered to himself?
Nick knew that Jesus must have been sent by God. He had become convinced of that through the displays of power Jesus had shown.
No one could do what Jesus did unless they had God’s power behind them.
And Nick says to Jesus in verse 2:
“Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”
Nicodemus knew that Jesus was a great teacher. So he calls him RABBI.
Nicodemus was also what you might call an educator.
As a Pharisee he was a teacher. Everyday he taught classes in a synagogue to Jewish people using the first 5 books of the Bible, the ones Moses wrote, as his textbook.
All day long every day he taught people about the Laws of God written down in Genesis-Exodus, Leviticus-Numbers and Deuteronomy.
This he felt, was the answer to life’s problems. Education.
If everyone could only know what God says in those five books, then they would be holy and would then be able to please God.
To Nicodemus, education was the cure for the problems of humanity.
Hunger, poverty, and crime were all symptoms of a deeper problem: Ignorance.
But Jesus comes to Nicodemus and says in essence, “Nicodemus, what people need is not merely an EDUCATION. What people need is SALVATION.”
Jesus says to him in verse 3:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Jesus says, “Nick, it’s not that people need to be educated. People need to be born. More specifically they need to be born a second time.”
Nick didn’t get it. Confused he asks in verse 4:
“How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”
Jesus answers in verse 5 in essence saying:
“Nicodemus you’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
Jesus elaborates in verses 6-8.
At first, Nicodemus doesn’t get it.
Now he just doesn’t believe it.
He asks in verse 9:
“How can these things be?”
In verse 4 Nicodemus DIDN’T GET IT.
In verse 9 Nicodemus DOESN’T BELIEVE IT.
He’s having a hard time seeing how this could all be true.
And in verse 16 Jesus answers his question.
John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible.
Just about every time you turn on a football game the camera spans to someone in the crowd holding up a sign made of poster board on which they’ve written this oft quoted verse of scripture.
Let’s say it together shall we?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answers, “Because God so loved the world.”
Let me just stop here and say to all of you:
CONTRARY TO POPULAR OPINION…
GOD IS NOT MAD AT YOU,
HE’S MAD ABOUT YOU.
God is in love with you. He has feelings for you. He is crazy about you.
And Jesus looks at Nicodemus and says, “All those rules you study and teach about are not going to fill the void in your heart.”
Religion never does satisfy the human heart.
Nicodemus, what you came looking for tonight, what made you risk your reputation and jeopardize your job, is that you want to be loved.
The cry of the human heart is for someone to love us.
And Nicodemus, I want to tell you of God’s love for you.
God loved you so much that he gave his only begotten Son.
Nicodemus, do you realize what this means?
This means that…
GOD LOVES YOU AS MUCH AS HE LOVES HIS OWN SON.
And let me just stop here and say the same thing to you this morning.
GOD LOVES YOU AS MUCH AS HE LOVES HIS OWN SON.
I mean, have you ever thought about that before?
God had a son whom He loved more than anything except one thing.
You. Me. God loved you so much that he “let go” of Jesus so He could “take hold” of you.
That’s what it means that he gave his son. It means He let go of him and let Him come to earth to die.
I’ll never forget an experience I had with my son Ethan.
When Ethan was about 2 years old, he had been playing and had fallen and cut open his chin.
It was bad enough for Nicole and I to take him to A.I. DuPont Hospital for children.
After the doctors examined his cut they told Nicole and I that because of where the cut was located they were going to have to restrain Ethan’s arms with a little jacket.
I’ve never forget that moment as long as I live.
They laid Ethan down on that cold hospital table and began wrapping him up in that little jacket.
As he felt it tighten around him he looked at me and began to cry, “Daddy, help me. Help me.”
As they began stitching his cut back together, he was so brave.
And as they were working on him he just kept crying “Daddy, help me. Daddy, help me.”
I felt like my heart was going to rip in two every time he wimpered or cried.
I felt absolutely helpless.
As I sat there a thought flashed through my mind.
It said, “This is what God had to go through with His son. God watched helplessly as His son was crucified.”
I thought, I could never have done that with my son.
I would never have given him up like that.
But God loved you and Me just as much as He loved His own Son Jesus.
And the Son of God, the one who came to earth to die for humanity, think of the love he has for us.
If God loves you as much as He loves His own Son, then Jesus must love us more than He loves His own life.
JESUS LOVES “YOU” MORE THAN HIS OWN LIFE.
Jesus’ love is a sacrificial love.
Jesus “let go” of glory to “take hold” of agony.
Jesus, the Son of God, had everything going for him in heaven. Position, privilege, status, glory.
But he gave it all up to come down to earth and die on a cross.
He literally “let go” of glory to “take hold” of agony.
The agony he felt was on the cross as he hung there dying.
Why would He do this? What would move Jesus to let go of the pleasures of heaven for the pain of earth?
Hebrews 12:2 tells us:
“Jesus…who for the joy set before Him endured the cross…”
What was the joy that enabled Jesus to endure the agony of the cross?
It was the joy of knowing that you and I would be able to have fellowship with him.
It was the joy of knowing that what he was doing he was doing for you and for me.
He literally loved you more than He loved His own life.
And Jesus looked at Nicodemus that day and told him of God’s love for him, of God’s love for the world of people.
But then their conversation takes a twist.
And Jesus switches gears with Nicodemus.
Jesus tells him in verse 17-21.
READ VERSES 17-21.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that even though God has loved people, people have not loved God.
Instead, they have loved the darkness.
God loves people but people love their sin.
And I think it’s ironic that Jesus begins to talk to Nicodemus about light and dark.
In the Bible light is symbolic of something good.
Dark is symbolic of something bad or evil.
And Jesus says that light, God’s light, had entered the world of men.
But that people preferred their darkness to God’s light.
Now think about the timing of Nick coming to see Jesus.
When did Nicodemus come to visit Jesus?
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.
People often do things at night when they don’t want others to know what they are doing.
This was the case with Nicodemus. He didn’t want the other Pharisees to know that he was seriously considering becoming a follower of this man Jesus.
Jesus challenges Nicodemus.
It’s as if Jesus looks straight through Nicodemus into his heart and says:
“Nicodemus, you have come to me at night because you don’t want anyone to know of your deeds, you don’t want anyone to expose you for what you are doing.”
This is how most people are with their sins. They hide their evil practices. They try and cover them up with a cloak of darkness.
But if you really want to be righteous, then come out of the shadows and walk out into the Light, God’s light.
Let me ask you…What would you have done? Would you have accepted Jesus’ challenge?
If you were Nicodemus would you have left your religion behind for a relationship with God’s Son?
If you were Nicodemus, would you have left behind your status, your reputation, your position, your power and trade all of that in to follow Jesus and become his disciple?
You know this is really what God is asking you and me this morning.
He’s issuing the very same invitation to us today.
He’s saying to you, “It’s good that you came to see me this morning, it’s good that you came to church. But now that you’re here, why don’t you come out of the shadows? Why don’t you leave behind your favorite sins? Why don’t you walk into the light?”
In John 8:12 Jesus said:
“I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
