The Walking Dead
CCCAG March 11th, 2018
Scripture- John 3:1-8
Some of you might be wondering about the title of the message this morning. Let me explain a little.
As I was preparing this week I had hundreds of thoughts about how to handle the third chapter of the Gospel of John being that is, in my opinion, the most important chapter in the bible. There are so many angles and so many truths to unpack here that I have dozens of things to say, but I needed a way to slow down and somehow frame and set up this exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus.
As I was thinking about this, I saw a commercial pop on my computer for the TV show, “The Walking Dead” and bam, the message for today began to take shape. I struggled a bit with naming the message this because the show is a bit provocative.
If you have never heard of the show- good. I would not encourage anyone to watch it because it’s pretty gross and in the genre of horror and would probably give most people nightmares. Stick with me for a moment as I explain the premise of this show and it will become clear why I chose this way to frame this conversation in John 3.
Essentially the premise of the show is a virus has swept over the entire planet and has killed most people and then turned them into flesh eating zombies. Those who are still alive are in a constant state of survival- having to deal both the zombies which outnumber them 100-1 and the other remaining humans- many of which have turned very evil. Not only that, but the zombie virus has actually infected everyone, so even if you are a good person, when you die you transform into one of the zombies.
Hence the title- the Walking Dead. It doesn’t refer to the Zombies, but to the people who are still alive because this virus waiting for them to get sick or die to transform them into a mindless killing machine.
A little disclaimer- Part of the challenge of preaching from a source that is over 2000 years old, speaks to a culture that is foreign to us is making it relevant to our culture today and drawing parallels that make sense to a modern mind without watering it down or changing it’s meaning, so please don’t think my using this example is in anyway an endorsement or stamp of approval to watching such programs, but helping those who have grown up watching such things make connections between biblical truth and how we think today.
As I sat there thinking about the parallels between what I know of that show and reality, and then thought about the scripture for this week I realized that that was the central point of what Nicodemus was struggling with and why he came to meet Jesus.
Nicodemus felt like a dead man walking and was in fact- the Walking Dead.
Keep that in mind as we read the scripture for this week-
John 3:1-8
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Let’s take a moment and ask God’s blessing and Favor on our time-Prayer
There are several things about Nicodemus that I want to explore this morning. The first thing is something I already mentioned-
I. Nicodemus is the Walking Dead
Why would I call a faithful priest, a pastor to his community and one of the most holy men around a dead man walking?
There are a several reasons why this is true, and it all has to do with him trusting in the wrong things to make him pleasing to God.
A. #1- HE is trusting in his heritage.
Like all good Hebrew priests of his day, Nicodemus is a direct descendant of Abraham, through Isaac, through Jacob and born into the family line of Levi. He could quote his lineage by memory if asked and that proved that he deserved a high place in society of being a priest.
How many people here were born into Christianity? You grew up in a Christian home and going to church is all that you have known.
How many people have you known that make horrible decisions in life that bring ruin to themselves and those around them, and when you bring up the subject of Jesus they automatically point back to the fact they were baptized as an infant and go to church twice a year with their family.
They make the same mistake Nicodemus is making here- they are trusting in their heritage and perhaps the faith of their parents to carry them through their life.
If a person has only their heritage to point to as a way of entering heaven someday- they are the walking dead.
The second thing he is trusting in is-
B. #2-Nicodemus is trusting in the law
Remember this number- 613. That’s how many laws are in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Being a priest, Nicodemus had all 613 memorized. He could quote you chapter and verse where in the bible those laws were located. He knew the moral law, the dietary law, the civil law, and the ceremonial laws by heart. Not only that, but he was a Pharisee, and for every law they added 2-6 different stipulation to each of those laws to ensure there were no wiggle room and no grace for those who violated the law.
For decades, Nicodemus has taught these laws, these rules, and these precepts. He has done is duties as a priest exactly how he was supposed to, and he has enforced the law.
Just like the Apostle Paul, he has been legalistically faultless his entire life. IF you made the requirements of the law into a check sheet, you could look at Nicodemus and check off every box and he would pass the test.
But as the Apostle Paul found, trusting in following the law for your salvation makes you a dead man walking, because
Romans 3:20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
The law doesn’t make one righteous, it can only inform you when you do wrong.
Since Nicodemus is focused on following the law-
C. #3-Nicodemus is trusting in his performance
He did all the ceremonies, performed all the sacrifices, avoided everything and everyone that would cause him to sin, and lived his legalistic life in such a way that any of us would have looked at him and said he was a good man. In the eyes of the religious world of his time, he is an example you would point to as someone with whom God is pleased.
But with all of that he felt something missing.
D. Even though he is doing well following law and being good, he still feels empty
Even though-
He was born into the priesthood
He has studied and memorized large portions of the Torah
He is trusting in following the law and his is obedient to it.
He has followed every rule prescribed by the law of Moses and his religious sect called the Pharisee’s.
(Even Though) Nicodemus has followed everything his religion has told him is required to make him pleasing to God
There is still something missing from his spiritual life.
1. Then enters Jesus.
Jesus is the polar opposite of what Nicodemus would except of a man that God would use-
In Nicodemus and the 1st century religious worlds eyes-
- Jesus is untrained- no spiritual pedigree to speak of
-Jesus is uneducated, no famous rabbi has trained him. In our way of thinking, Jesus the man never even attended middle school.
- Jesus wasn’t born to a noble family in Jerusalem. He’s a nobody and you have to go all the way back to David to find a famous person in his lineage
-Jesus is a nobody from a hick town in Galilee called Nazareth which was the wrong side of the social-economic tracks!
- finally, and perhaps most damaging in the eyes of this religious community Jesus was rumored to be the son of fornication. Everyone in Nazareth knew what happened during Mary’s engagement to Joseph, and that stigma would follow Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, and even be a chief accusation the Pharisee’s would level against him later in his life.
This is all on Nicodemus’ mind as he meets with this man, and he desperately needs and wants answers to how God is using Jesus despite all of these imagined shortcomings.
I think one of the reasons Nicodemus is puzzled is because God isn’t using him that way despite being a faithful and obedient priest.
God seems to be using Jesus- this uneducated layperson with questionable background to perform incredible miracles not seen in Israel in over 400 years
Nicodemus’ confusion is the second point we need to see today-
II. Nicodemus didn’t fully realize the problem that made him the walking dead.
With all of his education, with all of his scripture memorization, with all of his study of the Torah, he missed the central point about humanity.
Back to the beginning- Genesis Chapter 3. I refer to this chapter a lot because it’s the basis of our whole understanding of the world we live in and why it’s so messed up. When you read the newspaper, or turn on the TV news and see all the bad in the world, everyone points right back to this chapter of the bible.
Synopsis-
God creates humanity in Adam and Eve. God creates humanity in HIS image- a triune being. That means that you and I exist as three separate parts.
First and most important is our spirit- that part of our existence that is most God like- the part of our nature that sets us above every other life form on this planet. Our spirit gives us our higher reasoning ability, our creative ability, and our moral consciousness.
When God created Adam from the dust of the earth, HE breathed into him the breath of life, and in the book of Job 32:8, it says that But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.
God created a body from the things of this earth for the spirit to live in. When spirit and body come together, it forms our soul. The soul is the union between body and spirit.
God made us this way because we something that is part of this earth to be able to interact with the creation God made for us, which is a physical creation, so He needed a physical body to for us to live in.
HE places Adam and Eve in a pristine earth- a physical paradise with only one rule- don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.
Why doesn’t God want us to have that knowledge- Our Father gives that prohibition because HE doesn’t create a model of humanity that possesses the ability to handle that information.
Let me illustrate what I mean here-
Recently I rewatched the movie Apollo 13- about the mission to the moon in which part of the spacecraft blew up on the way to the moon and they barely made it back to earth. Being a little bit of a tech and science nerd, I was amazed at what they called computers on their spacecraft.
Do you know that if you are wearing a digital watch right now, that watch has more processing power and is a better computer then the computers that were inside the spacecraft that landed people on the moon?
If you have a smartphone, that smartphone has over 20,000 times the memory and processing power of the computer that helped Neil Armstrong take one small step for a man, and one giant leap for mankind.
Imagine taking that primitive Apollo guidance computer and make it try to make it load even the easiest and smallest computer operating system in existence today. Or even try and make it play a simple game-
Say, play a game of solitaire, or even the old Atari game pong.
That computer would freeze, or start smoking trying to run that simple game.
In essence, that’s what happened when Adam and Eve bit the apple. Essentially-They shorted out and that information overwhelmed our spiritual operating system- an operating system that was created to be completely dependent on God to provide the power to operate.
Adam, Eve, and everyone that followed them became the Walking Dead- infected with a virus that that wreaked havoc because we were not designed to process the information regarding evil.
We all spiritually died at that point. Since we (all of humanity) are a triune being, death also came to our bodies and our souls.
Adam, Eve, and all of their descendants carry this virus, and became walking dead- forever struck down with an illness that was constantly waiting to pounce and kill them.
God didn’t design us to processes evil because He loves us with an everlasting and overwhelming love and never wanted us to know and experience what evil does to a person or to a people.
Therefore-
Nicodemus is a dead man walking and doesn’t realize that this is in fact what is troubling him.
But this doesn’t just apply to this man.
Nicodemus is representative of anyone who has not come to faith in Jesus as LORD and savior.
Jesus doesn’t leave Nicodemus in his dead state, but shows him the solution-
III. Jesus shows him the solution
Backing up a little- Nicodemus comes at night. There are a lot of pastors who preached that this was a bad thing- that he didn’t want to risk anything meeting Jesus. I believe it was more practical. He wanted Jesus one on one for a theological discussion- one that you can’t have with a crowd.
You ever try to discuss a hot topic with a group of people?
It’s even worse when it’s a religious issue. You imagine Nicodemus even asking a question in front of the disciples?
Peter would be like- “Hey, don’t talk to Jesus. You need to go through me first”
James and John would call down fire for now knowing the answer already
Thomas would doubt your motives
Andrew would be asking his brother Peter what he thinks
Nathaniel would split every hair of the discussion to such fine points the main point would be lost
Judas would charge admission to even talk to Jesus.
It would have been a mess! Nicodemus needs to meet one on one with Jesus, and that’s an important lesson for us that we learn from this meeting.
You cannot ride someone else’s coat-tails to Jesus.
Just because your mama prayed doesn’t mean you are saved.
Just because daddy was on the church board, doesn’t guarantee you a spot in the eternal Kingdom
Just because your spouse is religious, God doesn’t have to take you also when He take him/her to heaven.
You need to make time to meet with Jesus, alone and so some business with him.
This isn’t just a decision that gives you a ticket to heaven, it’s a life time commitment to follow hard after God’s son, and let His Spirit, Presence, and Power change everything and bring life to what was previously dead.
You are not buying a movie ticket for a few hours of your time, you are enlisting into a Kingdom. “Jesus says count the cost, THEN take up your cross and follow ME!”
Second point- this meeting with Jesus will not go the way you think.
Nicodemus starts with a typical flowery greeting seeing in the middle east where it takes 10 minutes to say hello.
But behind all the flattery is a heart that desires to have what Jesus seems to have- intimacy with God and the power and peace of God ruling in the heart.
Jesus sees inside Nicodemus, and immediately addresses his deepest question and desire of his heart.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
Paraphrase-
Nicodemus, you are a dead man walking and with all of your bible study, with all of your effort, and with all of your training, you never realized that basic truth about yourself and all humanity.
You are the walking dead.
Jesus summed up the problem like this- Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’
Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and all of us here this morning or listening by podcast-
No one can experience God’s peace, unless they die to themselves
No one can feel God’s abiding presence, unless they surrender
No one can know God’s power, unless they willingly empty themselves of everything they have trusted in to that point.
It wasn’t so much a death. We talk about dying to ourselves and letting Jesus live through us.
Biblically and theologically we were never truly alive to begin with because we were all dragging 1/3 of our created nature around that was lifeless.
Genesis 3- the spirit within humanity died
John 3- We learn that through faith in Jesus, humanity’s spirit can be resurrected. Gen 3 and John 3 are the two bookends of the salvation story.
Finally Jesus says
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Let me bring this home-
Everyone under the sound of my voice feels some yearning inside them. You have no idea where it is coming from or where it wants to take you. All you know is that it is causing a struggle to rise up inside you.
That’s the Holy Spirit calling you to surrender to Jesus and be born again.
This isn’t a flash decision. It’s not just emotion. Jesus tells us “Count the cost, pick up your cross, and follow me”
If you are willing to do that, then Jesus will indeed breath life into your dead spirit, and you will become born again.
Prayer
Communion
