John 3:1-21
Nicodemus
Encountering Christ in the Book of John #3
Kevin Higgins
Woodlawn Baptist Church
Denison, TX
Introduction
"There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night…"
The passage we’re going to consider this morning is perhaps one of the best known encounters with Jesus in all the world - this night time encounter with Nicodemus that led up to the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16. Before we consider the actual encounter, I want to take you back several days and try to help you get into the head of this man Nicodemus.
Remember that John the Baptist had been preaching at the Jordan River a message of repentance; a message that told the people they needed to turn from dead religion to living faith in the coming Messiah. John’s baptism was to be evidence of the change that had taken place in their lives. He was hammering at the conscience of Israel, seeking to prepare the people for the coming of king and kingdom, but his message of repentance and baptism was an affront to the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day. They rejected the ministry and the baptism of John. They saw no need for repentance - and how dare this man suggest that they submit to an ordinance that was reserved for filthy Gentile proselytes.
Besides all of that, who was this Jesus anyway? They were looking for a Messiah, but Jesus didn’t fit the description of their Messiah. This was a common carpenter from the small village of Nazareth. He was a nobody, yet His very presence was arresting. He may have looked just like every other Jew, but there was something about Him, something in His eyes that pierced the soul and in His speech that stirred the heart.
For a few days all was quiet. After the Pharisees went home Jesus spent a few days with His new disciples: men like Andrew and Peter, John and Nathaniel and Phillip. There may have been others, and it seems that Jesus’ mom was with them too. They attended a wedding in Cana, a city not too far from Jesus’ home town, where He turned the water into wine, then left there to attend the Passover in Jerusalem.
When Jesus got to Jerusalem, He went to the temple. You’ll see in John 2:14 that Jesus went in and "found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting." Jesus was outraged by the injustices of their actions - and He acted out against it. I think of so many of the movies that have been made about Jesus. We find Him so serene and calm. While the world around Him was going crazy, the movies have Jesus acting as though He’s on Prozac. That’s not the image I get at all from John 2. The passage says that he made a scourge of small cords and drove them all out of the temple: the people and the animals, then He overthrew the tables, then He shouted after the people He had run out something about making His Father’s house a house of merchandise.
Let me tell you something - that was no small thing that He did, and it caught the attention of everyone in the city. The religious leaders wanted to know why He did it, what proof He had of His authority for behaving like that - to which He replied that they would destroy His temple and He would raise it up in three days.
Jesus left there that day and the Bible says that He stayed in the city performing miracles and building up a greater following than He had come with, so that now there is no telling what kind of a mob scene is moving around Jerusalem to see and hear this man who has come into town challenging the establishment. It must have been quite a scene.
Now, none of this has gone unnoticed by our man Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews. In other words, this man was on the Jewish Sanhedrin, or the Jewish high court. Rabbinical tradition makes Nicodemus one of the three richest men in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day.(1) Imagine him with me walking through the streets of Jerusalem at dusk, hoping for an appointment with this man Jesus. As he walks along he is thinking to himself:
"We sent people to talk to that man John the Baptist. I don’t understand why he is baptizing people. It’s not legal! The only person that can be baptized is a heathen that converts to Judaism. Are they trying to say that this is a new religion? Impossible! The law is all that anyone needs to live a life dedicated to God. These great principles given to us by God have been defined down to strict laws that anybody can understand and must obey.
"I don’t understand this man Jesus and his teachings either. He must be a prophet of God to teach with such power and conviction. He has done so many great and wonderful miracles. I don’t understand why he got so angry the other day at the temple. Why did he turn over the tables and run the merchants out? They were just doing their jobs. That’s not illegal. The people need sacrifices to offer for their sins.
"I should have sent a servant to ask these questions. No, I need to have this conversation for myself. I need to understand what he’s all about. He’s not going away."(2)
Now, look with me at John 3:2. Nicodemus comes to the place where Jesus is staying, sits down with Him and says…
"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?"
What an amazing conversation! Nicodemus obviously came to Jesus with his own agenda, only to have Jesus take control and turn the conversation in a completely different direction. Whatever Nicodemus wanted to know, Jesus drove home his great need for conversion.
In the time we have left this morning, I want us to deal with this subject of conversion, and more specifically two types of conversion. Conversion first is repentance (turning from sin and unbelief) and faith (trusting in Christ alone for salvation).(3) But after conversion, or after salvation, there are so many believers who fall into a religious performance trap - the trap that Paul spoke about in the third chapter of Galatians. Turn there with me and look at the Galatians 3:1-5.
"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? If it be yet in vain. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"
What’s the point? Simply stated these people had been saved, they had repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ alone for salvation, but now that they were saved by faith, they had begun to live under the law again to earn God’s favor. We do that all the time. We have this list of religious dos and don’ts that we unconsciously follow, thinking that it is our adherence to those rules that earns us favor with God. It may be Bible reading, prayer, attendance, or anything else. It’s not supposed to about what you do or don’t do for Christ, but whether or not you are abiding in Him, encountering Him - and all that "stuff" - that religious stuff, is supposed to be a reflection of that intimacy with the Lord. You can have religion without a relationship with Christ, but its legalism and I want to tell you it’s a religious performance trap that leads to dead religion and it’s exactly why so many people leave the church and the faith.
Maybe this morning you’ve never been saved - you need to be converted! Many of you this morning are saved, but you’re living in that trap, and Jesus wants to free you from it - He wants to breath life into your faith - He wants you to be converted, not in salvation, but He wants to transform your thinking and free you so that you enjoy a love relationship with Him, the Son of God. Conversion will only take place in your life when you realize that Jesus alone can meet your deepest spiritual needs and you allow Him to meet them But what are those needs? And how will Jesus meet them? Rather than trying to deal with a lot of different needs today, I want to draw your attention to…
Your Greatest Spiritual Need
I want you to think about conversion in terms of the greatest spiritual need you have. We don’t often think about it, if we ever think about it, but this need is the driving force behind everything you do in relation to your faith.
Acceptance by God
By acceptance from God I mean that every one of us, those of us in here and everyone else in the world is seeking acceptance by God. Now there are many in the world who don’t know that’s what they’re after. They may worship some other god, they may worship the cow or sun or moon. They may be New Age, Catholic, Baptist, atheist or agnostic. It really doesn’t matter what label you put on a man; every man is driven by this inner desire for acceptance and he manifests this desire by the way he lives his life.
Think about Nicodemus, or any other religious person that lives under a works religion, and by works religion I mean any religion, faith or denomination that believes you have to do something or keep being something in order to inherit eternal life. What drives that sort of performance? Nicodemus was the best kind of person that religion, education, and culture could produce. He knew the Law of Moses and he strived to live by that law in every detail. Why? Because his acceptance by God depended on it!
You ask someone if they are going to heaven and they say, "I hope so." Do you know what that means? It means, "I hope that God accepts me on the basis of how well I’ve lived my life, on how good I was or how well I obeyed His Word." It’s a trap! The Pharisees fell into it, and I believe there are a lot of find people in our world today, both lost and saved, who have fallen prey to it.
If anyone among the Jews thought that he was going to be accepted by God, it was Nicodemus! He was like Paul. Look with me at a few passages. First go to Philippians 3:4ff. Paul said,
"Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."
Think about what he said. "If any man was going to be accepted by God, it was going to be me! I’m in the right race, in the right family, I obey all the law, I’m zealous about my service to God. In other words, I’m the perfect candidate for heaven!" Now go to Acts 21:40ff
"And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying…I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day."
See, as Paul was giving his testimony, he shared with these men the testimony of who he was as Saul the Pharisee - Saul the religious, very zealous, God-loving, well intentioned, highly moral man that he was. He thought he was serving God - but he didn’t even know Him! If you read on in the story sometime you’ll see that as he was on his way to arrest more Christians, he encountered the Lord Jesus Christ and found out just how unacceptable he was!
Several years later Paul would encounter another group of men who were trying to find acceptance by God. Turn with me to Acts 17:16. Here we’re going to find a group of men who were seeking acceptance from God - but they didn’t know it was God they were trying to appease - they were just shooting in the dark hoping to hit the right one. Let’s begin reading in verse 16.
"Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? Other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection. And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."
Think about it - why would these men put up all these altars to all these different gods, and then - as though that weren’t enough, they put up an altar to an unknown god, just in case they missed one. Why do that? Because they were in this trap of seeking acceptance based on some standard that they had established for themselves. They wanted to be accepted by some god, even if they didn’t know who he was - after all, don’t all roads lead to heaven? So, whether we’re talking about the ignorantly acceptance- seeking heathen, or the legalistic Bible believing lost man who is hoping against all hope that he can be good, the need is still the same - the drive to be accepted by God.
Go back to our text in John 3. Nicodemus has obviously been giving some thought to Jesus. His words and actions have him perplexed. Jesus was obviously from God - "for no man can do these miracles that you are doing except God be with him." So the question here really becomes this: if I am doing all this stuff and living for God, and you Jesus are too, then why is your life so different? So much more powerful, so much more dynamic than mine? What am I missing?
I want you to picture Nicodemus sitting there in the still hours of that night long ago with all the weight of the moment on him, and Jesus stares into his heart and says, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Immediately Nicodemus started trying to figure out what Jesus meant by that. Jesus told him, "Nicodemus, are you the great master teacher of Israel and don’t know what I’m saying? You’ve been trying to please God with all your righteous living and religious duty, and those things are admirable, but what you really need is to be converted - you need to be born again - except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
Let me tell you something - it’s good to know that I’m not the only dense follower of Christ - I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain this passage to someone only to mess it up. And then it dawned on me as I glared at the page in my Bible all week and sat in Nicodemus’ shoes - What does it mean to be born again? What does all this stuff about flesh and spirit and wind have to do with anything? Why does Jesus say in verse 12, "If have told you earthly things and you don’t believe, what makes you think that telling you about heavenly things will make you believe?"
Listen to the words again: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Now listen to what Jesus told the disciples, saved men, in Matthew 18, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."
What’s the point? It’s this: what do you get when you have a birth? You have a tiny, defenseless little baby who can’t do anything. It can’t feed itself, can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t reason, can’t work, can’t clean its room, can’t ride a bike, can’t pass or fail a class, or anything else. All that baby can do is cry and cry and cry some more! When my children were born, my heart was thrilled, it was overjoyed with the love I had for them ! Do you see it? My love, my joy, my acceptance of them had absolutely nothing to do with their performance - it existed solely because they were my children!
Conclusion
How does God want to meet your need for acceptance this morning? Let’s go back to our two kinds of conversion. We said first of all that conversion was repentance (turning from sin and unbelief) and faith (trusting in Christ alone for salvation). If you’ve never been saved this morning, if you’ve never repented and placed your faith in Christ alone for salvation - you need to see that God isn’t going to accept you on the basis of what you can do for Him. He’s not going to accept you on the basis of how good you can be or how perfectly you can keep His commandments. The only way He’ll accept you is for you to repent - to turn from your sin of trying to earn His favor and place your faith in Him alone. Unless you become as a baby - God will not accept you. Don’t you see this morning that you don’t have anything to offer Him? Can’t you see that there’s nothing you can do to earn His love, and that your very efforts to bypass His Son Jesus Christ are offensive to Him?
Are you trusting in your own abilities to earn acceptance with God, or are you trusting in the death of Christ to pay for your sins? How sure are you that you would spend eternity with God if today were your last? If you were to stand before God today and He asked you, "Why should I let you into my heaven?" what would you tell Him? Would you mention your abilities, church attendance, kindness to others, Christian service, abstinence from some sin, or some other good deed?
All those questions Jesus and Nicodemus went through, that story about a snake on a pole and John 3:16? Do you see it? Its about recognizing your absolute inability to understand, to help, to do anything but admit your helplessness (like a baby), and trust Christ and Christ alone for salvation… "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." "That whosoever admits his helplessness and trusts Christ shall not perish, but will be accepted by God."
Now, that’s not all it means to be born again. Time won’t allow me to go into detail, but I want you to look with me at one last verse before I deal with the second conversion that needs to take place. Look at Ephesians 1:3-6. Listen, until you repent of your sin and place your faith in Christ, the Bible says that you’re a child of the devil, you are in his family. However, at the moment of saving faith in Christ, something happens.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved."
How does Jesus meet that greatest spiritual need? In salvation, or conversion, when you are born again, when you come to Him as a little baby, He rescues you from the most wicked family known to man and adopts you into His family - He accepts you into the beloved, and who are the beloved? His family!
Let me address the second kind of conversion quickly now - many of you have already been accepted into God’s family through salvation, but if you’ll be honest with yourself you’ve placed yourself in bondage to that performance trap all over again, and I think I can prove it with a couple of simple questions.
· You sin, or you mess up, or disobey God - maybe it was deliberate and intentional or maybe not - you didn’t realize you sinned until later, then something bad happens in your life. It may be health related, it may be financial, it could be anything you consider not to be favorable to you - do you often find yourself thinking that God is getting you because you failed Him or sinned against Him? Here’s another one…
· You do something for the Lord, some act of service, maybe you give extra money or some other thing that you are proud of having done - do you find yourself thinking that God is going to favor you more because of it?
If you answered yes to either of those questions, it is very likely that you have succumbed to the performance trap, seeking God’s acceptance and approval based on your actions and behavior. Let me remind you of something - God will never love you any less than He does right now, and He can’t love you any more. Why? Because His love isn’t based on your performance - it’s based on whether you’re in His family.
So quit trying to earn God’s favor and live in the freedom that comes from an intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ. You’ve already been accepted into the family - so what does Jesus say? Give up! And come to Jesus in the same helpless spirit that you had when you trust Him in salvation.
1. Phillips, John.
2. Adapted from a message by Roy Fowler titled: There Was A Pharisee http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=43715&ContributorID=2471
3. Piper, John. Desiring God (Multnomah Publishers, Inc. Sisters, OR) 2003 p. 64
