From Mortal to Immortal
A Study of John 3-4
The Breath of God – John 3:1-8
Circle of Life – John 3:9-21
Accepting God’s Plan – John 3:22-36
Satisfying Water – John 4:1-26
Pleasing Food – John 4:27-42
Birth
Birth is an extreme event. It is a dramatic, traumatic, and radical happening and it changes your life immediately and forever! Immediately: You will carry diaper bags everywhere you go. Forever: You have a child!
Life is a miracle. It is the beginning of something that cannot really be explained - only experienced. Something happens in the moment of birth. There is a breath, there is a cry and there is life.
This idea of being part of a new life is the playground of little boys pretending to be a daddy. It?s the dream of little girls feeding their dolls ?imaginary? food. The birth of a child is the hope of young people in love thinking about marriage and starting a family.
And what parent doesn’t remember the hours of preparing a nursery while the womb grows larger and the day of the birth slowly (emphasis on slowly) - gets closer and closer
Then, suddenly, just as you think it will never happen – it does. Sometimes it happens really fast - or not. It can take hours. But there is miraculous moment when the pangs of birth become the beginning of a brand new life. There is a gasp for air and a tiny cry. The miracle of life has happened because God gave it.
Jesus said that the miracle of birth extends into the spiritual areas. This Sunday we begin a five week study of John 3 and 4 that will take us deep into the miracle of the second birth!
Let’s begin this journey from the mortal to the immortal by reading the John 3:1-8 – the late night meeting of Nicodemus and Jesus.
John 3:1-8 (NCV)
3 There was a man named Nicodemus who was one of the Pharisees and an important Jewish leader. 2 One night Nicodemus came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we know you are a teacher sent from God, because no one can do the miracles you do unless God is with him.”
3 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless one is born again, he cannot be in God’s kingdom.”
4 Nicodemus said, “But if a person is already old, how can he be born again? He cannot enter his mother’s body again. So how can a person be born a second time?”
5 But Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless one is born from water and the Spirit, he cannot enter God’s kingdom. 6 Human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised when I tell you, ‘You must all be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wants to and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where the wind comes from or where it is going. It is the same with every person who is born from the Spirit.”
Life is a expedition of discovery
At a babies first cry all things become new
That first tiny cry is the beginning of a marvelous adventure in living. It marks a journey of discovery and growth that each of us is now taking.
Some of you are just getting started on this journey. Some of you are in the middle part. In fact, you have – along with me! – topped the hill and are headed down the backside of the mountain called life. I figure that I’m still middle aged if I live to be 104!
Some of you will crash and never complete the journey because of war, accident, or disease. And some of you have hit the bottom of the hill and are coasting to the end of the line.
In all of this life you make discoveries
You discover You
Have you ever seen a baby first glimpse their hand going by their face? It is wonderful to watch them laying in the cradle looking around erratically and all of the sudden this tiny hand floating by at the end of their arm catches their eye. It focuses and follows the hand and we see a moment of discovery and wonderment… that is my hand!
This experience is followed by other discoveries throughout all of life. Things like what happens to you spiritually when you stand at the back window of your house and take in a moonlit snow covered tree line at midnight. How loud your own heartbeat is in your ears while you are finishing a five-mile run. And how wonderful moose tracks ice cream tastes just before you go to bed.
You discover Love
In the first shocking moment when you are forced to painfully leave the comfort and 98.6-degree warmth of you mother’s womb and then place in her soft arms you begin to experience love.
This love is not given because of anything we do. It is our simply because we are here. It is this unmerited, unearned, and unconditional we crave for the whole of our lives.
You discover the World
All of the world – the good, the bad, and the revolting. It isn’t very long that we live before we discover art, music, and food. Not merely food that sustains – food that inspires.
But when we discover wealth and money we also soon discover bills and taxes.
The first time Shannon was paid for working at the TCBY she brought home her paycheck and said, “What happened to all my money and who is FICA?”
You discover Pain
Tangible pain is felt when you fall from the monkey bars and skin your knee. Emotional pain is felt when the school bullies taunt you with creative and cruel names. “Monkey Face”; “Lizard Breath”; and “Stupid Head” are just a few of the most cruel – when you are 6 years old!
Then there is the very real pain of rejection. We have all felt this pain. When you got turned down for a date or were laughed off the sandlot softball team. Some discover the pain of rejection in the divorce of their parents or their own divorce.
And then you discover Death.
The final discover is the mortal discovery. Everyone around you dies. Your puppy is killed by a truck racing down the street – and doesn’t even stop. A friend in the doesn’t come to school for a couple of weeks and suddenly you find out that he’s sick and then he dies.
Billy Wind got leukemia. He was a friend of mine in the third grade. I will never forget slipping into the visiting room of the funeral home across the street from the house I grew up in and standing there – with no adults around – looking into the casket with 3 or 4 of my friends at Billy.
We had been playing ball outside when Debbie – her dad was the funeral director – asked if we wanted to see Billy. We did. I laughed. It just didn’t seem real to me because it wasn’t Billy. It was just up puffy body of a little boy that didn’t move – not at all.
Jesus taught Nicodemus that the Spiritual Birth was just like the Physical Birth
To gain immortal life you must be born again in this spiritual birth…
There must be a second birth that is like the first. In fact it is as far-reaching and as dramatic as the first.
When Jesus said, “You must be born again” he used a word that could have been translated “from the top” or “from the beginning,” and may very well be purposely ambiguous.
This new and from-above birth is also described in v. 5 as being “of water and the Spirit.” This great work of the water and the Spirit stands in contrast with what human physical birth produces. It can only bring about the existence of another human being.
This work of the Spirit that produces a kind of birth takes people into the presence of God – for all of eternity
In this spiritual birth – through the water and spirit – all things become new
You discover You… as a child of God
In John 1:13 we discovered that Jesus came so that we would have the right to become children of God. In John 3 we learn through Nicodemus eyes and ears that we in the second birth become the child of God and that we are part of a wonderful family.
We have been born into a new family.
You discover His Love…
His love is a sacrificial, unconditional, inexplicable, and overflowing love. It is from the discovery and acceptance of His love we learn to share this love with others.
The reality is that you and I are leaky buckets. Either we fill that bucket with garbage and the toxic waste of anger, bitterness, revenge, and sullen resentment or it is cleansed and filled with the refreshing water of love – God’s love.
Wherever you go in life you spill what ever you have in your bucket on the people you meet. Your bucket gets empty and must be refilled by someone with something – garbage or love – on a consistent basis.
You Discover the Power to Overcome the World
Just as a baby discovers his abilities Jesus followers discover their new nature with it’s access to the mysterious power of God
We pray and God hears us. We cry out and God comes close to hold us. We ask for wisdom and God’s Holy Spirit gives us new insight. We ask for patience and God gives us trials to strengthen our endurance. We ask for maturity and God gives us his discipline to guide us to better ways of living.
Did you hear about the Super Bowl last Sunday? How could you miss it? Some have expressed shock and outrage. Others – who have discovered the power of God to overcome the world – see the emptiness and hopelessness of a world gone mad trying to find in pleasure the peace we have in Jesus. And then we turn our heads in sorrow because they are held captive while we are set free by Jesus.
But there is an even greater discovery
You Discover That the Mortal is now Immortal
We who were dead in sins are made alive together with Christ.
This is the birth of water and spirit. There is something that happens in the soul when a man or a woman is immersed into the waters of death and resurrected into the new life of Jesus. When we take that long walk down the hallway and enter into the pool room we go to see a miracle happen it is a miracle of life
This transformation is described with the word zôopoieô, “make alive.” This union brings us into permanent contact with His unending life by the breath of God himself.
Have you been born again?
Choose life. Choose to follow Jesus. Confess him as Lord. Change and be baptized into him. Let God breathe into you and there will be a gasp for spiritual air and then…
[At this point there is silence and then… A New Born Babies Cry]
…begin your new life of discovery and victory.
That which was once mortal has become immortal.
