John 3:1-17
“The New Birth”
We’ve been celebrating children, students and teachers this morning.
And one of the many things Parkview is blessed with is an abundance of Sunday School teachers who put a lot of hard work into what they do.
It takes a lot of dedication to prepare a lesson each week…especially when you have no guarantee as to whether you will have ten people show up or one or two.
It is my prayer that more and more of us will take advantage of the Sunday school classes, the Youth Group, Kid’s Zone, the United Methodist Women’s Circle Groups, the United Methodist Men, and the Bible Studies that take place here…because it is in these small groups that we learn…that we really learn about Jesus and how our lives can be changed through a personal relationship with Him.
And it is in these groups that we truly find new bonds of friendship as we fellowship one with another.
One of the great things that the church has to offer that no other institution has is a group of people…bonded by the love of Christ…who are here for one another through thick and thin.
For here in the church, we are brothers and sisters…tied together, not by blood but by the same Holy Spirit Who lives inside all who believe.
And this is what our Gospel Lesson is about this morning.
We are confronted by a man named Nicodemus who comes to Jesus seeking this intimacy with God and with other people that he has been searching for his entire life.
You see, Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jewish people.
He is a member of the Sanhedrin which only has seventy members.
It was the supreme court of the Jews.
The Sanhedrin had religious jurisdiction over every Jew in the world.
So Nicodemus was a powerful man, and it is clearly amazing that he would even bother to come to Jesus seeking…
…seeking something which, deep down inside he knew he did not have…
…seeking a real and tangible relationship with God.
But this just goes to show that no matter how much power one has in this world, no matter how much wealth a person may have in this life…
…if they do not have a relationship with God…
…then their life is hollow and empty…
…and ultimately devoid of true eternal meaning.
Everyone needs Jesus.
Everyone needs what only Jesus can offer.
And that is new life.
Real life.
Only Jesus offers us eternal life, which is the kind of life that God lives; its God’s life…and being a part of it.
Eternal life is to be lifted up above the merely human, temporary, passing things of this life and into that joy and peace that belongs to God.
And God wants us to experience this joy and peace which belongs to Him.
He wants to give it to us for free.
He wants us to possess it, just as He possesses it.
We are told that Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night.
And it makes sense that this is the way it happens.
For it is dark at night, and therefore this symbolizes that Nicodemus…in the darkness of his spiritual journey…
…in the darkness of his understanding about relationship with God…
…is attracted to the Light of the world…
…Who is Jesus.
So, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus…
… he is, in a sense, like a moth attracted to the Light shining in the darkness of this world.
He has seen something in Jesus, in the way Jesus loves, heals and relates to others that he wants for himself.
He has also seen something in the relationship between Jesus and those who are Jesus’ followers or disciples that he knows he is lacking in his own life…
…but he wants it!
He wants to be part of it.
Because in all his searching in this life, he has never witnessed the love and caring one for another that Jesus and His followers have for each other.
Yes, Nicodemus, wants what he does not yet possess.
He desires to find what he has been searching for his entire life, and he sees what he has been searching for his entire life in Jesus Christ.
So, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the darkness of his understanding…and this is the place that all of us come to Jesus.
We want more out of this life than what we are getting.
We want more out of life than the empty, hollowness of what we are experiencing.
So we come to Jesus, not understanding what we will find…
…not even understanding what Jesus is about…
…but sensing that there is a Light shining in the darkness…
…and we want to see…
…we want to get a glimpse of what this often seemingly meaningless life is about.
And so we come to Jesus, by coming to Sunday school, Worship, Bible Studies, Vacation Bible School, Circle groups…
…we come searching for something to Light up the darkness of our world.
And when we do come, we find that Jesus, the Light of the World is more than happy to speak to us…
…to tell us how we can find ultimate meaning in this life…
…how we can begin to move out of the darkness and into the Light…
…how we can be changed into people who are living in relationship with God!
And this change comes through what Jesus describes as the “New Birth” or being “Born Again.”
And this process is quite simple really.
Actually, it is so simple that many of us…in the darkness of our understanding…miss it altogether!
Simply speaking it means that there are two births that we are meant to experience.
The first birth occurs when we come into this world as infants, born from our mother’s womb.
This is the birth of our flesh.
This is the beginning of our lives here on earth.
This is what we must go through in order to become human people.
The second birth that we are to experience is not a physical birth, but a spiritual birth.
This is when we are born not of flesh and blood, but born of God.
This is when we become, not just children of our earthly parents, but children of our Heavenly Parent as well…
…Who is God!
This is the beginning of our lives as members of the Kingdom of God.
This is our entrance into eternal life.
This is our entrance into living in close communion with God.
It is our entrance into the kind of life that God lives; it is the entrance of our lives into God’s life!!!
And just as we have much to learn when we move from the darkness of our mother’s womb into the light of living in the flesh…
…we have a lifetime of learning, really…
We also have much to learn as we move out of the darkness of our spiritual deadness, or blindness into the Light of life in God!
The born again experience is just the beginning of our Christian lives.
It is the beginning of the journey!
And everyone experiences this “new birth” at different ages and stages.
The Holy Spirit is in charge of this “new birth”.
God seeks us out in this new birth.
As we are told in John Chapter 3:8 “The wind blows (that is the Spirit of God) 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.”
Nicodemus was an accomplished man…
…probably at least middle aged if not older when he comes to Jesus in the darkness searching for this “new birth.”
Some of us come seeking and searching early on in life, and some of us come later on in life.
What matters is that we come!!!
And when we come, if we come truly seeking to be born again…truly seeking to come out of the darkness which is devoid of true and everlasting meaning…and enter the Kingdom of God which means to live lives where we completely and willingly submit everything we have and everything we are to the will of God and accept the will of God for our lives…
…we will be born again or born of God!!!
This new birth will occur…
…and we will find more peace and joy and happiness in this life than we could have ever dreamed existed as we are lifted up out of the prison of this world and into the freedom of living for God which is the Kingdom of God!!!
Perhaps you have been living your entire life in darkness.
Perhaps you are searching for meaning, for hope, for a reason to live beyond what you have been able to find in this world.
Jesus is calling you, beckoning you to come to Him…
…to willingly and completely give your entire self…everything you have to His perfect will for your life…
…and in doing this you will be born of the Spirit…born anew…born again…
…you will find that you have crossed from the darkness of misunderstanding into the Kingdom where all things become new with the Light of Christ.
