Why Must I Be Born Again? Jesus and the Kingdom of God

Morning Alex is preaching.

I'm just going to bring us the reading.

This is from the book of John, chapter three, verses one to twenty one.

There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

This man came to him at night and said Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.

Jesus replied truly, I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

How can anyone be born when he is old?

Nicodemus asked him can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?

Jesus answered, truly, I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Whatever is born of flesh is flesh and whatever is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again.

The wind blows where it pleases and you hear it sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going.

So it is with everyone born of the spirit.

How can these things be, asked Nicodemus, Are you a teacher of Israel and don't know these things?

Jesus replied truly, I tell you.

We speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen.

But you do not accept our testimony.

If I have told you about earthly things and you don't believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of man.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

For God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

This is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light, because the deeds were evil.

For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it so that his deeds may not be exposed.

But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.

Good morning everyone.

We haven't met which I haven't met many of you.

My name's Alex.

I'm the lead pastor here, along with Fletcher.

Who is Jesus?

Well, that's the hidden question that Nicodemus came within, this strange interaction between him and Jesus.

Nicodemus, if you're not familiar with the story, was a respected religious leader, part of the group known as the Pharisees.

Pharisees have a bad name today, but actually they were highly respected in ancient Israel.

They saw themselves as the guardians of faith.

But the Gospels record Jesus having plenty of disagreements with them.

But here it seems that Nicodemus the Pharisee had come with a genuine question, which he doesn't quite ask, but it's there.

It's clear that Nicodemus realized that Jesus had God's favor.

He says no one could do these miracles unless God was with him.

But who is he?

Is he a prophet?

Is he the Messiah?

Or is he just a gifted teacher?

And for some reason, rather than coming out and asking the question, he just leaves it hanging with this opening statement, prompts us to ask who is Jesus to you?

Who is Jesus to me?

Well, maybe you have that question sorted out, but 2000 years it's still a question we ask and argue over.

There are those who say that Jesus is a teacher and nothing more.

You can take or leave his teachings.

Your Muslim neighbors revere him as a prophet.

Jehovah's witnesses admit that he is the Son of God, but they won't go any further than that.

Christians say that he's not just the Son of God, but he's God.

The Son God become a man, the God man.

And with such a range of options and there's probably more besides that I haven't mentioned who is Jesus becomes a very loaded question.

There's a lot hanging on it, but if it's such an important question and the answer is just as important, then if Nicodemus leaves his question hanging, why is it that Jesus doesn't just come out and answer it?

Why does he give this long, convoluted response to Nicodemus?

Where did this stuff about being born again and the kingdom of God come from?

Well, we need to see a bit of context to understand what Jesus is doing.

Devout first century Israelites were actually all about the kingdom of God.

They were eagerly awaiting the appearance of the Messiah, who they believed would establish God's kingdom on earth, with its capital as Jerusalem and the entire world under his feet, which of course, meant that Israel would be the preeminent nation on earth, with their king as the king of the whole world.

So when this miracle working rabbi came from nowhere preaching a message about the kingdom of God, it got people's attention, especially the authorities who were worried about the kind of trouble it could cause with their Roman overlords.

And Jesus was not the only person coming and preaching like this.

Plenty of would-be messiahs were put down in the first couple of centuries.

But it's this background of expectation about the kingdom of God that perhaps makes a little more sense of Jesus' response.

He guessed this was what was at the heart of Nicodemus' question and why he'd come Braces the question no, what does the kingdom of God have to do with us today?

On the whole 21st century, australians aren't looking for a kingdom.

If I took a poll here, I imagine many people would be Republican.

We're looking for a way to beat inflation, find somewhere secure to live, hoping we don't get dragged into World War III.

But you know what?

That's not so far from first century Jewish hopes.

Like most of history, the first century was a world where economic injustice was ripe, the rich got richer and the poor just had to struggle to get by.

Israel was occupied by a foreign power, the Roman Empire, and the world was just a brutal place to live in.

The promise of God's kingdom was that there'd be an end to that.

In different places the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, describes a world in which the Jewish God, yahweh, through his designated ruler, the Messiah the Anointed One, would establish peace and justice on the earth.

It was a world in which everyone experienced economic security.

No one lacked what they needed.

It was a world in which swords were beaten into plowshares.

The end to conflict and war and injustice.

That sounds all right, doesn't it?

I don't know about you.

I would like to live in that world today.

And so you see, if you desire these things, and who doesn't, then the kingdom of God has everything to do with us today.

The question becomes if this is true, how can I have a piece of that pie?

And so Jesus got straight to the point of answering it for Nicodemus.

If you want to see this kingdom, he says, you must be born again.

Now, that's a baffling statement.

If you're a Christian, you're used to hearing that sort of language.

But Nicodemus certainly was confused.

What?

That's?

Just a weird image.

Jesus and Nicodemus was a theologically educated man, don't forget.

But the point Jesus was making was that the kingdom of God was not a political system.

It was not an earthly realm.

It was first and is first and foremost a spiritual one.

And to become part of this kingdom of peace we need a complete spiritual transformation.

You must be born of water and the Spirit, as Jesus puts it Now.

The Spirit Jesus refers to is pretty clear it's God's Holy Spirit.

It's really God's presence and power with us and within us.

But the reference to water is a little more tricky and theologians have been arguing over this for the last 2000 years.

Some see it as a reference to baptism, which we'll be witnessing in a few minutes.

But the image of water when we read the rest of John's Gospel, it actually goes a lot deeper than this.

In chapter one, we see John the baptist baptizing Jesus in water and John has a revelation, as Jesus is baptized, of who Jesus is.

He sees the spirit coming down and God declaring that this is his son.

In chapter two, jesus turns water into wine at a wedding.

It's an act of transformation and new life and joy.

In chapter four, jesus talks to a woman who's come to draw water from a well and he urges her to seek the living water that will not run dry.

He's talking about life, giving water from above, from heaven.

In chapter five, jesus heals a man waiting to be healed in the waters of the pool of Bethesda, and they believe that when the waters got stirred up by an angel, people could go in there and they would be healed supernaturally, and a man just could never make it down in time.

In chapter seven, jesus describes the Holy Spirit welling up within us as streams of water flowing from our souls.

And so, as Jesus talks about water here, I don't think the point is baptism or any kind of physical HTO.

The water that he's talking about is new life, the living water from God himself.

He talks about where it comes from, bringing understanding, transformation, life, healing in God's very presence.

And why?

Why this imagery of water?

Why these things?

Because that's what life in the kingdom of God is like.

The kingdom of God is not a political or material realm, it's a spiritual realm.

The material realm, jesus says, can only produce material results.

If you want to enter this spiritual realm, the reality of the peace and security, the justice and prosperity, what the Jews call the shalom, which is a Hebrew word for peace, but it encompasses a wholeness, a well-being, if we want the shalom of God's rule.

We need a radical spiritual transformation to our very core, a new birth, jesus says, into the realm of the Spirit.

And if that all sounds a little bit weird and spooky and evidently it did, to Nicodemus, jesus says yeah, it does, doesn't it?

It's just like the wind, which, incidentally, is exactly the same word as spirit.

Wind and spirit in both Greek and Hebrew are the same word in each language.

The ancient world, of course, didn't understand what caused wind, so it's an apt metaphor.

It just sort of comes from nowhere and goes from nowhere.

But it's a little bit the same here.

You don't know where the wind's coming from or where it's going, and that's just like everyone born of the Spirit.

There's a mystery here that we're not able to grasp, and even today we can't control the wind.

But we can write its currents and let it carry us along, and so it is with the Holy Spirit.

I think we all seek the things that the kingdom of God stands for.

The problem is, we're usually seeking them in the wrong places and with the wrong tools, and it's not until we've had this spiritual transformation by the power of God that we can grasp them.

You must be born again, but Jesus isn't done with Nicodemus yet.

Or actually it might be that John isn't done with us, because at some point, if you've got a red letter Bible, you won't see this.

But at some point, probably around verse 16, john seems to stop quoting this conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus and he starts reflecting on it and explaining it to us, the reader.

John says that anyone who believes in Jesus is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe stands condemned already.

So it seems that John is saying that the default condition of human beings is that we are under condemnation and judgment.

Now maybe that seems grossly unfair to you, isn't God love?

How can God allow us all to be condemned like this?

What about those?

If it's not believing in Jesus at least to our condemnation?

What about those who haven't heard about Jesus?

Or what about those who haven't had the gospel explained?

How are they meant to believe in something they don't even know about?

Why is Christianity so exclusive?

Many people take offense at the exclusiveness of Christianity.

Jesus himself said I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

You can kind of understand why people would be offended by that, but again, we need to read this in its context, john says this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world.

And what happened?

Well, people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.

And as we watch what's unfolding in the Middle East, a few weeks ago, people who love the darkness set off the chain of events that lead us to where we are today.

Everyone who does evil hates the light.

The problem keeping us out of God's kingdom isn't only that we are physical beings that need a spiritual transformation so we can get into the spiritual kingdom.

It's that we're creatures of darkness who need to be brought into the light.

Now you might say, oh, hang on, that's not me.

I don't do evil, I don't sin.

I mean those Hamas guys.

They're pretty out there, really, aren't they?

Maybe Jesus is just talking about those sorts of people.

Well, you know, evil isn't just Adolf Hitler or slavery or child abuse, as evil as those things are.

You know, evil is the anger and unforgiveness I feel towards others, even when I think I'm justified in that anger or unforgiveness, because they have harmed me.

Evil is the selfishness and greed that we all seem to be able to justify.

Evil is the lust and exploitation we practice when we look at porn or use other people for sex or whatever it is.

So let me ask you a question Do anger and unforgiveness and bitterness and exploitation at any level belong to the kingdom of light or to the kingdom of darkness?

The lust and greed and selfishness or generosity, selflessness and commitment to others belong to the kingdom of light, to the kingdom of God?

Seems pretty self-evident, doesn't it?

And so we are condemned by what the Bible calls our sins, the evil things within our heart, and Jesus is the solution to that sin.

Well, how so?

Well, this is where Jesus strange saying about being lifted up like the snake in the wilderness, comes in.

He's talking about an ancient story where the Israelites had sinned against God and God released these poisonous snakes into the Israelite camp.

The story goes, and people were being bitten and poisoned and dying.

And God said to Moses make a bronze snake.

And he hoisted the bronze snake up on a pole and the story goes that everyone who looked at the bronze snake would live.

Well, that's the strange one, why they had to confront their sin and trust in God's way of salvation.

Jesus was predicting a near future in which he would be hoisted up on a Roman cross and be crucified.

And in that act of self sacrifice the king of light would seem to be engulfed by the darkness, but in doing that he would take all the darkness on himself, all of our sin on himself.

Let it engulf him and let it die with him on that cross.

For a moment it would seem like the darkness of one, but it was in that moment that Jesus put the darkness to death through his death.

You know, darkness can't put out a light, can it?

The light, no matter how small, always overcomes darkness, because darkness isn't a thing.

The light shines ever brighter in the darkness.

And so Jesus, the king of light, rises from the dead In a blaze of glory.

So we can have hope.

And so Jesus answers Nicodemus question who are you?

By talking about how to enter the kingdom of God, because Jesus is the king.

Jesus is the king, he is the way into the kingdom.

When we believe in Jesus, we are born again, born from above.

And, friends, when we don't believe in Jesus, we're still stuck in our sin and evil, and that's why John says those who don't believe in him are condemned, because we're already condemned by our own sin.

But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

We are sinners who need a savior, and Jesus is the way of salvation.

So I want to ask you again who is Jesus to you?

Who is Jesus to me?

Well, in a moment we're going to witness the baptism of a couple of people who has said that Jesus is their king and they have been born again.

Jesus is their savior.

Jesus is the source of living water that the water of baptism represents.

What about you, if you want to give your life to Jesus?

I want to just lead you in a prayer now and I'll invite you after the baptism to come and talk to myself or Fletcher, but what I just asked you to close your eyes and bow your head with me.

Father, we come now and we want to thank you for the gift of life that is in Jesus.

Father, we have to take responsibility for our own sin and evil, the little things that we try to justify and we think aren't so bad, the big things in our world that upset us.

It's all human.

None of it is from you.

But, father, you have provided the solution.

You have provided a way for us to be born again Through your Son, through your Holy Spirit.