Born from Above

Did you see the New York Times article published on December 23rd, which stated that the average

American adult lives just 18 miles from his or her mother?

I read it.

If you read it, it might have confirmed a couple of thoughts you've had about Church

of the Advent.

The first is, we are as strange and peculiar as we thought we were.

Most people in this room, I think, live far more than 18 miles from their mother, right?

Just a few of us don't.

The second is, if you have experienced loneliness or disconnectedness in the city of Washington,

D.C., those feelings are probably normal, and probably a lot of people around you are

experiencing or have experienced those feelings.

Last thought, it might confirm, if the Bible really describes the Church as God's family

in the world, then right now we should be conforming ourselves to God's vision for what family

should look like.

And if he makes promises concerning that family, that it's imperative that we claim those promises

for ourselves.

The last two weeks, we've looked at these promises found in the Old Testament, what it means for

God's people to be God's family in the world.

The first week, which was three weeks ago, we looked at Genesis chapter 12, and in particular

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God's promise that he would make a family, one that covered the earth, and through this

family all the peoples of the earth would be blessed.

In week two, which was two weeks ago, obviously, we looked at Isaiah 56, and we saw that this

family that God is creating or will create is open to all.

It consists of the loneliest, the smallest, the weakest, the outsider.

It's not for insiders.

It's not for the strongest or the most clever.

And today, we will look at how one enters that family.

And we enter God's family the same way that most people enter a family.

We're born into it.

We're born.

And tonight, we're going to look at how this new birth is a matter of life and death.

I'm not trying to be dramatic.

Those are the two points.

We're going to look at life.

We're going to look at death.

First, we're going to look at life.

We're going to look at new life that comes in Christ.

But first, we need to ask God to help us, to give us wisdom and understanding to receive

and to get this passage from John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

God, we would want a new life.

God, not just for ourselves as individuals, but for our church.

And not just for our church, but for the people around us.

For our families, our friends, our housemates, our neighbors.

So would you help us to understand what this new life is?

To receive it?

To experience it?

To live it?

God, thank you for giving it.

God, thank you for giving us your word that we might know you and understand you better.

And that we might be members of your family.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So when Tommy read the passage from John, you would have heard Jesus say three times,

truly, truly.

Some translations will say,

verily I say unto you.

In the original Greek, Jesus says,

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

You must be born again.

Amen.

Amen.

You must be born of water and the Spirit.

With power and authority,

Jesus is saying,

you must get this.

You must receive this.

You must take your whole life on this.

You must have new life on God's terms.

So what in this conversation with Nicodemus causes Jesus to say this so emphatically?

It reminds me of a friend of mine who raises Akita dogs.

These are really big, muscular, thick dogs.

And one time he snapped.

The dog snapped at his wife.

And asked, what did you do?

Well, my friend said, well, I took the dog by the jowls.

I pinned it to the ground and looked into his eyes until he stared away.

I thought, how frightening.

For the dog.

If you knew my friend.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when I read Jesus saying, truly, truly,

I feel like he is looking into my eyes with authority and power as my master saying,

you have to get this.

You have to get this.

The passage tells us that Nicodemus was a man of the Pharisees

and a ruler of the Jews.

He's brilliant.

He's powerful.

And he's devout.

Now, the Judaism that Nicodemus and Jesus both knew

had a good deal to do with being born into the right family.

What mattered in Nicodemus' day was being a child of Abraham.

And if you're born of this family, you need to keep the house rules,

which are being circumcised, keeping the Sabbath,

keeping and following the Jewish law and tradition,

both written and oral.

And this qualifies you to enter and receive the kingdom of God.

Now, for Nicodemus, to see the kingdom of God was to participate in the kingdom

at the end of the age,

to experience eternal resurrection life.

Here, Jesus is saying,

God is starting a new family in which this ordinary birth is not enough.

You need to be born all over again, born from above.

And that resurrection life begins here and now.

Now, as an aside, ever since the 60s and 70s,

the phrase born again has acquired all kinds of different

and often negative secondary meanings and connotations.

When Jesus says it in Greek,

it can be understood as both born again and born from above.

It means, the same word means both.

And we're going to assume they mean both.

He means both at the same time.

And because of that, I'm going to use them interchangeably.

Okay.

But anyway, the key to this, being born again,

being born from above, is transformation.

Nicodemus had for years taught others

the conditions of entrance into the kingdom of God,

conditions cast in terms of obedience to God's commands,

devotion to God, and happy submission to his will.

But here, Nicodemus is facing a condition he has never heard expressed,

the absolute requirements of birth from above.

Now, he doesn't really think that Jesus is saying that one must once again

enter the womb of one's mother.

Jesus, excuse me, Nicodemus' response is one of incredulity.

He was amazed at the very category.

New life, new birth.

Well, this new birth takes place through God's initiative.

Okay?

It takes place through God's initiative, as John says earlier in chapter 1,

in which we hear every year at the Lessons and Carol service.

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God,

who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,

nor of the will of man, but of God.

Here again, we see in scriptures the uniqueness of the Christian religion.

It is not man that seeks God, but God that seeks man.

It's not man that attempts to ascend to heaven, but God descends to earth.

Jesus, forsaking his own life to rescue us and bring us into relationship with his Father

to give us new life.

We are born from above, transformed, and being transformed into the image of the Father.

How does that happen?

Jesus says you must be born of water and the Spirit.

Now, last week, Tommy ended a sermon by saying that water is thicker than blood.

The sign that we have been brought into the family is water baptism.

And if you've never seen a baptism, we'll do them on Easter Sunday.

That's March 27th.

Don't miss it.

Baptism is a seal of the promises he has made to us.

That seal signifies ownership.

It's a seal.

It signifies ownership and security and membership into God's family.

To be baptized is to become a child in the household of the Father and a brother to Jesus Christ.

Because to be baptized is to be inducted into the family of God, the body of Christ.

Now, on the other side of this coin is being born in the Spirit.

It's new life bubbling up from within.

The Holy Spirit indwelling us, causing new life, a new heart.

Water and Spirit are closely joined.

Nobody in the early church supposed that Spirit baptism mattered so much that you could do without water baptism.

Now, there are many instances in the New Testament where Jesus needs to correct this.

Those who are baptized with water but don't seem to be baptized with the Spirit.

Those who aren't acting in accordance with God's will and commands.

The point in this passage is that this double-sided new birth,

which brings you into the visible community of God's family,

water baptism,

and which gives you the new life of the Spirit welling up like a spring of water inside you,

which is spirit baptism,

was now required for membership in God's kingdom.

Now, hundreds of years before this,

Ezekiel prophesied this.

In Ezekiel 37, which we heard Brian read for us earlier tonight,

we find God saying,

I will sprinkle clean water on you,

and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses.

And from all your idols I will cleanse you,

and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh,

and give you a heart, a flesh,

and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes,

and be careful to obey my rules.

Apparently, Nicodemus had not thought of this passage,

and other passages this way,

that we need individual regeneration.

If he was like some other Pharisees,

he was too confident of the quality of his own obedience

to think that he needed much repentance.

Repentance.

What is repentance?

It's turning, right?

I think we should think of repentance as an act of death,

of death to ourselves,

and our sinful inclinations as we turn to God and into new life.

Do you know who Peter Thiel is?

He's a billionaire.

He co-founded PayPal.

He's now focusing on anti-aging research.

One time he was speaking about these initiatives,

and he said, quite simply,

I think that the thing that's really incompatible with life is death.

And it's true.

Like, life is, to him,

and I think to most of us,

a self-evident good.

And death is the opposite of life.

So how profound is what he said?

That's what Jesus came to bring.

And as Christians, we know death to be our great enemy.

Yet the converse of what he said is equally true,

and ironically true,

that life requires death.

And that's our second point.

New life requires death.

Over the last month, I've been reading on the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius.

Athanasius concerns...

Athanasius...

Athanasius...

Slow down, Bielman.

Athanasius concerns himself with this point,

that humanity's great enemy is death.

How would God overcome this enemy on behalf of humankind?

So Athanasius writes,

But since the Savior is raising the body,

which is the resurrection,

no longer is death fearsome,

but all believers in Christ tread on it as nothing,

and would rather choose to die than deny their faith in Christ.

For they really know that when they die,

they are not destroyed,

but both live and become incorruptible through the resurrection.

Human beings, before believing in Christ,

view death as fearsome and are terrified at it.

But when they come to faith in him and to his teaching,

they so despise death that they eagerly rush to it

and become witnesses to the resurrection over it,

affected by the Savior.

End quote.

Now, could we do that?

Would we be so confident in the resurrection

that we wouldn't fear death?

That if we were being persecuted

and faced the prospect of martyrdom,

that we would go against the human nature to survive,

and that we would do as our brothers and sisters did back then,

and that they still do today in the Middle East,

and we would so despise death

that we would eagerly rush to it

and become witnesses to the resurrection?

If we want to attain that level of confidence and courage

that our brothers and sisters had in Athanasius' day,

or that many of our martyred brothers,

I'm thinking of the 21 on the shore of North Libya,

if we would have that kind of confidence and courage,

then perhaps the key lies in something that Athanasius says just a little bit later.

He refers to men and women despising this present life and practicing dying.

What an interesting phrase.

Practicing dying.

What would that mean?

It means that you would so prefer the love of Christ

and your life in Christ

that you would do without the things of this world

that would compete for that love.

You'd die to yourself.

You'd die to your desires.

You'd die to your sinful tendencies.

You'd die to the things that are giving you life apart from God.

You'd die to the things that you would hate to lose

if you had to depart this world.

And this is our application for today,

that living a life, a new life,

a born-again life,

a life from above,

means dying.

In 11 days,

the season of Lent begins.

This is the time of year,

the 40 days between Ash Wednesday

and Easter Sunday,

that Christians around the world

take a deep, hard look at themselves

and at their desires

and choose to give up things

that would compete with their love for Christ.

They take stock and see,

like, wow,

social media has assumed

too dominant a place in my life.

Or I too easily go to a glass of wine

or to sweets

or to binge-watching on Netflix

to attain confidence or life

or release.

I do these things instead of going to God.

Last year, I gave up buying cups.

This is my Lent from last year.

I gave up buying cups of coffee from stores,

like Starbucks and what have you.

I would find myself walking by a store.

Like, one day I found myself walking by an LPQ,

Le Pong, Quotidian.

And the next thing I know,

I'm outside that same store

with a cup of coffee in my hand.

Like, what?

How did that happen?

Like, without thinking,

I just went in,

got a cup of coffee,

and walked out.

Like, just randomly.

Yikes.

You know, if we give our money,

like, to the things that we love,

can we take that as a maxim?

Then I was,

I saw how this ritual was giving

my love for Christ competition.

So I cut that out for Lent.

For Lent.

I gave up something else.

I gave up,

I gave up resentment.

And I found that I had been

nursing a grudge.

And, you know,

it was thrilling.

It was life-giving

to nurse that grudge.

And think about that phrase,

nursing a grudge.

Imagine nursing.

Like, it's not hard for me

to imagine that as I get older,

I haven't worked out

in a few years,

and my,

my,

never mind.

Forget it.

But,

we,

we keep a grudge

close to our hearts,

and,

and nurse it.

You know,

had I opened up

the overcoat of my soul,

you would have seen me

keeping this monster

at my breast,

right?

Daily,

hourly nursing it

with resentful thoughts

and feelings

until it become part of my life,

like a tumor.

My,

my Lenten practice,

how I practiced dying,

was to pray for this person

every day.

And each time I prayed,

it was like cutting

into this tumor.

Easter.

And it was painful.

To pray for this person

felt like death to me.

It felt like dying.

But at the end of Lent,

I feel like I experienced

new life.

Like,

Easter felt like resurrection.

I felt forgiveness

for this person.

You know,

I,

I felt great,

as one often does

when they stop drinking poison,

right?

It's,

so I didn't grow up

in the Anglican tradition.

And so,

Lent is probably

as new to me

as it is for many of you.

And I might have said

10,

20 years ago,

as some of you might say,

or could say,

as an objection

to observing Lent.

Like,

shouldn't we be doing that

all year long?

Shouldn't we be dying

to ourselves,

giving up things

that are wrong,

like,

all year long?

And,

and yes.

Like,

the answer is

both and,

okay?

Of course,

we should be dying

to ourselves

all year long.

It's just that

we give repentance

a seat of honor

at the table

during Lenten season.

Just as we should be

celebrating all year long,

we push celebration

to a seat of honor

at the table

during Christmas

and Advent.

So,

over the next 11 days,

consider what

you can give up.

It's not a requirement.

But give,

consider what

you can give up

for Lent,

and we will be meeting

here the morning

of February 10th,

7.30,

or earlier,

7.30,

here in this room

and celebrate

Ash Wednesday,

a day that we remember

our mortality,

and we commit ourselves

together to practicing

dying during the season

of Lent.

So,

it's a both and,

right?

So,

we should be,

we can practice this,

we can practice dying

during Lent,

but we should be

practicing this

all year long.

We should be dying

to ourselves

every day.

And that's what it means

to have new life

in our new family

when we are

born from above,

when we are born

into God's family.

Being a part

of a family

completely reshapes

one's priorities.

in this family,

we die to our

preferences

and prefer

one another instead.

And this is why

John,

in a letter

he would write

later,

which Alex

read for us

earlier,

the book of 1 John,

John writes,

everyone who believes

that Jesus is the Christ

has been born of God,

and everyone

who loves the Father

loves whoever

has been born

of him.

By this we know

that we love

the children of God

when we love God

and obey his commandments.

So what if we used Lent

to ask our brothers

and sisters,

what are our blind spots?

We can use the season

as a checkup,

asking those closest

to us,

what are the things

about ourselves

that we don't realize

that are causing

friction in the family

or are undermining

our integrity?

Things that we're

making idols out of,

things that aren't

easily visible

to us,

but are pretty

obvious to others.

Dying to ourselves

is the way

we will get along

and love each other

deeply.

It will be how

our church becomes

a place of welcome

and healing

for the world.

This act of dying

to ourselves,

we must admit,

is a supernatural feat.

So where do we get

the power to do this?

Where do we find

the power to die

to ourselves?

Look to your baptism.

When we're saved

by water and spirit,

we are baptized

into the life of Christ.

We are united to him

in his death

and his resurrection.

Not only does life

require death,

as I said earlier,

but life requires

a death.

It requires one death.

Jesus Christ came to earth

and died

that we might have life.

We read in the book

of Numbers

that during their wandering

in the wilderness,

the Israelites grumbled

against Moses

and they were punished

by poisonous snakes

invading the camp,

killing many of them.

God gave Moses the remedy.

He was to make a serpent

out of bronze

and put it on a pole

and hold it up

for people to look at.

Jesus cites this.

Oh, anyone who looked

at the serpent on the pole

would be saved

and cured and healed?

And Jesus cites

this Old Testament narrative

and he appropriates it.

Jesus says in verses 14 and 15

of our passage tonight,

and as Moses lifted up

the serpent

in the wilderness,

so must the Son of Man

be lifted up

that whoever believes in him

may have eternal life.

That's the frankest answer

to Nicodemus' question.

How can this happen?

How can one be born again?

The kingdom of God

is seen or entered,

new birth is experienced,

and eternal life begins

through the saving cross work

of Christ,

his death on the cross,

that work received by us

in faith.

Jesus' response

ultimately shows

that Nicodemus' problem

wasn't a problem

of understanding,

it was a problem of belief.

It wasn't about rules

and concepts,

it's about a person

who Jesus really is

and what he really has done

for humanity.

Humankind as a whole

has been smitten

with a deadly disease.

The only cure

is to look at the Son of Man,

Jesus,

dying on the cross

and find life

through believing in him.

Do you have new life?

That's the question.

That's really the only question

to ask after reading

this passage, right?

Do you have new life?

Have you been born again?

Have you been born from above?

If you haven't

and you want new life,

the answer is to look to Jesus.

Look to the person of Jesus.

Talk to me

or Tommy

or Josh

or any of our prayer ministers

who congregate here

during communion

and we can show you the way

how to put your life

in submission to Christ,

how to be trusting

in the work of Christ

for forgiveness of sins,

for eternal life,

and for access

to an intimate relationship

with God the Father.

Now, have you been born again

and you know

you're in the family,

but it doesn't feel like

you're experiencing

this new life?

You don't feel,

experience the joy

that comes from

having your sins forgiven

and your relationship

with the Father restored.

And the answer is the same.

Look to Jesus.

Look to Jesus.

Precisely because evil lurks

deep within each of us

for healing to take place,

we must ourselves

be involved in the process.

This doesn't mean

that we just try harder

to be better,

to pull ourselves up

by our bootstraps.

All we can do,

just as it was

all the Israelites could do

in the desert,

is to look

and to trust.

Look at Jesus.

See in him

the full display

of God's saving love

and to trust in him.

When we're born from above,

we're born into a family

and Jesus becomes

our big brother.

So let me leave you

with a story

about two brothers.

It's a story

that singer-songwriter

Sandra McCracken tells

about two young boys

in Missouri

who spent their summer

playing by some

sandbag levees.

These levees

had held back

some of the extreme flooding

that had happened

over the past decade

on the Mississippi River.

But the levees broke

and the boys

found themselves

in quicksand.

When rescue workers

finally found them

and came to them,

they found

only the young boy.

So the rescuers asked,

where's your older brother?

And he said,

he's here.

I'm standing

on his shoulders.

The older brother

had sacrificed his life

to save his younger brother.

Just as this young boy

needed saving,

we too

were once sinking

in the sand

of our sin

and it took

our older brother Jesus

to sacrifice himself

so we could be saved.

And like the little boy,

we are still

in the sand of sin

but saved

from the death

it would cause.

we stand on Jesus' shoulders

and one day

the rescue worker Jesus

will come back

and pull us out completely.

That's what it means

to be saved

and to have eternal life.

So believe in him,

look to him,

trust in him,

maybe for the first time,

maybe for the thousandth time.

Look to Jesus

in the name of the Father

and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

let's pray.

Father,

we give you glory

for your plan

to rescue humankind

stuck

in the quicksand

of sin

and death

for sending

your Son Jesus

to die for us

and to rise again

that we might experience

new life

that death

and sin

would be conquered

and we could experience

life forever

with you

forever

but even in the here

and now

new,

abundant life

in the midst

of our suffering

in the midst

of our pain.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Jesus,

thank you for dying

that we might live.

It's in your name we pray,

Jesus,

our Savior,

our big brother.

Amen.