A Fresh look- John 3

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If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Galston

Road, Wandsby Heights, Sydney, Australia.

Okay, reading from John chapter 3, starting at verse 1 and going through to

John 3 · chapter mention

verse 15. John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council.

He came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has

come from God, for no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.

In reply, Jesus declared, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of

God unless he is born again.

How can a man be born again when he is old? Nicodemus asked.

Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born.

Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless

he is born of water and the Spirit.

Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to Spirit.

You should not be surprised at my saying, you must be born again.

The wind blows 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. How can this be? Nicodemus asked.

You are Israel's teacher, said Jesus, and do you not understand these things? I tell you the truth.

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

But still you people do not accept our testimony.

I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe.

How then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?

No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from.

Eternal life." I think some of the troubles we have with the Bible is that we've

broken it up into chapters and verses.

It's convenient and it's good to find that, but sometimes we make mistakes by

doing that. that there's a famous saying, a text out of context becomes a pretext.

We can make anything, and I've seen people do it, make any doctrine or belief just from one verse.

And then also we've added red letters to the words of Jesus.

And I wonder why we do that.

Does that mean the words Jesus spoke on the earth are more important than the rest of the Bible?

Isn't Jesus the Word of God? So to me, every word that we have in the Bible

is of equal importance as well.

And we can get, as I said, just remembering one verse can cause a bit of confusion,

can cause problems. I'll give you an example.

Hands up if you can recite John 3.16. I won't get you to do it, just unless you want to.

Who can recite John 3.15?

I gave you a clue by hamming in the thing.

Hands up if you could recite it. How about John 3.17?

Any takers for that? Yeah? A few show-offs down at the front here.

Hands up if you don't like putting your hand up in church.

We all know John 3.16, and the reason why...

The reason why John wrote the Gospel of John was for two main reasons.

The first reason, as we've heard before over the last few weeks,

is that he wrote the Gospel of John to encourage believers to keep on believing.

That was his purpose of John's Gospel. And he did that by revealing who Jesus was.

Also, there was some teaching coming in from one side that was saying that Jesus

wasn't God. He was human, but he wasn't God.

Or a bit of an extreme from that is that Jesus was God, but when he came to

earth as a human being, he laid aside his godliness or his God character and was just a human being.

And I've heard that preached many times in churches over the last few years.

That's coming back, unfortunately. On the other side, people were teaching that

Jesus wasn't really human.

It was just like a ghost, walking around in a ghostly form or something.

And when he died, he actually didn't die.

And when he rose, he actually didn't rise bodily. It was all spirit.

And that was around the time of John as well.

So John was writing the gospel, first of all, to encourage believers,

but also to rectify and correct these teachings that he was coming in.

And as we've heard, he started off with Jesus is God.

He is the word and the word was God and the word was with God,

showing that he was there.

Then he would give examples of what Jesus did and what he said.

There's seven miracles, major miracles that Jesus did, and he describes that.

That, and then Jesus stands up and says, I am, I am the bread of life, I am the light.

Also signifying that he was God.

Also showing who he was and what he was in that story.

Then after that story, John often wrote a commentary about what had happened, about Jesus.

And in this story of Nicodemus, we have a similar thing.

John writes about Jesus in this interview and then makes a commentary.

So John 3.16, I won't get you to put your hands up because people don't like

to do that. who wrote or who said John 3.16?

In some Bibles, it's in red letters. In some Bibles, it's not in red letters.

So who actually said it? I'll give the answer in a minute.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus. Nicodemus is a Pharisee.

He's actually the ruler of, they used to have schools or colleges for rabbis,

and he was a leader of one of those. and he comes to Jesus at night.

And some people say, well, he came to Jesus because he was scared to be seen talking to Jesus.

You know, all the other Pharisees will go, you know, no, no,

no, you can't do that. So he comes at night.

That's possible. But I also think maybe he really wanted to have a deep and meaningful with Jesus.

So, you know, during the day, there's all the crowds around Jesus, following Jesus.

So he couldn't get this one, one time. So maybe he came to Jesus at night for

that personal conversation.

Or maybe he couldn't ask those questions with all the other Pharisees around him.

I don't really know the motive, but what I do know is whatever motive you come

to Jesus, are you scared and hiding or do you just want to have a deep and meaningful?

Jesus will accept you and Jesus

will talk to you. And that's a beautiful thing about Jesus, isn't it?

Then I start this conversation and Nicodemus is going, the things that you do

looks like you are from God. You have been sent from God.

So he's still got these questions. And Jesus goes into this conversation about being born again.

And I always thought, you know, being born again, you know, you start like a

baby, then you grow and grow and grow.

But I looked up some Jewish traditions and history, and the word being or the

phrase being born again is really interesting.

It's not about being born again as like a baby. be, it was actually like a graduation

or inauguration since we're going into some interesting politics there in a

certain country that I won't mention.

There's six ways or six things in the Jewish tradition that you are called being born again.

For a male, when they reach the age of 13, the bar mitzvah, I can never say

that word properly, when you reach the age of 13 as a male,

you became an adult and you laid aside the things of a child.

You graduated, you became inaugurated as an adult and you'll call,

and that was called being born again.

Also, if you became a rabbi, you were called, it was being born again.

So you've been trained, you've been taught and then you become a,

you've been chosen to become a rabbi, you've been born again.

Also, when a male got married, he was saying, you're being born again.

You've inaugurated, you've graduated, as it were, from a single person to the blessed marriage.

If you became a leader of the school of the rabbis, you're being called born again.

The fifth one was, if a Gentile decided to convert to Judaism, they were born again.

They were graduating from the Gentiles to the true religion, or the Judaism.

And finally, when a king was crowned, it was said to be born again.

Now, Nicodemus has fulfilled four of those. He's over the age of 13.

He's married. To be in the Sanhedrin, you had to be married.

Excuse me. He was a rabbi, and he was also the leader of the rabbi school. We call it that.

The other two, he couldn't do. It was impossible. He couldn't be a Gentile coming

to Judaism because he was a Jew.

And also, there was no way he would become king because he wasn't in the line of David.

So when Jesus says, you must be born again, he's going, well,

I've done those four things. I've been born again four times.

So he's confused. So he goes back to the natural thing. Do you mean being a

baby again? And he's just confused.

And Jesus uses that situation to say, you must be born again of the spirit.

See, Nicodemus was in his earthly mind, in his fleshly mind,

understanding what the things of God.

Then Jesus says, sort of like a rebuke, says, you know, you're a rabbi,

you're the top guy and you don't understand these things.

And then he goes into the story of the serpents in the wilderness that we read from Numbers.

To show that, and Nicodemus would have known that. He probably memorized all of it.

They memorized the first four books, the Torah of the Scriptures, our Old Testament.

They memorized that. Can you imagine doing that?

In the beginning, God created the earth. That's about as far as I can get.

But they memorized those four books, including Leviticus.

I'm pretty impressed with those guys. But he would have known,

if he hadn't memorized it, he would have known about the wilderness and about the serpents.

And Jesus is saying, you don't understand because you haven't been born by the Spirit of God.

So he knew it all, but it wasn't revelation to him because of the Spirit of God.

He wasn't born in that. And that story is really interesting.

If you read a few chapters before in Numbers, they're crossing the wilderness

because of their disobedience.

They didn't believe they could go into the promised land, except for Joshua and Caleb.

You know, the spies were sent out and they came back and said,

you know, we've got no hope going in there.

Or the other 10, but Jacob, sorry, Joseph, I get it, right?

Joshua and Caleb said, we can, you know, God is with us.

It doesn't matter how big they are, look at the size of the grapes.

We can have wine for years and years and years.

And then they were put into the wilderness from Egypt to Israel, where Israel is today.

It was about a two-week journey by walking.

It took them 40 years because of their disobedience.

But still God looked after them. There was a cloud by day, a fire by night to

keep them covered and to direct them.

There was water provided. And then they were complaining about the hunger.

You know, we're hungry, we're hungry, we're hungry. and God sent this manna.

Every morning they would wake up, and on the ground was like this honey crisp

bread or something like that.

Actually, the word manna means, what is it? Imagine waking up in the morning going, what is it?

And they called it manna because of that.

But they started to complain about that. But imagine this is the food they had

every day, and God provided it miraculously, and all they had to do is go outside

their tent, pick it up and have food.

And had all every nutrient, had every protein, had everything they needed for

their day's nourishment.

A wonderful miracle. But then they started complaining because what's for breakfast?

Manna. What's for lunch? Manna. What's for dinner, honey?

Manna. And after a while, they started complaining.

But they had seen the 10 plagues of Egypt. They had been delivered from Egypt

by God. They had crossed the Red Sea on dry ground.

They had seen God do incredible miracles.

And now God's every day is providing manna for them, food and water for them. And then they complain.

We're probably thinking, well, we would never do that. But Jesus said,

are you content with your wages?

Do you complain about your wages that you get?

Sometimes I struggle with that one. Are you anxious about things?

Jesus said, that's complaining. You're not trusting God to provide for you.

You're not trusting God to look after you. Yes, he's given you a job or he's

provided for you in some way, some opportunities to earn money or whatever.

And then you go, well, that's not enough.

What you're saying is God can't look after me. I need more money. I need a bigger pay rise.

I need a second job. I need a fourth job. And sometimes God might do it through that way.

But if we're complaining, we're just like the Israelites in the wilderness, not manner again.

Do I have to go to work? Do I have to do this again?

And God sent in a judgment. He said in venomous snakes, and there were been

bitten and dying from these snakes.

And then they came around and God has to judge sin. sin

and sin is basically not having faith

in God going our own way doing our

own thing yeah God you can't do it I'll take

over and I'll do it my way that's basically a good definition definition of

sin and God sent in he has to judge sin and he sent in these snakes and people

are dying and then they came around I don't know how long it took for him how

many to die before they came around and said, we're guilty.

We need to be saved. Moses, can you ask God to save us? And God said, I will.

But what's interesting, God didn't take the judgment away. The snakes were still

there going through the camp.

And Moses built this, he was told to make this pole with a serpent upon it,

representing the sin, showing the judgment.

And if they got bitten anywhere in the camp, they could look up at this pole,

which was in the middle of the camp.

They could look up there and be instantly healed from the judgment of God and survive.

But they had to have faith in believing that that snake on a pole could save

them, that God had provided it.

And many did. Like I imagine someone got bitten. So we're going to try and figure this out ourselves.

We don't need to look at God. We don't need to trust God. You know,

it's just a bronze serpent on a pole. What can that do?

And then they would die from the judgment of God.

And Jesus uses this story from the history of Israel to describe,

to show Nicodemus that he didn't fully understand what had happened or what

was going on, how this was pointing to Jesus, the Messiah himself.

And Jesus said in the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up.

Lifted up so there's salvation from the judgment of God.

We still live in a world, don't we, under God's judgment. There's still sin,

there's still disease, death, war going on.

But God says, if you look up at the pole that I've raised, my son on the pole, you will be saved.

We still live in that, but we will be saved from it.

But Nicodemus couldn't understand that properly because he was still in the

world. He was still in the flesh.

He had the understanding of and knew the story, but he knew the baptism or the

birth of the Spirit to understand that.

And that's the end of the interview. That's the end of the interview with Nicodemus.

But then we have John 3.16 because this is the commentary of John about the situation.

So when people have read letters in the Bibles, get a black marker and just

go over it, if you can, very finely.

So this story has happened, and then John goes, and so for God so loved the

world that he gave his only begotten son, and then continues on that commentary above it.

I just want to refresh the understanding of John 3.16.

It says, for God so loved the world. That word so, it's not like God so loved us, you know.

I so, so, so much in love with my girlfriend.

Or I think so, so, so, so God.

Our period is really handsome, some of you might be thinking.

And the word so is not like that. The actual Greek word for so means in the

same way, in the same manner.

So John is saying just as God rescued or provided salvation in the wilderness

for those people being bitten by the serpents,

in the same way God raised up Jesus to save us from the judgment of our sin. The word love.

In the English we put so much meaning into one word.

The Greek and the Hebrew, they had different words for different types of things.

If I said to you a table, the word table, how many different ideas do you get from that?

We could have this little table here for the communion table, say.

Or you think of your dinner table. You think of the table at school or at work, your desk there.

There's so many possibilities of that.

And the word love is the same thing. In the Greek, there's a few different words.

There's eros the romantic love there's

philiae the friendly love

the brotherly love and then the word agape and there is a bit of romance to

it a bit of feeling to it but the word agape means simply a person recognizes

that someone else is in a useless position they're they're destitute you. They're helpless.

And that person looking at that other person or other people has this compassion

for them, this concern for them, and they have the resources to act upon it

and rectify that situation.

Now, Jesus said, agape your neighbors. It doesn't mean we have to like every neighbor.

Thank goodness for that. But we are to love them.

So if we see a situation where, and God, and Jesus, sorry, used the Good Samaritan,

that famous story, the Good Samaritan.

The Samaritan comes around a Jew who's been injured, he's destitute,

he's helpless on the side of the road, and he has resources to pick him up,

look after him, and take him back to an inn and pay for his care.

We're called to do that, agape, agape love.

Now, God agape-ed the world. And not just individuals, in the wilderness, God agape-ed Israel.

He cared for Israel. He had the resources to look after Israel.

And that word world, for God so loved, agape the world, world means all of creation.

Yes, it's mainly humanity.

God has agape love for us.

He doesn't say, you know, they're so cute, you know, those little human beings.

They're so cute, especially those guys, you know, just so in love with them.

No, it's that they're destitute, they're helpless, they're dying,

they're under judgment, they're under my wrath, but I have agape love and I'm

going to do something about it.

That's the whole world, the humanity, but also talks about creation as well.

God loves his creation. He loves it all.

And because of our sin, and I think this is really sad, because of our sin,

creation is also suffering.

And we can see that everywhere, can't we? how it's suffering because of our

sin and i just feel so bad about that that my sin has caused creation to suffer.

You know, when I get to heaven, my first thing I want to do is swim with sharks.

I think sharks are fascinating, especially those white pointers. They're incredible.

But I won't get in the water with one right now unless I want to meet Jesus really quick.

But in heaven, that's going to be all rectified. In glory, that's all rectified.

So when I get there, I'm going to say hi to Jesus. Thanks for saving me.

Where are the sharks? Where's the pointer? winner. I'm going to have a swim with them.

And that's the way it was designed. But because of our sin, that's all been destroyed.

But God's doing something about it. And Paul writes about creation moans for salvation.

Creation moans for it. This is going to be wonderful to see all creation restored

the way that was meant to be.

So God agarped the world so much and he wanted He wanted to rectify it.

He wanted to change it, that he sent Jesus, his only son.

And John writes begotten son, again, relating to how Jesus was God.

The fullness of God was sent to be put up on that pole, to die on that cross.

Then it goes, whoever believes. Now that word believe is so much more than what

we think. I believe in Jesus.

When I was growing up, I believed in Jesus.

As soon as I was born, I believed in Jesus.

Yeah, Jesus exists. Heaven exists. I remember when I used to live in Perth and

I was in second class and we had a spelling test.

Now I've got dyslexia, which I can't spell to save my life.

And then I marry an English teacher.

God's just helping me out, I suppose. I find it very hard to read because you're

reading something and the word doesn't make sense.

And so you have to reread it, then some other word gets mixed up.

So I don't really, really read. Do you know the first book I read right through was?

One guess. It was the Bible.

That's a miracle for me to read, to actually read, again, to read right through

Leviticus, not bagging out Leviticus this morning, but God gave me that ability to read.

I only listen to audio books. I just find it very difficult to read.

And spelling, just useless. But I remember we had the spelling test,

and one of the words was heaven, and I spelled it correctly.

Correctly there's all these crosses on the list you know

wrong wrong wrong wrong heaven i think the

teacher felt sorry for me so it gave me this really big tick

i spilt heaven right and i thought i'm going there i made it i passed the test

i can spill heaven so god's gonna accept me i believed that for um about two

days and but i always believed in jesus and i went to church which I believe in Jesus.

But I've testified before, there was a time when I had to come and realize I

hadn't believed in Jesus.

The word believe means to put your faith, complete faith, your complete trust into someone.

And we got to put our complete faith, our complete trust into God.

The people in the wilderness, they complained, they grumbled,

they didn't have full faith, they didn't have full trust.

In God. They didn't believe.

They didn't believe in God. Truly believed.

And as I said at the beginning, John wrote the Gospel of John to encourage people

to continue to believe, to put their full trust, to put their full faith in him.

No matter what the situation, no matter what was going on around them and in

their lives, they could trust Jesus.

They could have full faith in him.

Anything short is not believing. And also the word believe, not just going,

you believe in God once, and that's it.

I'm a Christian because I went up

the front one day at some meeting and I believed in Jesus and that's it.

The actual word believe there in the Greek means to continue,

to continue, to continue.

We've got to continue to believe in Jesus. We've got to continue to have our faith in Jesus.

It doesn't mean that one morning you wake up and going, well,

I don't feel really spiritual today. I just, yeah, things are getting on top of me.

I don't have real faith. It doesn't mean that you stop believing in Jesus and

that's it. See you later, guys.

We all stumble. We all fall.

We all sin, but there's a way to get back to Jesus if we confess our sins to him.

But John is encouraging them to continue in their belief, to continue in their

faith, because John knows that there's persecution coming. There is a starting

and it's coming and it's going to get worse.

It's going to get harder for them. They said, don't give up.

Don't give up. Don't give up.

Continue your belief. Continue, continue, stand fast in what God is.

And he wrote the gospel, as I said, with all those things that Jesus did.

I am the light. I am the bread. I am this. I am that.

I am the one who's going to be raised up on the cross. Then three days later,

I'm going to rise from the dead, proving and showing that sin has no more hold.

So if you're feeling lost, if your faith is shrinking, if your faith is faltering,

we look at Jesus and who he was and what he did in that.

There's a sort of a controversy about once saved, always saved.

And if you read the Bible, I believe that once you're saved and nothing can

take, if you believe fully in God, if you have full trust in Jesus, yes, you are saved.

But Jesus says, abide in me.

Abide in me. I'm the vine. Abide in me.

And if you don't abide in me, the branch will be taken away and thrown into

the fire. desire, and I believe that this comes from the same thing.

We've got to continue to abide.

We've got to continue to have faith. We've got to continue to believe in Jesus,

and as long as we do, nothing can separate us from that love of God.

Nothing can separate us from that, but if we choose to leave,

make a choice, make a decision, and then we're in big trouble.

I used to go to Nauru, you know, the little island in the Roo,

which is eight square miles.

I've been around a country on a postie bike. I don't tell them what country it was.

It takes about 20 minutes to go around this whole country. It's the smallest republic in the world.

And there was a leader, one of the elders in the church, a great guy,

lovely guy, loved Jesus.

A few years later, I went back there, and I said, where's this certain guy? He said, he's left.

I said, left what? Left Nauru? Went to Australia or something?

He said, no, he's left the church. He's left Christianity.

He made a decision, and he got up in front of the church and says,

I'm giving up. I don't believe it anymore, and walked away.

The book of Hebrews says there's no sacrifice for that.

There's no sacrifice for that no coming back as i said i'm not saying if you

commit a sin that's it it's a conscious decision that you stand and testify

that i'm through in the book of revelation,

john again sees the visions of all that and it says those who are steadfast

to the end will be saved, will see the glory of God.

So John is writing that to encourage us today to continue to believe in Jesus,

to continue to believe and put our full trust in him.

If you're getting ripped off at work, shortchanged at work, believe that Jesus

is the bread of life and that he can provide everything for you.

If you're struggling, if you're wandering through the darkness of life,

Believe, continue to believe that Jesus is the light.

What does it take for us to get to that place where we can believe that we can have full faith in God?

It's through being born in the Spirit.

If you're a Christian today, there was a light moment, wasn't there?

I was on those rocks at Womberall and there was a light moment for me.

The Spirit of God enlightened me and said, yes, you've believed you can spill

heaven correctly. that's great.

But you need to repent. You need to turn from your sins. You need to confess.

And that moment on those rocks, I was born of the Spirit.

By wind and Spirit, water and Spirit, I could see and I was able to accept.

And that's what Nicodemus needed, to understand what Jesus was saying.

And I believe he left that night born of the Spirit.

Because we read later that he believed and he stood up for Jesus and followed Jesus.

So my prayer for each one of us today is to continue to believe in Jesus,

have full faith and trust and confidence in who he is, and that the Spirit of

God may ignite that belief in us and continue to lead and continue to guide us.

And if you don't know Jesus today as your Lord, as your Savior,

I pray that the Holy Spirit will enlighten you today this morning to understand,

like Nicodemus that night,

who Jesus really is. He is God.

He is fully human. He is our Lord and he is our Saviour. Amen.

Lord, I thank you for each one of us today.

And may the words of God, the scriptures today, bring new life to us.

May it strengthen our faith in who you are, Lord Jesus.

May it strengthen our faith and that we'll never let go. We will always abide in you.

Jesus, be all that you are.

Revert all of us, reveal it all today in us, that we may know and continue to

know and continue to believe.

In Jesus' name. Amen.