Access Through New Birth

This transcript has been automatically generated

John 3, verse 1.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, We know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born anew. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, how can this be? Jesus answered him, are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. This is the word of the Lord.

For our last in the series that has been called Access, You’ve probably seen that notice, this has been up all this month and I’m going to use for our last passage this very famous conversation in John chapter 3 about the new birth which I guess has helped more thousands of people down the ages, millions maybe, to find access than any other single passage in the Bible. And the obvious verse to take that links with our theme of access or getting entrance into God’s kingdom is verse 5. Where Jesus talking to Nicodemus says, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. He can’t get access, there’s no entrance, the door is shut. So here is Jesus telling Nicodemus that there’s no entrance, no access without the work of the Spirit in his heart.

And that I think makes a good culmination to our series of 4. You remember we started by saying that man by nature can’t have access into God’s presence. We’ve studied how Christ died to bring us access into God’s presence and we needed to look finally at the work of the Holy Spirit as the power that brings us from our strange, our position of estrangement into the freedom of the kingdom of God and that’s what this storey is about. Now I think it would help me really if you were to open the Bible, if one is near you. There are some little red Bibles that you have to have a micro— a magnifying glass to read but never mind.

And there’s some bigger brown Bibles. And you may like to turn to John 3, or you may prefer just to listen as we look at this conversation, which is a little bit more tricky and complex than at first it seems. John’s conversations, which are so famous, probably are précises of something much longer, so that you have to try to study, to read carefully to see what actually went on as they talked together. And I’m going to say 3 things, selecting important things from the conversation about Nicodemus. First, Nicodemus was a distinguished Jew.

You will find that in verse 1: There came a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, who was a ruler of the Jews. That means he was a member of the great council. He stands here in John’s Gospel as a representative Jew. Now I guess that this does help, doesn’t it, to balance the New Testament picture of the Pharisee. The Pharisees generally come out very badly, don’t they, in the New Testament storey.

But the New Testament as always is absolutely honest and fair in the picture that it gives and amongst these men, although there were many hypocrites, there were some men of honesty and fine and distinguished character. You may remember the storey that is recorded in Acts, actually in chapter 5, of when the early apostles after very successful preaching were liable to be killed then and there through the fury of the rulers, that Gamaliel stood up amongst them and said that it was unjust to do that. And so as a result they were only flogged. It must have taken quite a lot of courage to do that. And Gamaliel remains a famous figure of the Acts because of that very courageous act.

Now Nicodemus seems to have been the same kind of person. Indeed we find him in a very similar situation. There’s just time to slip over a couple of pages in your Bible, in chapter 7 and verse 50. Where another familiar situation of Jesus before the authorities, or rather not Jesus on this occasion, but the authorities discussing Jesus and wanting to get rid of him. And in verse 50, Nicodemus stands up.

He feels he must, and he says, Nicodemus, who had gone before to him before, to Jesus before, and who was one of them, a Pharisee, said to them, does our Lord judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does? That, by the way, is an interesting comment, isn’t it? Because it’s exactly what Nicodemus had done. He’d given him a hearing. So he’s saying to his friends in the great council, don’t you think we ought to give him a hearing?

You might get a surprise.

And what’s the reply? Verse 52: Are you from Galilee too? Search, and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee. Now that completely fails to give the feeling of the original. What they’re saying is— it’s more like the gutter language we hear in a good deal of London politics today.

What they actually said to him is, you sit down, you don’t even know your Bible. Study your Bible and you’ll soon find there’s not going to be no prophet from Galilee. Yes, human nature doesn’t change, does it? The council chamber remains much the same. Somebody who wants to say something unpopular, to stick up for an unfashionable cause, is likely to get that kind of treatment.

So we may say that this man was a distinguished representative of Judaism.

And yet he gets a very immediate answer when he comes by night to seek an interview with Jesus. It’s almost abrupt as Jesus breaks in and says, truly, truly, I say to you, Nicodemus, unless you are born again, you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s worthwhile contrasting that sometime with the next chapter, chapter 4, where by contrast Jesus talks to a quite illiterate Samaritan woman. And it’s really rather moving to see how graciously he deals with her, how he leads her step by step in an understanding of spiritual things by talking about her everyday work, drawing water at the well, and gradually opens her mind to the truths that he’s come into the world to bring. Now by contrast, and John loves these contrasts, you see, he’s not talking to an illiterate woman, he’s talking to a scholarly Jew and he gets straight to the point.

Charles Walter was telling me that he’s been in the north this weekend and he said about the congregation he went, he said, they’re very blunt, they tell you what they mean. That’s rather different from we southerners, isn’t it? It looks as though Jesus is a north countryman, doesn’t it, here? You see, he comes straight to the point. Nicodemus, I must tell you plainly, you’re on the wrong track.

You’ve got to be born again if you’re going to enter the kingdom of heaven. Now this is all the more striking if we understand why John is telling us the storey in this context. Actually, if you read this book carefully, you will see there is a very steady plan through John’s Gospel. First of all, Jesus appeals to the Jew, chapters 2 and 3, then to the Samaritan, chapter 4, then later on in the book to the Gentile. And this book, the 4th Gospel, was sent at the end of the 1st century to the area that we call Asia, or was called Asia then anyhow, the cities that you read about in the book of Revelation, Philadelphia and so on.

And in these cities there were many synagogues of the Jews and many of these communities of Jews were hostile to the Christians but also amongst them there were many people who were open to it. So when John writes this book, you see, he’s putting into the hands of the Christians of that day a tract. He’s saying, read this to your friends who are Jews. Read the storey of Nicodemus because what Christ said to Nicodemus that day is what I want to say as an apostle to your Jewish friends today. Jewish friends in Asia, unless you’re born again you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus then is seeking to win the Jew and we too are seeking to do the same. It may be that there is a Jew, it may be there is a distinguished Jew in our congregation this morning. And we would say to you in the name of Christ, unless you are born again you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. We’re not seeking to be abrasive when we’re saying that, we’re seeking to witness and testify to the truth of God. There are, as you will know, a number of movements and councils for better understanding between Christians and Jews, just as today there are many such movements to get better understanding between different religious minorities.

And of course that is something that is good in any society. We need to respect one another and to understand one another’s heritage. But I get an uncomfortable feeling sometimes that in these councils for mutual understanding it becomes almost an agreed tacit part of the agenda that we won’t try to convert one another. That’s very British, isn’t it, in a way? And yet I think we have to say from John 3 that it is wrong.

We should indeed respect one another’s heritage, we should indeed listen to one another, but if we follow Christ, we are bound to say to our Jewish friends what he said to Nicodemus: Unless you’re born again, you can never get access into the kingdom of heaven.

This then is Christ’s word to this distinguished Jew: It is of interest to see that the word Nicodemus means victor or conqueror over the peoples. So I think it is perhaps worthwhile in, in view of some of the aberrations of some modern Christians to say that Jesus did not say to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, your name is victor over all the peoples and I’ve come to Jerusalem to tell you that God is on your side. And that you will overcome and that anyone who touches you, the Jews today, touches the apple of God’s eye. Now there are Christians who with a mistaken view of Old Testament prophecy say that to the modern State of Israel. But we as Christians have no mandate to say that.

We have no mandate to say that the Bible puts God on the side of the modern State of Israel against the Arab. Our concern is not with who enters into whose territory. We’re interested in only one territory, that’s the territory of the kingdom of God. We have to say to the Jew today and to the Arab today, if you’re not born again you can’t enter into the kingdom of God. That’s what we must say to Nicodemus, we have no other message to him.

And if Jesus had said that to many people in the state of Israel or the government, he’d have had his visa removed of course within 48 hours.

Secondly, he was a distinguished teacher. He was a distinguished teacher.

Verse 10: Are you a teacher of Israel? Jesus said towards the end of this conversation as it’s recorded for us. Are you a teacher and yet you don’t understand what I’m talking about and what we’re conversing about? Now the Greek almost certainly has a greater weight than that. What Jesus almost certainly said to Nicodemus is this: Are you the teacher?

Are you the famous teacher, as one or two modern translations put it? I don’t know if you’re famous enough for someone ever to have said that to you. I don’t know if anybody has come up to you at a party and you’ve said, well, my name is Smith, and they say, are you Mr. Smith, the Mr. Smith? Well, you may smile, but I suppose that happens to Delia Smith many days, doesn’t it, the Evening Standard cook? I don’t know if you follow her recipes.

I expect she’s often sort of incognito at a party and somebody says, what’s your name? And she says, Delia Smith. Are you the standard cook? Are you the famous cook that can make baked beans taste delicious or whatever it is? Very good for bachelors in flats and so on.

However, to come back to the point, that’s what it is here in verse 10, isn’t it? Are you the teacher and you don’t know?

Now I think we may say that Nicodemus, though ignorant, was honest. And that comes out from verse 2 by the introduction, the words that Nicodemus uses when he sits down. He sits down and he tries to introduce a conversation with Jesus. He’s come by night, I think, because he doesn’t want everybody to see what he’s doing. It’s a little embarrassing for a Pharisee to be seen with Jesus and his followers.

And yet he represents a little group of Pharisees who are much more open to Christ. So he starts by saying, We’ve seen what you’re doing, these amazing miracles, and we realise that God is with you.

Now one early commentator says that there is a touch of condescension in Nicodemus’ words, that he’s very like the establishment when it is trying to take a rebel back to its bosom. He’s saying really literally this: Some of us, you know, Jesus, are quite disposed to think well of you.

You know how it is with the establishment, at any rate always in this country, that when there’s some rebel in any cause, you know, there’s perhaps some young man who’s taken up selling insurance just 3 weeks ago and he’s already got more business than the whole Prudential. And in the end, you see, the leaders of the Prudential have to come and, and they have to talk turkey with him. And they say, well, you know, we needn’t oppose one another. There are a lot of good things that you’re doing. It’s true that you seem to be shocking the Financial Times, but surely we can talk together.

Now that’s what Nicodemus is saying. He’s saying, you’re doing very well. Can’t we learn from one another? Isn’t it foolish to oppose one another? If there is a trace of condescension, there’s also a trace of honesty.

He’s, he’s trying to come to terms with this new teacher. And is this olive branch accepted? Well, in a very real sense, it’s not. The answer comes back, my friend, you’ve got to be born again.

It’s interesting, you see, that here he calls Jesus Rabbi. For a Pharisee to call Jesus Rabbi, that shows what he was. Rabbi is, if you like, an official title. No Pharisee would normally call him that. Jesus has never been to theological college.

He has no official standing. But Nicodemus is willing to say, yes, you’re a Rabbi, you’re a teacher. But as the rest of the chapter shows, Jesus wishes to be seen not as the teacher but as the Son of God, as the Saviour of the world, not the teacher of the world, just, just, although he is a teacher, but a Saviour. Now I would suggest to you that if that is a true interpretation of the beginning of this conversation, that the middle classes in Great Britain have often treated the church rather like that. They have come to the church and they have said, yes, bravo, it’s good that you’re teaching these things and showing this new community life.

Our young people need this sense of purpose. Thank you for what you’re doing for those who are sick or weak or suffering. To which the church has to answer, no, that is not really the heart of the matter. What we want to say is something far more radical than that. You’ve got to be born again.

And when they say that, when the church is true to itself, then often people recoil, don’t they, utterly bewildered. Just as Nicodemus did. And he says, well, how can that be so when a man is old? Can he enter into his mother’s womb again and be born? I don’t think Nicodemus for a moment was supposing that Jesus was teaching that.

That would be crude and ridiculous. But I think it suggests that Nicodemus was an elderly man. He is an inheritor of Judaism. He has had a long life of experience following the law of God. He is saying, look, What do you mean?

How can I break away and make a new beginning? Again, there may be somebody elderly in church this morning. You’re saying to yourself, this is— it’s— I’m too old for all this. It’s what Sir Winston Churchill is said to have said to Billy Graham when he visited him: I’m too old to think of these new things. And I think it’s a very natural thing for senior people to say, isn’t it?

I can’t just put the clock back. I can’t become a different kind of person. I can’t change from my whole inheritance and see things completely new. I’m myself the result of all that has passed. What are you really saying to me?

And at that moment there’s a sound of the wind outside and Jesus says this: You hear the wind blowing, you don’t know where it comes from, you don’t know where it’s going but you can hear its sound and you know how effective and powerful that wind is, don’t you?

Now if you are looking at the margin of your Bible you’ll find that the wind and the Spirit are the same word in Greek. Jesus, if you like, is using a very subtle way of teaching. He’s really talking not about that wind that is sweeping outside the door which is a picture, he’s talking about God the Holy Spirit. Nicodemus has just said to him, how can I just turn the clock back? I’m old, I can’t make this new beginning.

I see all these young people, they’re making a new beginning but it’s not for me. And it’s as though Jesus says, but you’re forgetting God the Holy Spirit.

Are you a master in Israel and you should forget him?

It is very strange, isn’t it, that Nicodemus doesn’t seem to know about this. It’s difficult really to know where to turn in the Old Testament prophets because in Joel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, They’re all looking forward to the great day when God is going to send his Spirit into the hearts of men in a personal, individual, dynamic way. That’s going to be the mark of the new covenant, not just a few great heroes leading the people but every believer possessing the Spirit of God. Let me read you just 2 verses from Ezekiel 36 that are 2 of the loveliest verses in the Bible. They’re good news for today just as they were good news in Ezekiel’s day.

They’re what God will do to anybody who responds to his Son Jesus Christ. Listen, Ezekiel 36:26: A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my ways. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a young man or girl facing all the temptations of the world and you say, well, what I hear at Saint Helen’s sounds great but I don’t have the strength. Well, the prophet would say that to you. God can give you his Spirit.

Maybe you’re an elderly person and you say, well, this is something I’ve never really heard before, what I’ve been hearing on these recent Tuesdays, but I’m too old for this. And Jesus says to you just what he said to Nicodemus, God will give you his Holy Spirit.

Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand this? How often God must have had to say that, mustn’t he, about many teachers. Do you remember religious education at school? Do you remember sometimes that the teacher was given RI or Scripture to take just because they had an empty hole in their diary? And very often you listened to it and you couldn’t imagine how anybody could be interested in this.

It was taught in such a dull, flat way.

Why, that’s so often at university when you hear theology taught as though it belonged to the past, as though it was something far removed from ordinary people, just an academic study. Every Christian teacher, whether in school or college, should show by their teaching that they are not strangers to these things. We shouldn’t listen to teachers who obviously are strangers to these things.

You see, it is very blunt what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, you’re a great teacher, you’re steeped into the traditions and the law of Israel, but God the Holy Spirit has not touched your life. There’s no power to raise you into this newness of living unless you respond to what I say.

A distinguished Jew who needed to be born again, a distinguished teacher who hadn’t understood because he hadn’t experienced And thirdly, Nicodemus was a fine man, a fine man.

What does Jesus say to fine men? We know what he says to the publican and the sinner. We know how gracious he was to the outcast. What does he say to the upright scholar, the lawkeeper, the distinguished person? He says this: That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

Many of you can look back and thank God for fine parents. If you can, then you’re very fortunate.

But no matter how fine your parents and no matter what teaching they gave you, they could only give you what they themselves had. We can only pass on to our children that which is flesh. We cannot give them God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Every generation has got to discover this for itself. Every man or woman has got to discover this for itself.

That which is born of the flesh may be refined and cultured and religious but it is not born of the Spirit. That’s why this conversation is such a threat to institutional religion. We can’t get God taped. However much we know, whatever ceremonies we’ve gone through, unless the wind of the Spirit has blown into our lives and the cobwebs have been blown away, then we shan’t know God and we shan’t enter his kingdom.

C.S. Lewis put that beautifully in a chapter heading: Nice People or New Men? Well, I hope the new men will be nice, of course. It’s always very putting off, isn’t it, when people become new in Christ and aren’t nice. But the point I’m making is that it isn’t enough to be nice.

Nicodemus was nice, he had to be made new.

Well, Nicodemus fades into the background and the teaching about eternal life goes on and we’re left wondering whether he responded to the testimony that Jesus brought from God. But we’re not left without a clue and I’m going to give you that clue as we finish this morning. I want you to turn, if you have your Bible, to John chapter 20 and verse— sorry, John chapter 19 and verse 38.

Jesus is dead. His cause has failed as far as everyone can see. The disciples have fled.

And at this part of the afternoon, verse 38, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he might have the body of Jesus so that it might be buried. Verse 39, Nicodemus also, who had at first come to Jesus by night, presumably saying he also is a secret disciple, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 100 pounds weight. Isn’t that magnificent?

You see, at that last day— I was going to call it the 11th hour, but it’s the 11th hour and the 59th minute, isn’t it? And the 59th second.

When the cause is finished, the hands of 2 very distinguished men meet. They’re both secret disciples, but now they’re willing to come out into the open. That’s the mark, I think, today of being born again. It may come to be very fashionable to be a Christian. I pray that it will in this country if there is revival in the churches.

But I guess at the moment in the city, in the stock market or the insurance market, it’s not very fashionable to be an enthusiastic Christian. Well, it was jolly unfashionable to be a Christian at 3 o’clock on the afternoon of Good Friday, I’ll tell you that.

So perhaps Nicodemus was born again after all.

Will you take your hymn sheet as we finish and turn it over?

At the end of this month, it may be that if you’ve never prayed a prayer like that, you’d like to take that prayer on your lips. So will you with me bow your head, and if you care to, use these lovely words to respond to the risen Christ today.

Use them in your heart, use them for yourself, or take them away and use them when you get home.

And God, we pray for many a Nicodemus in the city, many a senior man, many a distinguished person, a Jew. We pray for anybody in this church today who’s never experienced the power of your Spirit and been born again. We ask that you will give them the courage to say this prayer and to mean it with their whole heart and to enter your kingdom and to find that access. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.