Sunday Worship Celebration

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Introduction Today we are beginning a new, brief series on how Jesus Christ is found in the Old Testament. Now, this COULD be just an academic exercise, seeing in a book what we did not see before. And one goal IS that we would simply see our Bibles rightly, how our Bibles are put together. But if Jesus IS pictured in the Old Testament - and those pictures were put there FOR US - and if Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, then what we are doing is getting a better, clearer understanding of Him. And therefore, we are getting a better grasp of the way through our existence; truth itself; and eternal life. This is more than an academic exercise. This is like a blind man, gaining MORE of his sight. Our logic in this series is very simple. We are taking our cues from Jesus himself. Today we look at one of the most clear connections that Jesus makes to himself in the Old Testament, in John 3, in his conversation with Nicodemus. Sense of the Passage John 3:1-2 Nicodemus, a teacher and ruler of the Jews, comes to Jesus by night, because he doesn’t want to be seen. But this is a picture of his own darkness of mind and soul. He was of the Pharisees, the less urban conservative party of the day. In fact he was a ruler, which means he was supposed to be an authority on the Bible. 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 signs that you do unless God is with him.” He calls Jesus “Rabbi,” or teacher, and says that God is “with him.” This is, of course, totally flimsy. Jesus is more than a teacher, and Nicodemus knows it: if Jesus is just a rabbi, and if God is JUST “with him,” then why is Nicodemus risking his reputation and career just to have a conversation with him? So Jesus dispenses with the pleasantries and gets right to the point, v. 3: Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “Again” = again OR “from above” This is one of those places where the genius of Jesus is right on the surface. The original word for “again” had come to have two meanings, which had nothing to do with each other, kind of like the way our word “ball” has unrelated any meanings. You can throw a ball and dance at a ball. Those two meanings are “again” and “from above.” “Again” and “from above.” Which meaning does Jesus intend? Yes. Unless anyone is born again, from above, that person cannot see the kingdom of God.” Now, Nicodemus commits a logical fallacy next that we might call pettifogging, v. 4 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?” It’s when you fog up the situation by focusing on petty details. They’re obviously talking about spiritual things, but Nicodemus suddenly wants to talk gynecology. But again, Jesus is not distracted. He stays on point. Which is itself a massive lesson. When get the chance to share the gospel, your listener will put up plenty of roadblocks. Half the battle is not being distracted by them, ignoring them, with respect, and pressing ahead. Truly, truly, Jesus says, getting more specific about what this “born again, from above” means: 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. The most shocking thing here for Nicodemus is first what Jesus leaves out. He does NOT say, unless one is born a Jew and tithes their mint and cumin and obeys all the law, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Of course, this is the shocking thing about Christianity for just about everybody. Nicodemus thought he was IN because he was better than most. God must grade on a scale, and certainly Nicodemus set the range. But Jesus says, no, you need something so much deeper and greater than that. You need to be born again, from above. By water: you are stained by sin, through and through. Down to your deepest core. Thus you need cleansing. But even if you were cleansed, your problem is deeper than that: as we will see, that stain of sin so permeates us, that is places our whole person under a curse, the curse of death. And so we need to be given a whole new US. That’s where the Spirit comes in. The first mention of the Spirit in the Bible is the second verse Gen. 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Luke 1:35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. - the Spirit hovered over creation, like a hen brooding over her eggs. So the Spirit must come over us, and give us new life. So then, Nicodemus, v. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ (from above) do not marvel - pull your lower lip off the ground. Of course you need to be born again, from above. Perhaps the evening breeze began to blow, so, v. 8 John 3:8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The evening breeze blows wherever it wants to. Can you catch it your hand and put the breeze in your pocket. Is it subject to anything YOU do? No, of course not. So it is with anyone who is born again, by the Spirit. It’s all a work of the Spirit. NOT YOU. John 3:8–9 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” V. 9. Nicodemus, the teacher and ruler of Israel, a man the nation looks to for spiritual wisdom, is just straight-up flabbergasted. So Jesus: “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” John 3:9–10 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? No suddenly Jesus speaks in the plural: “We” speak of what we have seen and know, but YOU - plural do not receive our testimony. John 3:11 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. For reasons that I will make clear, it seems best to understand the “we” as Jesus and all the prophets before him, recorded throughout the Bible. And the “you” is not only Nicodemus and the Pharisees, but most of the Jews, throughout their history. Nicodemus comes as a member of the Pharisees; Jesus confronts him as the last and fulfilling member of a long line of prophets that Nicodemus and the Pharisees and the nation have refused to listen to. Nicodemus’ dumbfoundedness here is therefore a guilty stupidity. He doesn’t understand NOT because he just needs more information or better instruction. He’s already been to the best colleges. No, he doesn’t understand because of that deep stain of sin. It’s so deep that it REVOLTS at what Jesus is saying. It REFUSES to understand. John 3:12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? So Jesus says, v. 12, And this, Nicodemus, you don’t even need to be reborn to understand this. In our day, the atheists at Stanford Divinity School read their Bibles and understand this much. Strangely sometimes the enemies of God have a more accurate view of God than His own people. But the point: Nicodemus, if you can’t understand even these earthly things, how will you comprehend spiritual things? And it is the SPIRITUAL things that you, the teacher of Israel, CANNOT comprehend. Are you starting to see it, Nicodemus? Are you starting to see, how you CANNOT see? You NEED to comprehend spiritual things, and you, the teacher of Israel, CANNOT. Your own self WILL NOT. John 3:13 LEB And no one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. So where will this being born again come from? Can self help self, if the self is dead to the spiritual, in open revolt against it? Can one’s self help one’s self if one’s self is a spiritual carcass? As someone else has said, it’s like stepping into a bucket to carry yourself up the stairs. You can’t do it. Someone must go get heaven. Someone must go get the Spirit and bring Him to us. And the only person who has ascended into heaven is the same person who came FROM heaven - the Son of Man, Jesus’ name for himself. John 3:14–15 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. For, and now Jesus gives Nicodemus a picture he was meant to see all along: Just as Moses - one of the prophets before Jesus - lifted up the serpent or the dragon - in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever BELIEVES in him may have eternal life. Numbers 21 In this passage, the Jews are trekking through the wilderness, after the Exodus from Egypt. And the people GRUMBLED, v. 4-5. Grumbling to us seems like no big deal, but in fact it is one of the GREATEST, WORST sins, because it says, from the heart, that God is doing it wrong, and that WE know better. It’s the attitude of the dragon himself, when he defected from God and entered the Garden and said to Eve, Did God really say? Numbers 21:4–5 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” To grumble is to be like the dragon himself, to defect and join his side, and do his work. Numbers 21:6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So it is no wonder that God sent to the nation “fiery serpents.” Or dragons. Fire breathing dragons. God said, you want dragons, I will give you dragons, and show you were it leads. And they attacked the people, and many died. Numbers 21:7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. Now, v. 7, many of the people came to Moses, in repentance. They acknowledged that they had sinned. It took fire-breathing dragons to show the people that they had defected from God to THE dragon. Numbers 21:8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” And they knew they needed an intercessor. Someone to stand before God FOR them, in their place. So Moses prayed to the LORD, that He would take away these dragons. Moses did just that. And God provided the way of escape: Numbers 21:9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. Strangely, for Moses to make a tall bronze staff, with a dragon impaled upon it. And whoever LOOKED UPON it, when they were bit, would live. And by implication, whoever did not, would not. The only thing the people could do for themselves is LOOK UPON the serpent, writhing, impaled on the staff. The only thing they brought to the equation is their helplessness. But what GOD provided was enough, to cleanse and give life. Doctrines The main doctrine that I want us to observe from both of these passages is that of human inability to save Doctrine: Human Inability ourselves. We are completely unable. This is because we WANT it to be this way. Human pride separates us from God. From Joseph Stalin to your dearly beloved, sweet seemingly sinless grandmother, we all have grumbled and told God we could it better if HE wasn’t in the picture. We ALL need salvation. And then pride loves to sneak in any nook or cranny that it can in salvation, even among religious people like Nicodemus. Jesus was being perfectly clear, and Nicodemus had the Scriptures in front of him all his life. But he didn’t WANT to see it. This is our great dilemma. We don’t want what we should want. We are enslaved, not to any outside force, but the force within. We have free will but have hearts that insanely bend AWAY from God. And there is nothing you or I can do to change that. And there is nothing I can do as a pastor to persuade you otherwise. No amount of human or angelic persuasion can cure the desperate wickedness of the human heart. None of us can save ourselves. We can save ourselves just as easily as we can pick ourselves up and throw ourselves. The only way YOU or I can be saved is if the Spirit, blowing like the wind at night, comes upon us, and re-creates us. So, How Then Shall We Live? Longing for a St. George For you who are NOT in Christ, there is only one thing to do. If you believe what I’m saying, then call out to God, and ASK Him for His Spirit to come upon you. Confess that there’s nothing YOU can do. Throw yourself on Him, not by faith PLUS anything. By faith alone means by GOD alone. When Grumbling Leads to Dragons But for those of us who ARE in Christ, when you grumble and God sends you the dragons, what do YOU do? What you DON’T want to do is spend all your time looking down at your wounds, scratching at them, tending them, self-medicating them . . . Beating yourself up, wallowing in your wounds . . . This is a pride that looks very humble. But it’s still pride, because it’s still absorbed with self. And this so very common, so very human. But the reality is that as long we stay fixed on ourselves, we will NOT be healed. In fact, you will die. You will not find life. No, as we are, in whatever shambles we are in, we must LOOK UP. We must look afresh at the Son of Man, lifted up for us, on that cross. The gospel is clear: since we are unable, God does everything, and we trust HIM. Which means that OUR identity is no longer in ourselves, but in HIM. It’s not in what we do well, and it’s not defined by even our SINS any longer. But we are forgetful and prone to wander. Thus we need to look up to the cross, again and again. This is why we do Communion often. To keep a clear view of the Son of Man, lifted up for us. Because HE says who we are. And in HIM, there is therefore now NO condemnation, for those who trust him. We know this from the transition from Numbers and the staff with a dragon on it, impaled and writhing on the staff, to the staff of the cross, with Jesus impaled and writhing on it. On the cross, the great Dragon thought he had won and adverted his fate that was promised in Numbers. But in fact, Numbers was fulfilled. For in killing the Son of Man, the devil went too far. For when Jesus suffered and died, he took ALL our sins upon himself, all our guilt, all our condemnation. And when he breathed his last breathe, the devils cheered, but the devil heard it - it is finished - and must have realized too late that Jesus was not referring to His life, but to the devil having any more ground to condemn us. Thus when Jesus died, it WAS as if the devil was impaled there, left powerless to condemn us anymore. Romans 8:1 is really true: there IS therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, not by our own works, but by FAITH alone. ONLY for those who look away from their wounds, to the Son of Man, trusting HIM to heal. And this faith is what enables us to do what we - across our culture and nation - what we MUST do: that is, REPENT of our grumbling. Grumbling is one our characteristic sins - we are not that different from the Jews that way. Imagine that - one of the most blessed nations in human history, and one of its chief grumblers. Which portrays that we are in DEEP rebellion against our God. No wonder we are bedeviled as a nation by fiery dragons on all sides. But thankfully, the way of escape has been provided for us, and it is very straightforward. Look up to the Son, and repent to gratitude and faith. The healing WILL follow. Our LAND can and I’m convinced WILL be healed, not through better education, and not through hard work, but by the Spirit of God, blowing upon us again, reviving us from mortal wounds.