Spiritual Espionage

IntroductionWe are in the story of amazing love, the greatest story ever told. So turn with me today to John chapter 3.The book of John as you will recall begins with this dramatic introduction to the person of Jesus Christ. We are introduced to him as creator of the universe; the creator of matter with all its complexity, power, design (all of it); all things were made by him and for him and through him. The opening verses introduce us to this omnipotent power!Then we are told in verse 14 that this limitless, boundless, immeasurable WORD became flesh and dwelt among us. And given the resume of verses 1-5 we’d expect a pretty dramatic entry.Maybe parting the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe splitting the sun in half? But instead Jesus’ debut miracle is turning water to wine. The miracle wow factor here is relatively low. This is really not that big of a deal.Now why this type of beginning? What we discover is that what impressed the followers of Jesus was not the miracles; people weren’t attracted to Jesus in the same way people are attracted to Houdini. They weren’t just following him because of his bag of cool tricks. They were following him because of what he claimed. And the miracles Jesus performed in his ministry authenticated those claims.The claims of Jesus in the Bible are simultaneously attractive and offensive. Compelling and reprehensible, so intriguing and repugnant.Today we come to see one of those claims. It’s bold. It’s startling. It’s offensive and yet so intriguing. And here it claims if you want to see God, you must be born again.So today we are just going to ask four simple questions around that claim. Two ‘what’ questions, a ‘why’ question and a ‘how’ question.This question is going to be answered via a story that records a midnight conversation between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus.Let’s read it:What Does it Mean to Be Born Again?So we are introduced to this man Nicodemus. Putting together John 7 and John 19, we discover that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a council of the most powerful ruling religious elite.They would preside over official judicial matters that came up to them from lower courts. So this would have been like the Jewish Supreme court. The Chamber of Hewn stone is where they met. This is a room built into the side of the temple structure itself. And it would be laid out with two groups of 35, kind of like afc west vs nfc east (you knew I’d sneak it in somewhere). And presiding over these two halves would be the high priest.The fact that Nicodemus was part of this group tells us a couple of things about him right off the bat. First of all he must have been aged. In a society that respected age, you are not going to be part of a ruling counsel like this without significant experience. So he was older and wiser than most.Secondly he was smart. An argument can even be made that not only was Nicodemus a part of this prestigious religious counsel but that he held an extremely high post, perhaps even the highest post second to that of the high priest himself. In verse 10 Jesus does not address him as a teacher in Israel but as THE teacher in Israel. What does it take to acquire a seat like that? In our modern terms, he’s got a PhD from an Ivy League School, he graduated top of his class from the Naval Academy, he’s got the titles. He’s got the accolades. The framed degrees on the wall. He’s got the letters after the name. When it comes to the Scriptures, Nicodemus was the doctor to whom they all looked.Now we are told that Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. That’s not just a passing detail. It’s obviously got significance. It’s referenced in John 19 when Nicodemus shows up again, “Nicodemus, the one who came to Jesus by night.”What are we to make of that detail? Now I’ve heard a lot of tellings of this that make Nicodemus out to be this guy who has a secret curiosity about Jesus and sneaks off, under the cover of darkness, in the middle of the night in his own PRIVATE pursuit of truth.Certainly, the cover of darkness is a feature here, but read the text closely. He doesn’t say, “Jesus, you and I know that the Senhedrin is a rotting swamp that needs to be drained. I’m part of that swamp and I’m ready to get out. Can you help me?”What’s his opening line? Rabbi, WE know you are a teacher from God. WE. He’s speaking on behalf of the Sanhedrin. And yes, they asked him to do it at night so that their corporate identity might not be tainted by association with this guy they don’t know.There are a couple features of the text that support this:The way Jesus responds to him is not how you’d expect Jesus to respond to an individual in genuine pursuit of truth. Are you a teacher of Israel and you don’t understand these things?Keep in mind the chronology. This is just weeks or months into Jesus’ arrival on the scene. The Pharisees and Sadducees are just learning about him. They are curious. They are in fact finding mode. They have not formed an opinion of this man. They haven’t put out an official statement on Jesus yet and they’d like to get to know him behind closed doors.Jesus, we see you have this miracle working ability and you are attracting quite a bit of attention. We’d like to get you involved." And perhaps they anticipate this to be flattering to Jesus. After all, he’s just 30 years old. When ever has a 30-year-old been approached by the Sanhedrin? Most 30 year old men are groveling, powdering themselves in the dust of the rabbis feet. But here they approach Jesus. They certainly at this point do not despise him.All they know is that there is this man Jesus and he is starting to do miracles. We only have the water to wine miracle recorded by John chapter 3 but clearly there have been more because Nicodemus says, “We know you are from God because no one can do the signs (plural) you do unless he is from God.”“Jesus, we think you could help us and we could help you.”The point is: Nicodemus is NOT seeking.Why is that significant? Because what we have here is not a man who is broken and has come to the end of himself. We don’t have here a man who has just lost his marriage, his business has gone bankrupt, his kids hate him. We don’t have a man here in total despair, strung out on a bottle who has thrown up his hands and said, “Where else can I turn? I give up.”We have here a proud teacher of Israel coming to Jesus on HIS TERMS. He comes to Jesus thinking he can control him, work out some sort of trade deal. Jesus can sense this and it explains why Jesus responds the way he does. It feels like a non-sequitur. Conversationally, it’s an abrupt right turn.Nicodemus, like all of us, wants to set up criteria by which we assess Jesus. He says, “I will look through my eyes of education and evaluate you. I will look through my eyes of experience and evaluate you.”"Nicodemus comes as the TEACHER of ISRAEL, and it’s on that basis he believes he is qualified to assess Jesus. But Jesus challenges that in a serious way. What makes you think that you are qualified to assess me based on your status as TEACHER of Israel? That qualifies you to do nothing in God’s economy. You think you know God? Impossible. Unless you are born again, you can’t even see the kingdom of God much less be part of it. You don’t have the tools to even see truth. The prerequisite for spiritual sight is being born again and you haven’t been. Therefore you are blind.Now look how Nicodemus responds.Nicodemus appears to be cynical, sarcastic, perhaps even slightly mocking in tone. Born again? Pffh. What is that supposed to mean? What do you want me to do…shrink back down to a baby and re-enter my mother’s womb? Of course that’s not what he thought Jesus was saying, but it was his way of maintaining his dignity, mocking the idea rather than pressing in and trying to understand.And then Jesus goes into dead serious mode. Truly, truly. He’s putting his reputation on the line. He’s putting himself under an oath. No I’m not joking, you must be born again. I insist on that language.Okay, well what in the world does that mean? He gives us this additional explanation, unless a man is born of water and of Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever being BORN AGAIN means, it has to do with the concept of the Spirit and the concept of Water.Spirit and WaterThe way to understand Jesus’ meaning here is simply to turn to the OT. Jesus is going to say, “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t understand these things?” The implication is that as a teacher of the OT you should be able to look in the OT and discover what is meant by being born of water and of the Spirit.This is surprisingly easy to do. When you read the OT you are constantly confronted with these pictures of what will happen when the Spirit is poured out like water upon mankind. It’s a metaphor the prophets use over and over again. They speak about the Spirit as if it was contained in this jar and then God takes that jar and pours out his Spirit like water. And the effect is this new life that just springs up out of the ground so significant, it could be compared to new birth.Do you see the image? When the Spirit comes, all of the sudden new life springs out of the ground! Now, I’m not going to go through the other examples, but trust me this language is everywhere in the OT, verses just like this. Here are just a few examples.So to be born again is to have the life-giving Spirit of God poured into you. This Life-GIVING EFFECT is so tremendous that the best way to describe it is literally being reborn.He says you can’t watch it happen physically, but you’ll know it when you see its effects. And he gives this analogy of wind. You can’t see the wind, but you can see the effects of the wind.I can watch grass sway, clouds move, windmills turn. And in a similar way, I can’t see the Spirit of God being poured out on a person but I can certainly watch a person who was spiritually blind receive spiritual sight.Nicodemus, you must be born again.So that’s what it is. What’s being born again? It’s being given the Spirit of God so you can see. That’s the what question. Now why? Why do we need to be born again?Well we’ve already been given a huge part of the answer. Because if we aren’t born again, we will never see the kingdom of heaven, much less enter it. Without being born again, without being given spiritual sight – kingdom sight, we cannot have eternal life.What must be emphasized here is that this is an ABSOLUTE requirement. It is like saying, “In order to live on Mars, you must have oxygen.” Ah naw, that applies to most people but it doesn’t apply to me. No, it’s a MUST. There are no exceptions.Jesus uses the strongest possible language. You must be born again. There are not alternate ways in which a person can achieve that spiritual enlightenment. You MUST be born again. You Nicodemus. You, the one who is not seeking me. You, the one who is not emotionally broken. You, the one wearing clean clothes. You, the one who is respected in society. You, the Ivy League graduate. You, the bourgeois, the upper crust, living in balconied, breezy, paneled houses. You, the person at the top.You have to be born again.And so must all of us. Yes, assembled here are those who are respected in the community, those who write articles and are published authors, those who are doctors and lawyers, those who are PhD’s, those who are part of business think tanks, who live in offices of Ivy, who are rational thinking individuals, whose needs are met, who are monogamous, heterosexual, who run a business with ethical practices, who are pillars of morality in the communityThe message of the new birth is not a call to more morality and moral structure; it’s a challenge to it. I don’t care how smart, moral, or sophisticated you are, “You must be born again.”Jesus looks at all of us and says, “Don’t come to me on your TERMS.” Everyone who comes to me must start at equal footing, ground zero, like a helpless baby. You have to start at day one. You need a new birthday. Nothing you have done counts.Jesus does not come to Nicodemus and say, “Nicodemus, I’m so proud of you. You’ve come this far. Now let me help you up the rest of the way.” No. He says, “Start the game over. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You have to go back to day one as a newborn child.”And by the way, this is good news for those of you who think you’ve messed your life up so bad that it’s too late. You look at the guy or gal who was raised with all sorts of privilege. They had great parents that loved them, went to the best schools, married with kids, stayed out of trouble, have a great job. And you say to yourself, “Look at me.” I got pregnant in my teens. I dropped out of school. I’ve smoked and drank and chewed everything that could be and now I’m in the middle of my life and I’m used up, messed up, jacked up. It’s too late for me.Jesus says, when it comes to God, all must be born again. You are all on equal footing. All enter the kingdom the exact same way, as a baby stripped of all your accomplishments. You come naked and stripped and needy. You come that way or you don’t come at all.Do you recognize what he’s doing? He’s taking away your excuse. He’s taking away your self-defense mechanism, the defense mechanism you use to say that this born-again stuff doesn’t apply to me. No it applies to everyone.Why is this necessary? Why is it so universal? There’s a very good reason.In verse 6 he says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.You need a different organ of sight. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have, how many people love you, how much money you have. That’s all flesh. That can’t help you see the kingdom. You can polish your binoculars all you want and you’ll never see radio waves. You can only see the kingdom through Spiritual eyes. And in order to get Spiritual eyes, you need to be born again.It’s a shock. And the shock is beginning to set in a bit on Nicodemus. You can hear it in his voice.How can it be that my degrees and education and influence and position don’t matter? How can that be?Nicodemus is frankly incredulous. Jesus sees his questioning, bewildered, confused, befuddled, suspicious eyes and says to him.What does he mean here? I think understanding this is where the passage opens up. Look at verse 11. He speaks in the plural. We speak of what we know. Who is ‘we’? Most likely him and John the baptist. We bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.What did John the Baptist testify? This is the Messiah. This is the Son of God. John testified that he saw the Spirit descend on him and God speak from heaven, “This is my son in whom I am well pleased.” John testified, “This is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” That’s the claim.Now we know, by repeated reference in the text that the Pharisees did not receive that testimony. They did not believe that Jesus was from God.SOBack up to the opening lines of John chapter 3. Suddenly this interchange makes all the sense in the world. “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.” Now if you’re just reading along, at first blush that sounds so respectful. Great teacher, clearly God must be with you because you are doing all these signs.But it’s incredibly evil. There are some painfully absent titles that ought to be there. That is most certainly NOT who Jesus claims to be. This is Messiah. This is the Word-Messiah whose sandal you are not fit to untie. This is not merely a great teacher. God is not merely with Jesus. God is Jesus.So many of us approach Jesus this same way. Jesus, oh yes, I very much respect this rabbi. But he’s not a rabbi. He’s God.And that is why Jesus stops the conversation dead in it’s tracks and says, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.” You’re coming at me on your TERMS. Start over. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You must be born again.The Passive Nature of itNow one thing to note here is the passive nature of the metaphor. You must be born again. Being born is something that happens to you, not something you do to yourself.Who actually brings about a birth? The baby? Has anybody gone and gotten born? You don’t go and get born. Birth happens to you; the baby doesn’t do a thing. It’s all the mother. The mother is screaming and crying and bleeding all over the place. She’s wailing in agony.The baby is brought into this world through the mother’s labor, pain and suffering. The mother is the one who has to lug that thing around for 9 months and has her bladder compressed and her back aches and her hormones are all out of whack. The mother suffers, groans, weeps and labors.You could even argue, the baby does not want to be born. The baby wants to stay in the mother’s womb. That baby loves the temperature, he’s fed perfectly, it’s cozy. The baby is forced to be born.And there is an implication here. The thing you need most, Nicodemus, you can’t do. You can’t make yourself a Christian. You can’t have this experience or get this spiritual sight. You can’t force yourself into this. You can’t say, “I’m going to go get me some of that Christian power. I’m going to make my life better by becoming a Christian.”You can’t do it.It is true that you cannot do anything. But you can believe something. I can’t fly to NYC. But I can believe that this plane can get me there and walk into it. If you want God to give you that spiritual birth, you must believe something. Look at the emphasis on the word ‘believe’ here.Do you see the emphasis here? It is by believing that Jesus is the Son of God, God come in the flesh, that we are born again. Being born again, begins by believing a claim. That claim ‘believed’ means being given the Spirit. Being given the Spirit means you can see the kingdom of God. It means being transformed so that you can see your need. It means being given grace to humble oneself and repent and receive forgiveness of sin.How do I become born again? We must believe. And to illustrate the kind of belief required for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, he uses this analogy.He says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” He’s taking this obscure story out of Numbers 21 in which the children of Israel are in the wilderness and they start complaining about this loathsome manna and God sends a bunch of snakes and they are bitten. It’s like the ultimate story to pull out when your kids are complaining about the broccoli salad.The children of Israel are all lying about, they’re dying. It looks like they’re all going to be wiped out, shaking with convulsions, high fevers, their veins are full of poison.God says to Moses, I will give them a cure. “Make a serpent out of bronze and put it up on a stick so all who look at it will be healed.” That’s what he does. It really is a weird story; but the picture is so perfect (which is why of course he uses it).Think about it, if you are bitten by a brightly colored pit-viper and you are writing in pain, what do you believe can save you? In those days they didn’t have anti-venom kits. If you were bitten by a pit viper it’s game over. It’s just a matter of time.Now if I’m Moses and I tell you, listen, what you need to do is look at this little snake around a pole; that will heal you. You’d say, “You are crazy.” The problem here is a venom problem. I can see the problem. There’s a chemical reaction happening between the venom and my muscles. That venom is slowly paralyzing me. It’s going to soon paralyze my heart and I’ll be dead. Looking on your little stick is not going to fix that chemical problem.And yet, Moses said, I know that to your mind, it makes no sense, but it’s the only way. The phrase that Numbers 21 uses is that they were to look to, or look upon this pole. It’s the idea of casting your entire faith, your entire trust, your entire hope for cure upon God. It’s a total admission of inability and a plea for help.Now Jesus says, in the same way that Moses asked the children of Israel to cast their hopes to God in that moment of certain death, to abandon on their normal ways of understanding how healing happens, to completely put their trust for salvation in what that pole represented, in God alone, Jesus is asking them to do the same.If you want to be born again, you have to believe that Jesus is the only way. There are not multiple ways to God, many good teachers and Jesus is one. No, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father except through him.And if you don’t believe you will perish. Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. You will die with the poison of sin coursing through your veins. You will die in your sins which is another way of saying, you will die refusing to believe the reality that Jesus is God. I refuse to submit to God. God says, “You want to push me out of your life? If you push me away, then you also push away everything to do with me.” Hell is described as outer darkness, nothingness, the complete absence of the presence of God. Men who hate the light will get what they want. They will end up in absolute, complete, utter, eternal darkness.But it doesn’t have to be that way. When we look to Jesus and believe that he is God, that he is our only hope, when we believe on him in this way, the most amazing thing happens. The Spirit of God is poured out on us and we are reborn.Let me give you an example of the type of radical difference between being born again and not being born again.If you had an apple orchard and you say, “Next year I want to get peaches from it. I’m tired of apples; I want peaches.” Fine. What would you do? Well you could say, “I’m going to water and fertilize it far better than I did last year. I’m going to prune it.” But you’re just going to get bigger apples. You’re not going to get peaches like that.In other words, if you want new fruit, you have to have a new root.You have to be completely replanted. That’s the kind of change that happens when we are born again. We are given a new heart that loves new things. That is able to stop loving self and start loving God and others. Without this new birth you can’t do that. You love yourself too much. You need a new life. The root of you, the heart of you needs completely remade. That’s why Jeremiah 31 when talking about the new covenant says, “I will take out of you a heart of stone and give to you a heart of flesh.” The part of you that is the center of your life, your heart, needs to be transplanted. You need a foreign heart given to you. You must be born again.Here’s the best way I can describe what this is like for those who have not experienced it. Have you ever had a moment in your life where you convinced you were right. And you had all these reasons why you were absolutely correct. And man, they were good reasons. The logic was tight. You felt fortified. You felt secure.But then something happens, and finally your entire perspective shifts, and you say, “You know what, I’m actually wrong.” And you look back at that moment and you think, “How could I have deceived myself like that? How could I be using my rational faculties, have all these really good arguments, and yet come to totally wrong conclusions?”You see the problem with trying to evaluate Jesus on your own terms is not that your brain doesn’t work. The brain works just fine. The problem is your heart doesn’t work. Your heart won’t allow your brain to come to the right conclusions. You need a new heart. That’s why you need to be born again.It’s not reform; it’s not even transformation. It’s a starting over at the spiritual DNA level of who you are. And when that new perspective is given to you, light floods into your heart and you are given new meaning, new purpose like you’ve never had before. It’s an unbelievable experience. It’s like the whole world makes sense. It’s an epiphany on steroids!How do you know if someone is really born again? If the evidence of wind is shaking grass, what is the evidence of the Spirit of God in a person? Look at what he says here. This is so amazing.He says, “Listen, Nicodemus the reason you came to me and said, Rabbi, you are a great teacher” is because you were afraid to acknowledge me as Lord. You were trying to flatter me but you insulted me. You were scared, because you know that as Lord, I search the heart and what would be in that heart would be evil. You can disagree with a teacher. You cannot disagree with an absolute sovereign, all-knowing, holy, perfect, all powerful LORD.Many are too proud to come into the light so that the pornography addiction can be seen. Many are too proud to come into the light so that the substance abuse can be seen. Many don’t want their anger exposed, their jealousy exposed, their insecurities exposed, their greediness, their discontent, their spending habits, their lack of generosity, their eating habits. There’s minimizing, there’s deflecting, there’s blaming, there’s defensiveness. There’s a fear of the light and a love of darkness.The evidence of someone not born again is hiding. Listen, believe on Jesus Christ and you can be saved from all that. He will pour his Spirit on you, you will be born again, you will be forgiven and accepted. And your response will be exactly opposite.Here’s what I love the most. Look at the evidence of someone who is born again. They come into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.Listen closely to the distinction. The one who is not born again hates the person of Jesus, hates the light because his deeds are evil; the other loves the person of Jesus, loves the light not because his deeds are righteous, but because he longs to show that his righteous deeds have been done through God. He wants to give God glory.One of the great evidences of a Christian is that he or she is so excited to show everyone that whatever great thing has just happened in me, to me, through me, is God. Look at God. He’s so amazing! Do you want that?Call to Repentance.You must be born again. There is no exception in the room. All of you must be born again if you want to see the kingdom of God.And perhaps today is the day. Perhaps you are ready to believe that Jesus is God, you are ready to believe on him, to look on Jesus, the one lifted up upon a pole, as dying man bit by the serpent of sin, your only hope, to look at him not as a great rabbi, but as Lord, God Messiah, and fling yourself face down and say, God I need you. I come to you as a baby, naked, stripped of all my self-righteousness, stripped of everything I’m proud of. All my righteousness as filthy rags.Pour out your Spirit on me. Pour it out. Pour life into me. Give me eyes to see.Here’s how you become a Christian. Here’s what you must do. I want to give you words to begin a prayer to God; You must mean it and you need to finish it:Jesus, I believe that you are God. That what is said in this book is history and is true. I believe that you came into the world, because you love me. I believe that you are offering me complete freedom from all my sin and eternal life. But I have resisted that life because I have loved the darkness because my deeds are evil.Now all those things that you have been hiding from God, all those things that you have been scared to drag out into the light, drag them out right now and just confess them to God. Ask him to forgive you.Be specific. Tell him of everything. No secrets. No partial confessions. No half truths. All of it. You can have the courage to do this because there is grace and forgiveness waiting for you.If you confess your sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Repent of your self rule. Repent of your insistence that you are right, that you are king.Say, Jesus I allow you to be now who you have claimed to be this whole time, Lord of my life. I want to serve you as my king and Lord and master and Savior.BenedictionNow if you have done this, I want you to let me know, because the next step is baptism for you, publicly declaring that Jesus is LORD of your life, that you have a new KING, a new LORD and a new MASTER.