Edit: Did I say less than a month? I meant 12 weeks away. Apparently, I can't tell the difference between March and May. They both start with M, leave me alone! It was wondering, too, because normally this church gives me so much lead time - it's one of the reasons I like them.
Sermon 1: John 3:1-36
John 3 – Jesus makes it clear who he is (John the Baptist backs him up). Will you accept him or reject him? Your judgement is in your hands. You can choose what your judgement will be.
Will you reject him like the Pharisees (who are supposed to love God, but don't when he confronts them – thinking we can get to God ourselves), or like the Baptist's disciples (who are jealous, and don't listen to their own teacher, because Jesus does things in ways we don't like)?
Or will we accept Jesus for who he is, accepting that we can't do anything to come into God's family, but he must make us born from above (like John the Evangelist 3:16-21)? Will we accept that our joy comes from the truth that Jesus comes from heaven – that he is from God (like John the Baptist in 3:27-30, and the Evangelist in 31-36)?
Sermon 1 words
In 2008, an American church planter called Mark Driscoll came to Australia, at the invitation of someone, I don't know who. He's well-known for being masculine to the point of chavinist, and he basically took his opportunity at St Andrews Cathedral to slam Australian Christianity (particularly Australian Christian men) for not being manly enough, and not being American enough. He is the kind of person who, at a Christian conference, invites people to come up and punch him in the face – and when they don't, he says that Christian men aren't manly enough, and so punches himself in the face. He's lucky I wasn't at the conference, as I would have been sorely tempted to sock him one. My opinion is he is invited on speaking tours and such because he is a success (he planted some big church in the USA), not because he is wise. I'm sure he has some good things to say, but his attitude and his opinions on some things have just turned me off completely. I'll never listen to him.
Have you ever looked up to someone, a famous or important person, only to have them say or do something that really stood against what you think or believe? It happens in political and religious situations, but can occur in most any educational situation too – where someone who is in a position of authority makes a statement that grates against you, and causes you to seriously reflect on whether you can continue to submit to their authority, how far you can follow them. No doubt you will have had similar experiences in your lives. We shouldn't be surprised, then, that when we look at the great Teacher, Jesus, we find there are people who are challenged by what he has to say, and must decide whether or not they can live with the claims he makes. This is a strong theme of the Gospel of John – over and over, Jesus will say challenging things to people, make impressive claims, and people are left having to decide whether they can reconcile themselves to him or not.
Today, as we look at John chapter 3, we will see two such reactions towards Jesus. Chapter 3 is not a hugely long chapter, but, as with much of John's Gospel, it is incredibly thick with rich material, and there is no way we will touch on it all today. But I will give you the basic structure, and then we will look for the main points. There are two stories here – one is about a Pharisee (the religious leaders of Jesus' time) called Nicodemus, who sneaks out at night to go and talk to Jesus – that's 3:1-15. The other story is about John the Baptist talking to his disciples about Jesus – that's 3:25-30. You'll see those numbers don't match up. That's because after each story, there is some explanatory information given by John the Evangelist, who wrote the Gospel, to help us understand these incredibly deep and important stories. That should give you an idea of how deep these passages are. It's not a coincidence that two of the Bible's most famous verses come from this chapter.
Nicodemus, we are told, was a Pharisee, but not just any Pharisee – he was a member of the Jewish ruling council. These were important religious leaders that made decisions about what people should believe. They were well respected, and powerful people. But they were met with a problem – this man called Jesus had turned up, and was performing many miraculous deeds, but the things he had to say didn't match up with what the Pharisees told people to believe. Now, it could be thought that Nicodemus was sent by the council to go and talk to Jesus officially, but since he visits Jesus at night, the suggestion is more that he sneaks away to talk to Jesus without anyone else knowing. Perhaps this shows us that the ruling council has already made their mind up about Jesus, but Nicodemus wants to find out more for himself.
And so they have a conversation, in which Jesus puts to Nicodemus a spiritual truth that confuses him, verse 3, “Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” This is a strange saying. In the book of Mark, we read Jesus saying, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” Jesus speaks in mysterious phrases a lot in John, but we must remember that while these phrases might be difficult to understand, those who have ears to hear them will be given the secrets of the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus does not understand. To be fair, “born again” in Greek is a homonym – it can mean two things with the same words. So “born again” can also mean “born from above” - born from heaven, or born from the spirit. Jesus obviously meant the latter, but Nicodemus hears it simply as 'second birth'. He is forced to ask in verse 4, “How can anyone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” Which obviously they can't. It is the real meaning of this term, 'born again', or 'born from above', which will shake Nicodemus, and cause him to question if he can believe what Jesus says, whether he can follow Jesus.
You see, Jesus goes on to say that no-one can enter God's kingdom without being born of water (that is baptism, which is a representation of repentance for sin) and the Spirit (that is, through the work of God through the Holy Spirit). I'll say that again. No-one can enter God's kingdom without a new life of repentance for their sin, and the work of God's spirit in them. Not only must you turn away from a sinful life, but God must choose you, must work in you, must change you by his Holy Spirit, or else you will never get into heaven.
This might seem clear to us as Christians today. But to Nicodemus, to the religious leaders of Judaism, it was unheard of. They believed, wrongly, that access to heaven came from a mixture of being born of Abraham (that is, being a Jew racially), and following God's laws (that is, being a Jew religiously). Jesus was saying something different, and so Nicodemus replies in verse 9, “How can this be?”
So Jesus rebukes him. Nicodemus is a Pharisee, one of the ruling council, and yet he does not understand how people can come to God. How would you feel if your church's leaders didn't know how you could come to God? It's outrageous. Jesus says that they wouldn't know God if he was right there talking to them – which he was! And so Jesus then fills Nicodemus in on the truth. What Jesus has to say is incredibly thick with meaning, and we just don't have time to cover it in depth. But in essence, he says that he has come from heaven, that he has spoken of what he has seen in heaven, and yet the religious leaders don't listen to him. He asks Nicodemus, “If you won't accept what I say about how God works here on earth in people, to bring them to himself, then how can I tell you more about what God is like in heaven?” And he tells Nicodemus that just as God empowered Moses in the Old Testament to lift the bronze snake so that those who looked at it would be spared God's wrath in the wilderness, so must Jesus be lifted up on the cross, so that all who believe in him may be spared God's wrath, and have eternal life.
John goes on to explain it more for us, and again this is powerful, deep stuff. The point I want to bring to you today comes mainly from verses 19-21. Verse 19, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” I want to be clear about this – John is writing this, not after the story of some prostitute, or tax collector, or thief or murderer. He is talking about Nicodemus! He's talking about a member of the Jewish ruling council! A religious man! His deeds are evil, and he loves darkness, not light! He's the one sneaking around in the dark. Just like someone who lives a good life by today's standards, someone who goes to church, maybe even someone in charge of a church. People who turn their backs on Jesus and what he says, turn their backs on God.
Verses 20 and 21, “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” The point is not that those who live by the truth come into the light because people will see all the good things that they do. No, people who live by the truth are living by the truth that God alone has the power to heal them of their wrong, to take away their sin. The only difference between those who love God, and those who love darkness, is those in darkness are trying to hide their sinfulness from God. They're trying to say to God, “Look at me! I'm a good person! I'm worth bringing to heaven!” But you can't fool God. He sees everything.
People who live by the truth, on the other hand, know that they can't hide from God, and know that only God has the power to make them born again, born from above; born from water and spirit, born from repentance of sin, and by the Holy Spirit's power. They come into the light, because they admit that everything they have done is in the sight of God. They bring the good and the bad to God and say, “God, look! I am a sinner! Help me, please, because no-one else can!” And God's reply is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Do you, like Nicodemus, think that you know God better than Jesus does? Do you think you can make a better way to God than that which Jesus offers? Do you think you can hide your sins from God? You can't even hide them from yourself. Don't try and cover them up. Bring them to God in prayer. Say, “Lord, I have wronged you. Please forgive me, and take these sins away.” Admit that you have wronged God, and turn away from such a life, and God in his Holy Spirit will work in you, to make you his own.
The scene changes now, and we are taken to the countryside, where John the Baptist is doing what he does best – baptising people. Jesus and his disciples go up the river a bit, and they baptise people too. Verse 23 says there was plenty of water, and it sounds like there was also plenty of people wanting to be baptised. And considering that Jesus had only just said that people must be born of both baptism and the holy spirit, it would be strange for him not to spend some time with people getting baptised.
Now, John the Baptist is an old hand at this baptism thing. He has been doing it for a while, and he actually had quite a following. We learn from Mark that, “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him.” John the Baptist was a bit of a religious rock star. He was famous, he lived a quirky and strange life, and many people followed him.
So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised when we read this story here in John's gospel, which tells us that John the Baptist's disciples come to him after having an argument with 'a certain Jew' about ceremonial washing, and start to complain that Jesus now is baptising on the other side of the river, and more people are going to him than to John.
You see, John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus. He had been baptising people for a while, calling them to repent of their sins, and to live the life of a good religious Jew, because soon the Messiah would come. John was not a radical – he wanted people to follow the Jewish law properly, and live righteous lives. But Jesus had spoken out against the Pharisees, saying that they made God's people jump through useless hoops, pushing them to follow rules that were unnecessary and not part of God's law. It would seem that some of John's disciples have met up with one of Jesus' disciples, and have had this argument between themselves. Not only that, but Jesus seems to be getting more popular than John, and that also makes them a little envious.
Now here's the thing. John the Baptist testified that Jesus was the Messiah they had all been waiting for. He announced it! He baptised Jesus when the Holy Spirit came down on him! He was the one who told the world, “This guy here, Jesus, is the Messiah, the Holy One of God!”, and more than that, John's disciples knew that! In verse 26 they say, “that man you testified about, look, he is baptising, and everyone is going to him,” and complaining about his teachings on ceremonial washing. John's disciples knew what John's teaching was about Jesus, but they rejected it – and yet still tried to call themselves his disciples.
There is a big temptation for Christians today to criticise other parts of God's church because they have this practice, or don't have this practice, or even just because we're jealous, and it seems that God is blessing their ministry more fruitfully than ours. Such bickering between God's followers is pointless. Times change – one ministry loses its relevance and therefore its appeal, where another ministry blossoms and bears much fruit for God. To say that what they're doing is wrong because it doesn't follow laws that you made up misses the point of God's kingdom. Yes, Jesus' disciples didn't follow the rules of ceremonial washing that the Pharisees made up. They didn't follow the Sabbath rules that the religious leaders made up. They didn't have to. They followed God, and God blessed them.
John the Baptist's reply to them is a picture of perfect Christian humility before God. He says to them, in a paraphrase of vs 27-30, “Guys, the truth is your ministry will only ultimately succeed if it is blessed by God in heaven. I'm not the Messiah, Jesus is. I'm just the best man at his wedding. I'm not there to get married. When the groom turns up, he gets the bride, and the best man is happy for him. That joy is mine now that Jesus is here. He must become more prominent and important, and I must become less prominent and important.”
We don't serve God to get popularity. We don't serve God to get success. We don't serve God for ourselves. You don't turn up at someone else's wedding to get the bride! God's Kingdom is about God's glory and about him calling a group of people to himself, to make them his people. When we see that happening, whether we get to be a part of it or not, we should rejoice. Whether those making it happen do it within our church culture or outside of it, we should be full of joy that people are coming to the kingdom.
John the Evangelist again writes after telling this story, to help explain, from verse 31, “The one who comes from above is above all” - that's Jesus. “The one who comes from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth.” That's like John the Baptist, or us – here on earth, doing our bit, but remember, as John even repeats it - “The one who comes from heaven is above all.” Then in verse 36 he says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them”.
John the Baptist's disciples had refused his testimony about Jesus, and in doing so had rejected the Son of God. We must be so careful to make sure that we do not reject Jesus ourselves by rejecting those that are working for his kingdom, just because they are not 'one of us'. God's church is bigger than that. When we start putting strictures and restraints on how Christians can serve God, we are in fact putting ourselves ahead of God, saying that our rules are as important, or more important, than God's rules. Not so. Jesus must become greater; we must become less.
Let's not be like Nicodemus, and think that we know better than Jesus how people can come to God. Instead, let's live by the truth, and accept that we are sinners, and we don't know everything, and put that in God's hands, knowing that people only come to God because of his Holy Spirit. Let's not be like John's disciples, and think that we know better than Jesus how people can come to God. Instead, let's be like John the Baptist, and seek to serve God's kingdom, attracting people to him, making him greater, making ourselves less. To God be the glory. Amen.
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