Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon text is found in John chapter 3. John chapter 3. We’ll be reading verses 1-21. John 3:1-21. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

John Chapter 3: 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.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, 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, “Most assuredly 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 again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the spirit.”

Nicodemus answered and said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Most assuredly I say to you, we speak what we know and testify what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is the Son of Man who is in heaven.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. And this is the condemnation: that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.

Let us pray that God would illumine this text for understanding by using the song provided.

Shine thou upon us, Lord, true light of men today,
And through the written word, thy very self display,
That so from hearts which burn, with gazing on thy face,
Thy holy ones may look and see the wonders of thy grace.

Breathe thou upon us, Lord, thy spirit’s living flame,
That so with one accord our lips may tell thy name.
Give thou the hearing ear, fix thou the wondering thought
That thy dear church may hear the great things thou hast wrought.

Please be seated. Younger children can be cared for in the nursery at this time during the course of the sermon.

Now, so far the gospel of John has given us various designations of the subject of the good news. This is the good news of Jesus Christ, of course. And in chapter one he was identified as the Word, as the Light, various other designations. In chapter two we saw John the Baptist declaring him to be the Lamb of God slain from before the world—Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world, all of them apparently.

In John chapter 2, we saw Jesus as the true wine, isn’t he? He is the great wine that we partake of at communion. And the picture he’s providing is the wine of joy, moving ahead from the purification waters of the Old Testament to the joyous wine of the New Testament which is effected by our savior. He is the best of wine, and our savior has declared himself to be the sanctuary. He is the dwelling place of his people. He is the temple and what the temple always represented.

Well, here I think, while it isn’t quite as direct, I think a proper understanding of this text tells us that what this text is all about is telling us that Jesus Christ is the teacher. He is the true teacher of men. We have a contrast here between Nicodemus coming at night. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. And the Lord Jesus Christ who is light. It’s a passage full of contrast. And one of the great contrasts is when Jesus says, “You’re the teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things.”

We speak, we teach, we declare, we proclaim what is true. The responsive reading we just read, as well as other scriptures, tie the work of the Holy Spirit to the proclamation of a voice. And so we have Nicodemus, his insufficient teaching, and Jesus Christ is the great teacher in this passage.

Now, he’ll give many expositions throughout the rest of the Gospel of John, but this is really the first full-fledged one. The way the passage works, your outline has it. First, Nicodemus is introduced, and then there’s a dialogue—two people speaking back and forth. And then there’s a change in the way the grammar is written. The second person declarations in that dialogue as Jesus speaks with Nicodemus ends. And then the last half of the section we read is basically a monologue. The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking.

And so we have this back and forth, and we have Jesus really being portrayed here for the first time as the expositor of something. He’s made statements up to now. He’s answered questions, but this is the first kind of chunk of Jesus teaching that we have. And I think it’s deliberately set in juxtaposition to Nicodemus dwelling in night as the teacher of Israel who doesn’t know these things.

And of course, Nicodemus comes to Jesus approaching him as a teacher. “Rabbi, Raboni, master teacher, I’ve come for instruction.” So this text is all about Jesus Christ being described, I think, in this story of Nicodemus, as the teacher.

Now, as we get into this, first we want to talk about the way the text starts, which is an introduction to who Nicodemus is. And we’re told in verse one of chapter 3 that there was a man. And remember, we’ve said that at the end of chapter 2, Jesus knew what was in man. He wasn’t entrusting himself to man. He knew what was in man. And here’s a man tying it right back. So these texts are related, as we said last week.

And again, as we said last week, Nicodemus comes forward as one who says, “We know that you must have come from God. You’re a teacher from God.” In verse two, “because no one else can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Now, that’s just a pairing of what we just read about men, mankind. The dazzled people, but they have deficient faith. Nicodemus is dazzled by the miracles and he’s coming for instruction, but the text makes painfully clear that Nicodemus cannot see the kingdom of God yet at this point. He dwells in darkness.

So there’s a connection then to this introductory material at the end of chapter 2 and this story of Nicodemus in chapter 3. How was Nicodemus like this man? And then what does this tell us about Nicodemus? Well, if we know that he’s connected to this group that Jesus just spoke of at the end of chapter 2, all that we said last week kind of comes into this text and helps inform us about what kind of man the scriptures is portraying him to be.

He is a man with deficient faith. That was our first point of the four-point outline last week. Remember we had duds, and then the steady savior in relationship to duds. He changes duds into, you know, fireworks into brilliant flashes of light demonstrating his grace in the context of the world. And the duds are those who have deficient faith. And Nicodemus is a dud here at first. He has deficient faith.

And yet the Lord Jesus Christ does, to a certain extent, entrust himself to Nicodemus, doesn’t he? You know, he doesn’t really say much. He’s had this picture of the steady savior but sort of pulled back from all the men at the end of chapter 2. But here he’s engaging a man. He’s giving quite a bit of knowledge to Nicodemus. And so our savior, you know, does work with—and the only people he’s going to work with and the only people we’re going to work with in terms of evangelism are people with deficient faith.

So Nicodemus is a picture of that, but he’s also a picture that we don’t misunderstand Jesus’s reserve talked about at the end of chapter 2. It doesn’t mean we don’t engage people and discuss things with them. We just don’t entrust ourselves to them. Okay?

So Nicodemus was a man. Secondly, Nicodemus is a man of the Pharisees. So he’s a Pharisee, and this is an important designation in the context of this particular place in history. You know, we read the Bible now and we say he’s a Pharisee. Oh, all the red flags come up, and you know, the Pharisees were bad guys and they’re the ones who defined Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and they defined it in a radically anti-Christian fashion. The stuff that was written about them was just horrendous. And we know that here the Pharisees and the Jews were the ones who opposed Jesus primarily.

So our connotation of that phrase “Pharisee” is negative. But you’ve got to understand that at the time of the writing of this, at the time of the actual event happening, this means that Nicodemus was an important person. You know, he was important. This was a badge of honor, not a badge as we see it now 2,000 years later of dishonor. Nicodemus is a Pharisee. He’s an important person. And he’s also a person who has a lot of experience, who thinks a lot about the nation of Israel, is trying to affect change the way they see change should come.

And by this time—we’ve made this point repeatedly going through this gospel, but it needs to be kept in mind here, particularly at this point in time—the Pharisees and those who are hoping for change were no longer hoping for the sort of change that Jesus is going to instruct Nicodemus about. They’re looking for external change. They’re what we might call environmental determinists. By this point in time, in other words, one of the big problems that Nicodemus has, as we’ll go through this text and see, is that he doesn’t understand how the sort of thing that Jesus says could be possible given his knowledge of human beings. He’s cynical. The Pharisees are somewhat cynical at this point in time. They’re discouraged.

Regeneration is not on their minds. What’s on their minds is the overthrowing of the Roman yoke. They’re the people of God. They have the temple of God. “The temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord. The temple of the Lord are thine. Deliver us. Get these Romans out of here. That’s our problem. Our problem is the difficulty we have in life, not our response to them.” That’s just like us, isn’t it? I mean, we, you know, we think of our problems as the set of events that happen around us as opposed to the problem being us. Like, you know, Pogo said, “Met the enemy and he is us.”

But the Pharisees were wanting a change in the environment, their external surroundings. And all too often when we consider who we are, this last week, you’ll recognize that you did the same thing. That’s why we grumble and dispute instead of pray to God and see how we can act in the context of the new creation.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and he was also discouraged. He was an important person. Calvin says this on this port of the scripture: “This designation was no doubt regarded by his countrymen as honorable to Nicodemus, but it is not for the sake of honor that it’s given to him by the evangelist, who on the contrary draws our attention to it as having prevented him from coming freely and cheerfully to Christ. Here we are reminded that they who occupy a lofty station in the world are for the most part entangled by very dangerous snares. Nay, we see many of them held so firmly bound that not even the slightest wish or prayer arises from them towards heaven throughout their whole life.”

You see, honorable positions and pride are what prevent them from really coming into a full saving knowledge of Christ. You have this lack of humility. Jesus will make quite clear in this text that it’s not natural birth. It’s not privilege by position, station or rank that establishes somebody as important in the context of the world. We think of United States senators as an example of being very important people. They make decisions. President Bush is important. The senators are important. Those are the important people. But you know, this is not the mind of Christ.

What Jesus is going to do in this text is say, “Well, you’re an honorable Pharisee and the teacher of Israel. That’s what he’s called. You’re an important person, but you know, you don’t know squat. And not only that, but you’re going to have no effect on this world. The people that will have effect on this world will be those who are blown like the wind, making their evidence of their spiritual regeneration known. That’s who changes the world. That’s the important people. The important people in the context of our culture are those who have been born again from above, who bring the spirit of renewal and recreation wherever they go.”

This is what Jesus tells Nicodemus, and we need to understand it. Our children need to know that they are very important people. They are far more important, assuming that they’ve been born again in the context of becoming a new creation in Christ regenerated, far more important in the context of what goes on in Oregon City than the mayor. This is our world. You see, we’re the new creation.

Jesus draws a contrast. Are you going to have life, or are you going to perish? If Nicodemus stays in the dark and remains a Pharisee, honored by man, he is going to perish. Is that important? Well, the importance of him is to see how the destruction comes. Hebrews makes this point, doesn’t it? “There’s a great shaking going on so that everything that can’t be shaken will remain and things that can be shaken will be destroyed. Future belongs to the new creation and the people that inhabit the new creation.”

Pharisees were concerned about the outside events of men. They were concerned about the outside, the environment of a man, not what was on the inside. Nicodemus was discouraged about men being able to change. We’ll see that in his responses here. Jesus says, “Got to be a new creature.” And Nicodemus says, “How can that be?” He’s not dumb. He’s not stupid in the sense of not having knowledge. He doesn’t mean Jesus is saying people got to go back in the womb.

We misinterpret him if we think that. He says that the sum total of a man is his experiences, what he’s gone through. We could say it again: that genetics and environment has determined who you are. And to a large extent it has. You have patterns, habitual patterns that have been formed according to an Adamic nature among other things. Nicodemus says, “How can we possibly think anybody’s good at change?”

See, he was discouraged about men being able to change. And he had to understand that he wasn’t the most important person. We’ve got to understand that people that are born again or regenerate Christians are much more important in the context of our world than United States senators.

Third, Nicodemus is a ruler teacher. And I don’t want to belabor this point, but I do want to make it. We’re told here in verse one that Nicodemus was a man, Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews. And then we’re told down in verse 10, Jesus says, “What? You’re the teacher of Israel. And you don’t know these things? The teacher. Now, I don’t think he meant that he was the only teacher or the primary teacher, but he kind of represents the teaching class, but the text places it that way: “You are the teacher of Israel.”

Well, what we see here is that Nicodemus is representative of the entire prophetic teaching ministry in Jerusalem at this time. And we see him as a ruler. He’s a ruler teacher. He rules by teaching. Okay? And this has implications, I think, for church office. And I just want to very briefly look at a couple of texts here to kind of make this point and move on quickly.

1 Timothy 5:17, if you will, turn there. It’s a familiar passage of scripture: “Let the elders rule well, be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.” Okay, so we see here a designation that some elders are going to rule well and some are going to labor in the word and doctrine, and some get paid more than others. That’s what the word means. It means other things as well, but it means that pay should be commensurate with how much work an elder puts into his particular calling. And some work hard and some rule well and they’re worthy of double honor.

The text is not positing here, however, two separate offices. It’s saying some elders—some rule well and they’re worth more money. The ones that are worth more money are the ruling elders. If you want to make ruling and teaching elders distinct here, there’s no distinction of office. There’s a distinction of function, what people primarily do. And the functions are really wrapped up. An elder is one who rules and teaches. That’s the point here. And he may do more of one or the other. He may do something well or not, and his pay is commensurate with all those abilities.

Turn also to Hebrews chapter 13, verse 7. Okay: “Remember them which have the rule over you, ruling elders, who have spoken unto you the word of God, teaching elders. You see whose faith follow considering the end of their conversation.” And then verse 17, same basic point: “Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable to you.”

Now obviously the pastoral ministry of the elder is being spoken of there, but he’s designated as ruling. You see in the scriptures men rule by means of the word of God. If we go back to Moses’ appointment of the tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands as rulers, he then instructs them in the statutes. They’re not going to rule according to the wisdom of men. They’re going to rule according to the wisdom of the word. And they have to know that word. They’ve got to know doctrine. They’ve got to know the application of the doctrine in order to rule men.

Now, one of the problems we have in Reformed churches that make a big distinction between ruling and teaching elders is that ruling then happens without the word. They end up—they split off the two offices, ruling and teaching elders, and you tend to end up with ruling elders who really are not ruling anymore on the basis of the word of God. They’re using the wisdom of the world. They’re using current management techniques. They’re using psychological methods. They’re using what’s most efficient. They’re using pragmatism. Whatever it is, but in the scriptures, Nicodemus is a ruler teacher, correctly. So rulers must rule according to the word of God and the knowledge of the word of God.

Jesus will make a big contrast: heavenly things, earthly things. Next week, a little diversion. We’re going to go to James and talk about the wisdom from above that’s first pure and peaceable, etc., because we’re going to talk about speech—the new creation speech that we’re to engage in. And the idea here is that if you don’t explicitly set up your elders to be rulers who rule on the basis of wisdom from above that comes from the word of God, you’re going to end up with wisdom from below.

So, you know, Nicodemus is a picture here of a ruler teacher. Implications for church office. Now, let me immediately—if you’re a head of household, you should be thinking about the implications of this as well. How do you run your family? How do you run your business? It’s got to be based on the word of God. It’s got to be based on an understanding of the word of God, a knowledge base of some sort that allows you to make decisions as a head of household.

Okay? So he’s a ruler teacher.

And fourth, he is a defender of sorts of Jesus. In John 7, verses 45-53, we read the second occurrence of Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, and then we have one final occurrence to read. But in John 7, Jesus is at the last great day of the feast of tabernacles and he cries out and says, “If anyone’s thirsty, let him drink from me.” He’s the water of life and the spirit will flow out from him. And this causes a big hubbub.

And in verse 45, the officers came to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, “Why have you not brought him? Go arrest that guy.” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man.” Then the Pharisees answered them, “Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees believed in him?” So we know at this point Nicodemus hasn’t expressed his belief because he’s a ruler of the Pharisees. But “the crowd that does not know the law is accursed.”

“Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, being one of them, said to them, ‘Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?’ They answered and said to him, ‘Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.’ And everyone went to his own house.”

So here Jesus is defending—our savior, although still he’s not openly asserting his belief in Christ. And what’s interesting about this text is that it mentions that Nicodemus is the one who came to Jesus by night. He wants us to remember: by night. Okay. So Nicodemus is a defender of the savior of sorts, and he is recognized there again as coming at night.

And then finally, Nicodemus so Nicodemus did defend Jesus in chapter 7 of John’s gospel. And then finally, he’s portrayed as a reverent member of the bride in chapter 19, verses 39-41. Now, I’ve only got verse 39 printed out, so look at John 19:39-41. This is the third and final occurrence of Nicodemus in the gospels, in any gospel. This is the only gospel that mentions him.

And in verse 38 and 39, Joseph of Arimathea is going to take care of the burial of Jesus. In verse 39, “There came also, in other words, with Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night”—mentions it again here. We don’t need that. Nicodemus, we already assume that it’s the same Nicodemus. Then it tells us: “One who came to him by night and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred pound weight. Then they took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen clothes with the spices as the manner of the Jews is to bury.”

“Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. In the garden, a new sepulcher wherein was never yet a man laid.”

Now, I read that last verse just because, you know, I am waiting patiently to get to chapters 18 and following to talk about the garden motif there, but I’m going to mention it every chance I get, because John is about a new creation and the whole final episodes, the chapters of John that conclude it, happen in the context of a garden. And so we have new creation.

And I mention here that Nicodemus is reverent. He’s helping prepare the savior for burial now. And he has this hundred pounds of aloes and spices. These were the same sort of spices that the Bible talks about that’s used to prepare a bridegroom for the bride in the Song of Solomon. So Jesus is going to raise up and then embrace his bride, as it were, first pictured by the woman who comes to meet him in the garden who thinks he’s the gardener, and then later with the disciples.

So it seems like the end of the story is—as the song of, or Ecclesiastes, says—better than the beginning of the story. Jesus eventually is pictured here as coming to saving faith, being reverent, and being considered as a member of the bride.

But in the context of all of this, we read over and over, “Jesus came,” or “Nicodemus came by night.” Now, two things. First of all, it’s not unusual to come by night. We don’t need to read any fear into this on Nicodemus’s part. It was typical for teachers or rabbis to go and discuss things night well into the early hours of the morning. The idea was they wouldn’t be interrupted. It was quiet time. During the day, they’ve got various duties they’re attending to. So nighttime was a not an untypical time to go and approach someone who had just done these neat things in the temple and was in Jerusalem.

And there’s no reason to read cowardice or anything like that into Nicodemus. But the text definitely wants us to associate nighttime with Nicodemus. And the other two occurrences, at night in John 7 and then here in John 19, they’re talking about what happened at the first. So I think what’s happening is there’s a contrast being pictured with Nicodemus. He dwelled in night in a general sense of the term, and now he’s in the daylight coming into reception of the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This word night is used several times in the Gospel of John and it’s always a negative connotation. Jesus says in John 9:4, “I must work the works of him who sent me while it’s day. The night’s coming when no one can work.”

John 11:9 and 10: “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.”

Judas in John 13:30 goes out, and it says that having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately, and it was night. Okay, so night has these negative connotations. And part of what’s going on is this transition. All men doesn’t entrust himself to any man are wrapped up in darkness apart from the light of the Lord Jesus Christ shining on them and regenerating them and bringing them into the light.

And there’s a sense in which all of the people, all of the Jews, are pictured in Nicodemus here—the teacher of the nation symbolically. And the whole nation is in darkness. Now, part of that darkness is the Old Covenant. This is why we don’t have lunar festivals anymore. The Old Testament part of the covenantal system that remember the Jews in Rome, the Roman church kept to, was lunar festivals. The picture is that the Old Testament is still the shadows. It’s darkness. Jesus, the light, comes in the context of the New Testament and brings about a brand new day, new creation. Okay.

So Nicodemus finally is then this reverent member of the bride in chapter 19. There was a Gospel of Nicodemus. We don’t know if it’s probably written about the fourth or fifth century, supposedly based upon the account of this Nicodemus. We don’t really know how accurate it was. But the Gospel of Nicodemus, and other apocryphal works, say that Nicodemus gave evidence in favor of Christ at his trial before Pilate, that he was deprived of office and banished from Jerusalem by the hostile Jews, and that he was baptized by Peter and John. His remains were said to have been found at a common grave along with those of Gamaliel and Stephen. We don’t know that, but that was the word of mouth legend that came down: that Nicodemus actually gave evidence for Christ before Pilate and was kicked out of office, as it were, and was baptized by Peter and John.

Did Nicodemus finally come into the light? Yes, he did. And in what chapter do we see this evidence of his life? That’s chapter 19 for you children of the children’s outline. Okay. So, that’s Nicodemus.

Let’s talk now. Let’s have some observations on the dialogue of Nicodemus and Jesus.

Now the second section—after introducing the character—there’s some back and forth. Jesus’s topic in this dialogue is new creation. That’s what he’s talking about. Nicodemus requests information. What’s up? He says, like the words some of the young person here put on my blackboard: “What’s up, Pastor Terry?”

Well, what’s up is what Nicodemus wants to know. You know, stuff has been going on. Jesus is doing some interesting stuff. And he goes to him in verse two and he says, “Rabbi, we know”—that’s interesting. See, he’s kind of representing himself as the group of Pharisees. “We know that no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” So Nicodemus wants, you know, a rabbinical conversation. He wants to know what’s going on. Is this a prophet of God? What’s happening? What’s going on here? He’s looking for information.

And Jesus responds this way. We read: very short, curt. “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Most assuredly, verily, verily—double emphasis—this is certainly true. I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”

Now, this word born again, born from above, might be another way to put it. Become a new creature—all those are would be legitimate translations of the specific words that are translated “born again.” Born anew is the idea here, not really “again.” One commentator, noting this response and then what Jesus is going to say to Nicodemus as a follow-up question, and Jesus goes back to his main topic, one commentator said: “In the Gospel of John, Jesus seems to be congenitally incapable of giving a straight answer.”

Now, you read this back and forth, but why didn’t he just answer Nicodemus’s questions and be a little more clear about this? It strikes us that way. But in point of fact, Jesus is actually being very clear, very to the point, and very direct. He doesn’t approach the conversation the way Nicodemus wants to approach it. He takes control of it by inserting his entire point right at the beginning of the conversation.

Remember last week: how does Jesus change duds? He changes by being a steady savior who’s not moved away from his mission. His mission here in speaking with Nicodemus is to talk about new creation. That a man in order to see the kingdom of God, you have to be part of a new creation. You have to be newly created. You got to be newly born.

So Jesus goes right. You know, he’s like these talk people on the talk shows on the news talk shows, which I watch too much of, you know, if you watch “Crossfire” or something. The guy will ask him a question, and more often than not, the guest won’t answer the question. He has his own agenda. He’s on national TV and he’s going to want to say what he wants to say. He’s advocating a position. These guys are trained well. Message discipline. When he gets on, no matter what the question is, he’s going to make his point. And some of them are better at trying to weasel out of the question than others. But the point is they go right on target.

Well, that’s the way Jesus is here. He’s right on target. He’s not going to mess around with Nicodemus. He’s going to go right to the point. And the point is that unless Nicodemus becomes a new creation in Christ, he won’t understand a thing. He’s going to understand nothing. And so Jesus, instead of evading the question, goes right to the heart of the matter.

Let me mention here, by the way, that I read with emphasis the word “born” when we read the passage at the beginning of the sermon. That’s because the word “born” is used—can you guess?—got to be seven or eight. And this is the new creation. So it’s eight. It’s used eight times. You know, there’s no need to have that repeated so often in a few verses like that. But it seems like God wants us to take note of that. It’s a picture. The very literary structure of it gives us a picture, as well as the opening comment, that Jesus’s discourse here with Nicodemus, his dialogue with Nicodemus, is all about the need for the new creation in the context of a man’s life. Jesus’s topic is the new creation.

Well, so he says you’ve got to be born again to see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus then asks a question which a lot of people make fun of Nicodemus for. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” That is, you know, we treat that as kind of a stupid question, or maybe hypocritical, you know, we treat it lots of different ways, but we miss the point.

Nicodemus is right. He is wiser than most Christians. I don’t want to—maybe I shouldn’t say that. But you know, a lot of people today in the Christian church, you know, they think that it’s man’s ability to choose for God, man could do it himself. And they don’t seem to understand the radically depraved nature of man. Nicodemus does. Nicodemus is a teacher and a ruler of the Jews. He understands people. He doesn’t understand the new creation yet, but he knows what people are like.

Anybody that’s tried to run a church as either a deacon or an elder, run a household, run a business, certainly run a nation, you come head up against the way people are right quick like if you try to do any work of any kind of value at all. People are—you know, well, I won’t quote Lex Luthor quoting his father from Superman II, but I think of it always when I think of this particular topic. He’s talking about why he’s going to blow up half of California and invest in real estate. “You can’t invest in people because people are no darn good.” Little more expressive word used.

And Nicodemus knows this, and you sitting there in the pew know this about yourself. If you’re honest with yourself, you know that you find it incredibly difficult to change old habits. As I said earlier in the introduction, Nicodemus understands the nature of people, and he knows that in order for—if Jesus is going to point not to an external change of conditions with the Romans, but to the internal relationship of a man himself and him becoming new, if Jesus is going to take that environmentalism that the Pharisees have and instead point it to the inside of their own hearts, and he’s going to put the hope for this new creation he’s bringing about in changed people—Nicodemus is wise here.

“How can that possibly be? How can a man relive his life? I, you know, I’ve gone through fifty years, and I’ve gone through much of that time establishing in my early years sinful patterns of behavior, sinful actions, being in the context of sinful people. I mean, there’s a whole—there’s a whole picture of our lives that has all these connections to what’s wrong and not what’s right. How can we change that?”

You know, I don’t know. I’ve heard that pastor’s greatest problems in churches is discouragement. Discouragement is the greatest enemy of the ministry of the Christian church. And this is what Nicodemus is experiencing. He’s experiencing discouragement. And I have to tell you, it is a difficulty for pastors. It’s a difficulty for me. Sometimes you end up thinking people won’t change. People never change. They are who they are. Whatever they’ve been in the past, that’s what they’ll be in the future. It seems that way quite frequently.

Jesus says, “No.” Jesus says there’s other things going on. There’s a new creation at work. But we shouldn’t, you know, mock at Nicodemus for this response. We should come to grips with it and say he’s right. I kind of think our savior says he’s right too.

And it’s a little different take on what Jesus says. But Jesus’s answer says, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water of the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” So he repeats himself, a little more explanation. Then he says, I think he’s agreeing with Nicodemus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Don’t marvel that I said to be born again. You, this can happen. This is why I’m here.”

Jesus is saying you’re right, Nicodemus. Apart from the movement of the new creating work of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible for men to change. There’s no hope for the future in men being changed apart from the new creation work of the spirit of God flowing into their lives. I think Jesus is agreeing with Nicodemus here, in spite of what we might think about it.

Nicodemus, you know, sees the absolute human impossibility of what Jesus is saying his ministry is. His ministry is to affect a new creation. And he’s going to affect that by making people new—new creations in the context of the Holy Spirit. And Nicodemus says, “I don’t get it. How is that ever going to happen? People are no darn good. They’re the sum total of all their experiences and their thoughts and their patterns and their habits. And it’s impossible for men to change.”

Jesus expounds then on his theme and he says, “Yeah, you’re right. It is impossible for men to change. But believe me, I tell you that unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Again, here there’s improper exegesis of this text in many Bible-believing churches. Well, the water means physical birth and the spirit means his second birth. No, because Jesus—the grammar is that “unless one is born of water in the spirit,” he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So he’s talking about how is it that a man is born again. And he’s saying a man is born again by water in the spirit. That’s what he’s saying.

Now all this brings right back what we’ve had so far—this discussion of Jesus and John. Remember, this is that section of the sevenfold order of the book where waters from above are being pictured as coming down and creating this new creation. This is the cleansing section. Water is everywhere in these first four chapters. Water, water everywhere, you know, and it’s baptismal waters. Remember, we said last week that he’s just cleansed the temple and he’s going to move on to discuss water and purification and baptism with John and his disciples and a big long exposition on that at the end of this chapter.

It is explicitly set in the context of the new creation—the new creation is of baptism. Putting water on people. Now there’s also what that water pictures, which is the baptism of the spirit. Remember Jesus gets baptized. The spirit descends out of heaven, resides upon Jesus. And Jesus is in the business of being baptized in his name—of having people changed and recreated by that spirit of new creation. And he wants us to link it here to baptism.

Now we don’t believe that every child that’s baptized or every adult that’s baptized is regenerated by the waters of baptism. But we also don’t believe that baptism is just some kind of little symbol that has no efficacy to it. That would be the other ditch in the road. One ditch is to say that whoever’s baptized is regenerated. That’s that, and that’s the way it’s going to be. The other ditch is to say that baptism is of relative unimportance in this thing.

Jesus, as he explains the new creation, talks about baptism. Baptism. He talks in terms of purification water. Any, you know, all the commentators I read, any legitimate commentator who understands the flow of the scriptures, who doesn’t have a dispensationalist axe to grind here, knows that this water is not talking about physical birth. It’s talking about purification waters of the Old Testament, maybe, but certainly in the context of what’s happening here, baptismal waters.

And so the legend that Nicodemus eventually becomes baptized. Now, there’s images in this text of Jesus’s talking about the water and the spirit. We read the responsive reading earlier from Isaiah. This is why we chose it, you know, that Jesus would pour water upon people, floods on the dry ground, my blessing on your offspring. So the idea here is again that your offspring are going to become new creations through the application of water—heavenly water coming from above, spirit water coming down upon people.

Same thing as is talked about in Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36:25 and 26: “Listen. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep mine ordinances and do them.”

Well, that text is talking about new creation—new heart, spirit put within you. And how does it happen? Water sprinkled on you, cleansing you from your defilements. So when we get around to reading in the New Testament that Peter says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” well, this isn’t surprising if we know, as Ezekiel, if you know the Old Testament patterns, if we know second day of creation, the heavenly waters up above that are going to come and cleanse the earth eventually.

Then the new baptism will be brought about—the replacement of all the Old Testament cleansing ordinances, the ordinance of the sacrament of baptism. We understand this, you know, we’re going to sing the Nicene Creed next week again, and we’re going to sing that we believe in one baptism for the remission of sins. Sang at family camp years ago, a guy called out, “Why? What is it? Where do they get that, any? What does that mean?” Well, it’s right here. It’s in the Bible in Acts. It says, “Be baptized for the remission of sins.” It ties this baptismal act of the application of water to the remission of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit. This is the Reformed view of baptism.

1 Peter 3:20 and 21, the like figure where to verse 21, the…