Good morning.
I’d like to ask you, if you would, please turn to John 3. This is probably the most preached-upon set of verses in the whole of the New Testament down through history, and probably the most familiar section in the New Testament.
Now, I hope that familiarity does not cause you all to go to sleep. If it does, I’ll do my best to keep you awake. But I think, brothers and sisters, for those of us who do not know the Lord, there is something here the Holy Spirit wants to emphasize. For those of us who may have just come to know the Lord, I think there is something here the Lord wants to point to and show us. And for those of us who have known the Lord many years, I believe there are things the Lord yet wants to enlighten to help us.
So, this is not necessarily a message to the unsaved. This is not necessarily just a message to the newly saved. This is also a message to those long saved.
So, let us turn to the beginning: John 3:1. We will read a number of verses through John 3:21.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:
The same came unto Him by night, and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be with him.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto 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, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.
The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, How can these things be?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which We know, and bear witness of that which We have seen; and ye receive not Our witness.
If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things?
And no one hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even 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 whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him.
He that believeth on Him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved.
But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.
And one more passage from the same Gospel, John 1:11-13.
He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not.
But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name:
Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And let us pray.
Lord, we once again come to that place where we know that we need the Holy Spirit to breathe life into these words. We once again recognize that You alone, Lord, have the words of eternal life, and without Your speaking there will be no benefit.
Lord, we are here in Your presence. We are waiting in Your presence, that this word may be loosed in fullness; that we may come into a deeper understanding of what new birth is, and that we may walk in the good of it as Your own. Speak, Lord; Your servant heareth. In Jesus’ name.
I have been recently drawn to this section in John 3. It is unusual for me because I have never spoken on new birth as a message—never once.
But as we have been praying and considering what the Lord would have us minister on, the Holy Spirit seems to keep bringing me back to John 3. And He keeps whispering to me, it seems in my spirit, “Ye must be born again.”
Now, I know that is not just a message for me because I think, in fact, I am born again. But I think the Holy Spirit has something to say. As I have been listening, or trying to listen, to these stirrings, the thing that is beginning to impress me is our need to see what we are in Christ Jesus.
We need to know what a Christian is. If we do not know what a Christian is, we cannot live a normal Christian life. We will live a substandard Christian life.
But I think there is more than that, because we are not called just to live as individuals before God, however marvelous and full that relationship is. We are called as a body to be the expression of Christ in all of His fullness.
So, I think we need to know who we are and why we gather. If we do not know who we are, if we do not know why we gather, then we can never live the Christian life in its fullness in the corporate sense. It will be a substandard life. It will be a life unconnected. It will be a life without purpose. It will be a life that does not measure up to the calling of God for His people.
So, these are the stirrings that have been in my heart. And I believe these stirrings take us right back to the beginning, because everything in this life—and this is not too profound, by the way; you can pass through this one—everything in this life begins with birth.
So everything in the Christian life begins with new birth. We need to understand the depth of the meaning of this new birth.
You young people who have recently come to know the Lord need to know what you have been born into. Those of you who do not know the Lord need to know what it means to be born again. And those of us who have known the Lord for many, many years—for me, thirty-four years, I think that is right—we need to know what it means to be born again and what that new life involves.
I have been impressed with a title as I read this passage. You may not like the title, but at least it was the title that impressed me. It seems to me that what this is all about is a meeting. I think you cannot argue with that.
So, the title the Lord gives me is this: The Meeting That Changed Mankind.
This evening meeting of these two forever set the standard for God’s estimation of man. It forever opened to us what the heart of God is toward man, and it explains to us what the way of man is. This meeting between these two was of such great importance.
That reminded me, as I was meditating on this, of a story I read. You know, I like stories, so you just put up with my stories. At least this is one you may not have heard.
I read a story of Napoleon Bonaparte. Everyone knows Napoleon Bonaparte, the great emperor who conquered so much. He met with Czar Alexander I of Russia at Tilsit, Prussia, in 1807. On June 25, there was a lonely evening meeting in the middle of the Niemen River, and history records it as a meeting that marked the destinies of mankind.
That stirred me. These men drew up the Treaty of Tilsit—you have probably never heard of it—but they thought they were determining the course of man forever. They were determining what would happen to Prussia and what would happen to Europe. They were marking out the course for man.
Now, brothers and sisters, you do not have to go far to understand the parallel. Here, in this nocturnal meeting, Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus, met the Lord Jesus, opened his heart to the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Jesus opened God’s way for man.
This is the meeting that changed mankind.
We have long forgotten about Tilsit. You have probably never heard of it. But we will never forget about that night when Nicodemus came and the Lord Jesus turned all of His attention on that man and said, “Ye must be born again.”
That changed the destiny of mankind. So that is the sense as we begin: what a momentous meeting it was.
There are three things that seem to come to me as I have meditated and considered the best way to approach this chapter. Everyone knows it. Everyone is familiar with it. What can we say that is new, that will not put you to sleep?
There were three things. First of all, the man. We need to see the man. That is where it begins.
Second, we need to understand the message. If you do not understand the message, then you have missed the boat, brothers and sisters.
Thirdly, we need to see the means of entering into what God has.
So, here is the little alliteration, and I am going to embed this in your memory. Before you leave, you will be muttering this in your sleep: you need to see the man, you need to see the message, and you need to see the means so that you can enter in.
Turn again to John 3. It immediately begins with a focus on the man. My version, and your version may say something different, begins, “But there was a man.” The Holy Spirit draws attention immediately to the man.
If we ignore the man, I think we ignore what the Holy Spirit has drawn us to. We need to see him, see what it means, see what he did, and see what the result was.
The man is Nicodemus. He came to the Lord by night. Now, Nicodemus, I think, has gotten a bad rap. Some people say Nicodemus was a coward. I do not think Nicodemus was a coward.
There is nothing in the Word of God, in the three times we read anything about Nicodemus, that tells us he was a coward. He wanted to have this undisturbed audience with the Lord Jesus when He was alone, to get his answers and to have his questions answered. He was not a coward.
Nicodemus represents something that we need to understand, and I think it is very important. There are several things the Word of God says about him.
First, it says he was from among the Pharisees. Brothers and sisters, that was the strictest sect in all of Judaism. They believed in the resurrection. They believed in angels. They believed in spiritual things. He was from among that sect.
It goes on to say, in the same verse, that he was a ruler of the Jews. That means he sat upon that elite council, the Sanhedrin, that council of seventy. He was a ruler among the Jews. He affected the whole nation of Israel, and that body had supreme power over Judaism.
Furthermore, when the Lord was astonished that he did not seem to understand what the Lord meant by “Ye must be born again,” the Lord’s response was, “Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?”
Now, brothers and sisters, that definite article is very important. You are the teacher of Israel. Notice that He did not say, “You are a teacher of Israel.” Probably Nicodemus was at the head of the class—the teacher—and you do not know these things.
Not only that, his character seems to be impeccable. There is absolutely no indication of hypocrisy. All that we can see as we read of Nicodemus coming to the Lord is how he respected God. He said, “Thou art a teacher come from God; for no one can do these things which Thou doest, except God be with him.”
He honored God. Not only that, he was sincere. He came to the Lord with sincerity. His character seems to be impeccable, and the Lord had no rebuke for Nicodemus when he came—no rebuke.
Now, this is quite different from the Lord’s words to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew. He calls them a brood of vipers. He says, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees.” But there is no such rebuke here.
I think this is quite a résumé. I do not know what your résumé looks like, but boy, this is a résumé that beats all résumés. He was the most religious. He was of the strictest sect. He was one of the rulers. He was full of sincerity. He honored God. What more can you say about Nicodemus?
That brought me to a simple conclusion. You may not think this way, and God bless you if you do not, but it brought me to a simple conclusion: he is the best of the best.
This is not the demoniac who fell into the fire. This is not even the woman caught in adultery. This one who came to the Lord Jesus for that evening session was the best of the best.
I think this is very important when it comes to understanding new birth, because the world has this idea that we are basically good. This is a problem. I know in your witnessing you have encountered this again and again: “We are basically good. We have a few faults.”
Well, you cannot say “faults” anymore. There is a new era. I am not used to it yet, and I am not that old, but you cannot hurt anybody’s feelings. You cannot say, “You have faults.” You can say, “We have issues.” Is that not the right word?
We are basically good; we just have a few issues. So now it is Nicodemus with issues.
Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit concludes, and Jesus looks into the face of Nicodemus and says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”
We need to understand that there is no good thing in the flesh. Now, I do not know if this hurts your feelings. I am not up here to preserve your feelings. The Holy Spirit says, “This is the best that man can do,” and he has utterly failed. No hope. Rejected.
Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” As I was reading and meditating on this, I came across a quote from Campbell Morgan. It helped reinforce the sense I had when I thought, “This is the best man can do.” He said:
Nicodemus would seem to have been one of the finest products of Judaism. Yet the conclusion of the Lord Jesus is: not good enough.
Do you understand that? Those of you who are not saved—there may be some of you here—there is no good thing in man. Those of you who are newly saved, there is no good thing in man. And those of you who have known the Lord for thirty-four years, there is no good thing.
There has to be an altogether revolutionary change that transforms us from one state to another. There has to be a work of the Holy Spirit in our innermost being. What I would like to call it is the great change: that which transforms us from what we were to what we become in Christ Jesus. That is new birth.
The great change. Jerry thought that was retirement.
Do you think there is any accident that this best of the best came? I believe the Holy Spirit is teaching us, as His own, that nothing in us is good.
Turn to Romans 3:9. You know these verses, but I think they came to me with new emphasis.
What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin;
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none that understandeth,
There is none that seeketh after God;
They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable;
There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one.
Not even Nicodemus. There is not a man who understands. There is not one who seeks after God. All have gone out of the way. They have together become unprofitable. There is not one who practices goodness. There is not so much as one.
The Word of God concludes this. To understand God’s estimation of man, we need to see this principle.
Ephesians 2:1 concludes that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Now, how much worse does it get than dead? Have you thought about that? You may say, “I do not feel dead. I feel pretty alive. I am still breathing. I am still walking. How can I be dead?”
But the Word of God concludes that we were dead in our trespasses and sins—absolutely dead.
It made me think again of that phrase, “dead man walking.” You have all heard that. I never saw the movie, so I cannot tell you anything about it, but years ago I read about what happens with those on death row, who are about to receive the end of their righteous judgment.
They are on what they call death row, and as they leave death row and go to their execution, to the death house, the guards used to say, “Dead man walking. Dead man walking. Dead man walking.”
And then, ultimately, he or she goes and faces the final punishment in the death house—unless the supreme governor or president intervenes.
You understand the parallel. Brothers and sisters, we need to see Nicodemus’ condition. He is the best, but this is a case where the best will not do.
What God has to say to us is that nothing we bring to Him will do. There has to be a revolutionary change that changes us from the inside out. Then we can be in right standing.
But the good news is that we not only see this first man; we see a second man. You know, it is pretty difficult to have a meeting without another person. I mean, you can. I know some of you talk to yourselves and have your own meeting and council, and it is perfect harmony for the first time—perfect unanimity in agreement.
But when there is a meeting, there is more than one. So, if we are to understand God’s estimation of man, we need to see beyond this one who is ruined to that second Man.
Is this too elementary for most of you? I am afraid you are way beyond some of this stuff. But I think we need to go back to the beginning. We need to know who we are. It is important.
We need to see that second Man. Ephesians 2:1 says we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and then comes the most powerful conjunction in the whole Bible: “But God.”
But God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.
There is a second Man there. Is that not good news? If there were only Nicodemus, how depressing would it be? But thank God, there is a second Man. There is a perfect Man. There is a whole Man.
If we listen closely, we can still hear the whisperings of the Holy Spirit from the Father when He says:
This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
This first one is in ruin; the second One is perfect. This first one fails to do all the will of God; this second One does all the will of God. This first man does not please God; this second Man pleases God.
You see, we are way too complicated sometimes for God. God sees two men. That is all He sees.
You may argue with the way I put things, and you have good basis sometimes, but God only sees two men. If you read 1 Corinthians 15, He sees Adam and everybody who is in Adam, and He sees Christ and everybody who is in Christ.
You are either in Adam, or you have been born again and are in Christ. Can I make it any more simple than that? That is sort of like cooking 101.
God only sees two men. All of mankind is ruined; they are in Adam. As a matter of fact, 1 Corinthians 15 uses the phrase “the first Adam” and “the first man.” But then, thank God, it calls our Lord Jesus “the last Adam” and “the second Man.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the simplest explanation of what it means to be born again. You were once in Adam, ruined and without hope. Then that ruling authority intervenes, we respond to that intervention, we are born again, and then we are in Christ—never to be judged again as to eternal judgment.
The second thing is the message. I think it is interesting that, when you read this, Nicodemus gets through two verses—now, I know he did not have verses—and then the Lord Jesus interrupts him.
The Lord Jesus did not mind hurting our feelings. Thank God.
Nicodemus began to come to the Lord with these probably burning questions, for which he needed this private audience. But the Lord Jesus, in John 3:3, interrupts him. To me, it is the strangest thing. He cuts him right off—cuts him off at the knees.
After Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God,” the Lord Jesus answers him:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
He cuts him right off. He interrupts.
I have a new appreciation for this. Some months ago, we were in a meeting, and a sister prayed, “Lord, thank You for interrupting my life.”
Lights flashed, and I began to see that this is the whole explanation of Christian life. We were living our own life, as good as you may have thought that was, living for yourself, living on your own; and then one day God, in His mercy, interrupted your life.
Is that not good news?
How I have prayed that over and over: “Lord, thank You for interrupting my life. I would have kept going. I would not have turned to You. I would not have sought You. I would not have found You. But in Your mercy, You interrupted my life.”
Is that your testimony?
We begin to see a couple of things in this message. We begin to see the necessity of new birth. You cannot go far without seeing the necessity.
In John 3:3, the Lord says, “Except.” Now, that is a strong word. It does not leave any wiggle room. I like wiggle room personally, but this says, “Except you be born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Then, in John 3:5, it says the same thing: “Except you be born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” And later He says, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
Do you get the necessity? Brothers and sisters, this is not an option. This is not, “You may or you may not; either way it will work out in the end.” This is an absolute necessity.
Some of you know this little story. I bought a new truck after the boys beat up the old truck so much, and it was going on seventeen years. We keep vehicles, by the way.
One of my partners, because I had the company name on my license plate, said to me—he calls me Pitter—“Pitter, when are you going to quit driving that old truck? Either stop driving that old truck or take the license plate off. You are embarrassing us.”
So that was a great excuse. I went to Linda and said, “I need a new truck.” When I went to get a new truck, because I do not buy a vehicle very often, I do not usually hold back. I get all the options because I am convinced I need them.
I even had the GPS thing. I would never get lost again. Now I know what it means: I have been lost, but now I have been found. Put that thing on, and it tells me to turn right in a quarter of a mile.
I even had backup sensors. I can take that big truck downtown and parallel park, with the backup sensors going, “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.”
Those are options. I could have gotten a much lesser truck. I did not.
But this is a necessity.
The Lord goes on to emphasize it more. Three times the Lord Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee”—in John 3:3, John 3:5, and later again. This One who taught us about vain repetition and idle words: do you think the Lord Jesus was speaking idle words?
No, dear brothers and sisters. It simply means, “Truly, truly; surely, surely.” Except. Unless, as some versions put it. Ye must.
This is the necessity of new birth. We cannot do without it. You will not see. You will never get it. Jesus said, “You will not see the kingdom of God.” He went on to say, “Nicodemus, you will not enter the kingdom of God.”
I think the Holy Spirit gives us a wonderful progression there: first we see, then we enter. Without new birth, without some revolutionary change in the very core of our being, we will never see and we will never enter into what God has.
The second thing that seemed to stand out to me was the nature of new birth. It is a complete change. Brothers and sisters, this is not just a new coat of paint and you are done.
I will tell another story on myself. Linda and I enjoy—well, I do not know if “enjoy” is the right word, because we are in the middle of one—house projects. I am in the middle of a big house project. Linda will be glad when it is over. Every time I see Jerry, he says, “Have you finished that yet?” Jerry, please do not ask me anymore. You have given me a complex. You are hurting my feelings.
But on cable television, the rage is these home-improvement shows. They are everywhere: Design on a Dime. They go in and fix up what is old and make it look new.
But new birth is not like that. It is not renovation. It is not improvement. It is a total, new change. It is a new creation.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
It is a complete change, a new dimension resulting in a new creation. This is the nature of new birth.
The Lord says in John 3:5, “Except one be born of water and the Spirit.” He says in John 3:6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” He says in John 3:8, “The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
The nature of new birth is spirit. It is not natural. It is not what we are by nature.
The Holy Spirit comes. Notice, in the reading of those verses, that “Spirit” is capitalized—the big S. Except at the end of John 3:6, where it says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” with the little s, because that is us.
In other words, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the third Person of the Godhead, comes into our spirit, awakens what was dead, and transforms us.
Then what happens is what happens in Colossians 1:13, where it says that we are translated, or transferred, from the authority of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
The nature is spirit.
Brothers and sisters, think of it. The Holy Spirit—the big S; you can call Him Big S, I do not think it offends Him—comes into your spirit, breathes on your spirit, resurrects your spirit, and makes you alive unto God. That is new birth.
This is the nature of the new birth. Now, you cannot always figure it out. I do not know; I cannot tell you exactly how I was born again.
Nicodemus was confused. This teacher of Israel said, “How can it be? How can we enter the mother’s womb and be born a second time? How can it be?”
And the Lord said, “The wind bloweth where it will, and you know it not.” But you know it is blowing.
Do you not know when the wind is blowing? I am afraid you are dead if you do not. But you know when the wind is blowing. You know when the Holy Spirit is moving. When we respond to the Holy Spirit, you know you are born again.
There is an affirmation in our spirit to the Holy Spirit that says, “Abba, Father. Father.”
That is what the nature of the new birth is.
Now, let me say one thing, because this is a little doctrinal work here. Some may disagree with me. You are welcome to disagree with me. But where the Lord says, “Except one be born of water and the Spirit,” I do not believe this is referring to believers’ water baptism.
This is pointing back to John’s baptism. Nicodemus and the Jews knew of John’s baptism. The illustration for us is that repentance precedes new birth. Do you understand?
If we do not understand this, we begin to believe in baptismal regeneration, and the Scriptures do not teach baptismal regeneration.
Those who are born of water come to God in repentance, and there is a change. Those who are born of the Spirit, with the Holy Spirit taking up residence, are spirit.
The second thing about the nature of new birth is that it is vital to understand that this new birth is an entirely new source of life. I think this is lacking among us as believers.
Many Christians, in many circles, will say, “Now that I am saved, it is up to me to live like Christ.” Many people will say, “He is our example to live by.”
Brothers and sisters, He is not merely your example to live by. He is your life. Do you understand the difference?
When Darby translated this in his notes, he said it is a new origin and a new beginning with a new source. Kenneth Wuest, in his expanded version, used the word “source” five times in John 3:3-8.
What is the big deal? The nature of new birth is that we have a new source of life that we did not have before.
I tell people all the time—and I know you are tired of this one, but you just need to put up with me for a few more minutes—you cannot live the Christian life. It is impossible.
But thank God, there is a source in us, by the Holy Spirit, of the life of the Lord Jesus that now enables us to live the Christian life. It is all about the source.
Are you living out of the wrong source? Are you living out of the old man? Are you living out of the flesh? The only way to live the Christian life is from that new source of life.
This is what John meant when he said:
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
It is a new source.
The last one is the means. We not only need to see the man—we need to be clear: you are either in Adam or you are in Christ. We not only need to understand the message—that there must be a revolutionary change in your being by the Holy Spirit, or you cannot see or enter the kingdom of God.
You must see this as a wholly spiritual thing. Though you may not be able to explain it, you know when it happens to you because there is an affirmation deep in your spirit that says, “I am born again.” You know it.
Thirdly, there is the means. Brothers and sisters, in the latter part of what we read, we begin to understand God’s great explanation of everything:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.
When the mysteries of the universe are boiled down, when they are all one day understood, we will understand that the one great explanation of everything is this most simple of all explanations: God’s means for us was not what we could do, but what He did.
Do you understand the difference? This is vital. The explanation of the whole universe is caught up in this one verse. As a matter of fact, one brother said that John 3:16 is the Bible in miniature.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
This is the way. Are you not glad today that you can say God made the way? You did not make the way.
John 1:12-13 says, “Not of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh, but of God.” I love that rendering: not of man’s will, not of flesh’s will, but we are born of God’s will. It is what He did.
Finally, there is another means. There is a repetition of a phrase. If you have not discovered it, you need to. In these verses, at least five times, there is this phrase: believe on.
“Believe on” in John 3:15. “Believe on” in John 3:16. “Believe on” twice in John 3:18. And “believe on” again in John 3:36.
To me, this is the means. This is all we are called to do. This is the one thing we do in new birth that we are called to do: believe on.
I do love the Amplified rendering of this. We have a sister who used to always read to us from the Amplified Version, and I love the rendering of this because it gives greater depth and meaning.
To believe on means to trust in, to rely on, and my favorite, to cling to.
That is my favorite.
Today, you can say you believe in the tooth fairy. “Believe” can be such a passive word. But “believe on” means to believe into.
Believe into that new source of life. Trust in that new source of life. Rely on that new source of life. Cling to that new source of life. That is the mark of one who is born again.
I do not think it is any mistake that it is there five times. No mistake.
Let me conclude with this. How many times is Nicodemus spoken of in the Bible? How many of you know?
Only three times. Nicodemus is spoken of only three times in the Bible, all in John’s Gospel. Only three times.
But, brothers and sisters, I think if you look at what is spoken of him, it tells us what ought to be manifest in our life. I believe it is very telling.
The first place is John 3. It tells us simply this: he was a seeker.
Now, I have a fellow at work—I will not embarrass him either, and he will never know it—and he seeks everything. He puts little sayings of the Dalai Lama up. I walk back in my office to see what is going on once in a while; I have to do that.
Then there is something about an eastern thing, and then he goes down to the rainforest and swings through the trees like a monkey. Now, I do not know what that does for a person. I am not tempted to even try it. I could see myself crashing into a tree.
Swinging from the trees—it must be to connect to that deep, inner, primitive self. I am not sure.
He is a seeker. But the difference with Nicodemus is that he was a seeker of Jesus.
Do we seek the Lord Jesus? Is that what distinguishes you and me? That is what distinguished Nicodemus.
What will be said of you when you pass? Were you a seeker? More importantly, were you a seeker of Jesus?
The second mention of Nicodemus is in John 7. Some of you may know the story.
When the rulers were meeting and hoping someone would apprehend and arrest the Lord Jesus, no one, it says, laid a hand on Him because it was not His time. Praise the Lord.
Then they said, “Hath any of the rulers believed on Him, or of the Pharisees?” And then Nicodemus opens his mouth.
He says to them in John 7:51:
Doth our law judge a man, except it first hear from himself and know what he doeth?
Immediately they say to him, “Art thou also of Galilee? Art thou one of them?”
You have heard the old saying: if Christianity were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
I think the saddest thing is to go to a funeral where everything gets embellished and they say, “Oh, Uncle Ed was the greatest person in the world,” and all the family is looking at one another, saying, “Same Ed we knew?”
What ought to be manifest? Would there be enough evidence to say you were one of them?
Oh, I hope at the end that will be said of me. I think this is the legacy of Nicodemus.
Then we have the last mention of Nicodemus in John 19:38-42. We do not have time to read it all, but let me tell you the story.
Joseph of Arimathea, one on the council, went to ask Pilate for the body of the Lord Jesus, that he might give Him an appropriate burial. It says he did it in secret for fear of the Jews.
Then it goes on to mention Nicodemus. But, brothers and sisters, it does not say Nicodemus did it for fear of the Jews. It calls Joseph of Arimathea this simple thing: it says he was a disciple.
Now, I cannot believe Nicodemus went and was not a disciple. Almost everyone who has any commentary on this section says that, in the end, Nicodemus became a disciple of the Lord Jesus.
As a matter of fact, the Talmud even has a story that Nicodemus survived the destruction of Jerusalem and was a disciple of the Lord Jesus.
Is that not the end of the Gospel? What does it say in the Great Commission?
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, this gave me a different view of Nicodemus.
Are you a seeker of Jesus? Will you ever be accused of being the Lord’s? Great accusation. Are you a disciple?
Think of what he did. He loved the Lord. The apostles had scattered, but Joseph and Nicodemus went and sought the body of the Lord. They took one hundred pounds of spices and prepared His body for burial according to Jewish custom.
How they loved the Lord.
I believe, in the end, what ought to be manifest is this: we ought to love the Lord. That could be the best thing said of you and me. And we ought to be disciples of the Lord Jesus.
This is the story of Nicodemus.
Lord, we know our understanding is not great. But we have some impression from this word of how important this issue of new birth is to You.
Lord, we just ask that You would open our eyes to see in the Spirit.
Lord, that we would see Your estimation of man; that we would see Your great means for man; that we would enter in; that we would believe on; that we would cling to the Lord Jesus.
Oh, Lord, that we would be, in the end, those who seek You; that we would be those who stand with You; that we would have a testimony that we are Yours.
That it would be manifest that we are those who love You when all scatter, and that we would be known for eternity simply as a disciple of the Lord.
Make this true. In Jesus’ name. Amen.