Morning, brothers and sisters.
I just want to add something to what Jeffrey said about the Word of God. It is so important for us as Christians to be in the Word of God—not just to skip around, like he was talking about, but to know the whole Word.
The people who fool us are people who take things out of context, and it does not agree with the whole Word of God. So it is so important that not just the teenagers, but all of us, know the Word. We need to know it in context, because a lot of people take verses out of context and start a doctrine out of this, that, and the other thing.
So we need to know the Word, fellowship over it, and study it, so that it shows us who the Lord is and shows us who we are.
My wife isn’t here, is she? Uh-oh. Oh, don’t I look clean today? Young. Thank you.
I wonder if people who saw me about thirty years ago would recognize me today. Not that they need to, but, you know.
Let’s go ahead and read our theme verse for the Gospel of John: John 20:30-31.
And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that believing you may have life in His name.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we want to thank You for giving us Your Word, because in it we know that You are revealed. Lord, we want You, and we come to You asking that You will open the Word to us and reveal Yourself—Your character, Your person, Your Son Jesus.
Let us see ourselves in the light of Him, and let us see You in the light of Your Word. We pray for Your Holy Spirit to open the Word to us and make it alive to us. Do not let us leave here just saying, “Well, we heard a bunch of words.” Lord, speak to us from Your Word, we pray. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.
This morning, we have gone through the first two chapters, except for the last couple of verses of chapter 2. I want to speed it up a little bit, so I am going to talk really fast.
I want to look at the last two—or actually three—verses of chapter 2, and then all of chapter 3. I am not going to go verse by verse. There are some things I just want to pull out as we look at John.
We are going to look at Jesus in Jerusalem and what it says about Him there. Then we want to look at Nicodemus. Kenny covered being born again when we first started our series on the fundamentals, so I really do not have to talk too much about that, right?
Then we want to see the exit of John the Baptist. Finally, we want to consider how the Word applies to our lives. Those are the things we want to look at this morning.
Let us start by reading—not talking about it, but actually reading what the Word says. Let us go to John 2.
We had just finished with the Lord Jesus Himself doing His first miracle, His first sign: changing the water into wine. We talked about that last time, so I am not going to reiterate anything, except that He was at Jerusalem. They asked Him for another sign, and He mentioned the sign. Then we have this little part as He leaves Jerusalem.
John 2:23 begins:
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did.
But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men,
and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.
Here we have a bunch of people believing in the Lord Jesus. You would think that because of this, He would say, “Right, I’m your man. Now that I’ve got a following, this is what I need.” But we find Jesus doing just the opposite. He does not give Himself to these people.
You have to think, why does He not give Himself to these people? We can give a lot of explanations, but I just want to give an illustration from my daughter. I can tell you which one, because I asked her if I could do this, but she said, “Please don’t tell them it’s me.” So I will not. You have a fifty-fifty chance of knowing who it is.
We were talking to her about people, having friends, and things like that. I was asking her one time, “Why don’t you hang around with so-and-so?”
She said, “Well, Dad, because that person is really not a friend.”
I said, “Well, what do you mean? Doesn’t it beat just sitting at the lunch table alone?”
She said, “No.”
I said, “Well, why not?”
She said, “Well, this person is there when she has nothing else. But when her other friends are there, she does not care about me.”
I think in the same way we can look at the people at this time with Jesus. They look at the signs and say, “This is great. We’ll claim Him as Messiah.” But that is as far as they go. When something else comes up, it is, “Okay, we don’t need Him now.”
Therefore, He will not commit. The Lord will not commit if you will not commit. It is almost like, how can you get married if the other person will not commit to you? It is the same way with the Lord.
We had a nice little picture here of a committed couple, do you not think? It looked like the lady had something on her mind that was not what the man had on his mind. Even in the way they were holding hands, it looked like she was holding just his finger.
It did not look like they were committed to the way they were going. It looked like pretty soon they were going to split up. So the Lord will not commit to those who will not commit to Him.
Miracles are wonderful things, but they are not things that hold us. They are fascinating things, but they do not hook us. They make us just want another miracle.
All the time when you read the Gospels, it is, “Give us a sign. Give us a sign. Give us a sign.” The Lord said, “Tear this temple down. In three days I’ll build it back up.” But still: “Give us the sign.”
We get into situations where all we want is signs, and we do not want the relationship. The Lord is saying, “I want to save you. I want the wholeness of you, and I will commit to you when you commit to Me.”
Does that mean these people are not His people? No. We will get a little bit into that in the application part. Jesus would not commit Himself, and we could even say He does not commit Himself to the old creation—but that may be getting too spiritual. Let us just deal with these things.
Now let us talk about Nicodemus. Let us read the first thirteen verses.
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.”
Some of you have a little different version than I do. If you have my version, the New King James, you see it read, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.” But that is not exactly the correct translation.
There is a little conjunction there that joins it with the previous section. It says, “But there was a man of the Pharisees.” In other words, there is a connection here.
There is another time when there is a “but” in Scripture, in Genesis. It talks about how man’s thoughts and intentions were evil in Genesis 6, before the flood. Then you get to Genesis 6:8, which says, “But Noah.”
Here we have a situation where the Lord will not commit Himself to these others. We have to look at it like this: this is Jesus Christ as God. God will not commit Himself to these others, but there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus.
Nicodemus comes at night. Why is he coming? We do not really know, because he never gets to ask a question. The Lord almost cuts him right off. Nicodemus gives Him an introduction, and then the Lord steps right in.
You have to wonder why he was coming. I think he was coming because he wanted to know something. He was like the rich young ruler in Mark 10, who came and said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
I think Nicodemus was like that. He wanted to know something. He wanted to come and ask the Lord. Like any of us, when we want something, we butter the person up a little bit: “We know You are a teacher come from God.” It is as if that is going to get us a better hearing.
You can tell when your kids want something. “Yeah, you’re so nice. Can I have the car?” No. We are all like that. Sometimes we feel that we have to butter up the Lord to get something from Him.
What we want to do is look at who this man is that would approach God. I want to look at him as almost a representative man. If we were sending someone up to God to find out about being accepted, who would we send? I think we would send Nicodemus.
Do not laugh. This is Nicodemus. The reason I pictured him as Superman is because you would not send a mediocre person, would you? You would not send a bad example of man. That is why this is so important: he is the best.
What do I mean by the best? First of all, he is a Pharisee. If you read Philippians 3, you know about Pharisees from what Paul says about himself. A Pharisee was a righteous man. He was concerned with his righteousness. He wanted to be righteous.
He was morally upright in everything he did because he was trying to please God in such a way that God would say, “I will accept you. You are Mine. You live up to all My expectations; therefore, you can come into My presence.” So he was a Pharisee.
Secondly, he was a ruler. By being a ruler, he had leadership qualities and carried authority with him. That is what you want, right? You want somebody who can carry himself strongly and present himself with some type of authority.
Here he was going to the Lord Jesus. John said he was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews. They knew it. They knew who he was. He had a reputation.
Then he was a teacher. What does it mean that he was a teacher? He had the ability to make sense of the truth and give sense to the Word.
You remember in Nehemiah, where they brought out the Word of God and Ezra was reading it. The priests went out and gave sense to the Word to those who were sitting around and listening. That is what a teacher does. A teacher is supposed to give sense. A teacher is supposed to lead you into the truth—not just tell you the truth, but lead you into it.
It is almost like a shepherd leading a flock, getting you into the truth so that you imbibe it yourself. This was supposed to be Nicodemus. He was all these things.
Nicodemus goes up to the Lord, but the Lord really stops him in his tracks, does He not? The Lord says, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.”
“You must be born again.” It throws him for a loop. “What do You mean, born again?” It is so beyond him that he has to ask questions based on what he knows: “How can you be born again? What do you do? Crawl back into your mother’s womb?”
His mother was probably dead. How would he be born again then? He is looking for ways to do this, and he just cannot do these things.
By saying, “You must be born again,” the Lord says, “Nicodemus, let Me tell you who you are.” Right away, He cuts out everything Nicodemus thought he was before God.
Jesus, by saying that he must be born again, says, “Nicodemus, you cannot claim your own righteousness.” What does Scripture say about our own righteousness? Isaiah tells us it is as filthy rags. So he has no claim to his own righteousness.
He cannot claim his position: “Well, I am a teacher.” Remember, Jesus said, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?” Have you ever gone into a class and had to teach something you did not know? That is a tough deal, especially if you have not prepared.
It is like teaching fractions to kids who have no concept of fractions. It is like teaching rocket science to monkeys. You cannot do it.
Let us go a step further. He could not even claim that he was a Jew. The Lord was saying, “Even though you are all these things, you cannot just not enter the kingdom of God—you cannot even see it. You have no idea what it is.”
If you look at their ideas of the Messiah, you can tell that they had no idea what it was. Even God’s own chosen people had no idea. The Lord was saying, “These things do not get you in. You have to be born again.”
What does it mean that you have to be born again? The Lord describes it, and He says first that you must be born of water.
Some people say the water is the Word. I tend to think it is water baptism because we have been looking at John the Baptist, and he has been baptizing. What was baptism a symbol of for John the Baptist?
People were coming to him because they recognized that they were sinners. They knew they were sinners, and they knew something had to be done about sin.
We know that 1 Peter tells us baptism is not the washing away of sins. It is not some symbolic thing where they wash over you. But if we look at baptism today as Christians, baptism is a symbol of you dying.
It is you dying. Here is Nicodemus; here is his baptism. The Lord is saying, “Nicodemus, you have to be born again. You have to be born of water first.” In other words, all these things he trusted in are like Paul said: rubbish. They are dung. They do not get me anywhere with God. They just do not.
But not only do we have to be born of water; we must be born of the Spirit. What does that mean? The law brings us to death. We have to face ourselves and say, “I am not righteous. The guilty one should die.”
But the Spirit speaks of being raised from the dead. Brothers and sisters, this is the new covenant. Ezekiel talks about it. The Lord says that not only will He wash us clean, but He will put His Spirit in us.
Why does He put His Spirit in us? He will write His law in our hearts. So it is not an outward doing, but an inward change in us through the Holy Spirit. This is what we are talking about by being born again.
Nicodemus came by night. He asked these questions. He had all these qualifications, and the question is: if he cannot make it, then who can be saved? Who can enter the kingdom of God?
We know that concerning the rich young ruler, Mark says that with men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. This whole matter of being born again is not a choice that we make by ourselves. It is an appeal to God, and it is God responding to us.
“You want to have eternal life? I will give it to you.” Ephesians tells us it is a free gift. Eternal life is a free gift.
From here, Jesus gives Nicodemus a sign, because Jews want a sign, right? “How can these things be?” is his question.
Jesus uses the sign from Numbers 21:4-9. The people grumbled, and God sent serpents to come and bite them. They cried out to Moses, “Save us from this.” Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord said, “Make yourself a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and whoever looks at it will be healed.”
Moses took the very thing that was causing death—the serpent—and put it on a pole. When they looked at it, they were healed.
We need to read what Jesus says in John 3:14-15:
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.
The serpent was lifted up in the wilderness; the Son of Man must be lifted up. Here we have the Lord Himself becoming the very thing that caused death.
It was not man that caused death. It is not merely that the Lord became a man. Yes, He became a man, but that is not what caused death. What caused death is shown to us in 2 Corinthians 5:21.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The very thing that caused death, He became. If we look to Him, just as those in Moses’ time looked to the bronze serpent, we can be saved and have life.
Then the Lord gives a revelation of Himself and His character, beginning with John 3:16. This is the verse everybody knows.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that 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 loved 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 by God.
I just want to make one statement about this: God did not send His Son to judge the world. The world has already been judged.
Do you know when it was judged? It was judged in Eden. When man fell, the world was judged. From then until now, that judgment has been ripening, until it gets ripe enough to fall off the tree.
If you are in the world and that is it, you are already judged. You are living in judgment. You are living under judgment, and that judgment will have its day.
But God did not come to the world to judge it. He came to save it. That puts a whole other light on things.
Some of us have been studying the Scriptures together on an off-meeting night, studying the Gospel of Matthew. We have found the Lord Jesus to be so gracious in the things He has been doing and saying.
A couple of times in Matthew, He says to the Pharisees—once when He was at Levi’s house, after Levi was called and saved, and Levi gave Jesus a dinner—the Pharisees came in and asked the disciples, “Why is He eating with sinners and tax collectors?”
Jesus said, “It is the sick that need a doctor.” But then He said:
Go and learn what this means:
“I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
Here is the message to us, and to a world like the song said—a world that is dying. Why do we go? To extend mercy. That is what the Lord did.
He could have wiped everything out. Look at the flood: He did, except for Noah. But the whole new race was the same old race. Yet that did not stop God from extending Himself in mercy to save.
Sometimes we think God is just out to judge us. He is out to save you. That is His will. That is His purpose. His purpose is to save you.
Whosoever will—come. Whoever wants to come, whoever wants to be saved, God will not turn away.
The Lord healed everyone who came to Him. What does that tell you? Anybody who wants to be saved and comes to Him—will He turn you away? Will He say, “I do not think you measure up to what I want in My kingdom”? No.
He says, “Come.” In some of the parables, He says, “These people do not want to come. Go out to the highways and the byways and bring in whoever wants to come.”
This is a big thing. Some of us just have to get it through our thick heads that God wants to save us and does not just want to judge us.
The world has already been judged, but He has come to save it. He has come to redeem it. He has come to bring it back to Himself. What is driving Him to do that? “I love you.”
There is no other purpose than this: “I love you. That is why I want to save you. That is why I have come to save you. You are under judgment, but I want to save you. I do not want you to be under judgment. I want to save you.”
Do you hear Me? Do you hear Me calling to you? I want to save you.
That is the Spirit of God. It is even like when Paul says, “I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren.” That is the Spirit of God, because Christ did become accursed that His brethren might be saved.
Now let us look at John the Baptist, and then we will make some application. I know this is not like, “Oh gee whiz, he is not going through every verse,” but this is the main gist of it.
Everything about being born again of the Spirit says that you cannot see it or understand it unless you are born again. You have to be born again to see and even to enter. It is not what you know; being born again is what God has given you in His gift.
Let us look at the exit of John the Baptist.
After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He remained with them and baptized.
Now John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there. And they came and were baptized.
For John had not yet been thrown into prison.
Then there arose a dispute between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purification.
And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified—behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him!”
John answered and said, “A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven.
You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’
He who has the bride is the bridegroom;
but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.
Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled.
He must increase, but I must decrease.
He who comes from above is above all;
he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth.
He who comes from heaven is above all.
And what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony.
He who has received His testimony has certified that God is true.
For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit by measure.
The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life;
and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Here you have this wonderful jealousy for your master. “John, Jesus is baptizing over there, and He is getting more people. That is not right. He is stealing your sheep.”
John is very gracious. He says, “This is the way it is supposed to be. This is what I told you. There is a greater One than me coming after me. I am only the one preparing the way. Now that He is here, I am going to step back.”
In stepping back, he says:
He must increase, but I must decrease.
We take that and say, “The Lord needs to increase in me, and I need to decrease.” That is true, but I will touch on that a little later. Here is what John is saying: “My ministry is not the ministry. My ministry does not take precedence over the Lord’s ministry.”
Now that He is here, my ministry is to decline. I am stepping back. Now that He is here, His ministry is to be greater, because He is the greater One.
“It is nothing for me. I am not hurt by this. I am rejoicing because this tells me my ministry was right, and my ministry has been accomplished.”
Pretty soon, John is going to jail. Even though he will not be out baptizing, he is still going to be ministering, because we know that Herod loved to listen to John. Is that not an amazing thing? John convicted him of his sin, yet Herod would go down to the dungeon because he wanted to hear him.
John had words of life. Even though Herod did not want to hear in the sense of obeying, he liked to hear the Word. Some of us are like Saul with David. Saul would hear David and say, “Oh, you’re right, you’re right,” and then he would go off chasing David again.
That is how some of us are. We like to hear the Word. It is like a wound: “I wonder if it still hurts.” Oh yeah, it does. Some of you are not as weird as some of us are.
Some of us are like that as Christians. We go back and get stung again, then we say, “Okay, I got my hurt. I have sobered up. Now I’m going back to being what I was.”
But John is simply saying, “He’s it. There is nothing to cry about. Do not cry for me. His coming has given the amen to my ministry. How can I not rejoice?”
John the Baptist then exits, and we do not hear from John the Baptist again in this Gospel. We will see Nicodemus a couple of other times, though.
Now, how does this all apply to us? That is really what we want to talk about.
If we go back to John 2, we have the situation of the Lord not committing Himself to those people. One reason why He will not commit Himself to us today is because I am a deeply superficial person.
We have a superficial faith. You know what superficial is? It is just surface. Our faith goes no deeper than our surface. That is it.
As long as things are okay on top, it is almost like, “As long as I am not going to hell, I am okay. I will take that.” But I do not want to go any deeper than that. It is nice to know I am not going to hell.
The Lord does not say, “I’m sorry. You have made a confession of faith, and there has been true faith there, but I’m going to send you to hell anyway.” No. The Lord is gracious.
Anybody who has a true spark of faith and believes on Christ for the forgiveness of their sins will be saved. There is no doubt in my mind. But some of us only want that.
The Lord is gracious. Just because you are superficial does not mean He does not bless you. Some of us are blessed. This is the spirit of Laodicea: “We are rich. We have need of nothing. The Lord is blessing us. What else do we need?”
It does not mean that just because you are superficial, the Lord does not bless. Think of the Israelites: forty years in the wilderness. Were they walking around in rags, looking for scorpions under rocks to eat? No.
Their shoes did not wear out. Their clothes did not wear out. He fed them with manna. He gave them water from a rock. There was still blessing, but He would not commit to them.
Remember when He sent the spies into Canaan? Two came back with a good report, and the others said no. Then God said, “Okay, you are not coming into the land.” They said, “Oh no, no, no. Okay, we are going to go now.”
What happened? God did not commit Himself to them. He said, “You did not trust who I was. You did not trust who I was, and now you are going to make it up like that? I know your heart. I know what is inside your heart. You are fickle.”
We do not use that word much anymore, do we? Fickle. You know what fickle means? It means that my love for you lasts only until I see the next good-looking person. Then it lasts for them until I see the next one. Then I might see you looking good again, and I am back to you.
I ought to be in high school again, right? Is that not what it is all about?
But I will tell you this: those of us who are superficial in our faith will not know eternal life. I am not saying we do not have eternal life. I am saying we will not know eternal life.
We will not have the epignosis, the experiential knowledge of eternal life, which is Jesus Christ. We will not know Him.
That is a tough thing. We do not enter the rest. You will not know Him whom we are supposed to know.
There is a wonderful verse in 1 Corinthians—I am sorry, I did not look up the reference—but it says we will know as we are known.
I know the Lord knows me beyond what I know of myself. But think that I might know Him in that type of way. That is the relationship the Lord is after.
It is like a relationship with our spouses: we would know as we are known. I allow my wife to know me, and she allows me to know her in a deeper way than just being friends or acquaintances.
It is not just saying, “Hey, Lord, it’s good to see You Sunday. See You next Sunday.” You think the Lord wants to commit to you like that?
Sonny Bradley always gives the example: why would you go up to a person at the airport and say, “Hey, I’m Jim Boggana. I’m a teacher. I’ve lost some weight”? People would think I was crazy, and they would not want to know that stuff anyway.
You do not tell personal things to people you do not know. Is the Lord any different? I do not think so.
If you do not want to know Him, He is not going to force it on you. “You are going to know Me if it takes You—” No. You do not want to know Him? Okay. But He wants you to know Him. The door is open. You can come in anytime.
Every once in a while, He taps on the shoulder, touches the wound: “Oh yeah, You’re there.”
Because our religion remains on the surface, we will not come to the knowledge of our own depravity. That is a key thing.
Now, some of us know something of our depravity. But I do not think you know your own depravity so much. If you knew your own depravity so much, I think you would fall over and die. I think you would have a heart attack.
When John saw the Lord in His glory, he fell down as dead. I think he saw himself in the glory of God and could not take it. He saw how depraved he was.
Is it not gracious that the Lord then touches him and says, “Get up”? He raises him up.
But if we do not know our own depravity, then we are rich and have need of nothing, just like Laodicea. “We do not need You.”
The second application I want to make is Nicodemus.
Nicodemus came by night. I think he really came to say, “Lord, there is something missing in my life. I have done all the rules. I do all these things. I am a good man. I am righteous and everything, but I am empty. I do not know why that is.”
I think he knew something about the fact that he did not measure up to God. He knew that no matter what he did, he would not measure up. That is why I put the picture of the beggar there.
He knew he could not make it. I think he wanted to come and say, “What do I have to do?” Now, that is not Scripture; that is just me thinking. If I were coming to Him and had all those qualifications Nicodemus had, I might say, “Can I join You? Can I have part of Your ministry? I am a good guy.”
But no, I think he came saying, “What is wrong? What is wrong with me? How come I am not making it?”
He comes in secret. Brothers and sisters, this is what a lot of us do not do. We do not come in secret. Our Christian life is public. Our prayers are public. Our reading of Scripture is public. We never get to the place of coming in secret.
When the Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount that the Father sees the one who comes to Him in secret, He hears him and blesses him openly. But Nicodemus came in secret.
Because we know something of our own depravity, some of us will not come at all. You get to thinking, “How could God ever take me? Look at me.” Other people may say, “Yeah, I’m looking at you, and I can see God would have nothing to do with you.”
But we are our own worst enemies because we rob ourselves of faith—the faith of the Son of God that is in us. We overcome it with our own feelings of inadequacy and our own thinking that we are just too bad.
Brothers and sisters, that has to be overcome. It can only be overcome by the life of Christ in us and the faith of Christ in us, but it must be overcome.
God knows our depravity too. But did that stop Him from sending His Son? No. Did we not just read that He so loved the world that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes? Whoever.
We feel we cannot come. We say, “I come up short.” This is not something we want to share with everybody. That is why Nicodemus came at night.
But he came to the One, to the Person he thought could shed light on everything. Oh, what light he got.
He was not put off by the saying, “You must be born again.” He said, “How is it done?” The Lord showed us: by My dying and rising up, and you being in Me—that is how it is done.
God commits Himself. Why did He accept Nicodemus when He had just said He would not commit Himself to the other people? It is because Nicodemus cared enough to say, “I cannot go on like this anymore.”
“I cannot go on like this anymore. I need You.”
God commits to the one who will come to Him on this basis—who comes to Him and says, “I need. I need. And I want more than just a surface salvation.”
A. W. Tozer wrote a book called God Tells the Man Who Cares. It is the same thing. Do we care enough about our own souls to come to God and say, “What must I do?”
We find that He meets us coming, and He already has an answer for us. But He waits for us to come.
No matter how poor you feel in spirit, what does the Word say?
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Is this not the very thing? Unless you are born again, you cannot see and you cannot enter. But you who are poor in spirit—the kingdom is yours.
Lastly, we want to look at John the Baptist’s exit. We will close with this: “I must decrease, He must increase.”
A lot of us look at that as being the cross to us. I want to look at it in a whole different light, because I have seen it in a different light.
John the Baptist is typical of something. He is typical of the old covenant and the law.
I believe that if we look at it this way, it might be helpful. He is saying, the law must decrease.
How many of us are still under the law because we think that is the way we get consecrated? The question brought up in John 3 is an argument about purification.
This is the word to those who argue, “How do we get sanctified?” He is saying, “The law must decrease.” How can that be? What do you mean, the law must decrease? Is that not what I go by?
No. The law must decrease, and the life must increase.
That is a whole other way to look at these things. How do I consecrate myself to the Lord now that I am born again? The law must decrease.
If we look at the law scripturally, let us take a look.
Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ,
that we might be justified by faith.
Where is the law in this picture? The training wheels. She cannot ride a bike, so she has training wheels to keep her on course. That is all the law was meant to be: a tutor.
If she were my age, riding that bike with training wheels, what would you think? Too old. You would think, “Can’t that lady ride a bike?” Would you not think that? Because cannot everybody ride? No, my mom cannot. My mom never learned. She was no help when it came to riding bikes.
But the whole thing is, the law was never meant to last in our lives as an outward thing to keep us on the straight and narrow.
Do you understand that? It is not meant to keep us on the straight and narrow, because it is not that object—the letter of the law. It is a Person.
You remember doing that with your kids? I remember it with such pleasure. I remember having my kids do that out in the back alley. That was so cool. You ride alongside them, and pretty soon you let go. All of a sudden, they find their balance.
It is the same thing. Look, Ma, no hands.
But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
Remember the new covenant in Ezekiel? “I will put My Spirit in you,” and He will write the law where? In your heart.
It is from the inside. This is the big thing Christianity really has to find for itself: it is not an outward thing, but a life that comes up from within. All of a sudden, that life becomes the thing that gives us our balance.
What tells us the balance is the life within us. The life within us tells us.
I have used this before: pregnant women know, “I cannot eat this,” or, “I cannot take this,” because of the life within them. They are on a whole other thing because of the life within them.
It is the life within us. That is the same way.
The reason this is so appropriate is that we are coming back to water and the Spirit—being born of the Spirit. The reason she can ride without the training wheels is because she is at rest because of the water.
What do I mean by that? Let us go back to Colossians 2:14:
Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.
And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Are you at rest with that? You really need to ask yourself that. Are you at rest with what Christ has done for you?
Do you believe that He has put in you His very life, which is able to work in you the very things you really want? Do you believe that?
Because that is the gospel. That is the gospel. It is not just that Christ died for me; it is that Christ lives in me also. The two go together. It is hand in hand. They are not split apart, but we split them apart.
We are born again to newness of life. We are born again to newness of life.
May God open our eyes to this. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we come to You just like Nicodemus came to You, Lord, and we say, “How can these things be?”
Oh Father, I pray You would open our eyes and let us know the whole possibilities and realities of this new birth. Just be gracious to us, Father, we pray. In Christ’s name, amen.