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Jesus’ Conversation with Nicodemus, Part II, John 3:3,4
Before we begin this lesson in John 3 let us turn on our imagination to picture a swimmer in distress.
He is thrashing, crying out, sinking, rising, sinking again and overall he is in mental misery as his fading life passes before him.
And so you listen carefully perhaps to hear his last words and you hear him crying out to the lifeguard, Help me, Help me, please come …………and teach me to swim.
I need to learn how to swim!
Now this mental picture somehow does not fit reality for learning how to swim is not what this man needs.
Learning how to swim is not what should be desired at this time but perhaps could take place at another time if what is truly needed comes about. Of course what is truly needed for this drowning man at this time is not to learn how to swim but the need is to be saved from drowning.
The cry should not be “teach me how to swim” but should be, Save me, Save me, I’m drowning.
Now what we have imagined is exactly what took place at the conversation of Nicodemus and Jesus.
For Nicodemus majored on the need to be taught when he should have majored on the need to be saved.
He expressed this by saying in John 3:2, We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.
Now Nicodemus is not an unusual case, for not knowing your true condition will lead you to get things out of order.
Many want to know about God, many want to be taught about God thinking they are fit to be taught just like Nicodemus.
But many, are in reality in a drowning situation and asking to be taught to swim, when instead they should cry out to be saved in order to get a chance to learn how to swim.
Christ does not join Nicodemus in the direction he desires to go and He therefore ignores his courteous and perhaps flattering statement and by doing so tells us Nicodemus is not in a condition to be taught.
Jesus told Zacchaeus, the chief among the publicans, in Luke 19:10, For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
Lost, lost, a dreadful word, is the Bible description of men, women, boys and girls without God.
And in this conversation with Nicodemus Jesus faced such a man, a lost man, a man not yet prepared to be taught.
And therefore we hear Jesus say this most important truth. Verse 3:3,......Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
In this statement Jesus goes to the heart of the need of Nicodemus.
He addresses the new birth as the first subject of his teaching in this Gospel.
So here, as on many occasions, Jesus Christ uses experiences common to man to teach spiritual truths.
Here He uses human birth to explain the condition of entrance into the kingdom of God.
Everyone that can listen to his words has been born, so this example can be universally understood.
We know that in order to have a birth, a seed must be planted.
This seed is not planted by the one who is born.
The one who is born has nothing to do with that planting!
Once planted the seed grows until the proper time for the birth to take place.
Some seed does not come to full term and no successful birth takes place.
Apparently the body of the Mother, the receiver of the seed, is sometimes deficient in something and may not provide the best environment for the seed.
In human reproduction some seed is deficient.
But some seed grows and produces a successful birth and there is, of course, rejoicing.
Natural forces within the body of the Mother cause the child (the one produced from the seed) to exit the Mother at the proper time.
The one born takes part, but the body of the Mother is responsible for the expelling or birth of the child.
Three things are responsible for a successful birth.
Good seed, a good environment for the seed to grow and a mechanism for the child to be brought forth.
Each part must take place in order for a successful birth to be realized.
The seed can grow, the environment can be perfect but until the child leaves the mother, no birth takes place.
This whole process is again compared in other gospels to a sower sowing seed in various kinds of ground.
A good teacher uses many devices to get a point across and Jesus Christ was, of course, the Master teacher, whom all teachers should try to follow.
So Jesus Christ chooses to use this analogy to explain to Nicodemus about how a person can understand the kingdom of God.
Jesus does not use this occasion to explain how man should live but he uses this time to tell Nicodemus how men are made alive spiritually.
We see here that the basic fundamental that Jesus taught is that a person must first be born spiritually before anything else of spiritual importance can take place.
He thunders the basic foundational truth, Ye must be born again.
The Lord uses the words, verily, verily, another form of Amen, Amen, which means, of a truth, of a truth.
It means firmness, stability, constancy, true, faithful, certain.
He did not use this phrase lightly for what He said was of very weighty significance.
It was a solemn thought and meant to be a introduction to a very important statement designed to urge serious thought on the part of the listener.
He uses the word twice.
Double importance. Ye must! There is no room for compromise.
When God says, ye must, he leaves no room for squirming out and finding or making another way.
He says that without the new birth God will not allow you to see the kingdom of God.
The door is closed to you until you are born again.
Your first birth, your natural birth, does not give you entrance into the kingdom but on the contrary it excludes you.
Exclusion! Oh how this goes against modern thought where everything is to be equal.
So this is Truth’s welcome to the world!
Your welcome to the world is that you were born wrong and there is nothing you can do to please God from the first birth, the birth that produced the old nature and therefore you must be born anew, you must be born from above.
The seed that produced you in your first birth was bad seed, corrupted seed, seed that doomed you to the death that was decreed to Adam, your father.
That seed contained, not spiritual life, but death and had no ability to communicate with your Creator.
Your heart from the first birth cannot perform the works of God, you must be given a new heart to do the works of God.
As David cried in Psalms 51:10, Create in me a clean heart.
He did not say clean my heart.
He realized that his heart was not cleanable. A newly created heart was necessary.
That clean heart is created with the new birth.
God plants a new seed, a spiritual seed, the seed of the Word of God, which will produce after its own kind.
That kind is Jesus Christ.
That seed, by the agency of the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit of God.
Without the planting of that seed there is no new creation, there is no new heart.
The kingdom of God here used, means that which the physical eye cannot see.
It must be seen through new eyes that come with the new birth.
Jesus gives new vision to the one who is born again.
This vision allows you to see the kingdom of God as described in:
Romans 14:17, For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Without the new birth you are not righteous, you do not have peace, and you certainly cannot joy in the Holy Spirit because he is not in you.
Most people don't believe this.
It is not a popular doctrine because it destroys the hope of man that his works have standing before God and a man or woman's work is all that most people depend upon.
The five words of Jesus, Ye must be born again, are words that the human mind or human nature must reject because they conflict with notions of eternal life that people cling to so strongly.
Self-righteousness or self-worth or self-value to God is destroyed by this doctrine.
Nicodemus depended upon his connection to God's chosen people and his standing among the Jews as a ruler of the Jews to gain him entrance into the presence of God. |