Help From Above

Text: John 3:1-17

Focus: God's saving grace

Function: A gospel call

Form: G^od O^nly K^nows

Intro: Let us count off the first 9 words of John 3:16 together: For God so loved the world that He gave...

God gave. God gives. God gave Jesus.

Nicodemus was a religious man. He was a sincere scholar, honest in his search.

But for some reason, he wasn't quite getting who Jesus was.

You have to admit it, all those parables and the way Jesus lived His life, He was pretty mysterious. I am not sure I would have gotten it either.

Jesus came to establish a new Covenant with humanity, a New Testament. And thank God it includes everyone, everywhere.

Up until Jesus, the Jewish faith was a national faith, it was a theocracy, it was a covenant that God established with the nation of Israel.

The New Testament, the New Covenant is different.

Here comes Jesus, healing everyone, no matter which nation they came from.

Jesus was a friend to sinners. And in a Pharisee's eyes, according to the Old Covenant, sinners brought the judgment of God on the entire nation.

His role was to kick Him out, but before he did that, he wanted to check Him out. Something mysterious was going on with Jesus and he needed to see.

And Jesus was upsetting his preconceived notions.

That every happen to you? It seems to me like it does every time I read this book.

He, and John before Him, preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand, that it was here and now.

This confused ol' Nic.

But because he is honest in his search for God, he checks it out for himself.

I think he was missing the generosity of God.

I think he was missing the gift of God.

I wonder if he missed the concept that God gives.

I wonder if he missed the concept that God wants to be inside the hearts of men and women.

Perhaps he didn't understand the the message of the OT, the Spirit of the Law, which is to love one another.

But good news for Nicodemus: being a Pharisee, he was of the sect that believed the OT prophets.

And the OT prophets were excited about the coming of Jesus.

As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 1:10-12 tells us that they longed for it.

Jeremiah longed for the day when by God's Holy Spirit the hearts of everyone who believes would be changed and they would feel what he was so passionate about.

Isaiah longed for the day when the Lion would lay down with the lamb and a little child will lead them.

He also longed for the day when those who are thirsty can be filled, for the day when wine, bread and milk flow freely to everyone and people exchange greed for brotherly love.

Micah and Joel longed for the day when men would beat their swords into plows.

Amos longed for the day when God would be excited about human worship because instead of mere religious ceremony, it would include justice rolling down like a river.

And although the prophets spoke these messages that the revived Kingdom, under the Messiah would be a kingdom that included foreigners, peace, justice and changed hearts, Nicodemus, steeped in his traditions missed that message.

And Jesus Himself makes it clear that God's kingdom is not earthly, not political, not an human construct, but a kingdom that dwells in the hearts of men and women.

So Jesus is explaining this to Nicodemus. But although he is steeped in tradition, he is an honest seeker. So, it takes him a while to get it.

And to help him, Jesus makes it simple: “you must be born again.”

According to commentators, John is employing a literary device, a word play with Jesus phrase that has two meanings: Born again, and born from above.

Jesus tells him that he must receive help from above to be a part of the heavenly kingdom.

The prophets were mystics. They were spiritual.

According to the text, Nicodemus takes everything literally and wonders how a person can crawl back inside his own mother and be reborn.

But it was mystical language. The OT prophets were proclaiming what salvation in the New Testament, the new covenant, would look like.

(pause) It isn't a corporate religion, it is a personal faith brought about by God's Holy Spirit.

As a matter of fact, probably the best description of what it means to be born again, born from above, comes from an OT prophet: Ezekiel 36:25-27: ²⁵I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities.... ^26...I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

And here is the main point of this entire teaching about being born from above: The Kingdom of Heaven consists of people whose hearts are transformed by the Holy Spirit.

The Kingdom of God, the Church, has nothing to do with lists of rules, regulations, devotion to either or any political ideology, race or nation. The Kingdom of God is a relationship with God, provided by trusting in Jesus where His Holy Spirit indwells us and changes who we are.

(Repeat) The Kingdom of Heaven consists of people whose hearts are transformed by the Holy Spirit.

There is a heart transformation.

God reaches down from heaven, right into the human soul, grabs the heart of every man and woman that believes in Jesus and changes them.

How do we know this has happened to a person?

John 13:35 gives us the one proof of our salvation: We know it by the love we show others.

It is not a list of rules, but two principles: Love each other and Love God.

The proof of this change is the way we love each other.

The proof is not quoting the right creed, articulating the doctrine of the faith in just the correct order or joining the right group. The proof of Jesus' transformation is in the way we love each other.

Let me emphasize that. If love your for your neighbor is not obvious to you in your life, then you got some more “borning again to do.”

Nicodemus and the rest of the Jewish leaders were looking for a political Messiah, a military Hero like King David from 1,300 years before.

They couldn't embrace God's Kingdom which transcends nations and kingdoms and racial boundaries and changes the attitudes of men and women.

Nicodemus was confused initially because he approached Jesus with his expectations of what he wanted the Messiah to be.

The traditional approach, at the time of the Old Testament, was a God who loved them and hated their enemies.

But Jesus changed all of that. The Spirit of Christ, through the OT prophets proclaimed God's love for the whole world.

Let me distract for one minute. I love the teachings of Jesus. The world loves the teaching of Jesus. It gets uncomfortable for many, but people love the ideas that Jesus preached. They aren't sure the church lives up to them, but the concepts are beautiful.

And they will believe when we remember that membership in God's Kingdom is evidenced by our love for others.

If your faith does not increase your compassion for others, then something is missing.

See. Nicodemus wasn't getting this idea.

Preconceived notions of who Jesus was going to be kept him from seeing who the true Messiah is.

He was looking for an human answer to a spiritual problem.

And so, Jesus tells him, you need help from above. God is the one who does this.

I had a deacon who was huge. He was 6'4” and over 300 pounds. He had a deep gruff voice and he was scary. My kids were scared to death of him.

He didn't practice religion in order to be seen by men.

And he was tough. I have never been big, and have always been sort of a wimp. But the only way to gain this guy's respect was to get into his face and challenge him. It was scary, but I did it.

And we loved -well, we still love- each other dearly.

I know a secret about him, and without giving away any confidences, suffice it to say that he was one of the most generous people I know.

Oftentimes, he called me to ask me who was hurting in either the church or the community because he had money he wanted to give to someone.

With all of this rough exterior, he was a teddy bear.

God's kingdom was evidenced in the way it ruled his heart.

He didn't put on any pretense, but in here (point to heart), God had touched his heart and made him into a new creation.

One day, he told the whole church how God had changed his heart.

His earliest memories were of his father waking him up in the morning with a baseball bat.

He sobbed as he told the story of how finally, God's unconditional love touched his heart. That love melted a heart of stone and made it soft.

I watched him get born again, time and time again.

The prayer we started with today witnesses to God's continual process of us causing us being born again, and again, and again.

Did he get perfect? No.

He would get upset of I didn't preach out of the King James Version. He would get upset of I went to the market in short pants. He would say” “you should dress like a Christian.”

Did I mention that we are great friends?

In my opinion, those proscriptions for me still smelled of religiosity instead of faith, but God loves him, God is inside of him and God is the one changing him, not me.

The Holy Spirit transforms people. Let Him in.

Remember, God so loved the world that He gave....

And He keeps on giving His love and grace.

He pours out His Holy Spirit on those who trust in Jesus for salvation. It is a gift, free, without cost and open to everyone.

And, it is the gift that keeps on giving.

Have you received Him today?