7-12-26 New Birth (Face to Face)

Join Pastor Tyler as he starts a new series looking at face to face encounters people had with Jesus.

Transcript

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Father, we are grateful that we can worship you this morning. We're grateful for your holiness. That you, God, a holy God, would send your son Jesus to the earth. To have face-to-face encounters with people. You care so deeply about all of us, even down to the individual, that you would come as Jesus to have these face-to-face encounters, which brings about new life as people understand your life and death and resurrection. So for that, God, we are grateful. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, good morning, church. If we haven't met yet, my name is Tyler, and I'm the new guy in town. So new, in fact, that I didn't realize a couple weeks ago that I'm not supposed to step right up onto the stage. I stepped right up. If you missed it, I just stepped up right here because it didn't seem like that big of a step, and I heard murmuring. People were kind of surprised, I think, that I took that step. So I've learned my lesson and I came up the side. It is a lot easier to come up this side, I will tell you that much. Well, it's good to be with you. We've had a great, you know, couple weeks, few weeks of getting integrated. We've uh swam at some pools. Some of you who've invited us over and we've swam in your pool. Thank you for that. Um, and we've gotten to know kind of many of you just in bits and pieces here and there. And it's been a good, a good few weeks for us as we get integrated. Well, today we're starting a five-week series. It's a five-week series called Face to Face. And this is a series that is meant to help us explore these five encounters that Jesus had with people who had very different life situations. Each one of them did. They have different backgrounds. And we're going to explore these interactions that Jesus had with a respected religious leader. That's number one, with a social outcast, with a desperate sufferer, with a failed disciple, and with a faithful follower of Jesus that was overwhelmed by grief. And each week, my hope is that we're going to see Jesus more clearly. That's my hope. That we can see Jesus more clearly, we'll discover truths that may help us connect with God more deeply. We'll imagine ourselves in these situations so that we can increasingly become open to the Spirit's work in our lives as we discover what it was like in the first century for people to interact with Jesus face to face. And along the way, my hope is also that I'll get to hear some more of your stories throughout the week. Each person in this room has their own story to tell. We all have some uniqueness to our stories, their own encounters with Jesus, often through the Holy Spirit. And so whether you've known God for your entire life, or you're just now getting curious. You're curious about Jesus. It's what's maybe drawn you here. You're just now starting to explore faith in a way maybe that you've never really explored before. Over the coming weeks and months, I would love to hear your stories. We all have one. And during this series, we might resonate more deeply with one or two of these stories, maybe even all five of these face-to-face encounters that Jesus had with people in the gospels. And my hope is that as we let God speak to us over the next five weeks, that we would not just listen and learn, but that we'd enter the story that we get from Scripture. We'd enter, really enter the story. That we'd let God surface the things that we need to see and hear and change, and that we'd be willing to share our own stories along the way. So consider this an open invitation to reach out. Send me an email. You can reach out to the office and say, Tyler, you said you want to hear our stories. I'd love the chance to share mine. As the Lord maybe prompts you over the coming weeks or months to do something like that. Consider that an open invite. I want to hear your story. Get to know you and your relationship with God, where you're at a little bit more. Maybe your story is like today's. From the Gospel of John chapter three, it's the story of this respected Jewish religious leader. He's named Nicodemus, and he reaches out to Jesus to discover more about who Jesus is? He's curious. Nicodemus finds himself face to face with Jesus, and the conversation goes in a direction that I can't imagine that Nicodemus really would have even predicted. But before we dig in, let me prime the pump a little bit by asking you this. How do you think a conversation with Jesus would go if you two were face to face right now? What would that conversation be like? Some of you are smiling, laughing a little bit. What would you say? What would you ask? What would you do? What do you imagine him saying and doing? You are face to face with Jesus. Again, we're all a little bit different. We have different backgrounds, different curiosities, and different experiences, both good and not so good. And so I'm guessing, I'm guessing that we'd all engage in this face-to-face conversation with Jesus in a unique way, and he would engage with us in a unique way. Jesus was so good at taking the whole of a person's life situation, at knowing people, at being aware of who he was talking to and even the audience that was around him and what they might be thinking, and then responding in a way that met somebody's actual need. Not necessarily what they thought they needed, but what they actually needed. Jesus could diagnose a person's comment or a person's question and respond with the cure. He was so good at this. And that's what he did with Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Here's what we discover. Starting in John chapter, sorry, we're fighting. I think we're fighting here. I got it. John chapter 3, verses 1 to 2. Here's what we find. There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. Rabbi, he said, We all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you. So Nicodemus meets Jesus at night, and that could be for a bunch of reasons. Nicodemus was this respected Jewish teacher, so he might have wanted to protect his own reputation. He seems legitimately curious and eager to learn more about Jesus, but he doesn't know yet if expressing this genuine curiosity would impact his reputation among the Pharisees. So maybe he visits Jesus at night for that reason. Maybe it's because he wanted to have this private conversation with Jesus. Jesus is so frequently surrounded by crowds. We find that all over the Gospels. Jesus is so often surrounded by crowds and crowds of people that maybe he just needed time to have a reflective conversation, and at night was maybe the best time to do that. It could be that John, who's the author of the Gospel, who's telling us this story, it could be that he's making this theological point. He's teasing out the time of day. John often contrasts the light with darkness in his gospel. So it could be John's way of letting us know that this face-to-face interaction, it starts with spiritual ignorance. And Jesus would bring light into the darkness of this conversation. Maybe it's some combination of all these things. Whatever the case, the scene is set for this private conversation between a highly respected Jewish leader and Jesus. And what we're going to discover as we continue in this story exemplifies what John has already told us at the beginning of his gospel. In John 1, here's what we read. Just a couple chapters before this, we read the true light, that's Jesus, that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. Nicodemus is an example of this, didn't quite recognize him, but maybe sort of thinks that there's something special about Jesus. So here's what continues to happen. Jesus came, or this is continuing in John chapter 1. Jesus came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of a human, of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. John 1, what we've just read, it sets the scene for John chapter 3. Light meets darkness. And what's revealed is the truth that those who received Jesus, who believed in his name, became born of God. And so Nicodemus comes to speak with Jesus and says, Rabbi, we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you. For Nicodemus to say Rabbi, to address Jesus as a teacher, it's this sign of respect. Nicodemus, he's not here to actually rip into Jesus like other religious leaders try to do throughout the gospels. He's actually here to learn, it seems. He can't deny the miraculous signs that function as evidence that God is with Jesus. But Jesus says this in response. Here's what Jesus said. He says, I tell you the truth, unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Which is kind of a funny response, I think anyway, to what to what Nicodemus is saying to Jesus. Jesus doesn't say, Thank you. Yes, God is with me. And it's because Nicodemus, he didn't quite get it right. He's close. But not quite. God isn't just with Jesus. Jesus is God. That's already been established at the start of John chapter 1, but Nicodemus wasn't yet able to see that. He couldn't see the kingdom of God because he hadn't yet been born again. The implication being that when we're born again, we become able to see the kingdom of God. It's this spiritual vision that we receive from God through the Spirit. We're able to see life with a new lens, but Nicodemus, he didn't have that lens yet. So he couldn't see the spiritual reality that Jesus was God. He thought Jesus was a teacher sent from God and that God was with Jesus. That much he had the sense of, probably like many other teachers who'd gone before Jesus. But Nicodemus couldn't see the full picture. And so Jesus, wanting to help Nicodemus see more clearly, tells him that unless you're born again, you can't see the kingdom of God. What do you mean? exclaimed Nicodemus. How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again? Nicodemus thinks that Jesus is describing a physical birth, like a new physical birth, not a spiritual one. And so Jesus replied, I assure you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don't be surprised when I say you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it wants, just as you can hear the wind, but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the spirits. Verse five has become one of the most hotly debated verses in the Gospel of John. And it centers around this idea of being born of water and the spirit. Is John talking about physical and spiritual birth? Like, does water represent something like amniotic fluid? Sorry to get graphic. Does it represent amniotic fluid, physical birth? Or does water represent baptism or is it something else? I think the key comes from Ezekiel 36. And you'll understand why in just a second. Ezekiel is this book in the Old Testament, as many of you know, so it takes place before Jesus arrives on the scene. And it includes these prophetic words. They're words that can function to predict what's going to happen in the future. They're often tied to these promises that God makes. And here's what God says to his people at the time in their lives, this time in their lives, when they really needed hope. They'd been exiled from their land. And in that context, God says, For I will take you out of the nations, talking to his people, I will take you out of the nations. I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 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, and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people, and I will be your God. In Ezekiel 36, the water represents the cleansing of the heart, being cleansed from impurities and idols. It's about being cleansed from sin, sinful actions, sinful attitudes, but it's not just about being cleansed, because there was a process in the Old Testament for people to experience a sort of cleansing. But they would just sin again and become unclean. This was a very common rhythm for God's people in the Old Testament. That's what you get with the sacrificial system, back and forth and back and forth, with very little, if any, actual permanent progress. And so there's this other component that's important. It's not just about cleansing the heart, but getting a new one. And that's what the Spirit does. The new heart and the presence of the Spirit in people moves them then to follow God's decrees and laws. So water in the Spirit seems to represent cleansing and a new heart. And that's what was starting to happen with the coming of Jesus. That's what he brings. That's the main thrust of the passage that because of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, and then the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts, people would receive cleansing and a new heart. And this was all foretold in Ezekiel. That time that had been predicted in Ezekiel had now come. That's what Jesus is saying. So after Jesus says this bit to Nicodemus about water and the spirit, he connects the spirit's activity to the wind. You can't see the wind, you can't control the wind. And the same is true of the spirit. Just like the wind, the spirit has a will of his own. He has methods of his own that are spiritual in nature. The process of spiritual rebirth is unseen. It happens apart from the naked eye. It's a process that can't be fully recognized until somebody's actually born again. You can see the effect. So when Nicodemus asks this question, how? He follows up. He's still curious. How are all these things possible? How can a man enter into his mother's womb again? Jesus is saying, Nicodemus, you're not seeing clearly just yet. You're not fully seeing the spiritual reality that I'm talking about. And you can't see, you can't control the wind, but you can see the effect of the wind. You can see its impact. You can see leaves blowing, you can see a flag whipping in the wind, and in the same way, you can see the effect of the spirit in somebody's life. Even if you can't explain the mechanics of being born again. You can see the impact. You can see that someone's been born again by the spirit, by the eventual result of having a new heart. How are these things possible? Nicodemus asks. He's still trying to get at the heart of what's going on here. How are these things possible? It's a natural next question. Maybe it's a question that you would ask if you're face to face with Jesus and he's telling you all the things that he's just told you. You're still a little bit puzzled. How is all this possible? Help me understand how this is possible. Nicodemus, he's still puzzled, and Jesus leans into Nicodemus a little bit. We'll see that in a second. He kind of leans in. And I think it's because Jesus knows that Nicodemus would be very familiar with Ezekiel 36 and passages like it. Nicodemus would be eagerly longing for God's promise to be fulfilled. He'd be longing for a time when God would cleanse him from all of his impurities and from all of his idols, when God would give him a new heart and put a new spirit in him, when God would remove from Nicodemus his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. And when God would put his spirit in him and move him to follow God's decrees and be careful to keep God's laws. Nicodemus was longing for that time along with many other Jewish followers of God in those days. And so because Jesus knew that Nicodemus and his had this immense knowledge of the Old Testament, here's how Jesus replied. But if you don't believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? So Jesus is saying, if you can't grasp what I'm telling you up to this point, you're not going to grasp the answer to the question that you're asking about how all this is possible. No one has ever gone to heaven and returned, but the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. So Jesus is referencing himself here. He came down from heaven, and because of that, he can testify to these heavenly or these spiritual realities. He knows how this works. He can say with authority that the time for the Spirit to give people new hearts, that time is now. It's beginning. And in the same way, the bronze snake from the Old Testament saved people from the wilderness, or in the wilderness, from the death that was a consequence of their sin. This is a short version of that story. Jesus must be lifted up. Meaning Jesus must be crucified so that people would be saved from their sin and the death that results from it. Those who believe in Jesus, who he is, what he did, what he does, they're then saved by faith. Then comes probably the most well-known Bible verse of all time. For this is how God loved the world. So God sent Jesus not to judge the world, meaning he didn't come to point out sin and then let people just die in it. Jesus does point out sin, but he doesn't leave people to die in it. He came to save the world through his death. Death and resurrection, he came to bring life. And this whole interaction, you know, this face-to-face conversation that takes place after dark, this very personal moment between Jesus and Nicodemus, it ends with Jesus essentially saying, I'm here to bring salvation and light and life. And now people have a choice. To either enter that light and follow a new path or to continue hiding in the dark. God doesn't force anyone one way or another. And he came so that people might have the choice to respond to salvation. He came so that people didn't have to continue living in the dark. Jesus says it this way. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it, for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they're doing what God wants. There's a lot in this scene, in this story between Jesus and Nicodemus. And I think we're meant, like I said, to enter this story, to imagine ourselves sitting with the two of them. Learning about Jesus, learning about ourselves right alongside Nicodemus. So I want you to imagine being face to face with Jesus. I don't know what you need to hear today. I don't know exactly what Jesus wants you to hear, but be open to his voice speaking to you right now as you imagine sitting face to face with Jesus. Maybe you're sitting in the very seat that Nicodemus sat in. And imagine Jesus saying this to you. That being religious isn't the same as being born again. If anybody checked all the boxes for this proper religious life, it was Nicodemus. Checked all the boxes. And Jesus doesn't actually rip Nicodemus for having a proper religious life. He's not saying stop following God's law. He's not saying just believe and then go do whatever you'd like. Instead, Jesus is saying, even if you continue to pursue what's good and right, your heart is still affected by the sinful nature that is constantly working against your desire to do what's right. It's a spiritual reality. It's a battle that you can't win on your own. You can't win it without God. You can't, Nicodemus. You can't do enough on your own to overcome your sinful nature. Only God can properly cleanse you and give you a new heart. Only God can bring about a new spiritual birth. You can't do that. Only God can, and only through the sacrifice of Jesus. So start believing in who Jesus is and start believing in what he's done, and here's what's going to happen: your heart of stone will be replaced by a heart of flesh. God will put his spirit in you and move you to follow his decrees and be careful to keep his laws. You now have the ability. You now have the power to follow God in a way that you couldn't before because now you're born again. Now the spirit is with you and in you. You now have a heart of flesh. John Wesley put it this way: After you're born again, sin remains, but it no longer reigns. So imagine Jesus saying this to you. I love you so much that I freely gave my life for you. And because of that, sin no longer reigns over your life. It no longer exerts that heavy influence over your life that it once did because you are now born again. I gave you a new heart. God gave you a new heart through the spirit. Now imagine Jesus saying this. Now that you're born again, you get a new lens to guide your life. You have a new lens. You get a new spiritual vision. You get to see life through the spirit, not just through your five senses, and this is going to make all the difference in the world. Like when hardship comes, one person says, God has abandoned me. Another says, God can use this situation to form me. Same circumstance, different spiritual vision. One person says, look at everything I've accomplished. And another says, everything I have is a gift from God, and He's entrusted it to me for His purposes. Same circumstance, different spiritual vision. One person says, it's not a big deal, everybody does it. Another says, this pulls me away from the life God wants for me. Same circumstance, different spiritual vision. One person says, you and I disagree, so you're my enemy. Another says, that person is someone Christ loved and died for. One says, church only exists to meet my needs. Another says, God has placed me here to worship him and grow in faith and to help other people thrive. One says prayer is probably useless. Another says, I'm speaking to the God who's at work even when I can't see what he's doing. The Spirit doesn't just change our destination, he changes our vision. Being born again is about a future promised, a future promise, rather, of life after death and a new lens to see God's kingdom today. It's part of that conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. And finally, I want you to imagine Jesus saying this to you. You're face to face, just you and him. And he says, enter and stay in the light. The story of Nicodemus, it begins at night. And by the end of this conversation, Jesus is effectively inviting Nicodemus into the light. Enter the light and stay there. And maybe that's Jesus' invitation to some of us today, to stop hiding in the dark, but to enter and stay in the light. The darkness is where we tend to hide things. We hide our sin and our shame and our doubts and our addictions and our bitterness and our fear. And we sometimes stay in that darkness because we're afraid of what Jesus is going to do if he sees us. But he already sees us. He already knows. He sees us clearly. His invitation isn't to be exposed by the light so he can condemn us. It's to be brought into the light so he can free us, so he can heal us, so he can save us. Jesus isn't afraid to call out sin, but again, it's not for the purpose of condemnation. It's for the purpose of salvation. That's what Jesus wanted for Nicodemus. He was this well-respected Jewish leader, and for him to step into the light would be or would mean that everyone who opposed Jesus would likely oppose Nicodemus. At least a lot of his Jewish friends would. It means that he might lose his status, his power, his influence. He'd potentially lose everything he'd built throughout his life. It was undoubtedly a hard choice for Nicodemus. And there's no resolution in John chapter 3. Like Nicodemus doesn't say, I want to be born again and enter the light right away. John just keeps going with the rest of John chapter 3. There's no resolution here. But we do get a glimpse over time of Nicodemus starting to follow Jesus more actively. He shows up in two more places in the Gospel of John. One's in John 7, where Nicodemus speaks up for Jesus when his fellow religious leaders are trying to arrest Jesus. And then after Jesus dies on the cross, Nicodemus joins a guy named Joseph of Arimathea to prepare and bury Jesus' body. And this is what we read. Joseph was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds. Here's the translation. That was very expensive. And more importantly, it was a quantity that was befitting only kings in that day. So Nicodemus goes from visiting Jesus under cover of darkness to speaking up for Jesus among his fellow religious leaders to effectively saying, Jesus deserves to be buried like a king. And I'm going to be part of that. Nicodemus steadily moves into the light throughout the Gospel of John. So are you hiding in the darkness? Do you need to enter the light? Remember that Jesus wants you to enter the light. He already knows your darkness, and he's not wanting you to enter the light so he can condemn you, but so he can save you from the darkness that ultimately leads to death. So let's draw to a close by imagining again we're face to face with Jesus. And he says these three things. Being religious, it's not the same as being born again. Now that you're born again, you get a new lens to guide your life. And would you enter and stay in the light? And here's what you can do this week. First, you can ask Jesus to search your heart. Are you born again? If so, is there an area of life that needs cleansing? That cleansing is an ongoing process. Second thing is this practice seeing with your new lens. So when you face a difficult situation this week, pause before you react and just ask: how would someone born of this spirit see this? And let your first response be shaped by God's perspective instead of maybe your instincts. Practice that over time. And third, take one step into the light. Bring one thing that maybe you've been keeping in the dark into the light. It might mean confessing a sin to God, sharing a struggle with somebody who's a trusted Christian friend. Maybe it's asking for a prayer, maybe it's taking the first step toward reconciliation with somebody. Jesus didn't come to expose you for condemnation. He came to bring you into the light so you could be healed. Put one more way. Receive a new heart, see with new eyes, and step into the light. Father, we are grateful that we as a church can be gathered together to learn from this interaction that Jesus had with Nicodemus. We're so grateful that we actually get to sit alongside of Nicodemus and be part of that conversation. That we get to learn about why you came, Jesus. We're grateful for the new life that you've given us, the new heart, the cleansing that you provided through your death on the cross. We're grateful that you've given us a new lens for life, a new way of seeing even the hardest things that we experience. Would you help us to see life through that lens? And would you help us to step into the light? That as we step into the light, that we would also stay in the light. That we'd remain there. Thank you for the healing that you bring and for the wholeness. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.