SPEAKER_00: Clearly, that God had a claim on me.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that.
SPEAKER_00: He had a claim on me.
SPEAKER_00: And what I told my brother was, ask me later.
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot more living to do.
SPEAKER_00: I felt these inner stirrings.
SPEAKER_00: Something in me resonated with what he'd read to us in the scripture and what I'd read in this track.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, no.
SPEAKER_00: I just stuffed it.
SPEAKER_00: Ask me later.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot more living to do.
SPEAKER_00: I'll come back to you when I'm done with some major goals that I have in my 12-year-old self.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that we see about what it means to open to God, what it looks like, if the first is paying attention to the stirrings in our heart, the second is a little more costly.
SPEAKER_00: It involves a willingness to be corrected and to be taught by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed in Nicodemus when he speaks, there's actually only about three sentences that he says back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really short encounter here.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to Jesus and he says, you know, we know, we know.
SPEAKER_00: He's in the place of knowing and seeing.
SPEAKER_00: I see you, Jesus, we know.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing he says is, what?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
SPEAKER_00: Born again?
SPEAKER_00: Born from above?
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: The third thing he says is, how can this be?
SPEAKER_00: How can these things be?
SPEAKER_00: You see, what Jesus had said to him was Nicodemus, you have missed the center.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus says to him.
SPEAKER_00: You're a teacher of Israel, and yet you have missed the center of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And you're lost.
SPEAKER_00: And Nicodemus is willing to sit under that.
SPEAKER_00: There's something amazing about this.
SPEAKER_00: There is a teachableness in him that is in sharp contrast to the Pharisees and to the other Jews.
SPEAKER_00: What did they do when Jesus said the kinds of things that I read earlier to you?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would tell them, you know, you're going to die in your sins if you don't believe I am who I am.
SPEAKER_00: And they would say back, oh, where is he going?
SPEAKER_00: Where does he think he's going?
SPEAKER_00: We know your parents.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we know.
SPEAKER_00: We know you don't have a dad.
SPEAKER_00: They would pull out the knives, they would chuck and jive, they would move all around.
SPEAKER_00: But they weren't teachable.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't willing to just sit.
SPEAKER_00: See, they weren't willing to face the cost.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cost involved in opening.
SPEAKER_00: What is this cost?
SPEAKER_00: There's a cost involved in opening, a cost that we have to put lower down.
SPEAKER_00: We begin this process.
SPEAKER_00: It's a long process to begin the process of lowering our masks.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I see a mask on Nicodemus when he comes to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his Pharisee mask on.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his Sanhedrin, ruler of the Jews, mask on.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I know.
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: But that mask starts coming off.
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: That mask starts coming down.
SPEAKER_00: And he begins to face literally the terror of his fears.
SPEAKER_00: And facing your fears at this level can be terrifying because Nicodemus is facing the fears of his need, that he's missed the center, that he's not right with God, that in spite of decades of positioning himself and putting himself in the best possible place in life, he's now in a place that has missed it all.
SPEAKER_00: He's in a place that has to look at the exposure of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what Jesus said just a few minutes, and perhaps even a part of this discussion with Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_00: This is in John 3, verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, This is the judgment that light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.
SPEAKER_00: For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light lest his deeds should be exposed.
SPEAKER_00: There is the cost of openness to God.
SPEAKER_00: Coming into the light that your need would really be exposed.
SPEAKER_00: This is humility.
SPEAKER_00: This is repentance.
SPEAKER_00: This is surrender.
SPEAKER_00: This is the point that Nicodemus is looking at, that he's facing.
SPEAKER_00: He's a very conflicted man.
SPEAKER_00: We're not sure how he actually leaves this scene.
SPEAKER_00: But he's facing the pressure of this.
SPEAKER_00: He's being shown that if he doesn't open, the great cost that's involved in that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a third thing here about what openness looks like.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just going to mention this.
SPEAKER_00: But all opening, all opening to God involves a prior movement of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said this to Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the things he marveled about.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, flesh gives birth to flesh.
SPEAKER_00: You have to be born from above.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God needs to blow at his sovereign will in your life and in your heart and do a creative work within you that is radical.
SPEAKER_00: As radical as being born all over again.
SPEAKER_00: It's an inward renewal, an inward birth.
SPEAKER_00: Only Spirit can give birth to a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the Old Testament foretold that very thing.
SPEAKER_00: I do think it's meant for us to take into account.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to kind of push against that 12-year-old who says, you know, I'll come to God later.
SPEAKER_00: I'll come to God when I am willing, on my terms, I'll come back to this.
SPEAKER_00: I'll just come back when I'm when it's more convenient.
SPEAKER_00: But I think all through John's gospel, there's this constant message.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, you know, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, all my children will be taught by God.
SPEAKER_00: They will hear the voice of God.
SPEAKER_00: My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason you don't hear is because you're not my sheep.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus would say a lot of things that would create a kind of hopefully an allurement of humility of saying, wow, wow, Lord, it really is meant to evoke in us a quicker opening.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, can I be such a man?
SPEAKER_00: Would you work in me?
SPEAKER_00: The spirit opening that you talk about here.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when my mother had cancer 20 years ago, she was diagnosed with one of the most serious kinds of cancer there are.
SPEAKER_00: And I think if I remember the stats, it's something like this.
SPEAKER_00: They said, you know, only 5% of people will survive this.
SPEAKER_00: Her response to the doctor literally was, okay.
SPEAKER_00: What do I got to do to be in that 5%?
SPEAKER_00: How come I can't be in that 5%?
SPEAKER_00: Someone's in that 5%.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like us to move over to scene 2.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to get through this if we don't move quickly here, so let's look at scene 2 in John chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to look at verse 32 and then 45 to 52.
SPEAKER_00: John 7, verse 32, the Pharisees had heard the crowd muttering these things about Jesus, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.
SPEAKER_00: Now drop down the verse 45.
SPEAKER_00: These officers came back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, Why didn't you bring him in?
SPEAKER_00: And the officers answered, No one ever spoke like this man.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees answered them, Have you been deceived?
SPEAKER_00: Have you, have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
SPEAKER_00: But this crowd that doesn't know the law is accursed.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?
SPEAKER_00: They replied, Are you from Galilee too?
SPEAKER_00: Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Things are heating up for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things, this is the second time, the second scene we meet Nicodemus, and what we see in this scene about opening is that opening involves a desire to die to people pleasing.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus is beginning to die to people pleasing, all his status and all his jockeying to maintain where he was and the kind of position that he had.
SPEAKER_00: He is willing at this point to actually rebuke in a veiled kind of way these leaders that you know what, you guys are saying nobody understands the law but you, and you're breaking the law in condemning Jesus without even having given him a fair hearing.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: What courage it took for Nicodemus to do this, to begin to express his loyalty to him, the courage it took for him to face the scorn that he faced in this passage and that he would have known he was going to face as he begins to kind of come out and start moving more toward Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the Lord tells us this many times that he who wants to save his life will lose his life in this world.
SPEAKER_00: But he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
SPEAKER_00: He who denies me, my father will deny.
SPEAKER_00: But he who is loyal to me and affirms me, my father will affirm in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There's a great cost in opening to God.
SPEAKER_00: There's a great cost to our reputation.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe not with your fellow Christians, but maybe with your family, maybe at your workplace.
SPEAKER_00: In some sphere of your world, if you're not really opening to God, there is going to be a cost, and there will continue to be a cost.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see with Nicodemus, the cost only gets higher as he goes on.
SPEAKER_00: The cost never stops.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cost to receiving the gift of grace from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's a cost of loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: And that cost is an angry world.
SPEAKER_00: That cost is evil that now has a target on your back.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: This is after Jesus was crucified.
SPEAKER_00: It was during the Passover feast.
SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath day was at hand.
SPEAKER_00: Everything had to be taken care of before sundown.
SPEAKER_00: So the things we're going to be reading about here happened in the daylight.
SPEAKER_00: Happened in broad daylight, toward the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: After these things, verse 38, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Pilate gave him permission.
SPEAKER_00: So he came and took away the body.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloe, about seventy-five pounds in weight.
SPEAKER_00: They took the body of Jesus and bound in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had been laid.
SPEAKER_00: So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.
SPEAKER_00: What we see here with Nicodemus is a deepening loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: He now with another member of the Sanhedrin, another secret disciple.
SPEAKER_00: And I think even his association with Joseph is saying something to us.
SPEAKER_00: These two are together.
SPEAKER_00: They're really disciples of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They're emerging disciples, but secretly for fear of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But now, now they are in broad daylight.
SPEAKER_00: What happened first at night?
SPEAKER_00: And then only in the company of just his colleagues.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's before the world.
SPEAKER_00: He's asking for the body of Jesus, and he's going to give him a lavish burial fit for royalty.
SPEAKER_00: This really was a lavish, lavish burial.
SPEAKER_00: And Joseph and Nicodemus kind of reverse the opposition of the Jews who believe that Jesus was not the King of the Jews, and they say, oh yes, he was.
SPEAKER_00: And they're giving him this lavishing burial.
SPEAKER_00: I wish we had time to think about with you just the slowness of Nicodemus' movement.
SPEAKER_00: Be careful how you judge people's opening to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus leaves us kind of ambiguous.
SPEAKER_00: We're never really sure how deeply he apprehended Jesus at the point of this final scene.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what's interesting is where are all the other disciples?
SPEAKER_00: They are hiding.
SPEAKER_00: And Joseph and Nicodemus are burying the body in public in broad daylight.
SPEAKER_00: There is a symbolism there that is just beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Are you personally opening to God?
SPEAKER_00: Are you opening to his way of reconciliation?
SPEAKER_00: Are you content to be somebody who maybe has been around Christianity and around the scriptures, but's never really open to God?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's maybe stirred from time to time that maybe you've missed the very center, but not willing to push into it.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe if you're a young person like I was, maybe you're just gonna wait for a better day when it's more convenient, when you've lived a little bit and got sowed your wild oats and had some fun, then you'll come to God and let his claim be upon you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You know, a flower is an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_00: It was made to be glorious.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting that its glorious is realized only in its opening.
SPEAKER_00: A flower that remains closed is virtually no flower at all, is in danger of being useless to the gardener and pulled up.
SPEAKER_00: But there is something else which God created that is more beautiful still when it opens to its creator.
SPEAKER_00: Are you opening to God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the musicians, uh, please come forward.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a responsive uh song, and then we'll have a closing prayer after that.