John chapter 3, this is a familiar
story to all of you. You've heard of the story of
Nicodemus for lots and lots of years, but what I want to do
tonight mainly is to show you the connection of the second
chapter to the third chapter. I want to show you how these
verses that I just read, how they're very significant And
I want to sort of bridge, build a bridge between chapter 2 and
chapter 3. I say build a bridge, it's really
already there. I just want to identify it for
you. There is a connection that's
here. And I want to see if the Lord would enable me to set this
before you. Now, our Lord Jesus is in Jerusalem. He's in Jerusalem for the annual
Passover feast. This is the first of four, first
of four Passovers that he's going to attend during his public ministry. Now he's been to many other Passovers
ever since he was 12 years old, and you can read about that back
in in Luke the second chapter, but after our Lord was baptized,
after He began His ministry that God gave Him for three and a
half years, something like that, He would go to four different
Passovers. And this is the very first one,
and he's going to stay there. He stays here for at least a
couple of weeks. There are several things that
go on about Passover time, and then of course there is the Passover
day, but then after that there's the seven days of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. So he's here several days in
Jerusalem, and he is himself the Passover lamb. Now, when
He dies, there are four Passovers that will be observed. This one
here, another one, yet another one, then the last one. And that
was the last, and no matter what Jews may observe today, that
was the last Passover because God's Passover Lamb died then. That one that all the Old Testament
types and figures and pictures and shadows, they all pointed
to His death. He is the Passover Lamb. He's
that sacrifice. He is the Paschal Lamb who died
according to the purpose of God in order to save the people of
His choice. He is that Lamb. So here He is
in His, shall we say, in His official capacity as Messiah. He's begun His ministry, He has
already performed His very first miracle of changing the water
to wine in Cana of Galilee, and then He makes His way, He spends
some time at the house of His mother in Nazareth, and now He
makes His way to Jerusalem and He's here for the Passover feast.
And He remains there for many days. In fact, several writers
said maybe for as long as three weeks he spent time there. Now notice, go back up into chapter
2, verse 23. Now when he was in Jerusalem
at the Passover, in the feast day, in the feast, in the feast,
what feast? Feast of unleavened bread. In the feast of unleavened bread,
which wasn't a singular day, You notice the word day is in
italics. It's an italicized word, which
means our translators, for our benefit, to help us read better
and for our better comprehension, they put this word day in, but
really it's for the feast. This feast didn't last a day,
it lasted seven days. So He's there at the Passover,
in the feast days, it says many believed in His name. Many believed
in His name. Now watch this. They believed
in His name when they saw the miracles which He did. So over
this period of several days that our Lord is in Jerusalem, He's
performing many miracles. Now we don't specifically know
how many miracles He performed. We don't know of what sort the
miracles were. But the physical miracles of
our Lord, they revealed His absolute authority over everything. It
showed His omnipotence. It showed His deity. And we already
know from our studies in the Gospel of John that this is why
John wrote this book as he was led by the Spirit of God to show
that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Son of God. And these
miracles that He performed, they all attested to His deity. So during these several days
he was in Jerusalem, he performed several miracles and he showed
his power over disease, he showed his power over demons, he showed
his power over death, and he showed his power over nature.
They all gave evidence of his deity. Now certainly, our Lord's
performing of so many miracles did not escape the attention
of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, that consisted
of 71 men. That was the greatest, the most
powerful judicial body in all of Israel. The 71st man being
the president of the Sanhedrin, that's the high priest. And of
the Sanhedrin, there was another man and his name was Nicodemus. He's a ruler of the Jews. He's
somebody in religion. He's a member of the who's who
in religion, in Jewish religion, in Judaism. So all of these miracles
did not escape the attention of this man Nicodemus. And they
had an effect upon him, as is evident from chapter 3, the second
verse. I'll read it again. The same
came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that
thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these
miracles. No man can do these miracles
that thou doest except God be with him. He had noticed this
had not escaped his attention, nor most likely the attention
of all the rest of the Sanhedrin. that this man, Jesus of Nazareth,
He came to the city, and He's performing many miracles. Now these miracles weren't all
performed at one time, but spread out over several days. And Nicodemus,
he finds out about it. Maybe he was an eyewitness to
one, we don't know. But he either saw or he heard
of the miracles of the Savior, and therefore he drew near to
Him. Now you'll notice back in chapter 2 and verse 23, it says,
many believed in His name when they saw the miracles which He
did. And on the surface, this sounds good and this looks good. After all, what is it that we
want? We want people to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, John, when he sets forth
his reason for writing this book as he was inspired of the Spirit
of God, he writes that we might know that Jesus is the Christ
and that believing we might have life through His name. So John
writes so that men will believe. And that's what we want. We want
people to believe. I want you to believe the Gospel.
I want you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you
to lay hold of Him. I want you to embrace Him. I
want you to lean all the weight of your soul upon Him. I want
you to see that His is the only righteousness that puts you in
good standing with God. There is no other righteousness
that justifies but the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There is no other blood that
washes us from our sins but the blood of the Son of God. And
I want you to believe in Him, to rest in Him, to embrace Him,
to hug up to the blessed Savior. We want you to believe. That's
what we long for. That's what we ask God for. When
we come to God in prayer, we ask, Lord, Lord, magnify Yourself. Reveal Your glory to us. Give
honor to yourself and reveal yourself to sinners that sinners
might believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Philippian
jailer, after things were shaking all around, his world was just
as shaking. When God sent an earthquake,
and when God sends an earthquake to your soul, you'll be shaking
within and you'll say, what must I do to be saved? And they said,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thou
hast. Believe! That's what we want.
I want people to believe. I want people to rest in the
Lord Jesus. I want God to show them His glory. The glory of God shining in the
face of Christ the Lord. So on the surface, this looks
good. Meaning when they saw the miracles,
they beheld the miracles over several days, not all at once. It wasn't like there was a big
rush of miracles all at once, but apparently it was spread
out over several days. He's performing these miracles,
and people begin to believe in His name. Some believing over
here, and then He goes over and performs a miracle over here.
Some believe when they see this miracle. As He performed these miracles,
people were coming to Him and as He did them, they expressed
to Him, we believe You, we believe You are the Son of God. We believe
You are the Messiah. We believe You are the fulfillment
of all the Old Testament prophecies. But, the faith that they had
was not genuine faith. It was not real faith, it was
false faith. They said they believed on the
Lord Jesus when they saw the miracles which He did, but understand
this. It isn't seeing a miracle. It isn't seeing a miracle that
saves. It's being an object of the miracle
yourself. Something miraculous has got
to happen to you. It's not observing a miracle
out there. Oh, I'm going to believe Him
because He changed the water to wine. No, you believe Him
when He gives you a submissive heart and a new heart of faith.
That's when you'll believe Him. You've got to be an object of
the miracle yourself. Something miraculous has got
to happen in us. We've got to be raised from the
dead before we'll ever believe. To these people, they saw the
miracles and then they believed, but it wasn't real faith. And it's obvious because here's
what's said in verse 24 and 25. But Jesus did not commit himself
to them. Because He knew all men. And
once again that word men is italicized. He knew all. He knew all about
them. He knew every thought. He knew
every action. He knew their hearts. And He
knew deep within their hearts. They didn't believe Him. Not
really. They didn't risk in Him. They
didn't forsake their gods. They didn't forsake their dead
works of religion. They didn't forsake this idea
of keep the commandments and go to heaven. They didn't turn
their back on all that, which is repentance, and then turn
to the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved by His person and by His
work and by His grace alone. Our Lord Jesus saw deep into
their hearts. And He saw that they were still
self-righteous hypocrites within. So He didn't commit Himself to
them. Because He knew all men. He knew all about them. Look
at verse 25. He needed not that any should
testify of man. For He knew what was in man,
just like He knows what's in you. And He knows what's in me. He doesn't need somebody inform
him as to what's going on in your mind and what's going on
in your heart and how sincere you are and how serious you are
about the things of God, how urgent you are about the gospel
and about eternity, about death and judgment and such. He doesn't
need anybody to tell him about you. He knows all. He sees all. He sees you as you really are. He knows the thought that you're
going to think before it even goes through your brain. This
is the omniscience, the all-knowing Savior. And he saw this wasn't real faith.
They didn't have the faith of God's elect. This wasn't a genuine
reception of Christ Jesus. Their souls didn't rest in the
Son of God. They didn't embrace Him. They
didn't commit themselves to Him. They didn't believe that salvation
was solely conditioned upon His obedience unto death, even the
death of the cross. They did not fully and unreservedly
trust Him. And that's what faith is. That's
what faith is. It is to solely, fully, unreservedly
trust Jesus Christ and His work of redemption to save your poor
soul. What is faith? Faith, forsaking
all I trust Him. F-E-I-T-H. Forsaking all I trust
Him. You forsake all your learning,
you forsake all your supposed good works and religious deeds,
you forsake all your Bible reading, all your prayers, all your attendance,
you forsake everything and you look to Jesus Christ alone for
all of your salvation, all of your deliverance. from sin and
Satan and the world and hell and death itself. You look to
Christ only. Go over to 2 Timothy chapter
1. 2 Timothy chapter 1. Listen to what the Apostle Paul
says. And before I read this verse,
which is verse number 2, Well, 2nd Timothy, 2nd Timothy 1.12.
Let me again read this verse in John chapter 2. Jesus did
not, He did not commit Himself unto them because He knew all.
Now listen to 2nd Timothy 1.12. For the cause of the gospel,
for the testimony of our Lord, He says, 2nd Timothy, 1 Corinthians
12, for the which cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless,
I'm not ashamed. It's what we sang a while ago.
For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded, I have absolute
confidence that He is able to keep that which I have committed. I've committed unto Him against
that day. I have made a deposit. I have
deposited my soul with all of its value, with all of its worth.
I've deposited my soul, my life, eternity, I've deposited it all,
I've committed it all to Jesus Christ the Lord. That's what
faith is. It's just leaning fully on Him. See, I could say I'm leaning
on this pulpit, but I'm not fully committed to this pulpit holding
me up. Because I'm still carrying some of the weight on my leg.
But now if I go back here, Now, I've made a full commitment
to this chair. I believe this chair will hold
me up. And it is holding me up. Now
if I do this, that's not a full commitment. And that's what a
lot of people do with Christ Jesus. And so I'm trusting the
Lord Jesus, but they're still kind of standing on their works
a little bit. I had a man came to me just years
ago. He said, I want to be baptized.
And I said, well, why do you want to be baptized? He said,
well, I want to confess faith in Christ. And I said, do you
believe salvation is all in Christ? And I said, do you believe salvation
is all in Jesus Christ and baptism doesn't have anything to do with
salvation? He said, I believe that, but I want to be baptized
just in case. I said, I can't baptize you.
Because there is no just in case. You make a full commitment. You
rest fully, wholly on the Lord Jesus Christ. You commit yourself
lock, stock and barrel to Christ. That's faith. That's faith. And
these people over here in John chapter 2, they didn't do that.
And therefore, the Savior did not commit Himself to them. He
did not entrust Himself to them. You see, our Lord knows what's
in man. He knows we're not trustworthy. There is no faith in us. Did
you know that? There is no faith in us. Faith
is foreign to the natural man. Everybody doesn't have a little
seed of faith. Everybody doesn't have a tiny
little bit of belief within them and then it's like the fan needs
to be blown or waved over the embers and then faith goes poof!
And it just blows out like, no we don't have faith! We don't
have faith. No man will naturally commit
themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Savior said in John
5.40, and you will not come to Me that you might have life.
He said in John 6.44, no man can come to Me. No man can come
to Me except the Father which has sent Me. Draw him, and I'll
raise him up at the last day. Faith is not in us. Not naturally. It's a gift of God. For by grace
are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. That's
not your contribution. So many people think, well you
know Jesus died on the cross and He shed His blood for our
sins and He did all He could do. Now faith is our contribution
to it. No, faith is not our contribution. Faith is a gift that He has to
give us. It's His right to give it and
it's His right to withhold it too. And if He gives faith, we'll
embrace Him. And if he doesn't give faith, if he doesn't give
genuine, real, true faith, we'll be just like these people. It'll
be a head knowledge. We'll get kind of caught up in
the miracles that he did and say, we're going to follow this
one for a while, but it'll fizzle out. See, true faith doesn't
quit. Oh, true faith, it won't fizzle out. True faith won't
die. Because true faith, genuine faith,
is God's gift to us. It's a gift of His grace. So these people, over here in
our text, they believe, but it wasn't genuine faith. Our
Lord didn't commit Himself to them. He didn't commit Himself
to them, and I'll tell you why. Two reasons. Two reasons. He
knew that they didn't have faith, and He didn't commit Himself
to them. He knew what was in them and He knew that this was
not real faith. It says He knew all and He knew
what was in man. He has an exact knowledge of
the human heart. You can fool me. I've been fooled
before. And guess what? I can fool you. But nobody is going to fool Him.
He knows what's in the heart. And I tell you, the second reason
he knew this was not genuine faith was this. Had their faith
been genuine faith, the only way they could have had it, he'd
have had to have given it to them. Isn't that right? He would have had to have given
it to them. And he didn't give it to them. He didn't give it
to them. Faith is a gift of God. Not all
men have faith. All right, now watch this. This brings us to the third chapter.
What is the significance of our Lord's confrontation with Nicodemus? Just this. Here were people who professed
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but they really didn't
believe. So here's the connection right
here. The only people who will believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ are those who have been born again. And that's what this is about
with Nicodemus. He's got to be born again. That
old dead heart, spiritually dead heart, lifeless, dead in trespasses
and sins, it can't produce faith. It can't produce faith. It has
to be given. Well, when is it given? How does
God go about giving us faith? He regenerates. We're born again. And five times in these first
ten verses, the Lord Jesus talks about the new birth. How is it
that a man comes to believe on the Son of God? We've stressed
the importance of it. It's absolutely vital. It's vital. You're not going to glory unless
you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the long and the
short of it. Well, how does anybody come to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? They're born from above. That's
how. They're born of the Spirit. He
gives you a new heart. What is that new heart? It's
a heart of faith. It's a heart to believe on the
Lord Jesus. Note how many times our Lord
talks about being born again to this man. Chapter 3 verse 3, Jesus answered
and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again. He can't see the kingdom of God.
The word see is no. Nicodemus, he begins this all
in verse 2 by saying, Rabbi, we know. Rabbi, we know. He's bragging on his knowledge. And then the Lord Jesus says,
you can't know anything unless you're born again. You're bragging
on your knowledge. You're bragging on how much you
know. Bragging on your intelligence. You're absolutely ignorant unless
you're born from above. That's what the Savior says.
Look at verse 5. Jesus answered, Verily, verily,
I say unto thee, except a man be born of water, that is the
water of the Word, and of the Spirit, he can't enter into the
Kingdom of God. Do you believe there will be
unregenerated people in Heaven? Why, no! That is absurd. Everybody who goes to glory,
everybody who enters into the portals of heavenly glory, they
go there through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ through
His substitutionary death that has been made real to them through
the regenerating, the quickening, the new birthing power of the
Spirit of God. You're not going to see it and
you're not going to enter into it unless you're born again.
He says in verse 6, That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
And may I just say this, that which is born of the flesh is
flesh and that's all it will ever be. It's never going to
get any better than flesh. If you're expecting your flesh
to get better as you grow in the grace and the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ, you've got false expectations. The flesh
is not going to get better. The flesh is rotten. The flesh
is sin. The flesh is opposed to God.
It was before your conversion. It still is. It always will be
till God kills it. That which is flesh is flesh.
That's all it's ever going to be. And on the other hand, that which
is born of the Spirit, of God the Holy Spirit, It's spirit. So he says in verse 7, marvel
not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. There it
is again. In verse 8, the wind bloweth
where it listeth. Thou hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.
So is everyone that is born of the spirit. Born of the spirit. You see the great need of Nicodemus. is the new birth. The new birth. He needed God to do something
for him. That's what we need. Preachers
running around all over this country trying to get people
to do something for God. I'll tell you the issue is this. God needs to do something for
people. Ain't nobody gonna worship God
unless God does work grace in their hearts. Nobody's gonna
look to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith. They're not gonna have
the faith that God demands, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
thou shalt be saved. There just will be no faith unless
there's the new birth. Do not confuse responsibility
with ability. Everybody is responsible to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the Son of God. He came
into this world. You're responsible to believe
Him. But responsibility is not the
same as ability. We lost all ability in Adam's
fall. And nobody will believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ until and unless the Spirit of God gives them
life. And then that life will be made
evident in that they believe on the Son of God. You say, well, if I believed
that, I'd just quit preaching. No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't
quit preaching. You'd be encouraged to preach.
You'd be just like Ezekiel. Go out there and preach. It's
a bunch of dry bones out there. Well, can the bones live? Lord
God, thou knowest. Well, I'm just going to preach
to them. You know, when I first started
out in career, it's not really a career, but I thought about
being an undertaker. Yeah. And then I decided I didn't want
to fool with dead people all my life. So I became a preacher. I'm still fooling with dead people
all my life. It's just spiritually dead people. Our only hope is the Lord give
us life. And that's why we ask God, that's
why we pray. These people who talk about You
know, they want people to be saved and then they'll pray,
Lord, save these people. Well, what are they asking God
for? Because they don't believe God can save them. They don't
believe that God can quicken them. They don't believe in the
necessity of the new birth. Want to just go out and lasso
a sinner and tie him up and deprive him of food and water until they
believe. If it's all up to the sinner. It's not up to the sinner. It's up to the Savior. You know,
that's what the scripture says. It's up to the Savior. He's got
to give us life. And our Lord Jesus, He just nails
Nicodemus down. Nicodemus had heard all of the
uproar. He's heard about all the miracles
that have been performed. And all these people that said
they believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. And here He comes along.
He just kind of follows in with the rest of them. Rabbi, we know
you're a great teacher come from God. Nobody can do the work that
you do, except God be with you. Our Lord Jesus said, Sir, you've
got to be born again. You puffed up in your knowledge,
in your arrogance, in your self-righteousness, in your religion. You think you're
somebody. The Savior says to them in verse
10, you're a master in Israel. You're a doctor in Israel. You
teach the preachers. You teach religion. And you don't know these things?
Here's what your problem is. You're dead. You need to be born
again. And there have been books written on the new birth, how
to be born again. The Lord Jesus never told Nicodemus
how to be born again. That's the work of the Spirit.
This is not something you do. It's not like building a house.
It's not some effort on your part. He said the Spirit of God
is like the wind. It blows where it wants to. And
here are these people who observed the miracles of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and guess what? The Spirit didn't blow over them.
He didn't blow their way. You can't make the Spirit move.
You can't make the wind blow. And when the wind starts blowing,
you can't stop it either. That's why we talk about irresistible
grace. invincible power when God the
Holy Spirit takes the Word of the Gospel and He drives it home
into the heart of a chosen, redeemed sinner. And He quickens him.
He's born again of the Spirit of God. That's what's got to
happen. That's why we beseech God. Oh Lord, do You work of grace. Lord for our children, Lord for
our grandchildren, Lord for our other loved ones, Lord, for our
friends and our neighbors. Oh God, oh God, would you work. Would you make bare your mighty
arm of salvation. God be born again. God to be
born again. So, here he is. He's a ruler
of the Jews. He's a man of religious authority.
He comes to Jesus by night, and I'm not, I know a lot of commentators,
they put a lot of, they say a lot of things about what that coming
to Jesus by night indicates or what it means. I do know this,
every time Nicodemus is mentioned in the Bible, it is also mentioned
this one who came to Jesus by night. I certainly, I don't know
whether he came by night because he's embarrassed to come by day
or not. But I do know this, He came to
Jesus at night because night time was the state of His soul.
He's in darkness. He's in darkness. Nobody can
turn the lights on but the Lord of Glory. He, the Son of Righteousness,
has got to arise with healing in His wings. He's got to shine
the light of the Gospel in the heart. And when He does, in His
light, you know what happens? We see light. Know what it says? In His light, we see light. And when He gives us life, when
He makes us alive, the evidence of that, what's the evidence
of life? We cry out to Him. And we're hungry for His Word.
Baby born in this world begins to cry out. He's hungry, wants
to eat. That's what people who are born
again in the Spirit of God, a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
They find it in Christ Jesus. It's due to the work of God within.
Well, we'll pick up with this again next week, this story here.