In this text, we know that Jesus
is speaking with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who came to Him, and saw Him, and confessed to
Jesus that He knew, or that they knew that He was indeed from
God. And Jesus tells him that he must
be born again. Jesus tells him that he must
be born of the water and the Spirit. Jesus tells him that
he cannot see the kingdom without that birth. And Nicodemus responds
in such a way that is confusing and that reveals that he is confused. And then Jesus, if we look at
verse 9, we start to see exactly what
it is that Jesus is teaching. When Nicodemus asks, how can
these things be? Now friends, I want us to think about
that for a moment. When we hear the truth of the
Gospel in our fleshly minds, we really do ask the question,
how can these things be? If we were not given the sight
to see the truth of Scripture by the Spirit, no matter how
hard we've studied, we would still, even if we would not confess
it audibly or to each other, we would say, how can these things
be? And even though we have been given understanding, even though
we have been given illumination by the Spirit of God, we still
find ourselves, if we were honest, how can these things be? Look at verse 9. How can these
things be? Jesus answered, Are you the teacher
of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Truly,
truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we bear
witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I've told you earthly things,
like birth and wind, and you do not understand them, do not
comprehend them, do not believe in them, how can you believe
if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son
of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal
life." Now friends, we know that if
we look at history, and if we look very deeply into our own
lives philosophically, if we look at the mind, And we begin
to ask ourselves, what is it that I've really wanted to know?
Somebody said, well I wish I'd learned a new language. Not what
you wanted to learn, what is it that you want to know? Because
learning and knowing are completely different. Many people learn,
but yet they know nothing. Nicodemus learned, but he knew
nothing. Everything that he knew was fruitless. Everything that he knew was condemning. Everything that he knew, he looked
through blind eyes and saw nothing. The plight of man has always
entailed a desire to gaze into the sublime. Every human being
that has ever lived has given at some time in their life the
thought that, oh, what else must there be in this world? Surely
the existence that I know is not it. Am I right? That's where
people have spent trillions of dollars just in the last decade.
Let me say that again. Trillions of dollars just in
the last decade. Government agencies just in the
last decade to find life in outer space. People starve and we are in debt
and they're poking into nothingness to find something that's already
been revealed. Men want to gaze into the sublime,
men want to know it, men want to master it and want to be the
master of the truth of all things, all things supernatural and all
things miraculous and all things powerful. I mean though I believe
it is impressive for someone to have a good mind that can
do mathematics or linguistics. You don't see them being paid
a thousand dollars a day to stand in front of crowds of hundreds
of thousands of people and talk about their problems or talk
about their theories. The same thing is true when good
expositors stand in plenary sessions across the nation and across
the world for free. and charge no one anything to
come in here, but yet they barely fill up the front rows of most
arenas. Oh, but if a man comes to the
stage knowing nothing, not even having a good theory at all,
but comes to say, I know how you can have the mysteries of
life, not only will it pack it out, but they will pay dearly
to hear nothing. The truth is man cannot see,
man cannot gaze into the sublime, man cannot gaze into the supernatural,
man cannot gaze into the unknown and the unseeable because he
is blind. Nicodemus was one of these men.
How can these things be? Man cannot know it and man can
never master the truth of God for He is truth. and He is the
Lord. Man cannot comprehend. Consider
some things that we've learned thus far in the narrative of
this text and even as it relates to what we've seen in the prologue. But just in John 3, we know that
one cannot see and one cannot comprehend Jesus without being
born again. We also have learned that man
is really aloof when it comes to supernatural things. When
it comes to spiritual things, we are aloof. That's why it's
always better for the masses to attach themselves to someone
who has some biblical knowledge, but then they come from without
to attach something else to it. Like maybe they've discovered
something hidden. Or maybe they've counted the
verse numbers and they've come up with a date. Or maybe they've
come to a place where they say, God gave them a vision. Why? Because all of us desperately
sit and blankly look into the pages of text and we say, well,
we don't see that. This person has an inside view. This person has insight. Let
us find that which we're looking for and come and believe that
which has not even been told to us because someone else has
discovered it. We find it humorous, but it is
the very thing that we see as the mainstay of the appetite
of humanity and sadly the mainstay of the appetite of people who
profess to be the church of Jesus Christ. They would rather experience
something outside of the text rather than know the one who
is revealed through it. Nicodemus was excited about what
Jesus was showing them. Nicodemus and the Pharisees and
others were a little bit inquisitive at the nature of who Jesus could
be. The fact that He had power, the
fact that He proclaimed with great authority the Word of God,
and He authoritatively taught them what they should have already
known, but then, yet, now they're seeing things a little bit differently.
If Jesus were alive today, the masses that followed Him would
be no different than the many who believed in His name during
the time that He was in Jerusalem. They would see what He did, and
they would experience what they saw, and then their excitement
and their affection would be in the experience, would be in
the emotion, would be in the endorphins, would be in what
the mind did to the body to give them some sense of joy. Beloved,
the joy that is ours in Christ is a supernatural joy that comes
through the knowledge, that comes through Scripture, that is empowered
by the Spirit, which is the new birth. God has not called us
to understand, then we might believe. God calls us to believe
when we cannot, and then He does a miracle that causes us to be
able to see and then believe. And when the grace of God is
given to bring a man to life, he nor she, a woman, a child,
they will not not believe. They will believe. Man is aloof. He's unable to
grasp even the earthly imagery of spiritual things. Even the
pictures, if you will. We've also learned that the new
birth is what God the Spirit does. And that one cannot enter
the kingdom without the work of God. We've seen that man is
born in sin. and that He is flesh, and that
flesh begets flesh, and that flesh cannot do anything spiritually,
and that flesh cannot become spiritual, but in order for flesh
to become spiritual, that flesh must be rebirthed by the One
who is Spirit. And then the Spirit, then what?
Begets the Spirit. We've also learned that in order
to see and enter the kingdom of heaven, one must be born anew,
and that all who are born anew by the Spirit of God will see
the kingdom, and they will enter into the kingdom of heaven. We've
learned that the work of God the Spirit is the work of His
own choosing, in His own timing, for His own purposes. And I'll
say in a minute, but I'll go ahead and give you a primer here.
We cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, in any way,
through any words, or any following, any precepts, command God. We
cannot command God. We cannot command His Spirit.
We cannot manipulate God through the twisting of His Word. We
cannot say, this is what you promised in your word, God, so
now you have to uphold it. We cannot do these things. God
is true. We don't put God to the test,
and we don't hold God hostage to His own nature. He created
us. We certainly cannot command the
Spirit of God because we said the right words to make us new. That, beloved, is what the world
knows as witchcraft. The right spell, the Spirit moves. We've also learned, just as Nicodemus,
just as Jesus shows us there, you're not the teacher of Israel
and yet you don't understand these things. How are you to
understand spiritual things if you cannot understand earthly
things? Do you not see? We know that no amount of academic
pursuits or human learning can give spiritual understanding.
And these are reviews. We've learned this over the last
week or so. Now there are a lot of other
sermons in this text, but today I will finish through verse 15.
Next week I will be in verse 16. There are a lot of other sermons
here. If I had it my way, I could go in and probably preach 20
to 30 sermons out of John 3. Because there's a lot there that
I want you to see. There's a lot there I want you to know. There's
a lot of things that are alluded to. A lot of statements that
go so much deeper than just what's argued on the page. But for the
sake of exposition, we can just teach what's here. And by the
Lord's grace, we'll learn those things as we continue as a people
together. But consider some of the things
that we could look for. Things that are obvious that
have already been given to us through the first chapter and
the second chapter, that the darkness of man is blinding,
but the light of Jesus Christ shines in the darkness. We've
learned that. We've seen that in John 2. We
will see that in John 3 through the teaching of Jesus. We will
see that in John 4 with the salvation of the woman of Sychar. We will
see the light of the gospel of Christ overcoming the darkness
and the blindness of men. We'll see the new birth is by
the Lord's will, by the Spirit through which He makes a sinner
a saint. He declares us just because in the new birth we can
believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Now the crazy
thing is that Jesus was preaching the gospel of faith alone in
Him, in Himself, before He even died on the cross. Amazing, isn't
it? Because we can trust in Jesus
Christ and the work of God for salvation, by the power of the
Spirit of God through the hearing of the words of Christ and have
salvation even before salvation was perfected. No, we may not
grasp it all. We may not, as the disciples,
did not really fully understand and comprehend the depths of
what Jesus had been teaching until after He was raised from
the dead. And then they saw the, wow, this is what He was talking
about. If I use a phrase in a foreign language today, and I don't tell
you what it means, and you haven't recorded it and can't go Google
it, and you don't have a clue, and all of a sudden you hear
it again, you'll be like, wait a minute, I've heard that. And then one day when you see it
on a billboard, you go, well, that's what pastor was talking about.
How about that? It's the same with the teaching of Scripture.
But it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that the people who did
not completely understand everything were lost. Because beloved, let's
just be honest, we don't completely understand everything. So in
that sense we're lost in our ways, we're lost in our wisdom,
but our wisdom is Christ and the truth of the gospel and the
simplicity of what Scripture teaches is what's most important,
not the deep things that are hidden. Because I'll be honest
with you, I don't believe that the Scripture has hidden anything. I believe that when we start
to dig in the Word of God and we think that there's something
there that we can't see yet, it's because we're not satisfied
with the simplicity of the power of what is visible. And that
we're discontent in our heart and we're looking for something
more. And all we really need is what is right in front of
us. Jesus says that your faith must be like a child for a reason. We don't need high academics.
and credentials in order to be a scholar in the Gospel. Some
of the wisest men I've ever met in my life were dumb as a bag
of rocks. But I longed to have what they
had, and I pursued it through books and writings. And when the Holy Spirit of God
began to teach me through the Scriptures, all those things
just sort of faded into nothing. We could teach baptism. I've
had several of you ask me about how this relates to baptism.
I could teach a text or a sermon or six on baptism because we
see the word water there, right? We see the idea of water and
the Spirit. We could talk about baptism. While done in water,
it is not in play here. Many commentators like to place
it here, but Jesus makes no mention of baptism. And Nicodemus, as
part of the Sanhedrin and as a Pharisee, would have understood
baptism as his reference very clearly. Because baptism is a
Jewish ritual. And it's always been a Jewish
ritual. And baptism's meaning changed when Christ came. But that's not what he's talking
about there. He's talking about the work of the Spirit of God.
We've already clarified that. We must continue to look, if
we can, and remember as we look at what else we're going to learn
in this text, that as I've just said, the Spirit cannot be commanded. We cannot make ourselves alive
just because we do what we have been told to do. We could teach about the Kingdom
of Heaven. We could make sermons here about the role of Jesus
and His offices and ministry. We could teach about total depravity
and the federal headship of Adam. I didn't say federal vision.
I said federal headship of Adam. Don't throw me out because I
use a word. Federal headship of Adam as our
Father who imparts sin and depravity to us. We were all sinners. We could teach about that. We
could teach about the command and the authority of Christ as
the Living Word, which you already have, sort of. But right here
in John 3, we could show these things. It's there. We could
teach numerous articles on the new birth and its product, its
fruitfulness, its power. what it can do. We could teach
about the methods of learning and the knowledge of Jewish people.
We could do a history lesson on the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees.
We could talk about who the Sadducees were and we could really deal
with the Romanistic influence and the oversight that Rome had
over first century Jerusalem. I mean, it's mentioned. It's
there. We could pull it out and we could start. It's not argued,
but it's talked about so we could extrapolate. We could go to other
places and go to other sources. We could preach sermon after
sermon after sermon. We could find a few sermons just
in this text in John 3 about the testimony of God concerning
the Son. We could engage in all the numerous
allusions related to the idea that one could see and engage
with the presence of God. We could elaborate on the idea
that the new heaven and earth the earthly rule of Christ, what
it meant, and what it ultimately meant eternally. We could see
the different thoughts concerning the Incarnation. And we could
discuss eternal submission. We could look and see what in
the world. We could talk about the generation of the Trinity.
There's a lot of things that we could do. We could look at
the Old Testament prophecies about the Son of Man, and the
plethora of teachings that deal with saving faith. So I literally
could preach the rest of next year, just in John 3, if I took
topics out of it. But you would not be getting
exposition. Though it would be true and fruitful teaching, you
would begin to lose sight of what is being taught here. And
oh, how I want to teach these things. But what is now being
taught, starting in verse 9, we've already gone through a
little bit last week. Let's reiterate some of that.
Verse 9 and 10. How can these things be? Are
you not the teacher of Israel, yet you do not understand these
things? Remember what we've said now probably seven times. Man
cannot comprehend the gospel. Man cannot comprehend the teaching
of Christ. Man cannot comprehend the Word
of God without being born again. without being birthed anew, no
matter His place, no matter His genealogy, no matter His education,
no matter His expertise. No human being can grasp truth
unless he's born again. Now see, some people say, well,
Jesus was troubled. He couldn't believe Nicodemus.
That's not true. He said, truly, truly, I say,
truly, truly, I say, you must be born again. You must be born
again. You must be born again. What
you've said to me, you must... Jesus wasn't baffled that Nicodemus
was baffled. Jesus rebuked him and did so
that he might see that nothing he knew was worth anything. Now people don't like what I
just said. And I actually have had several people in the last
few weeks get in my face in some sense. Because I dare, what they
say, mock the understanding of Israel when it comes to the Word
of God. A man even yesterday said that the Jews understood
Scripture completely accurately. Really? Then what in the world
was Jesus talking about here? What in the world was Jesus talking
about in John 2 when He cleansed the temple? What sign do you
bring? The sign from your own Scripture. Silly. What sign do
you bring, they say? What sign do you bring, they
say in John 6? And they go to the Mishnah, they go to the myths
and to the history of Jewish writing. Let me see the staff
of Aaron, let me see the bread, the manna that's still in the
Ark of the Covenant. Show me that, then I'll believe you're
Jesus. Then I'll believe you're the Christ. No you wouldn't.
You'd believe in signs, you'd believe in wonders, you'd believe
in miracles, you'd believe in relics. Nicodemus and all those
like him believed in relics. They believed in the relic of
their own bloodline. They believed in the relic of
their own authority. They believed in the relic of
their own covenant. They believed in the relic of
their own myths. They believed in the relic. I
guarantee you, had Israel had the bronze snake that Moses lifted
in the desert, they'd enshrine it. Even today, they'd enshrine
it and worship it. The second thing we learn is
that the new birth makes sense of blind learning. As Nicodemus
had all of this knowledge and all of this learning and all
of this understanding, beloved, many people can know what the
Bible is teaching and be correct about it, but it doesn't mean
that they know it. Can you just repeat yourself?
They can know what it says, but it doesn't mean they know it.
Or better yet, it doesn't mean they know Him. Are you in that
number? Is your faith an academic faith?
Is your faith an experiential faith of following after your
understanding? Or is your faith a blind faith
that is given sight spiritually to believe in Jesus Christ despite
or in spite of how deeply you understand what He's done for
you? A great lifetime of biblical
education will never enable one with spiritual lives. And I'm
not knocking biblical education. There was a time when I used
to read a hundred books a year. Don't have that time anymore. And none of those books really
did much for me in comparison to what God's Word does for me. But I believe it's good to learn.
I believe it's good to study. I believe it's good to read.
I believe it's good to pursue things. But let's not put that
as spiritual maturity. Let's not put that as power. Let us remember that the power
of God comes through Scripture and that the knowledge of God
comes through Scripture by the Spirit. The new birth will make
sense of blind learning. and academic pursuits. Something
else that we learn here is that the new birth illuminates the
human being. And it does so in such a way
is that we're able to understand, now hear this, we're able to
understand the mind of Christ. Because ultimately what's happening
here with Nicodemus is Nicodemus is confessing Christ, Christ
rebukes him. And Nicodemus is confused. So
Christ explains simply. Nicodemus is saying that's impossible.
Christ rebukes him again and shares with him the reality that
he's dead. Not only did he come to Jesus
at night, he was dark. And that's proven at the end
of this text. Jesus doesn't change audiences
when he says this is the judgment. The light has come into the world,
but you, Nicodemus, have loved the darkness because your works
are evil. Now, if we were to follow Nicodemus
around, there would be no evil work for us to check off our
pad. There would be nothing from our standard of righteousness
to say, oh, Nicodemus, you're going to be brought before synagogue
discipline. You're going to be brought up. I'm going to take
your phylacteries away. Look at you, you were haughty
to your neighbor. You cussed when your camel stepped on your
foot. I heard it. Nope, none of that. What we would
see was Nicodemus studying the Word of God. What we would see
would be Nicodemus praying to God. What we would see with Nicodemus
serving and doing things in the temple. What we would see is
that they would teach and he would teach during synagogue,
I mean during temple, he would teach during the temple services.
What we would see is that they would rebuke those who were living
in outward sin. What we would see is that they
would try to make peace and follow the rituals given to them through
Moses as best they were able to. And Jesus said, those works
were evil. Wow. Why? Because He didn't understand
them. He put His trust in them. He put his hope in who he was,
not who Christ was. Man speaks of what he knows.
As we get into verse 11, Nicodemus has said, we know that you are.
Now, if that were given to you today as a question, what is
it that you know about who Jesus is? If Jesus were to ask that
question as He asked of the disciples, Who do you say that I am? And
of course, Peter, the spokesman of the Twelve, spoke rightly
when he said, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Where
Jesus responds and says, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for man
has not revealed these things to you, inclusive of your own
mind, O man. Man has not given these things
to you, but the Father has told you these things. and not just a breath later,
after confessing the truth about Jesus, it shows you that though
the truth was in Peter, Peter was as ignorant as they come. and that the flesh is of no consequence,
the flesh is of no help, the flesh is a hindrance to faith
alone. Everywhere we go, we can confess
the right truth, but brothers and sisters, our minds will twist
us out of faith. Thank God He's faithful, because
if it were up to us, we would all be getting saved every 30
seconds. I'm lost, I'm saved. I'm lost,
I'm saved. I'm lost. It's the most boring
roller coaster ride in history. Never get off the ground. Man speaks of what he knows.
Nicodemus knew nothing. But then Jesus in verse 11 says,
we speak of what we know. Now, I mentioned this last week,
but not in much detail. Jesus is not proving Trinitarian
theology here. Jesus is- this is not the plural
pronoun we in the sense that we see in Genesis 1. Let us. Septuagint. Jesus is just responding in the
plural safety. Remember me talking about this
last week? The safety of saying, Nicodemus saying, we know. And
if they were right, it's like, wow, we got it right, I got it
right too. If it's wrong, they go, you know, I sort of wasn't
standing with them. You ever been there? You ever like the
safety of the crowd? Well, let me tell you something,
beloved. There is no safety of the crowd when it comes to faith
in Christ. You're not going to be standing next to somebody
else in judgment. And Jesus is going to say, you
know what? Y'all have been hanging out together. Come on in together. No. Personally
and particularly, you must believe in Jesus Christ alone. You cannot
believe in the safety of our doctrine. You cannot believe
in the safety of our confession. You cannot believe in the safety
of my preaching. You cannot believe in the safety
of your church membership. You cannot believe in the safety
of the ministry that you do, and the amount of work that you
do for Christ, and the number of people you share the gospel
with. Your security is in the person of Jesus Christ alone,
in whom you personally must trust completely and alone. Man speaks of what he knows.
Jesus spoke of what He knows. And what is it that He says?
Man speaks from blindness and thus is a fool. Even in this
most brilliant moment, without the illumination of the Holy
Spirit, man is a fool. The new birth enables a man to
see and receive the testimony of God. See there? You do not
receive our testimony. I've told you earthly things.
You can't believe them. You can't receive them. You can't
acknowledge them. You can't trust in them. You
can't see them. All these words are interchangeable. How in the
world are you to believe and see and trust in spiritual things?
How are you to trust in the message that I've given you for salvation,
Nicodemus, if you can't even see them or comprehend them?
The Spirit of God must birth them anew. The new birth illuminates
the human being and gives him the understanding, listen, of
the mind of Christ. That's why Paul can so emphatically
command the people of Philippi. When he says, have this mind
among you, Listen, "...have this mind among
you, which is yours in Christ Jesus." What is Paul saying there
in Philippians 2? He's saying, he's commanding,
have this mind. And then he gives the teaching,
the didactic, the doctrine, which is yours in Christ Jesus. And
then he explains what the mind of Christ is. God, equal, not,
boasting. Though he was equal with God,
he did not take it to something to be grasped. He did not come
out and say, Ta-da! I'm God! Boom! Shooting fire from his
hands. I mean, I would have done that. Laser eyes and all. That's where they would have
gotten the Godzilla from. That's not what Jesus came to do. Jesus
will come and He will bring all things and place them all under
His feet. And every believer and every
unbeliever will confess Him as Lord. Everyone. It often troubles my spirit.
Well, it always troubles my spirit when I hear often people mock
the gospel. As if they've got tomorrow. As
if it doesn't really matter. As if they go to hell, they'll
just have a good time with all their sinner buddies. The eternal wrath of God is poured
out completely and eternally on everyone who is not in Christ. And the eternal wrath of God
is done so in a way that those who receive it eternally confess
Jesus as Lord on their knees forever. You will confess Him. Every man, every woman, every
child, every toddler, every infant will confess Christ as Lord.
Whether they're in judgment or in grace. The new birth allows a man to
see and understand the mind of Christ. So that when Jesus through
Scripture, by the Spirit, teaches what is said, we understand it
to the level in which God wants us to see it. First for salvation,
then for peace, then for maturity, then for unity, and so on, and
so on, and so on, to the praise of His glorious grace. That we
might continually grow in our understanding of the mercy of
God. This new birth enables a man
to see and receive the testimony of God. This comes from Scripture. There is no man living today
who can hear God apart from His Word. Let me say that again. There is no man living today. When I say man, I mean human.
Living today, who can hear God apart from His Word. Now some
people say, well I heard God. Really? And I'll steal away from
my brother Trey, well you better write that down in the back of
your Bible because it's scripture. If you've heard from God, you
need to get some blank pages and write it in the Bible. And
then you better disseminate it and share it and get others to
write it in theirs. Oftentimes we mistake the leading
and the working of the Holy Spirit in our own voice, in our own
conscience, in our own mind as God telling us something. God
tells us what is in Scripture. God teaches us what is here.
God speaks to us through this way. But why? Remember when we
started our service this morning and the sermon? Remember what
we talked about? The fact that so many times we want to experience
something mystical or supernatural rather than the truth of what's
right in front of us. The Lord works only through the
context of the Holy Writ, the Bible. And anything that is taught
there can be seen by the power of the Spirit. Anything that's
taught in Scripture can be understood. You know why so many believers
don't grow in their understanding of Scripture? Let me give you
a hint. You know why? Here's a little
thing that you should write on your hand. They don't read it. I've never met a surgeon, neurosurgeon. That would have been a good career
path for me. That was just how stressful. I would have made
it three years. I'm sick of these people. Hands
flying in the air. Could you imagine a neurosurgeon
going, I've talked to a lot of surgeons. I've read magazines
on neurology. And I used to cut up chickens
in high school. I mean, how hard can it be? How hard can it be? You ever started in IV? It's
not easy. Somebody's gotta let you practice
over and over again. Nobody would go to a surgeon,
hey, you know I have a pain in my neck, I can't see out of my
left eye. Oh, you need surgery on your nerves. Come on in, let
me read up on that this weekend. Surgery for Dummies subscription.
I'm going to read up on that and we're going to get you taken
care of, okay? How many times have you ever done this? I've
never done it, but we're going to fix you up. I'm confident. Alright,
you know, test that out when you change your oil for the first
time. Or check the pressure on your tires. Don't live your life like that
with the Word of God. The reason Christians do not
grow in their understanding of the knowledge of God is because
they don't read their Bible. Or when they do read their Bible,
it's in response to some really bad situation. Oh my God, what
am I going to do? Get my Bible! I mean, that's
not working, y'all. I've never gone more than two
days without eating. And in those times, it's because
it was really horrible illness, food poisoning. Because I ate
the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place two days
before. But even the sickest moments,
the depressed moments, I don't skip a lot of meals. Do you? And y'all ain't skipping a lot
of baths either. By the non-smell of things. We brush our teeth. We get up,
we go to work, we go to school, we do what we're supposed to
do because it's our routine. It's required of us to continue
the life in which we want to live and we've got to continue
to do the things at a minimum way, at a minimum standard, at
a minimum expectation to maintain the life we live. Beloved, we
cannot maintain our Christian faith in peace and understanding
and growth if we're not in Scripture. What am I supposed to read? Read
John's Gospel. Read Romans. Not only are they
good letters to continually read every single day, but we as a
church are going through them every single week. And if you're
not able to be here midweek, go online and listen to the Romans
teaching. It's a lot broader than what we're doing on Sunday
morning. This new birth, this Scripture,
the Spirit of God allows us to receive the testimony of God
which is found in the pages of the Bible. The Lord works and
the Spirit illuminates. Man's wisdom can be great by
the Lord's power, but it's not man's wisdom, it's the wisdom
of Christ. It's Christ who is our wisdom. Let me tell you where stuff like
this starts to break down for us as Christians. when calamity,
pain, suffering, strife, illness, relational issues start to hit
us. We stop learning because the urgent testimony
and the pain that we're going through today seems to be greater
than the ineffable power of Christ. And we think, well, I don't have
the opportunity, I don't have the heart, I don't have the mind
to sit down and read my Bible. And you mothers, it is not a
sin to sit down and study your Bible when there's other things
to do. Let your children see the dishes
sitting or make them wash them. Let the day go at the cost of
your house and invest in the Word of God. Do not let the enemy
tell you that you're guilty, that you should feel guilty.
And in the same turn, husbands, let the grass grow. You can cut it in an hour. What God can do in three minutes
is greater than what one man can do in 300 years. Do you want to receive the testimony
of God? You must hear the Word. Man's wisdom can be so great
by the Lord's power that even a child of the age of eight can
be wiser and greater in the Lord than a man with a Ph.D. in theology. For God is not looking for experts and professionals. God has found His sheep. After all, as I mentioned already,
the faith of a child is necessary. What does that really look like?
It is a dependent faith. It is a faith that does not impose
its own thoughts or wisdom or philosophy. It is a faith that
sees clearly the surface of what is taught in Scripture. It is
a faith that is so blind that when you hold your hand like
this to a child who just saw it open, and you say, what's
in my hand, they will pry at it like a bar and a burglar to
get what's not in there. And then when they open it and
they see nothing, they'll go, you're a magician. How simple is the faith of a
child? I heard something in my closet.
There's something under my bed. And you go in there with all
the power and the might of a father and you grab that invisible nothing
and you beat it up and you throw it out the window and they sleep
like a baby. I got it. We bring too much to the table
of faith. The faith of a child has no inference.
The faith of a child has no philosophy. The faith of a child has no human
wisdom. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 1 that man's wisdom is nothing. Paul goes on to say that he came
not in eloquence, not in wisdom, but he says, I was barely able
to stand up. I was barely able to speak. And I came to you and
I preached one message. And of course we know the Corinthians,
they received the gospel, but they allowed a lot of sin to
just run rampant amongst them. People who were professing Christ,
who were in the fellowship of the body and receiving the benefits
thereof, and they were not rebuking this wickedness. And Paul's like,
I came there with nothing but the Gospel, but the Word of the
Cross. Because if I came there with
anything else, the Cross would lose its power. Listen, beloved,
when we come to our understanding of the Scripture with our own
wisdom, with our own insight, and with our own philosophy,
Jesus Christ is nothing. The cross is worthless. The gospel
is no good news at all. It's just some additive on the
back of a postcard in the reference section of our spiritual journal. The Bible says that the gospel
is the power of God unto salvation. To which most of humanity says,
how can these things be? How can that be that Jesus suffered,
that He came from heaven, that He was raised to life? How can
that be that all that is required of me is to believe in everything
that Christ has done? How can that be that I must be
born from heaven? How can that be? Why do we not
even hear the teaching of the new birth anymore in our culture? because it's too far beyond the
wisdom and the intelligence of our day. It's beyond good wisdom. It's beyond good logic. It's
beyond it. It's a fairy tale. It's like
saying that the earth is flat on the back of a tortoise, crawling
through space. There are people who believe
that. And if you are one of them, I
am not poking at you. I'm just saying there are people
who believe that. People running out the door,
you know. Heavenly things are glorious.
Earthly things cannot even be understood by our human wisdom.
What Christ has said is that it is impossible to see. but He has taught it, so it is
truth. What Christ has said is impossible to understand. How
is it that I am to be born again? What must I do? And do you know
what you must do? Nothing. So even when we come to the place
in our community where we try to come find some commonality
on the common ground and say, okay, we're all evangelicals,
we're all Christians, we're all Baptistic, We're all gospel-centered, and
we're going to come to a... We do believe you've got to be
born again. But let's just say that we agree to disagree that
the new birth, for some of us, happened when we believed in
Christ. That's what some people say. Friends, that's a lie. If your faith calls you to be
born again, guess what? then your wisdom is in play.
Then your knowledge is in play. Your power is in play. Your ability
is in play. Your philosophy is in play. Your
actions are in play. Your works are in play. And God
had to respond to you, beloved. No, faith is the fruit of regeneration. Faith happens only after God's
Word goes to a dead, blind sinner. And they hear it with their human
ears, but what they don't know is happening is that the power
of God through God the Holy Spirit is working in their hearts, and
changing their hearts, and opening their spiritual eyes, and they
see, and they go, I've never seen this before! Oh my goodness! Look at this! I believe! I believe! I believe! Christ
alone is my salvation. If a man is not born again, he
is forever, forever relegated and assigned to reprobation.
And that is an eternal thing. We're not getting to that this
morning. But he is forever going to be consigned to wrath. And if a man is not born again,
he will never believe on Christ, no matter how much knowledge,
no matter how much he says, no matter how much he does. And
this is not how we share the evangel by saying, God's going
to birth you again, or He's not. We teach the Scripture and we
call every person that can hear to believe on the truth of the
gospel of Jesus, for it is good news. And when God good and well
wishes, He opens their eyes and brings them to life. and then
He is celebrated and worshipped and glorified in it. You want to be on the hook for
people who don't believe? Be my guest. If you want to live
in that kind of prison that's unbiblical, be my guest. You
can be the puppet of the enemy for the rest of your natural
day. Christ saves alone. And I'm getting to the point
where when people hear it in Scripture and then they reject
it, and then call it demonic, they have committed the sin of
the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Because they have clearly seen,
hear me, clearly seen what Scripture says about God's gospel and regeneration
and the gospel of grace, and they reject it and then call
it demonic. That is an unpardonable sin, beloved. And God will shut
them off. One lie that the enemy continues
to propagate in our culture is that you've always got time as
long as you're alive. Not true. Just yesterday, someone told
Jesse and I, yeah, I'm going to repent. I'm going to repent
of that. Jesse said, you better repent
today and believe the gospel. Because repentance is believing
the gospel. and not yourself. Repentance is changing your mind
of thinking that you're going to get things straight and just
trust in the work of life alone. Repentance is not getting better. Repentance is not turning your
sin around. That's a lie. Repentance is, no longer I but
Christ. Nothing I bring but all of Jesus.
Maturity, growth, discipline. These are where we see the ebbs
and flows of spiritual growth and sinning and not sinning,
etc. These aren't qualifiers for salvation. These aren't conditions to be
met in order that one must believe. You must be born again, Nicodemus,
in order for you to see the glory of the kingdom and enter into
it. I am the glory of that kingdom. I am the eternal life. As Jesus
would say in John 11, I am the resurrection and the life. These heavenly things are glorious,
and in order for us to see them, they must come from God. They
must be given to us by God. It is not a pamphlet sitting
on a shelf for us to take. It is a true and powerful message
that God sends supernaturally into the heart of a new man and
a new woman so that they might believe. In this text that we've
seen this morning, Jesus says that no man is the source of
truth. Because no man has ever seen heaven except the man who
descended from heaven. No one has ascended into heaven,
verse 13, except he who descended from heaven. Who is that? The
Son of Man. Scripture. says that Jesus has
been there because He is from there, that is His dwelling place,
the abode of God, and He comes from God, and He teaches from
God, and He is God, and He speaks that which God is speaking, and
He does that which God is doing, because He is God. Heaven has
come down to save you. All truth comes from heaven.
earthly truths are dark and blind. They do not make sense and when
they do, man's journey to answer the questions of heaven are a
fool's errand. He cannot know them except God teach him. They
must come from God. The Jews did not interpret Scripture
rightly. They walked in darkness and they
made their own way. Beloved, many people in our culture make
their own way to Jesus. make their own way to heaven.
Using bits and pieces and fragments of puzzles that do not fit together
in the full counsel of His will, in the full counsel of His scripture. And the same thing happened in
Numbers chapter 21, where we'll see as we close this message
out this morning, where Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, verse 14. So must the Son of Man be lifted
up that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. And in
Numbers it goes like this, I'll read it to you. Numbers 21 verses
4-9 says, From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red
Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient
on the way. And the people spoke against
God and against Moses and said, Why have you brought us out to
Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water,
and we loathe this worthless food. They loathe the sustenance
of God. Then the Lord sent fiery serpents
among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people
of Israel died. And the people came to Moses
and said, We have sinned, we have spoken against the Lord
and against you. Pray to the Lord that He will take away the
serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord
said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone
who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze
serpent and set it on a pole, and if a serpent bit anyone,
he would look at the bronze serpent and live. And this is where Jesus
is telling Nicodemus the gospel is located in His Bible. Nicodemus can't understand anything,
he doesn't grasp it, he doesn't know what. And Jesus is saying,
you know, in Numbers 21, 4 through 9, as the snake was lifted in
the desert, that's the good news of God. In the same way, I, the
Son of Man, will be lifted up and all who believe in me will
have eternal life. This is the Gospel. The reason God did what
He did for Israel, with Israel right there, and recorded it,
is so that we could see the Gospel. God's justice, some truths about
this context, God's justice brought death to the people who grumbled
against Him. God sent serpents to kill sinners. And the crazy thing is those
who died, that was not judgment, they still wait for it. They're
still awaiting judgment. God's mercy then, in the same
way, gave life to some people. So God's justice then, in this
context, brings death to all people. But God's mercy, just
like in the wilderness in Deuteronomy, brings life to some people. God's mercy. The snake lifted
had no power. It was a shadow of the Son of
God lifted. who did have the power to give
life. The faith in the snake is the same faith that saves
us. It is the faith that God has
provided mercy through Jesus Christ. Though they may not have
known the details, they believed in the author of the message
and His power to save. Some lived. God's power overcame
the will of men and the wisdom of men. if a bunch of snakes fell out
of the ceiling in here and bit all of us, and I said, wait just
a minute, hold on, I'm going to wrap a little cord around
this and hiss at it, and if you look, you'll live. See, that's
like a snake. You guys are going to flee from
here and go to the hospital. And you're not coming, you're
going to be like, pastor must have got bit before service,
he was crazy. There are many other ways to
live in this matter, aren't there? You're dying, you've been bit
by a viper, and many other things. Let's suck the poison out. That's
man's answer. Let's chop off the arm. Or better
yet, there's a bunch of us that haven't been bit yet, let's kill
all the serpents. See, that's man's idea, let's
kill it. Kill everything that bothers us. Rosebush, pull it
up. Let's get these snakes. Let's
get some weapons. Let's go around and there's a
bunch of snakes. Let's get away from them. You know what you
can't do? Escape the judgment of God. And
you know what else you can't do? Find a way to overcome it
with your free will. Man can do nothing He can do
nothing but look at what God has done. That's what looking
by faith means. As Moses lifted up the serpent,
people must look. God said, if I look, I live.
I believe in God. I live. Not, I believe in the snake.
Not, I believe in my look. See, many of us believe in our look.
We believe in how we appear and how we gaze and what we can see.
Oh yeah, I'm wise in this. I see it now. No! I see the One
that gives life. I see clearly. It is not about
my will, or my way, or my means, or my ability. It is about what
God has done to overcome my blindness. He gave me sight. And now I see. Praise be to God for His glorious
grace. Man can do nothing but look.
without sight given to him by God, he will die. No matter how
hard he looks, no matter how long he looks, no matter how
zealous he is on the gaze, no matter what kind of gaze he gives
to the bronze serpent, he will not live if God does not give
that man sight. In the same way, we will not
be able to see Christ if God does not give us sight. God can do everything and He
has done everything necessary for your salvation. He has given
the remedy that is to be effectual by faith alone. God has given
life through the death of Jesus Christ and if we believe that
it is true, we believe that it is effectual, we believe we have
been born again by God, thus we believe. Because trusting
is trusting. He who knew no sin became sin
that we might be the righteousness of God. God sent His own Son
down to earth from heaven to be the message of good news.
To be the message of hope. To pay for the sins of His people.
To satisfy His own wrath and fury. To make Him, to continue
to, well not make Him, but to display His righteousness according
to Paul in Romans 3. Because He's forgiven so many.
who are worthy of death. And God sent His Son to die on
a pole to display His eternal love for you. You might say, well, why did
I go through all of that? Look at verse 16. Four. It's the Word. Everything I just taught
you, is in that word for. It sets up to it, what has God
done? Look at what God has done. Look
at everything. Look at all the work that Christ
accomplished. Why? For God loved the world
in this way, that He gave His only Son. You see what's necessary? to read Scripture in context. See why it's necessary to see
the teaching that comes from God and not the teaching that
comes from man. For God so loved. That's how He did it. He did
it so. How did God love? This way. Whoever believes would
not perish but have eternal life. God loved and does love you if
you are in Christ. Do you believe in Christ? Let's pray. Father, may Your Spirit give
wisdom and knowledge and understanding that we may just bask in the
beauty of Jesus We praise You for all that You
do, all that You've done, all the work that Christ has accomplished
for us. Thank You, Lord, that You have
overcome the will of dead people that we might believe and be
set free from judgment. Father, I pray that You would
prompt us and cause each of us to read the Word this week. That we would read the Scriptures
that we're learning. That we would read other places. That
we would pray. That we would meditate on that
which we learn. That we would expect that if
you don't open us to understanding, we won't grasp it. And Father, the little nuggets
that come to us, let us savor them as though they were banquets.
Because they are. Help us to never get over the
Gospel. Help us to never forget the cost. And Father, help us to never,
ever trust in ourselves, but only the cross of Christ. For
upon it, Your Son died so that we could live. And it's in His
name we pray. Amen.