Alright, let's go back to the
third chapter of John. We're going to continue on in
our study. I want primarily to focus our
attention here on verses 14 and 15. And this whole thing is a
conversation, a discourse between our Lord and Nicodemus, the Pharisee,
the Rabbi that came to him. at night to talk to him. And
in this conversation, it switches from talking to him about the
new birth and talking to him about things that he couldn't
enter into. And you can tell by the way he
answered that he's a little upset with the Lord. He came there.
One writer said, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He
came there. Let's say he came there with
good intentions. And he came there at night so
as not to cause a big squabble, because there was already trouble
brewing between Christ and the Sanhedrin, and between the Pharisees,
and between the hierarchy of the Jews. There was already a
storm brewing here. And he thought perhaps he could
come and talk with the Lord, and he'd come after dark to try
to make some peace, try to find out from Christ without a crowd,
without people interjecting things and scribes and lawyers throwing
questions at him and the people all standing around and being
intimidated. I'll just go there every night
and one-on-one I'll talk to him. So let's just give him the benefit
of the doubt because the Lord saved this man later on. He saved
Nicodemus. But right now he's not a saved
man. He's an unbeliever and he comes thinking to add something to
Christ, thinking to help with this thing of salvation. He's
going to help this thing come to pass. That's what he's going
to do. And so the Lord just stops him and tells him, this great
master of Israel, this rabbi, that he don't know anything and
has no possibility of ever knowing anything apart from a new birth. This man is going to have to
receive a new nature. In his nature. I don't care how
much he learned. I don't care how many titles
you pin on him. I don't care how you dress him
up. This man don't know God because his nature is not of such that
he has an ability to know. God is Spirit. His words is Spirit
in their life. And a natural man, he can't attain
that. He can't comprehend that. He
can't get past his nature. And so he gets a little upset
with the Lord. And you can tell by, what do
I do? Crawl back into my mother's womb?
This is not a man trying to reason things out. This is a man getting
upset. Getting upset. And he's going
to try to make him look bad by what he says. And the Lord said,
Nicodemus, He said, if I told you earthly things and you believed
not, what would you do if I told you heavenly things? What would
you do if, like my servant Paul, I was to carry you up to the
third heaven and you were to see things that's past your ability
to even describe to me? And there are no words, no illustrations,
no way to communicate these truths. How would you receive them? And
then he draws a line. He draws a line from his conversation
about this new birth. He draws a line to that serpent
in the wilderness. Look here in verse 14. And he tells him here in verse
13, No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down
from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life. And I don't want to overemphasize
these verses or wear you with a lot of repetition, but these
verses here in John chapter 3 are vital to the understanding of
the rest of his gospel. They're absolutely vital and
necessary to the understanding of everything else that transpires
in this gospel. And so if it seems a little repetitious,
I just beg your indulgence because I believe it's necessary to the
things that we have to say. Scripture, I was talking to Winston
last night, Scripture tends to be given in layers. If you'll
notice, when you read through the epistles, Like, take for
instance, the book of Romans. He makes a statement and then
you'll see this little word, for, comes up on the very next
verse. For. For. Therefore. You just keep seeing
it popping up. And what that means is, he's
made his declaration and now he's going to give you, he's
going to layer this thing with reasons and arguments and substantial
evidence that proves this declaration beyond a shadow of a doubt. And
so he layers these things. And this is what our Lord has
begun to do with Nicodemus. He made his declaration about
the new birth, and now he's beginning to lay down these He's beginning
to give the evidence of these things. He's beginning to lay
down the reasoning of these things and how these things are, what
the nature of these things are. And I spent some time last week
talking to you about Nicodemus being a man, being a natural
man and a religious man. And he was a Jew. and by nationality
was identified with the God of Abraham. I recently had a conversation
with a man and I said something about Israel, or he said something
about Israel, and his comments was of a very superstitious nature. Just don't say anything about
Israel. And I said, why? And he said,
because that's the chosen people of God. They are identified,
yet today, in our day and time, two thousand years after the
coming of Christ, they're still identified as the people of God. Make one mention of Israel, anywhere,
just go down to Barbershop, anywhere, make some kind of mention of
Israel, they'll tell you in a heartbeat, even if the man don't go to church,
he knows that. This is the chosen people of
God, and you better not get on the wrong side of them." Well,
Christ was on the wrong side of them, wasn't He? Huh? The
apostles were on the wrong side of them. Every preacher I've
ever known has been on the wrong side of them, because these are
not the children of God. The children of the promise are
counted for the seed. God has an Israel, and that ain't
it. That ain't it. But this man was
a Jew. And by nationality, he was identified
with the God of Abraham. Listen to this over in Romans
2. And here's what I want you to see. He's not just a Jew in
that regard. There's a whole lot more to it.
Look over here in Romans 2. This book is written by a Jew. This is written by Paul, a Pharisee. Now listen to what he says. Behold,
thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law," that's your hope.
That's the way of salvation and favor with you. Now, restest
in the law. You rest in the law. You make
your boast of God. That is, I belong to God. I'm
a child of God. And he said, "...and knowest
His will." You stand up and say you know the will of God. A Jew
believed that he knew God's will concerning salvation, and that
it was mostly in the physical, mostly had to do with the kingdom,
mostly had to do with saving the Jews, saving Israel, delivering
those promises that He made to Abraham. Thou knowest His will,
and look at this, and approvest The things that are more excellent
being instructed out of the law. They knew what God demanded morally. They had the ten commandments.
They knew what God demanded morally. They knew what God demanded ceremonially. God gave them the holy days,
the feast days, all these ceremonies, the priesthood. And they knew
what God had in mind when it come to dietary rules because
He gave them those too. So you see what they're saying?
They approve us of these things. You know what these things are.
They're not a mystery to you. You've got the law. And that's
your boast. John, their boast was that they
knew God. They're saying the same thing we do. We know God. We know the will of God. We know
what's going on. We know what to eat, what not
to eat. You see what he's saying to them?
That's a Jew. He said, verse 19, "...and are
confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light
of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish,
a teacher of babes, which hast a form of knowledge, and of the
truth of the law." That is, they had a systematic theology. They
didn't just dream these things up. They had the Word of God
and what they believed to be the doctrines of God. They had
what we call, I guess, a confession of faith, a catechism. They had a systematic theology. And then in Philippians chapter
3, Paul gave a record of his own confidence in the flesh,
being a Pharisee. He was circumcised the eighth
day of the stock of Israel. His mother was a Jew. His father
was a Jew. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin, touching the law of Pharisees,
zealous to the putting away of anybody who stood up and spoke
contrary to what they believed. And touching of what he believed
to be the righteousness of the law, he said, I was blameless.
Now this pretty much is a general description of Nicodemus when
he came to the Lord. These are all things that he
believed he knew. He had no doubt about them. There
was nothing in his mind questioning these things. This is what everybody
else in Israel believed. This is what they believed for
thousands of years. This is what his grandfather
believed, what his father believed, what he believed, what they taught
down at the seminary. He had no doubt about these things. So the Lord took him to something
that he did know about. He spoke to him in his spiritual
terms, made this declaration about the new birth, and then
he draws a line to something he knew about. And he said, as
that serpent was raised up in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up. He must be lifted up. And that's
what I'm laboring to point out to you this morning, He was a
master of theology, a master of the law of Israel. He was
an Old Testament scholar. He had all these things. He wanted to take something of
the gospel, something of Christ, and add to those old ideas and
concepts and try to work out a common ground. And then you have to deal with
this thing of miracles. actually believed him to be a
teacher sent from God because he saw these miracles. He saw
these things that was undeniable. Undeniable. And so there was
something there that he couldn't explain, couldn't put his finger
on, believed this man to be a teacher sent of God, but couldn't enter
into anything he was saying. That's where Nicodemus was at. And this is the natural. And
I want you to hear what I'm saying to you this morning. There is
a natural and there is a spiritual. Nicodemus came to Christ in his
nature. He came to Christ as a man, confined
in bondage in a natural man's nature, trying to reason and
figure out the things of God. He couldn't do it. It wasn't
possible for him to do it. And so the Lord says, here's
the way things are. Here's the spiritual picture. I see where you're coming from
by nature. That's not what's going on. What's going on are
things that you can't see. That's what He's telling us.
The things that God has ordained are things that you can't see. What's the trouble today? Why
do people find so much fault and difficulty in coming to Christ? Because you're talking to them
about something that they can't see. They can't see. Nobody knows anything about it.
It's a mystery. It's a mystery down at the First
Baptist Church, and it's a mystery over at the Nazarene Church,
and it's a mystery down here at this church, and it's a mystery
to everybody that you talk to who don't know God. It's a mystery.
And he stops this religious man dead in his tracks and tells
him that you must be born of the water and of the Spirit to
enter into the Kingdom of God. Because the kingdom of God cometh
not with observation. That is, you cannot see it with
your eyes. You can't figure it out. There's
a natural and there's a spiritual. You go through the Scripture
and you'll find out that there's a natural faith and a spiritual
faith. There's a natural man and a spiritual
man. There's a natural kingdom and
there's a spiritual kingdom. You'll find the natural and the
spiritual. You just go all the way through the Scriptures and
you'll find it. And the spiritual understanding of the law is quite
different from man's understanding of the law. Our Lord told him
that, didn't He? He said, you say, you quote from
Moses, and here's what you say, here's what you teach. Thou shalt
not commit murder. He said, now I'm going to tell
you what that means. I'm going to tell you what this means in
the spiritual realm. To be angry with your neighbor
is to be guilty of murder. You get mad and just, I ain't
talking to him anymore, and walk away. You killed that man. That's
what the Lord is telling us. He said, you say that it's wrong
to commit adultery. That's a violation of the law
of God. He said, I tell you, here's what
that means. to look on a woman and lust after
her is to commit adultery in your heart. The law is spiritual
and we're carnal, that's what Paul said, sold unto sin. We
can't even interpret the law, let alone interpret grace. You
set the law of God, you set those Ten Commandments out here and
ask ten different people what they mean, you get ten different
answers. That's the truth. There's natural and there's spiritual.
And he said, you must be born again to perceive the kingdom
of God. And now he's going to take him
over and show him what this thing's all about. And he took him back to that
serpent in the wilderness, John. And here's a people who rebelled
against God, who voiced their absolute disgust for His gifts. They were disgusted. Our soul
loatheth this light bread. We're tired. We're tired of walking
through the wilderness. We're tired of wandering around
in this desert. We got no water to drink and
our soul loatheth this light bread. Over and over and over
they grumbled and talked about the leeks and the cucumbers and
the flesh pots back in Egypt. They had plenty to eat. And they
sit out there and dream to the old days. They done forgot all
about the whip. They done forgot all about the bondage. They forgot
about walking through a sea. They forgot about crying unto
God when Pharaoh and his army was after them. They forgot all
those things, and they grumbled, moaned, and rebelled against
God, and God sent down fiery serpents. Sent them down among
them. I don't know. Some pictures I
see, biblical pictures, show these things raining down like
rain out of heaven. It doesn't say that in the Scriptures.
It said He sent them among them. And so whatever it was, there
was two and a half million people out here in this wilderness,
and they were just invaded with fiery serpents. And these serpents
were biting people, biting them, biting them, all down on their
legs and things. And whatever this serpent was,
its poison was lethal. And they began to convulse and
fall on the ground and die. And they were just stacking up.
You can imagine a camp with two and a half million people filled
with these fiery serpents. And he said, and much people
died. They were just dying, just falling
over on the ground. Everybody was dead and dying,
convulsing. No remedy, no cure. Can't go
to the priest. Can't go anywhere. You bit, you
die. You bit, you die. You see what's
going on? Now that's what he's telling
Nicodemus. I know you're a Pharisee. Art thou a master in Israel?
He acknowledged that. He knew who he was. He knew he
was a Pharisee. He knew all about him. What Nicodemus didn't know
is that all around him is death and dying. All a man who's bitten
can do is die, isn't it? That's what it says. Wouldn't they kill her? Wasn't
any cure. Wasn't anywhere to go. God sent
the serpents. They knew God was angry. And
all of a sudden, people began to die. And there was no stopping
the serpents. They just kept right on biting,
right on biting, right on biting. What's He telling them? He's
telling them that you're a sinner, and all that a sinner can do
is sin. That's all he can get. And you can send him to the finest
seminaries. You can make him a rabbi. That's
what Nicodemus was. You can teach him all the doctrines.
You can get him a big robe. You can make broad as phylacteries.
You can etch out in linen there on the sleeve on the phylacteries.
You can make it a little broader and etch out and put all ten
commandments on there. Put them all around there. You
can do all these types of things. You can train him up in the best
places and send him among the best men and give him the most
influence that a man could possibly have and still he's a sinner.
And all a sinner can do is sin. That's all he can do. And you can walk him down an
aisle and you can drag out of him a profession of faith or
you can have him to join the church or you can get him to
make a decision and you can get him to make a commitment. Get
him to join the church. You can catechize him. You can
do all kinds of things and still he's a sinner and all a sinner
can do is sin. Now here's what the Lord's telling
him. These people were bitten and
all they could do is die because all they could do is sin. If
there weren't sinners, there'd be no serpents. Be no serpents,
there'd be no death. Be no death, there'd be no need
of a substitute. You see what he's telling them?
And that's what he's telling Nicodemus. Just rake all your
past aside and all your attainments and all these things that you
think you know. You don't know nothing. You can't perceive anything
apart from the gift of God in regeneration. And when He regenerates
you, here's what you're going to find out. You're a sinner.
And all a sinner can do is sin. What about when he prays? His
prayer is full of sin. Huh? You ever been there? God
ever showed you that? It's like the dam broke. And
you're sticking your hand in here and the water comes out
here and you put your hand here and it comes out here. It's a
spring. It's a well within you and it
just gushes up. And the only thing that comes
out is sin. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts and adulteries
and fornications and all these things. Evil speakings. It's like a... like a great spring,
and it just pushes out. And if you say something, the
poison of ash is on your lips. That's what Paul said in Romans
3. Huh? You're a sinner. What a revelation. And all a sinner can do is sin. That's all he can do. All he
can do. Here's what the Lord told him.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, John 3.14,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Now here's what he
told those folks laying out there dead and dying. He told Moses,
he said, make you a serpent of brass and put it on a pole and
raise it up. And behold, he said, when a man
is bitten, I think there's a little spiritual value in that. Everybody's
not bitten. But when a man's bitten, he said
it'll come to pass. If he looks, he'll live. When he looks, he'll live. Not
when he runs. Not when he works. Not when he
joins. Not when he decides. When he
looks. When he looks. Moses stood out there with that
serpent and said, Look. One point message. Look. Look. And we gather in here two or
three times a week, and I stand up here and preach to you from
here to there and yonder, but here's basically what I'm telling
you. I'm trying to hold Christ up on the cross and point and
tell you to look. Look! And live. Look and live. must be born of water. That word
water has to do with the Word of God. We don't have time for
me to go through and try to prove that to you theologically. But
he's talking about the washing of regeneration through the Word
of God, through the truth of God is what he's talking about.
He's talking about a new birth here. And he's talking about
being washed by the Spirit of God, sanctified by the Spirit
of God through the truth of the Gospel. so that you know where
to look. And you're not going to look
until you know where you're at and what kind of condition you're
in. As long as you think you're in pretty good shape, you're
not going to look. You're not going to look. As long as the
situation ain't desperate, you're not going to look. He said the well had no need
of the physician. What do they need a physician
for? They're not sick. But he said he came to heal the
sick. He come to bind up the broken hearted. I can't find
anybody broken hearted, can you? He came to seeking to save sinners,
but I can't find any. I can't find any sinners. We're
not sinners. I'm not a bad person. No, you're worse than that. You're way worse than that. And
so am I. All a sinner can do is sin. Sanctify his conversation, reform
his habits, reform his walk in this life, change his dress,
change his speech, change his lifestyle, and still he's a sinner.
All he can do is sin. Let him have his beginnings in
a godly home. David was a man after God's own
heart. He said in the Psalms, I come
forth from the womb speaking lies. Didn't do him any good. Didn't do him any good. Isolate
him in Tibet. Put him in a monastery far up
in the mountains. Isolate him from the world. Deprive
him of all the earthly comforts and pleasures. Take away every
influence of the world and still he has a heart out of which comes
evil thoughts and adulteries and all those things. Sin. Sin is what we are. He's a sinner. And all a sinner can do is sin.
I was a young fella. I had a 1966 GTO. And it was
canary yellow. 389 four-barrel, four on the floor,
bucket seats, mag wheels, jacked all up in the back. I mean, this
thing was everything that a young man could want. It was. But it
had a problem. It had bad oil rings. And what this thing would do
was leak a little bit of oil into that piston, and if you
started it up, That oil would leak in there, and when that
gas exploded in that piston to give that thing power, it sent
out a gray-blue cloud out the back of it. And you couldn't
see through it five feet. I mean, it just, everywhere you
went in that car, it left a trail of pollution behind it. Everybody
knew who went that way because of the pollution. And that's
what I'm trying to tell you about sin. All a sinner can do, I don't
care what he does, I don't care if he's religious, I don't care
if he prays, I don't care if he reads his Bible, I don't care
what he does. All that he does is sin. That's
why Isaiah said, we are all as an unclean thing and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Now that's what he's telling
Nicodemus. Here's the first thing in this
thing of regeneration is you're going to get acquainted with
who you are.