More of the Lord's Conversation With Nicodemus

Tom:

We are going through the gospel of John with a particular emphasis on the gospel and the salvation we have in Christ.  And, as we have been saying, our life in Christ begins with our understanding of the gospel and our acceptance of it by faith.  Really, I would say, that’s the main theme of this entire gospel.  As we mentioned last week, Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he must be born again, we must be born again.

Dave:

Right and he is explaining a bit what that means.

Tom:

Right.  Dave, I’m going to repeat verse 8 and I will take that, probably, through the 12th and we will discuss it.  “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and 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.”

Dave:

Tom, let me interrupt just for a second.  The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest—people say, well you are reading this old King James, this Old English, come on, let’s get on with some modern language or whatever.  You know, if you grew up in Europe and you’re just a child in grammar school you study Latin, you probably know two or three languages, I don’t think it should be beyond the capacity of Christian young people today and older ones as well, to know a little bit of real classic, Shakespeare, even better than Shakespeare English, you know, lets get an education, okay?  So, I just didn’t want people stumbling out there and thinking how come you guys are going back three hundred and fifty years or four hundred years, you know, let’s get with it.  Well, I love the King James and I think we can understand what it says.  Sorry, Tom, go ahead.

Tom:

Well, that’s okay Dave, as long as I can pronounce it right.  I’m an instruction in itself here.  Verse 9, “Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?”  Jesus answered and said unto him, “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”

Dave:

These things of course are, How can I be born again?  He’s still thinking of that.

Tom:

Right.  Dave, throughout the scriptures Jesus really has some interesting rebukes to those He loved and to His own.

Dave:

And, Art thou a master of Israel?  Right.

Tom:

Yeah.  “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.”  “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”

Dave:

We talked about a bit last time that look, the universe is created out of nothing.  Jesus is the one who made it, we got that in John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”  So, here is the Creator of the universe, He created it all out of nothing.  Nicodemus, I can’t tell you what the atom is, what an electron is, what energy is, you couldn’t understand any of this.  You can’t even figure out where the wind is coming from and where it is going.  So, if I tell you of earthly things, and you can’t understand it, how are you going to be able to understand if I try to explain to you what a spirit is, what it means to be born of the Spirit in the family of God?  We talked about that last time, but certainly, the concept makes sense.  You must be born again.  To be in the family of God you must be born into the family of God by the Spirit of God.  And, we’re not just physical bodies, but we are a spirit living within this body.  That spirit is dead to God; it needs to be made alive so it must be born again.  This is what Jesus is saying.

Tom:

Dave, I want to go back to His rebuke though to Nicodemus, with regard to him being one of the leaders of the church well leaders of Israel, religiously speaking.  That’s an interesting rebuke because we find, more often than not, those who lift themselves up to be religious teachers go so far a field it’s just incredible.  Just simple things that we are talking about, they missed them completely, not just the things that are hard to understand.

Dave:

Very often, that is the case.  We’re not indicting every religious leader but there’s a certain amount of pride that enters in Tom,—Well, I’ve been to seminary and I know the original Latin, I know the original Greek and Hebrew—I don’t but someone who has had that education, then feels that they are a notch above those below—they can even refer to themselves as Reverend so and so.  The Bible says Holy and reverent is His name.  They may call themselves Father.  Jesus, very clearly said don’t call anyone your father on earth, I mean that would be excluding your physical father.  One is your Father who is in heaven.  He took the rabbis to task for setting up a system of religion that made the common man his servant, really.  They had to go through the rabbis to get to God and the rabbis made the rules, so everyone was at their mercy.  I think Jesus has some of that in mind; you would get that in Matthew 23.  Are you a master in Israel?  You don’t know this.  You don’t know that you have to be born again of the Spirit of God?  You don’t know that the flesh is not all that there is, the flesh is not going to do you any good?  Nicodemus, what are you teaching these people?  You know what Jesus said in Matthew 15.  They were upset because He didn’t follow their tradition.  Jesus said by your tradition you have made void the Word of God.  So, I think it is a kind of mild, but a sharp rebuke to Nicodemus.  Nicodemus, don’t you know the Word of God?  You’re a master of Israel, you’re a rabbi, you’re of the Sanhedrin, you’re supposedly leading these people into a relationship with God and you don’t understand the basic elements involved.

Tom:

Dave, one of the reasons that bothers me—I was going through the mail and received a letter from this pastor who somebody, thinking they were doing him a favor, gave him a copy of The Berean Call, our newsletter, and the guy was really upset.  So, he took the time to sit down and write to us, telling us how far we had missed it, how unloving we were, how we didn’t understand all of the things that were going on in the church, the ecumenism and how wonderful that was and how we were a stumbling block to all of that.  That really grieved me.  Not because he was taking us to task but because this is a leader of a congregation and I thought, what shall I write back to this man?  The only thing that I could think of was, could he explain the gospel to me, could he tell me what the gospel is?  Because, it goes back to the simple truth and that’s all we are doing, not just in this program.  We are trying to point people back to God’s Word, the simple truth of God’s Word and what it says, not unlike what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus here.

Dave:

Tom, words have varying meanings.  You can talk about love, you can talk about unity. The Bible says the rebuke of a friend, faithful is the rebuke of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.  What is the source of this?  Ecumenism, unity, we can talk about unity but it doesn’t help to be unified around a lie and Jesus is laying out something very clear here.  Nicodemus, you must be born again—well, that’s too narrow minded and, you know, that causes division because there are some people who don’t believe in being born again but they are good people, they are loving and kind and they have a concern for family values and traditional morals, so why don’t we just all get together?  This is not about family values and traditional morals, this is not about unity, this is about heaven and hell and Jesus is saying, wait a minute, you’re going to face eternity and you must be born again.  Now, if that causes a division, in fact, four times in John’s gospel, it says, there was a division among the Jews because of what Jesus said.  So, you could fault Jesus and say look, tone it down a little bit—you claim you are the way, the truth, the life and look, there are a lot of religions out there—what about Buddha and Confucius and, don’t be so narrow minded.  Well, it’s a matter of the eternal destiny of souls.  Jesus is telling us you must be born again.  Now some pastor can say that’s too narrow minded but then he is going to lead people astray, unifiedly astray and they will all be together.  And, that’s when Jesus said in Matthew 7, “…broad is the road that leads to destruction, many there be that go in thereat.  Straight is the gate; narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it.”  That’s our concern Tom, search the scriptures, if what we say is not true—I don’t think this pastor took you to task for not being biblical, but you weren’t being ecumenical.