Sermons - Cornerstone Christian Fellowship

What Shall I Do - Part Three

Nov 06, 2022 by: John Herbert | Series: What Shall I Do...

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Jn 3:1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night..........

We will continue to look at Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus today.

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Sunday November 6th 2022
What Shall I Do……..
Part 3

1). Jn 3:1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

We will remember from last week that John had written his Gospel during the time covered by the re-offer of the Kingdom of the heavens to national Israel. During the time which began when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, recorded in Acts Chapter 2, to the close of the re-offer in Rome, recorded in Acts Chapter 28.
	a). And we will also remember that John had intentionally written his gospel to the Jews, and had constructed it around eight, specifically selected signs, for a revealed purpose – Jn 20:30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written that you [the Jews] may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life [for the age] in His name.

Through that detailed in the signs in John’s Gospel, we had seen that the opportunity was given to national Israel to be the recipient of the wisdom brought forth from above, allowing the nation to receive the same revelation that Peter had experienced in Matthew Chapter 16. The revelation, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
	b). Let’s remember also that the signs given were inextricably connected to the Kingdom of the heavens being offered by the Lord to the nation. With the signs pointing to the spiritual healing, deliverance, and provision available to the nation upon repentance, available upon changing their collective mind.
	c). And it was the signs being given in conjunction with the Kingdom being offered that Nicodemus went to talk to Jesus about, acknowledging that He was ‘a teacher come from God’ because no one could do the signs that Jesus did unless ‘God is with him’. And this appears to have been the view of not only Nicodemus but of other religious leaders as well, Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God.
	d). And it was this inquiry by the eternally saved ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus, about the signs and the Kingdom that Jesus then addressed directly, Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

And we had closed last time by pointing to the phrase, ‘born again’, with a caution about how we are to understand it. A better translation of the word ‘again’ would be ‘from above’, allowing the phrase to say, ‘born from above’. And part of the problem that has arisen concerning this phrase comes from individuals not realizing that what John recorded in John 3:3 provides further explanation to the process of being born from above, introduced in the first Chapter of John’s Gospel – Jn 1:11 He came to His own [things], and His own [people] did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

In these verses John is recounting the Lord’s appearance in a regal capacity to the eternally saved Jewish nation at His first Advent. And in v11 we see that the Jewish nation, His own [people] did not receive Him. But there were many individuals within the nation who did, ‘as many as received Him’ shows us this.
	e). And to those Jews who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Again, let’s not hear eternal salvation in this, remember the context, but rather we will pay close attention to these individuals’ belief being in ‘His name’, in believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, with the words ‘Christ’ and ‘Son’ both pointing directly to His regality. The belief that these individuals exercised then, had absolutely nothing to do with death and shed blood but with that which could only come afterwards. And it would be ridiculous to try to connect their belief to the Lord’s death and shed blood as the cross still lay ahead of Him at this point in time. It just doesn’t work.
	f). Here then were individuals who were a part of God’s disobedient firstborn son, who believed the message and received the Messenger as the Christ, the Son of God, who, because of their belief, were then placed under the child training of the Lord, ‘He gave the right to become children of God’.
	g). And how was it possible for these individuals to believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God? The Scripture tells us. They were brought forth [born], not of blood, their natural birth, nor the will of the flesh, this didn’t come from their own intellectual resources, nor the will of man, they were not taught it by someone else. Rather, they were brought forth out of God. And perhaps some familiar verses from Matthew Chapter 16 will help to give us clarity in this – Mt 16:16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.

The experience of those individual Jews who received the Lord as the Christ, the Son of God, at His first Advent, could only have been the same as that of Peter. It had to be, because the wisdom from above revealing Jesus’ identity could only be brought forth out of God. There is no other source from which this wisdom could have come.
	h). And let’s once again remember, that this revelation is inextricably connected to the Kingdom of the heavens that was offered to the Jews at the Lord’s first Advent and the re-offer of that same Kingdom to the Jews which provides the context for John’s Gospel.
	i). And if we take all of this into John Chapter 3, then Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus should now make complete sense, 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

2). Failing to follow this teaching through from John Chapter 1 into Chapter 3 has been a major stumbling block to correctly understanding Jesus’ statement about being born from above. And this has been further compounded by this phrase, ‘born again’ being removed from its context and then used to say something it doesn’t say within context.
a). And we have all at some point understood being ‘born from above’, ‘born again’, as a description of what took place at the time of our eternal salvation. And the thing is, this would be a correct way to describe what did happen.
	b). As we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, so the Holy Spirit breathed into us the breath of life and our new man, the man of the spirit, was born, so to speak. We would also understand this to be our ‘new birth’, or our ‘second birth’, our spiritual birth, the birth that is to take precedence over our first birth, our natural physical birth, the birth of the man of the flesh. And this spiritual birth can only be brought forth from above by a Divine work, as we had seen last time in the foundational types of the light in the darkness on Day One in Genesis Chapter 1, and God breathing the breath of life into Adam in Genesis Chapter 2. Fallen man cannot do anything to redeem himself, it is only by a sovereign act of God that such a thing is possible – Eph 2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

To be born from above, ‘born again’ is the correct description of this process. But the question we must ask ourselves is, was this what Jesus was referring to in using this phrase in His conversation with Nicodemus? And the answer to that question is categorically, ‘NO’. Nicodemus, as we had established last time, was already eternally saved, and as we have seen, his conversation with Jesus was about signs and the Kingdom of the Heavens, that which could only be understood by, and offered to, those already in possession of spiritual life, and as we have seen, that recorded in John 3:3 gave additional explanation to that which was already taught in John Chapter 1.
	c). And to repeat one more time, the conversation was about signs and the Kingdom and the Lord’s identity as ‘a teacher come from God’. If it had been a conversation about eternal salvation, then the subject would have had to have been about death and shed blood, that which is the basis upon which eternal salvation is founded, and clearly it wasn’t.
	d). If we then continue further on into the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, we will see that Jesus then gave more commentary still on v3 and John 1:11, recorded in – Jn 3:5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

In this verse, Jesus gave substance to what He had said about being born from above in v3. A person had to be born, or brought forth, out of water and born out of the Spirit, if he was to enter the Kingdom of the heavens. And we should understand ‘seeing’ the Kingdom in v3 and ‘entering’ the Kingdom in v5, as two ways of saying the same thing. Again, we can clearly see that there is no mention of death and shed blood in v5 either, but rather we see being born of water and Spirit
	e). And as we think about that said in v5, let’s remember who Nicodemus was. He was a man of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews, someone Jesus referred to as ‘the teacher of Israel’. Here then was a man fully cognoscente of Moses’ writings. And it was to Moses, and one of the foundations of Jewish history, that Jesus tried to take Nicodemus to help him to understand what He was teaching. And the place He went to, is of course, the Exodus from Egypt with a particular focus on the Red Sea crossing – Ex 14:22 So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

Ex 13:21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. 22 He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.

Ex 3:8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

In the days of Moses, God had ‘come down’ to deliver His people from the hands of the Egyptians, to take them to the land covenanted to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a land flowing with milk and honey, so that they should rule at the head of the nations within a Theocracy.
	f). And at the time of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, God, in the person of Son, had again ‘come down’ to deliver His people from the hands of Gentile world power, to deliver them from the god of this age, to take them to a place of rulership in the heavenly realm of the Kingdom, and to restore the Kingdom in the land of promise upon the earth, the double portion of the inheritance belonging to the firstborn son, to rule within a restored Theocracy.
	g). As in the days of Moses, supernatural signs were a testimony to this deliverance. And as in the days of Moses, the Passover lambs had died year by year. All that remained for national Israel, already the recipient of spiritual life through the death and shed blood of the Passover lambs, already having passed from death to life, was to then be brought forth from above out of God, believing that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God; so that the nation could then be led by the Spirit, in resurrection, to receive the inheritance in both realms of the Kingdom.
	h). This is what Jesus had laid before Nicodemus, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

That set out in the foundations of Jewish history and recorded by Moses was what Nicodemus should have understood as ‘the teacher of Israel’, but didn’t – Jn 3:9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?

And it is Nicodemus’s failure to see what Jesus had pointed to from Jewish history, recorded by Moses, that is the reason for his rebuke from the Lord.
	i). Through the foundational picture of the first generation of Israel being led by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night we see a progressive and continual process of being brought forth from above, being led by the Spirit. And this would be inseparable from the process leading to spiritual maturity. And therefore, the Jews who believed on Jesus’ name at His first Advent, those we saw in John 1:11-13 who were given the right to become children of God, are seen in connection with the child training of the Lord. Being brought forth from above and the child training of the Lord are synonymous with respect to leading the one submitted to the training to spiritual maturity, led by the Spirit to be fruitful, for the purpose of receiving their inheritance.

3). Although we have been dealing with the offer of the Kingdom of the heavens to the Jews at the Lord’s first Advent, and the re-offer of the Kingdom seen in John’s Gospel, the continual process of being brought forth from above readily transfers into a Christian setting – 
1 Pe 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The phrase ‘born again’ [has begotten us again] is used here in a Christian context at the beginning of 1 Peter. And as we had seen in John Chapter 3, ‘has brought us forth from above’ is a much more acceptable translation.
	a). And again, just as in John Chapter 3, we must be careful how we understand the use of this phrase as it has of itself, nothing to do with eternal salvation as it is used in 1 Peter.
	b). Once more we see that there is no mention of death and shed blood. Rather we see a living hope in connection with ‘the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’. Resurrection must always take us beyond death and shed blood to that which is to come afterwards. If we take this back to what we saw referenced in John Chapter 3, then these verses in Peter parallel the Jewish people raised to newness of life on the eastern bank of the Red Sea, with a land and an inheritance set before them.
	c). We are continually to be brought forth from above, after our eternal salvation, with respect to the revelation of the living hope that is set before us. A hope embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead to this end; the risen Son whom God has chosen to rule the earth in the Seventh Day – Tit 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God who is our Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. 15 Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.

The revelation and understanding that we have concerning our appearance at Christ’s Judgment Seat, the salvation of our soul, and the coming Kingdom of Christ has not come into our possession through our own efforts, or anyone else’s efforts for that matter, it has been brought forth from above, out of God, through the Spirit, through the Word – 
Jn 16:13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. 14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. 15 All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

1 Co 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

It is the wisdom from above, that we have rightly separated from the wisdom below, that we have received and that we have believed – 
Eph 1:13 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

And if we return to where we started today, to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, we will hopefully realize once again the absolute necessity of rightly dividing the word of truth, so that we do not read into the phrase ‘born again’ that which it does not say. In fact, it would be as well for us to note that the phrase ‘born again’, brought forth from above, is NEVER used in Scripture to talk about the unsaved moving from death to life. It is ALWAYS used to describe a continuing process of being born from above, through the wisdom from above, by the Holy Spirit through the Word –
Col 2:1 For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

What I hope we will realize is that seeing the phrase ‘born again’ in John 3:3 to mean eternal salvation will make the Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus, meaningless.
	d). It would completely destroy what the Holy Spirit is teaching through this conversation and would place another filter over our eyes whereby we cannot help but see the rest of the Scriptures in an incorrect manner.
	e). An error of this significance doesn’t go away, it just gives rise to more error, and we know where this will lead.
	f). And what we have seen with this continuing process of being brought forth from above is exactly what has been set in place in the first Chapter of Genesis, where the light brought forth on Day One, brought forth out of God in a Sovereign act of the Divine will, was followed by five more days of restoration. Each Day being brought forth out of God, ‘God said, God said, God said’, leading inexorably to the Seventh Day and the Man and the Woman who will rule there.
	g). In these six days in Genesis Chapter 1 is pictured our race of the faith, our progression to spiritual maturity, Ruth’s journey from Moab to Boaz’s threshing floor. And every step that we take toward the goal of our calling must be directed by the wisdom from above. We must be continually brought forth out of God if the desire of our heart is to be realized – Ro 1:6 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

And can we see how all of this would be lost to us if we have an incorrect understanding of being ‘born again’ as it is used in the Scriptures? And such an incorrect understanding has its origins in just one place, the wisdom from below. It is the doctrine of demons sown by deceiving spirits.

And this we will come back to next time – If we remain and the Lord is willing, and we have prayed.

What Shall I Do - Part Three

Refresh A Recap from the Sermon

What Shall I Do - Part Three

Nov 06, 2022

Speaker: John Herbert

Series: What Shall I Do...

Category: Sunday Morning

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A Recap from the Sermon