Come Into The Light

INTRO.

Hey! My name is _________, I’m the Student Pastor around here, and I would love to officially welcome you to the best night of the week! We love WEDNESDAYS around here, and by the way, we do this every single week throughout the school year. So we’re really glad you’re here tonight, but I want you to know you’re invited back every WEDNESDAY. We’d love to have you.

TENSION.

Let me start with a question:

Have you ever had something right in front of your face... and still totally missed it?

I don’t know what it is about the ladies in our lives, but they seem to have this supernatural ability to find things.

You ever have that moment where your mom sends you to the pantry for something—let’s say, I don’t know, a can of soup—and you’re digging like a raccoon at 2 a.m. You’re moving 19-year-old cans of green beans around…You’re SURE it’s not there… So you walk back and tell her, “Mom—it’s not there.”

And she gets up… walks over… doesn’t even try… and finds it in like 2 seconds.

It’s the worst!

And it’s not just because we’re lazy (okay—maybe a little)…It’s actually something true about all of us: Sometimes, we miss what’s right in front of us.

There’s actually a really famous video that proves this exact point. Take a look at this:

Monkey Business Illusion video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY&t=83s

Wild, right? If you’re not looking at things through the right lens, you can miss something that’s right in front of you.

But, the video proves: Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

And I wonder if there are things in your life that you don’t see, but are still there…

You don’t see how numb you’ve become – but you are.

You don’t see how you use humor externally to hide your internal pain – but you do.

You don’t see how you're repeating the same mistakes you swore you'd never make.

You don’t see how performing for everyone else has left you without a real sense of who you are.

Maybe…you don’t see how God or the gospel has anything to do with you – but it does.

What if there is something right in front of you that you’re not seeing?

TRUTH.

That’s exactly the situation a man named Nicodemus finds himself in during a conversation with Jesus in John 3.

There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”

John, the writer of the book, loved to use metaphors and pictures in his writing. And one of the themes in the book of John that he uses the most is theme of light and dark. In the very first verse, as he talks about Jesus, he equates him to the “light of the world.”

In contrast, John often talks about sin and the world that Jesus came into as “darkness.”

For John, Jesus is the light who has come into a dark world.

So, it’s no coincidence that John points out that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. The physical setting of the meeting was a metaphor of the Nicodemus’ spiritual condition. He was living in the dark. And while he was in the dark, Nicodemus makes two different claims about Jesus:

He’s a teacher – that is the meaning of the word “rabbi.” So, to Nicodemus, Jesus is a teacher.

He is from God – This one takes a little context, but Nicodemus is essentially claiming Jesus to be on the same level as the prophets of Israel. He’s been sent by God and has the power of God on him.

And of course, Nicodemus wouldn’t be the first person to call Jesus a good teacher or a prophet. Many have claimed Jesus to be those things. But…remember, he made that claim about Jesus in the dark.

And Jesus responds to Nicodemus and says,

“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again,, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

And at first, you read that and think, “that took a bit of a turn.” But Jesus doesn’t have ADHD – He’s getting to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter for Nicodemus is that there is something about Jesus that is right in front of him that he is MISSING.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that, because he is not “born again,” there are things that he simply cannot see.

And upon hearing that, Nicodemus says something that I imagine many of us find ourselves saying the first time we hear the phrase “born again…”

4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”

The proposal to be “born again” sounds illogical. It makes no sense. And Jesus goes back and forth with Nicodemus about the fact that what Jesus is saying doesn’t make sense. And then Jesus makes an interesting reference back to the Old Testament in the book of Genesis:

14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

Again, another reference that seems to make no sense. But Jesus is referring back to a story in the Old Testament when the nation of Israel was infested with poisonous snakes. People were being bitten and dying rapidly, until God told the leader of Israel, Moses, to make a snake out of bronze and hang it on a pole. Anyone in Israel who was bitten but looked to the snake in faith that they would be healed…were healed.

It was something that seemed illogical. After all, how could a bronze snake heal a person of a snake bite?

But the point of the story isn’t the snake – it’s faith. The snake didn’t heal anyone. Faith that God was telling the truth and that, by looking at the snake, one could be healed, that was what healed them.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus points to a story about faith as He’s talking to Nicodemus? It seems the point that Jesus is making is that it was not logic and reason that would help Nicodemus to be born again – it was faith. The question, is faith in WHAT?

In the story of the snake, it was faith in God – that He was telling the truth that He knew their condition and had made a way to save them!

And what Nicodemus didn’t know yet was that, in the same way, Jesus was inviting him to have faith in God – that Jesus, the Son of God, was telling the truth that He knew Nicodemus’ condition and that He was making a way to save him.

And right after that, Jesus says the most famous verse in the Bible in John 3:16:

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus is saying to Nicodemus—and to you tonight: You’re in the dark and in danger—but Jesus came to bring you into the light.

And that’s the whole point of John 3:17-18:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God

You don’t need to fear God’s light. He’s not here to embarrass you. He’s not here to guilt-trip you. He’s here to save you from the darkness and danger you didn’t even know you were in.

APPLICATION.

The truth that is right in front of us, but so easy to miss:

We are all made by God, in the image of God, for a relationship with God. You were made for relationship with Him.

But we have all sinned and that sin costs something – death. The death of the perfect image of God in us and the death of our perfect relationship between God and us.

And now, like Nicodemus, we’re born into darkness. Spiritually blind. Separated from God and missing what matters most.

But God didn’t leave us in the dark. He sent the Light - Jesus. Jesus lived the life we couldn’t live—perfect, sinless, fully connected to the Father. Then, like the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness, He was lifted up on a cross and killed by Roman crucifixion—not because He deserved death, but because we did.

And on that cross, He became the payment to cover the debt of all the sin of human history – past, present, and future.

But the best part of the story is that He didn’t stay dead! 3 days later He literally walked out of His own grave that they buried Him in – He didn’t just PAY for sin, He conquered it once and for all.

And now anyone who looks to Jesus in faith is saved.

The light shines in the dark. The kingdom comes into view. You’re born again.

Remember what we said earlier? Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The kingdom of God isn’t far away. It’s right here.

And if you’ll trust Jesus by faith—He’ll open your eyes to see what’s been right in front of you all along: that you are in danger and need to be saved. But you have a Savior who has made a way!

Tonight, if you want to look to Jesus in faith to be your Savior and you want to submit to Him as your Lord and learn how to live a brand new life, in a minute I’m going to invite you to stand up – here’s why.

Faith requires action. We are not saved by anything we do. We’re saved by our faith in what Jesus has done. But while faith is a decision you have to make personally, it is always meant to be shown publicly.

So tonight, if you want to step into the light and be born again – to become a follower of Jesus Christ, stand up right now.

[Pause and celebrate]

Hey if you’re standing, we are so excited for you. There’s not a more important decision that you’ll make in your life than this one. But this is a starting line, not a finish line. We don’t want to give you one great night with Jesus, we want to help you live a great life with Jesus, and the best way we know how to do that is together. So, I want the rest of us to stand up with our friends, and together, we’re going to have a moment to pray.

If you stood up to become a follower of Jesus tonight, just so you know, there’s nothing magical about the prayer we’re going to pray. This is just you having a moment to tell God verbally what you’ve decided to believe internally tonight.

If you’re already a follower of Jesus, I would love for you to pray this out loud with us 1. To show our new brothers and sisters in the faith that they’re not alone and 2. To be reminded of the day that you first believed in Jesus.

And if you are not a follower of Jesus. If you’re skeptical, maybe even cynical about all of this, just so you know, we didn’t forget about you. We were expecting you and we’re so happy you’re here. You don’t have to believe in Jesus to belong with us. As we pray, please feel free to just stand a be quiet. You don’t have to pray with us if you’re not comfortable doing so.

But for those of us who are ready to follow Jesus tonight, or who are already followers of Jesus, let’s have a moment to pray this together:

Father, my sin has blinded me from seeing You. But tonight, I now see that I am in the dark, I am in danger, and I need a Savior. In faith, I believe that Jesus was who He said He was. I believe that He died and resurrected from the dead. And I believe that He has offered to forgive me of my sin and make be born again. Tonight, I choose to make Him the Savior and Lord of my life. And I commit to following Him from this day forward. In Jesus’ name, amen.

What a great way to start off the school year, huh? Can we celebrate one more time?!

[Pause and celebrate]

If tonight was the day you decided to follow Jesus, can I encourage you to do one more thing?

Would you pull out your phone and text “Jesus” to 377-48?

You’ll get a text back with a link to a form, and that form just has some basic information for you to fill out. I promise, we don’t do anything weird with that information. We use it for 2 things: 1. We use it to remember what happened today. We don’t want to forget it because it’s THAT BIG OF A DEAL! And 2. We use it to follow up with you. Again, believing in Jesus is a personal decision, but everyone needs help learning how to follow Jesus - and that’s why we’re here! To help you do exactly that. One of our pastors will personally send you a text to offer some help on what a great next step for you in your faith journey would be.

Don’t wait, right now pull out your phone and text “Jesus” to 377-48. We’d love to help!

While you’re doing that, we’re going to take a moment and celebrate with God through worship. Because, for the last two weeks, our small groups have been praying for their friends to be “born again” and follow Jesus. Part of those prayers has been writing down the names of who they’re praying for on this sign.

Now, the thing is, they wrote the names in invisible ink. So even though you haven’t seen them, they’ve been right here the whole time.

[Shine the blacklight on the WEDNESDAYS sign]

We did that as a picture of what we were praying God would do – open the eyes of our friends to see what they’ve been missing – the gospel!

And tonight, there are some of you who stood up and decided to follow Jesus whose name we’ve been praying over these past two weeks! That is worth celebrating.

So, let’s celebrate together!

[Worship]