Sermon Notes - Seeker

Bible Passage: John 3:1-7

The lighting in that video makes it hard to see what is going on, but I hope you could hear the words and follow along in your bibles. In that poor light, Nicodemus is searching.

Makes me think of a skit I was part of at a Riverbend camp. The camps then would always finish with a concert night.

The skit was about someone searching for there missing watch, it had fallen off and now looking for it. This skit would include all us boys, one by one we would come up and ask what are you looking for and start helping to search for it.

After 8 of us are on the stage searching for the watch the last boy comes up and asks what are you searching for. My watch. Where did you loose it? Over there, but the light is just better here.

So many people are seeking in this life, but many are only looking where they are comfortable.

Today I want to cover how we are always to be seekers and that seekers

Should check out Jesus

Seekers don’t always hear what they want to hear from Jesus

And when we are confronted by the reality that we are trapped in our sin, Jesus has made a way.

o As earily seekers, we ask questions like - who am I, what is important, is there life after death, is there a God, and if so, what is that God like?

o Seekers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali

§ Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a Muslim woman who became a prominent ‘New Atheist’ in the 2000s but has recently found Christ. She says…“I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”[1]

· And in today’s reading Jesus meets a seeker, named Nicodemus

o Let’s consider a little bit of information about Nicodemus from Lynn Cohick from Encounter Episode 3 (show Enc Ep 3 Clip 1)

§ “When Nicodemus comes to Jesus, he is living in Jerusalem, presumably living in Jerusalem, and the event itself happens in the city Jerusalem. Nicodemus is a leader, so he has some kind of authority. He's been well educated. And yeah, so he's interested. He's interested in what Jesus is talking about…There's a lot of discussion about why Nicodemus did what he did. I think to describe Nicodemus as a seeker using a modern day term would be a fair description in that he was curious, wanted to know more about what Jesus was teaching, and did not just take the party line, if I could use that term, that his friends took, which was that Jesus didn't know what he was talking about and shouldn't be believed. Nicodemus seemed to want to know things.”

Like Nicodemus

Seekers should check out Jesus

· In both the Scriptures and in life today, we see ‘all sorts’ of seekers come in ‘all sorts’ of ways

o Some are very deliberate, and some are almost accidental seekers

o Some have their ‘map and compass’ out trying to find the way, and others almost ‘bump into’ their search, and they didn’t consciously realise that they were even searching.

I am still on a journey of seeking and following Jesus and as we move towards Easter, I am following the Lectio 365 prayer guide, to pray morning, noon and night. And to learn some of the wisdom, prayers and radical commitment from early followers of jesus that left everything to seek Jesus whole heartedly.

The host of the series, Pete Greig, says in this episode of Encounter on seekers.

o “You don't get anyone that holds a newborn baby aloft and says, behold, a biological fluke born into a meaningless universe…And so it is normative to believe in God. It is an aberration. It is a tiny blip and a tiny bit of the world that we call the West in just the last 200 or 300 years, where this very notion of atheism, as we now have it, exists.”

· Nicodemus reminds us that seekers should check out Jesus

John 3:1–2 NIV

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

· Nicodemus knows a lot

o He is a religious leader

§ Yet he sees something in Jesus that makes him want to spend some time with Him and ask Him some questions

· Nicodemus comes at night

o There is nothing overtly wrong with this

o And maybe that is where some of you today are at

§ You are searching in some way

· You may be very deliberate, or you may be simply open to challenging your understanding of the world

o There may be things you don’t understand about following Jesus, parts of your life you are still figuring out how to give over to Jesus and trust you will be okay with out it. Or You may have been on this road with Jesus for a long time but still feel you have questions you are unsure who you can turn too.

o So keep checking out Jesus

o Not only does Nicodemus come to Jesus, but he comes to Jesus with questions

§ ‘How can that be?’ you hear him ask…‘this doesn’t make sense’ etc

o I want to remind you today that no question is off limits to ask Jesus as you seek Him

§ He can handle your doubt, anger, hurt, disbelief, the wrestle in your life

· He isn’t put off by it at all

But you might be.

Seekers don’t always hear what they want to hear from Jesus

John 3:3–4 NIV

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

· In short, we don’t actually know what Nicodemus wanted to hear

o But certainly, what he did hear didn’t make sense to him

· Jesus says that we must be ‘born again’

o And Nicodemus just doesn’t get it

§ It doesn’t make sense to the brain if you think purely in the natural world

§ You can’t go back to where you started from

o The old and new testament tells us that God’s decrees and Jesus teaching will be ignored because it challenges our comfort. It is a fear, I think we have, certainly one I am trying to overcome, that if I confront something in someone's life that clearly goes against Jesus teaching, I will be rejected, loose that friendship/or potiental one and misrepresent Jesus. A couple of life groups this week shared this reflection.

We don’t want to get in the way of people Checking out Jesus, the only thing is, Jesus challenges every person and culture in some way

§ And at that, seekers can often turn away.

· Seekers don’t always hear what they want to hear

o But whatever they hear, if it is from Jesus, it is always delivered in love because He wants what is best for us

Testimony time…

· Remind what testimony is and isn’t

o Is not…

“This isn’t a claim that the person giving it is perfect,

nor that life has only been filled with good moments,

or that everything has unfolded exactly as we would have chosen;

o It is…

§ Giving God the glory for His work and presence

§ Reminding ourselves of the great things Jesus has done

§ Building up the faith of others

· Testimony from the series

o We are going to watch one small part from the coming weeks episode about how one of the guests, Heather Tomlinson, encountered Jesus (show Enc Ep 3 Clip 3)

§ So I was going to church, and I would almost describe it at that time as like whispers of the Holy Spirit in me of something. I could feel something, and I wasn't sure what it was exactly. And there's certain sermons that maybe stuck out and made me start to think about things a bit deeper. But mostly I would say it was private prayer and Bible study and really searching and questioning. But I was very much still wrapped up in my liberal secular way of viewing the world. So I was still interpreting Christianity and Jesus through that lens, and I didn't really, I couldn't see what I couldn't see. I wanted to follow Christ. So for me, being baptised was me saying, I want to follow Christ, even if I don't necessarily understand or agree with all of these teachings that the church had, or I didn't necessarily agree with the church, I did want to follow Christ. So that's why I got baptised. Completely out of the blue and not really expecting anything or expecting anything to happen. Um. I was reading my Bible on my bed one day, and I had a very, very powerful experience of God's love. And from that point on is when I think what most people would say, I was born again and started bouncing around, talking about Jesus.

DO you have a story like that? Do you remember or still have that hunger, that bouncing around for Jesus

We would love to hear it in our Share time

A character I used to love watching that would bounce around a lot was Road Runner and Coyote

o Sometimes in movies or old cartoons, you see a character run through a wall or a door

o They were in some ways trapped, and they ran at the door or wall and just ran through it

§ And in many cartoons, the character would leave a ‘body outline’ in the door or wall with one arm out here, and one leg up etc – the equivalent of the ‘chalk outline’ on the ground

What makes it funny is that we know that is not reality; you cannot just run through a wall.

· Nicodemus reminds us that seekers are confronted by the reality that we are in a ‘trapped place’ that only Jesus can help us out of.

John 3:5–7 NIV

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

John 3:14–15 NIV

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

· We like to think of ourselves as able to get ourselves out of the situations we get into

o We don’t want help…we want to do it ourselves

o But here Nicodemus is confronted with the fact that there is no human way he can get out of his predicament

Jesus makes the way

· Jesus says you must be ‘born again’

o And as we just mentioned, Nicodemus tries to think about this from a ‘human’ point of view and realises that he can run as hard as he likes against that door or wall (Illustration above), and all that is going to happen is he is going to break his nose rather than leave a ‘body-shaped’ hole

· Jesus says this being ‘born again’ of the seeker can only happen with two things occurring

o A movement of the Spirit of God (Jn 3:5-7)

o Believing in Jesus (Jn 3:15)

· We can’t jump high enough, run hard enough, behave well enough to enter this Kingdom of God

o In fact, we can’t even get close

§ We enter through the movement of the Spirit of God and by looking at Jesus and choosing to follow Him, because it is only through Him that this way has opened up

John 14:6 NIV

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

When we are born again, following Jesus means we must leave the old way behind, confess the sins and practices in our lives that we trust in more than Jesus, lay that down and follow in the ways, the truth and the life of Jesus.

Kay’s vision of a hand reaching out

· Nicodemus reminds us to always be a seeker

o To be a seeker who checks out Jesus

§ And even if you have been a Christian for a long time, many people’s experience is that there are deeper realities to always find and follow.

o To be a seeker who is open to what Jesus says, even if it is different to what we wanted to hear

o To be a seeker who allows Jesus to make the way for us, laying down our trust in other idols or practices of sin.

Share time - reflection from the sermon or an encounter on the topic of being born again.

· Time of reflection/response

§ What is at least one thing that God seemed to say to me today?

§ What will I do with what I have heard?

Pray

Communion

All are welcome as we come to this family meal. Here we remember who we are in Christ and renew our trust in God. If you consider yourself a child of God, we invite you to share in these elements. If you are still exploring what it means to trust God with your life, please feel free to let the elements pass and use this moment to reflect on the love and forgiveness Jesus offers you.

As we come to communion, we stand where Nicodemus once stood—not at the beginning of his questions, but at the point where Jesus’ words become confronting. Seekers don’t always hear what they want to hear. Nicodemus wanted clarity; Jesus spoke of birth. He wanted categories; Jesus spoke of the Spirit. And He made it unmistakably clear: this new life is not an upgrade of the old one. It is a beginning so radical that Jesus could only describe it as being “born again.”

On Thursday, I ran through my sermon with Stephen, and he went through his, as he is preaching this morning at Summerhill. Honour commitments before accepting the Ministry trainee role. He is speaking on Matthew 11, and there were a couple of themes that built on Nicodemus' encounter with Jesus.

Born again.

Birth is not gentle. It is a rupture, a leaving behind of what was safe and familiar. A baby is thrust from the womb into a world it cannot yet understand. And Jesus says that entering the kingdom is like that. In Matthew 11, we hear that the kingdom is “subjected to violence”—not because God is harsh, but because the old boundaries are being broken open. Those who never performed the right rituals or made the right moral choices are suddenly welcomed in. But to enter, they must leave the old world behind.

Communion reminds us of this holy upheaval. The bread and the cup declare that Jesus has made a way for every seeker—but the way is not self-improvement. It is surrender. It is trusting God enough to let go of the life we’ve shaped for ourselves and receive the life only He can give.

I am enjoying the prayers and the words from Lectio 365. Yesterday, the reflection was on the fact that we live in a world that tells us to blend in, to stay relevant, to embrace the culture on its own terms. But Henri Nouwen warns that our society is not a community radiant with Christ’s love, but a “dangerous network of domination and manipulation” in which we can lose our souls. He wonders whether we have been so shaped by the world’s seduction that we no longer see our own need—or feel the urgency to “swim for our lives.”

Makes me think of the boy, Austin Appelbee, who swam 4km for his life, asking God for help the whole way.

Communion calls us back to clarity. It reminds us that Jesus did not come to make us more acceptable versions of ourselves. He came to make us new. Every seeker is welcome at this table, but every seeker is also invited to trust—to step out of the old world and into the life of the Spirit.

As we take the bread and the cup, may we come not as people trying harder, but as people being born again. May we receive the grace that disrupts, the love that transforms, and the Spirit who leads us into the kingdom of God.

Matthew 26:26–29 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

Distribution of the bread:“The bread is a symbol of Jesus life given to sustain us, take and eat this bread, remembering that Jesus Christ died for you.”

Sharing the cup: “This cup is a symbol of the covenant of love as an outcome of Jesus’ poured-out life, the cup reminds us that God is ‘with us’ and ‘for us’.”

Prayer – (to include corporately praying for fellow church family members not able to share in communion that day)