Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Open your Bibles and read with me our text for today...

Here’s what we must understand:

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

The story of Nicodemus is a story that is replayed in the lives of many today who come to Jesus openly believing he is something unique, but no more than some type of spiritual broker who can buy, sale and trade, away our sins for forgiveness.

Using him to wheel and deal on our behalf with God when it comes to spiritual things.

This type of amazement and wonder that we find ourselves in, just as Nicodemus, is one that is inadequate to salvation.

As we read last week at the end of chapter 2, many people believed in Jesus for the signs that he did, but their surface level wonder was not enough for Him to entrust Himself to them.

Nicodemus also comes to Jesus the same way in wonder because of signs, yet this man was a “Teacher of Israel,” a Pharisee.

He understood that God was with this unknown teacher named Jesus, but he faith was at the beginning of a journey to spiritual realities that he could not yet understand.

Maybe you can relate.

What does it mean to be “born again?”

He is not referring to anything biological or of the flesh, He is in fact speaking in this somewhat cryptic, supernatural, and spiritual language.

What does Jesus mean when He says, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”?

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

Buried within this text are 4 key truths to this idea of “New Birth.”

That when we look below the surface reveals the mysteries of what Jesus means when he tells Nicodemus and us that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, one must be “born again.”

1.

New Birth is More Than Just Water Baptism ():  

New Birth (to be born again) for the Christian is not simply completed by an outward work of water baptism, but must be initiated by an inward work of the Spirit.

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In v.5 Jesus deals with Nicodemus on this very subject.

In verse 4 Nicodemus is taking Jesus answer of New Birth literally.

But that’s not what Jesus means… when he says this.

To be born of water and Spirit automatically takes those who have been in our church or especially the Baptist church to the thought of “Believers Baptism.”

Where one comes to profess their faith in front of the church and is immersed in water, and both by Biblical example and symbolism conveys the being buried in the waters which cleanse us of sin and raised to the newness of life in Christ.

So as a good Baptist being born of water evokes this imagery.

Nicodemus wasn’t a Baptist, technically neither was Jesus, but Nicodemus was a Jew, and we see Baptism as a Christian ordinance…yet, this purification by water was steeped in the Jewish faith.

Yet Nicodemus is struggling connecting the dots.

This is why it should not have been a surprise to Nicodemus what Jesus was saying because it should have brought to mind the words of the prophet Ezekiel.

When God instructed the people through the prophet of how he would purify His own people who had sinned against him.

Ezekiel 36:

You see water and Spirit in the language of God would have meant the same thing.

Water was not just a resource for cleansing, but in a land of desert terrain water was a life giving source.

That understanding is lost on us today where we find it plentiful.

What Jesus is saying is water and Spirit are the true giver of life…water gives life to the flesh, but the Spirit gives life eternal.

We see this in the OT and the NT.

The Apostle Paul said it this way to the church of Ephesus:

Eph

“....one body…one Spirit…one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God...”

John

New Birth is new life in the Spirit.

Much like water sustains the flesh in the dry periods of life, so too does the Spirit in the holy realms.

Remember what we talked about last week.

It’s the Spirit that awakens us to the realities of God’s rescue stirring up affections for Jesus and His life-giving work on the cross.

Baptism is response to the acknowledgment and the Spirit feeding faith to that work.

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John 3:9-10

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

2. New Birth is More Than Earthly Wisdom (): 

Many who are skeptical to the Gospel of Jesus are because they find those who claim Jesus both today and from the apostolic time (and what they teach) to be untrustworthy.

However, those who have be born again have been awakened by saving knowledge given by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus tells Nicodemus:

Notice the plurality of the personal pronoun in this statement.

Jesus starts the statement with an empathic “I,” then quickly switches to “we.” Who is the “we”?

Many scholars believe Jesus is speaking of the testimony of His apostolic community of the church.

Frank Bruner in his commentary on John in dealing with the who the “we” is, in the text quotes the thoughts of John Calvin, who Bruner says, “frequently refers to the “Minority Church” in God’s plan, citing Jesus’ present double-plural “you folks do not accept our testimony,” and [Calvin] comments:

We learn this important lesson from this phrase: faith in the Gospel must not waver among us if it has few disciples on earth…the fate, as it were, of God’s Word has in all ages been that it won belief among only a few.

Bruner also brings another theologians thoughts to this text, Frey.

He says of Frey’s analysis: that “Jesus and Johannine community writing John’s Gospel are the “we” of our text, perhaps along with Jesus’ historical disciples during his ministry (and of course , including the the Father and the Spirit)”…giving the addition of the trinitarian plurality.

Let me simplify this by putting these thoughts this way.

Jesus’ “we” as recorded by the apostle John is in reference to His church, faithfully left to the apostles to build upon His foundational work through His death and resurrection and this “we” contains also the Godhead who constructed the restored people of God’s church in eternities past.

Again v. 12 connects the skeptic of today and yesteryear with the person of Nicodemus as Jesus asks:

The church bears witness to Christ’s glorifying work here on earth for the hope of heavenly realities made known through the good news of Jesus.

Yet many turn to themselves and their works instead of His.

His work on earth far outweighs any work you or I could do.

Our earthly works are futile, reaping only death…while Christ’s earthly works reap glory for those who believe.

Bruner asks us this question in his commentary:

If we as humans do not, first of all, believe our deep human need, how will we ever seek or believe any deep divine provision?

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

Which lead us to our next key truth taught in this text...

3. New Birth is More Exclusive than Inclusive (): 

To be born again in Christ one must understand that "Jesus is the exclusive personal bridge between heaven and earth, between God and human beings.”

- Frank Bruner, (John, 192.)

I love how Bruner presses us into the spiritual realities of this verse as he pens these words:

Having seen Rebirth’s Need (Human Nature’s Insufficien[cies]) and Rebirth’s Means (The Holy Spirit’s Baptism), we have at last come, via the Church’s testimony in the last verse, to Rebirth’s Provision and Source (by the Son, from the Father [here in v.13]).

Basically, we learn that Christ (The Son of Man) is the only person with direct access to heaven (Bruner, John, 191).

Paul reinforces this thought (and I have often used this verse to those who think they can reach God through other means):

Nicodemus rightly call Jesus a “Teacher who has come from God” he just doesn’t realize how true that statement is.

Because “he doesn’t think of Jesus as a Teacher who has come down from God in heaven or as the Teacher who alone has access to heaven or as the Son of Man and Son of God who has any of the other supernatural attributes that this Gospel claims for Jesus.”

“Nicodemus’ faith is in a Jesus that is flat [not 3-D or 4K or UHD]; [his faith] is not high as the heaven with the Father, from whom Jesus has in fact ‘come’ down, nor is it as deep as the hell to which Jesus will descend in His Passion.”

Bruner says:

If faith does not have the divine Jesus as its object, it is untrustworthy faith; if faith does not have the crucified-for-our-sins Jesus as its object, it is not the Christian faith of the [Bible].

New Birth isn’t simply acknowledging Jesus, it’s dying to self and living in Him.

This bring us to the most important key truth that this text is trying to convey...

4. New Birth is More About Belief than "the Whoever" ():

New Birth is a picture of Salvation.

Nicodemus being a “Teacher of Israel” should have understood this from the Old Testament.

The entire Bible is about Jesus.

Everything in Scripture points to the cross of Jesus.

New Birth is a picture of Salvation.

Nicodemus being a “Teacher of Israel” should have understood this from the Old Testament.

The entire Bible is about Jesus.

Everything in Scripture points to the cross of Jesus.

We must understand belief is given by the Spirit.

We make it about the “whoever” believes, while forgetting belief is initiated by God in the “whoever.”

It is God who grants belief, which leads to “eternal life."

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John 3:14

This verse is quite perplexing to one who is unfamiliar with Scripture, especially the OT.

Which again, points that Jesus is appealing to Nicodemus as the “Teacher of the Jews” that he was.

Again, trying to help him connect the dots.

But in this picture Jesus paints a picture of a past event pointing to the salvation of God for His people, and pointing to a future picture to Nicodemus (a present reality for us) in the ultimate salvation of his people; the cross.