SPEAKER_01 0:01

Father, we thank you for that good gospel promise that we have just sung about. That you invite weak and weary and heartbroken sinners to run to you and find rest and find safety and security. And so we pray now that as we turn to your word, that we would hear the gospel again, that we would look again in faith to the God Abraham believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Do that again in our hearts this day and in your church. We pray in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated. Wizened old Nicodemus at the pinnacle of his career and nearing the end of his life. He was winding his way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem, his rich robes flapping in the wind that was cutting through those alleyways and passageways. He was on his way to have a conversation, to go and inquire of this remarkable young man whose reputation had reached the ears of the Sanhedrin that Nicodemus sat upon. So he makes his way into this room with this young man named Jesus so that he might interview them, get an idea of who he is, what kind of fellow he is, and whether Jesus in his remarkable ministry might find some kind of accord or maybe enter into some kind of partnership with the Sanhedrin, with that religious council that ruled over the affairs of the religious life of the nation and in many respects ruled over the affairs of the political and the civic life of the nation of Israel as well. And so they sit down together and this conversation commences, and eventually Jesus arrives at those comfortable words that we hear every Sunday at All Saints Anglican Church. I'll talk more about the comfortable words in particular in just a minute, but but that that phrase in the comfortable words, which is that most famous of all the passages of Scripture. So God loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. To you and to me, I think those words probably ring in our ears and in our hearts. But to Nicodemus, those words were like a horn blast, like the dogs of war about to be released. It was like a clanging symbol. There were in Jesus' comfortable words to you and me, there was no comfort at all for this man who had come to Jesus under the cover of night. As I was thinking about this character, Nicodemus, and kind of all that he represents, as my as my mind and my heart I want to, uh they raced to another one of the professionally righteous class that we talk about here quite regularly at All Saints Anglican Church, a fellow that you may have heard of named Martin Luther. Martin Luther and Nicodemus have a lot in common. You know, Martin Luther, he was one who, like Nicodemus, was intimately acquainted with the law. He knew the ins and the outs of the law. He was there, part of the professionally righteous in the monastery, who spent his life, who poured out his life in prayer and in considering and reading the scriptures, who would spend, who would spend hours upon hours, day by day, in the confessional with the priest, confessing to him every little sin and peccadillo that might happen to cross his mind or his heart, and then having been absolved by the priest, would step out into the corridor and after a few steps turn and make his way back again because something else had sprung to his mind. Martin Luther, like Nicodemus, knew the law inside and out, but Martin Luther saw the law to be a terror, which it is. Because by the works of the law, Saint Paul says, no man will be justified. Nicodemus, that old testament professionally righteous individual, has come as the teacher of Israel, Jesus calls him, to a teacher. Did you notice that? That's how he refers to Jesus. A teacher sent from God. Because no one could do the signs that you have done, Jesus, unless you were sent from God. So Jesus is an extraordinary person, but in Nicodemus' eyes, he is an extraordinary teacher. And that's where it ends. What is it that Nicodemus was a teacher of? Nicodemus was a teacher of the law, the law of God. He knew the law of God, inside and out, frontwards and backwards. And here he has come to this teacher of the law, whose teaching was attended by water into wine, by raising eventually the dead to life, whose teaching was attended by signs and wonders, demonstrations of the power of God. And he comes to Jesus, and essentially, Nicodemus is asking Jesus, teach me more about the law. I have a confession to make to you guys, which is probably not something that you often hear Anglican clergy get up and say from a pulpit on the second Sunday of Lent, but I'm sick of Lent. I'm over it. And I'm over it not because I don't think Christians should discipline themselves.

unknown 6:43

St.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Paul says as much, discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness. Discipline yourselves so that you can take deeper delight and joy, not in the discipline and not in your performance of the discipline, but in the Lord. Discipline yourselves so that you find greater and deeper delight in Him. But dear brothers and sisters, I'm sick of Lent because over the course of the last week and a half, I have had so many conversations with so many dear and precious saints who in Lent have only ever been ground down into the dust. Friends, Jesus has not come to grind you in the dust. I don't know how your Lent has gone thus far. I don't know how you're doing with chocolate or whatever whatever it is that you've given up or whatever new discipline you've taken on, but you need to hear the very good news today that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. If Jesus is just a teacher to you and to me, like he was to Nicodemus, if Jesus is just a teacher, then Lent, that's as good as it gets, guys. And quite frankly, that's not very good news. Nicodemus is expecting a teacher. He wants Jesus to come along and give me more instruction, give me something else to do. I need you, Jesus, to top up kind of my spiritual tank, right? I'm doing a pretty good job. I'm holding it together. You know, of course, what we don't see is that behind Nicodemus' life, as behind your life and my life, if indeed we think we're holding it together, there is a patchwork of, I mean, what was in MacGyver's toolkit? There's duct tape and there's bubble gum and maybe some toothpicks that's holding the facade up, right? Jesus, give me some more bubblegum to patch over the holes in my life. To that, Jesus says, You must be born again. And then he says again, you must be born again. No one enters the kingdom of God unless they are born again. When you hear that phrase born again, what what do you think of? Now, I I think a lot of that can be informed by our our various traditions, right? Maybe some of you hear the word born again and you kind of your stomach is in a knot because you think of born again people as kind of those, as really, I mean they're they're like the really emotional Christians, right? They're they're the Christians who are constantly crying, like Sam, right? Just kidding. Maybe that's what born again Christians are, the ones who are who are constantly, constantly crying. Or maybe you think of born-again Christians as those who don't drink and don't cuss and don't smoke and don't run around with girls who do, right? There's either this this emotional lens by which we understand born again, or there is this moral attainment lens by which we understand born again. But friends, I'm here to tell you that neither of those things is true. That those who are born again are the church. They are those who rest and trust in the work of Christ and in Christ alone. The true church of God. Maybe we think that those who need to be born again are the ones whose lives are obviously falling apart, where where the duct tape has failed. Those whose families have broken apart, whose marriages have failed, those who are in prison, drug addicts, and certainly they need to be born again too. But but who is Jesus talking to? Is Jesus talking to someone whose life has fallen apart? Is he talking to a drug addict? No, Jesus is speaking to someone. Jesus says to someone, you must be born again, to someone whose exterior life is everything that you and I could possibly hope for and imagine in this world. And he says to that man, Nicodemus, you must be born again. He didn't say that, as we'll see next week, to the woman at the well. He doesn't say it to the Syrophoenician woman who's begging for scraps at the table. He doesn't see it to the woman who was caught in adultery, you must be born again. No, he says to Nicodemus, you must be born again, because the gospel demands that you let go of all of your attainments, of all of your supposed righteousnesses. You let go of all of those things and you cling to the cross of Jesus Christ and to him alone. Nicodemus, you must be born again. Nicodemus doesn't like this word because it's really hard to let go of all of our successes. But we want to hold on to our successes and claim those as our own. But indeed, Jesus requires of every single one of us, whether we're the Nicodemus or whether we're the pimp and the prostitute out in the street, you have to let go of it all and cling only to me. You must be born again. Turn with me, if you will, to 8.35 in your pew Bibles. That's John chapter, John chapter 3, because our our gospel reading this morning ended with John 3.16. But but I think that the verses following help to explicate a little bit of the distress that Nicodemus is under as he's having this encounter with Jesus. Jesus says to him, God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal, everlasting life. 3.16. And then this wonderful message, again to you and me, it rings so beautifully in our heart because God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. If you're a conscientious Jew who thinks that you're working your way into the kingdom of God by your adherence to the law, you really hate that because you're looking forward to God condemning the rest of the world. You're looking forward for God to rain down judgment upon all those pagans and all of those heathens, and here comes Jesus and says, I have come not so that they might be destroyed, but so that they might live. Continuing on, verse 18. Whoever believes in him, who's the him referring to? The only Son of God. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already. This is what Nicodemus here. Whoever does not believe is condemned. Already. And then Jesus goes and talks about judgment at verse 19. Light has come into the world. This is echoing John 1, just a few pages before. Light has come into the world, and people loved what? Darkness. The world loved the darkness rather than the light. Because their works were evil or evil. Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works be exposed. Remember Nicodemus? Winding his way under cover of darkness to meet with Jesus, slinking around in the darkness, lest his works be exposed. And then he comes to the light of the world. And like a spotlight of however many lumens. I don't know, actually, I don't actually understand how lumens work. A lot of lumens shines there and he's pegged, right? Did you notice as we were reading along in the gospel passage that that Nicodemus shows up and he says a lot of things the first time? A lot of words, and then far fewer words the second time he's able to get a word in edge wise with Jesus. And then what is the last thing that Nicodemus says to Jesus in verse 9? How can these things be five words? That's all the teacher of Israel has to say in response to Jesus as the searchlight of the law is driving in on his heart and exposing all the darkness within.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

How can these things? How can someone be born again?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Jesus' response is a little quite frankly, it's just weird. He goes back to Numbers 21, this famous account in the history of Israel when the people of Israel had been complaining in the wilderness about uh about the food. Well, as Bishop Terrell pointed out uh yesterday during his his talk during Synod, uh they complain about how there's no food and we're gonna die here in the wilderness. And oh, by the way, all this food that you've given us, we don't we don't like it. Well, well, which one is it, Israel? Is there no food, or is it actually we just don't like the food, Lord, that you have provided? Because of their grumbling, the Lord sends fiery serpents in their midst to bite them, and as the venom courses through their veins, Israel is lying in the dust of the wilderness, and they are dying. But do you know what God's remedy was? God's remedy wasn't go find some herbs and make them some type of poultice. It wasn't go and suck the venom out of their veins. By God's grace, I've never been in a circumstance where I've had to do that. But that was like that was that was a serious concern for me camping growing up. It's one of the reasons I'm not much of a camperman. I just hate the notion that I might have to suck venom out of somebody's leg or something like that. But but God gives none of the responses that you or I would give to remedy this problem. In fact, God takes the sign, he commands Moses, take the sign of my judgment, a fiery serpent, and set it up on a pole. And how is it that Israel is delivered? It's not because the serpents are gone, it's not because of some medical remedy, it's because they are looking at the sign of God's judgment, and in fixing their eyes on the sign of God's judgment, they live. And so Jesus says, it is with you, Nicodemus, who are trying to be justified by the law. The law will not save. The law is those serpents who come and condemn and kill. But if you look to the sign of my judgment raised up upon the cross, you even you will live.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

You will be born again.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

The new birth is not simply some kind of overwrought emotional experience. And it's not simply the way that people whose lives are falling apart somehow put their lives back together. The new birth is for every single son of Adam and daughter of Eve who has ever tread the dust of this ground that we have broken and drugged down into sin and rebellion. The new birth is for every single one of us who would enter Christ and his kingdom. The kingdom of God. The comfortable words are one of those remarkable, we call them cranmarian inventions. One of the things that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer himself penned as he was putting together the Book of Common Prayer. And as Archbishop Cranmer was putting together the Book of Common Prayer, his great intention and desire was to give the people of England the gospel over and over and over and over again in one service of morning prayer and evening prayer, or in one service of holy communion. Because these are people who had never heard the gospel in their own language. It's just been priests mumbling in Latin up front. Maybe they'd gotten a little bit of the gospel in the stained glass or in the art of the church, but a lot of that was actually directed towards law and not gospel. So Thomas Cranmer, he wanted to re-evangelize the nation over and over for them to hear the gospel message of God's great love for sinners. And so after the confession of sin and after the absolution, and before we come to this table where Jesus meets us, he placed those comfortable words, those words of great comfort. And they aren't just four random passages of scripture that he quotes. They're four very specific passages of scripture and four passages of scripture quoted in a very particular order, which is why we do them, all four of them, every Sunday in the same order, here, again and again and again. God so loved the world that he excuse me. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Brothers and sisters, friends, especially in Lent, you need to hear that comfortable word. That the gospel is not come and do more and strive harder. The gospel is come and rest in the pierced hands of Jesus. That's where we begin. We all know how exhausting life in this world is. Jesus bids you come and rest. How is it that we can come and rest? Because God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him, who whoever, whoever believes in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. It sounds too good to be true, but it is deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world. The very reason for the incarnation. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

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And he is the propitiation for our sins. He is the perfect offering. It is his offering that that's what propitiation is. It turns away the wrath of the Father. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. We're going to hear those comfortable words again. In just a few minutes, because in just a few minutes, you and me, we're going to need to hear the gospel again. Nicodemus, there's not Nicodemus, those words did not strike him as comfortable words, John 3.16, in that moment. But the spirit, which blows where it wills, Jesus says, it was blowing on Nicodemus that day, just like it was blowing outside the house that he met Jesus in. Because we go along in John's gospel and in John chapter 19. You don't need to turn there, I'll just read it for you. John chapter 19. After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, he asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, he came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. Friends, the Spirit of God blew and breathed spiritual life into Nicodemus's lungs. Nicodemus was born again in the darkness of his own lent. Those days of Jesus' earthly ministry. And so much so that rich and accomplished Nicodemus found himself doing medial, menial woman's work. Preparing the body of our Lord, anointing it with myrrh and aloe in an attempt to ward off the stench of death. And then burying Jesus in a garden. He buried Jesus in a garden so that Jesus would shoot forth three days later as the new Adam, the father of a new humanity, of all those who have heard his words, you must be born again. And today I suspect there are some of you here. You can relate to Nicodemus. You're familiar with the church and with its life, you're familiar with all the things that you're supposed to do. Maybe you've been striving to check off all your lists, and especially in Lent. You've gotten really good at Lent over the years, but right now the Spirit of God is blowing on you.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Breathe deeply.

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Breathe the breath of God that Adam breathed as he sprung forth from the dust, and that Jesus, the new Adam, breathed as he walked out of that garden tomb. Breathe and breathe deeply today, so that you might live, that you might look at the Lamb of God, so that you might be born again. Let's pray. We pray, Father, that you would blow by your spirit in our hearts, and you would bring life where there is death, that we who are weary of life in this world may find in you and in your promises, and Jesus, in your accomplished work for us, we may find life. Breathe on us, so we may breathe in you and be born again into your kingdom, Jesus. We pray these things in your name and for your sake. Amen.