Waters Church

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're gonna take a look at a guy who's very

(00:02):
famous in the scripture. Here for one of the phrases
that Jesus said, imn very famous passage in John three
point sixteen. His name is Nicodemus. The title of my
message is what Nicodemus now knows? What Nicodemus now knows?
John three. That's where we're going. Okay, Now, how many
of you like to get the truth delivered quickly? Bad

(00:26):
news are good news? Anybody just give it to me straight?
Anybody like that? How many of you like it to
be kind of like progressive? But I don't. I don't
know if I'm ready for the hammer to drop. Anybody
like that? Well, I heard this story about this lady
that went away on vacation, left her husband at home
to watch her cat. She called him on day three

(00:49):
and uh, she said, how's the cat? He said dead?
She said, honey, why did you do that to me?
He goes, what do you mean?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
She said, you could have broken it to me a
little bit softer.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
He goes, well, how do you mean? She goes, on
day one, I could have called you and you could
have said, well, he's up on the roof and then
the day two, how's my cat? And you could have said, well,
he's a little sluggish, and then day three he's a
little sick, and then day four he's dead. You could
have done it like that progressively. You didn't. You didn't
have to say it so bluntly like that. He goes, honey,
I'm so sorry. I'll never let that happen again. Lefts

(01:21):
and learned. She says, okay, thank you. How's my mom doing?
By the way, he said, she's on the roof that story.
This story does have something to do with where we're
going today. In John chapter three, what Nicodemus now knows
stand with me for the readnew of God's Word. Chapter

(01:41):
three of John, reading from verse one right through to
verse sixteen. Now there was a man, somebody say a man.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus,
a ruler of the Jews. This man, somebody say, this man,
So amen moves Now to 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

(02:04):
can do these things that you do unless God is
with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you,
unless one is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom
of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man
be born when he is old? Can he enter a
second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born of the
water and the spirit. Somebody say, water and spirit, unless

(02:26):
so many is born, Unless one is born in water
and spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which
is born of the spirit of spirit. Do not marvel
that I said to you, you must be born again.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound,
but you do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. So it is with everyone who is

(02:46):
born of the spirit. Nicodemus said to him, how can
these things be? And Jesus answered him, Are you a
teacher of Israel? Are you not a Are you the teacher?
Somebody say the teacher? Just remember that, he says, are
you the teacher of Israel? And yet you do not
understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we

(03:08):
speak of what we know and bear witness of what
we have seen. But you do not receive our testimony.
If I have told you earthly things and you do
not believe, how can you believe if I tell you
heavenly things. No one has ascended into heaven except he
who is descended from heaven, the son of Man. As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes
in him may have eternal life. For God so loved

(03:30):
the world that he what we should know. This one.
He gave his only son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish, but have eternal life. This is God's word.
Let's pray together, Father in heaven, we say, time out
on life, time out on our schedules, time out on

(03:52):
our day, for you to speak to us. We thank
you for the privilege to be able to come into
this house and worship you and hear you, and receive
in our hearts the word that never returns, void, that
always accomplishes the purposes for which you scent it. May
our eyes be open, May our ears be open, and

(04:13):
my heart's be receptive to hear your voice and see
Jesus in his name we pray, and everybody said, hey, man, Goup,
lets you have a seat. You belong your part. For
what Nicodemus now knows. Jesus loved conversations. He is a
conversational guy. John's Gospel in particular deals with several one

(04:41):
on one conversations that Jesus has with different kinds of people,
whether they be George Vicentees or Nicodemus. And then in
the next chapter, in John chapter four, he has a
conversation with a woman who was five times divorced and
living with in fornication another man, and Jesus has a conversation.

(05:03):
What I love about God. What I love about the
scriptures and how they reveal our God is he wants
to talk with us, not just at us. Do you
ever have anybody to talk at you and not with you?
And what I love about how John reveals the glory
of Jesus, that the point of his gospel is that

(05:24):
you might know who Jesus is and what he did,
so that you might believe that he's the Christ and
the Son of God, and that you might have life
in his name. And you have to know that this God,
this Jesus is a conversation kind of God. He wants
to talk with you, not at you, and he starts
where you are. Nicodemus, who is he? Verse one? Now

(05:45):
there was a man, if you've got your notes out,
underlying the words a man, because the first thing that
we know from John's Gospel is that Nickodamus was a man.
But then he gives us some more qualifiers. He was
from the Pharisees, and he was a ruler of Nicodemus.
The word Nicodemus comes from two Greek words Nike nickay,
which means victory. Okay, we have a sneaker brand name

(06:08):
for that, right, Demus, which we get the word democracy
from rule of the people. So Nicodemus means victory over
the people of If Nicodemus was in church today, he'd
be wearing Nike's and be a democrat. That's who he is. Okay,
victory over the people. And this is Nicodemus his name.

(06:30):
Who is he? He's a man, but he's a Pharis,
the Pharisees. There are six thousand Pharisees in Jesus day.
They lived mostly around Jerusalem. They were absolutely one thousand
percent devoted to following the law. They were the religious
people of the religious people. They were the devout Catholics
and fundamental Baptists and hardy Presbyterians and biblically minded Evangelicals,

(06:55):
all wrapped into one. They made They made the Catholics
look like not amateurs. When it came to religious practice,
they dotted their eyes and crossed every tee. In fact,
they not only have followed the Ten Commandments, they also
lived according to the six hundred and thirteen laws of
the first five books of the Bible. The first five

(07:16):
books we call those the Torah. They called them the
tor means law. These are the books of Moses, the
books of the Law, which are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy Pharisees. To be a Pharisee, it required that
you had those five books memorized, memorized. Anybody think they
could do that, like take away Netflix and give it

(07:36):
a chance, you'll probably do it. But you know, this
is what they did. They believed that this was the
word of go Us, where they internalized and memorized that
they had studied all the time, and so they followed
the laws. And then they followed not just the laws.
But they followed their commentary in the law, the Mishnah,
which was a commentary in law how to obey the law,
because some of the laws you need a little bit

(07:58):
more instruction on how to obey it. Some of them
were cut and dry, very simple, like do not steal.
Like that one was cut and dry. What does that mean?
Don't take other people's stuff? Right, that's simple. Do not
commit adultree, It's pretty simple, like nobody commits adult tree
by mistake. Nobody's like, why you're not my wife? Nobody's

(08:18):
like that happened, right. So that was cut and dry, clear.
But there was that fourth commandment, that pesky fourth commandment
honor the Sabbath. That one needed clarity because what does
it mean to not work? What does it mean to work?
And so they had all kinds of laws, laws on
top of laws, tradition on top of tradition for how
to obey that one. And they had some crazy stipulations,

(08:41):
like one of the stipulations was on the Sabbath, you
could spit on a rock, but you couldn't spit in
the dirt because if you spit in the dirt, you
could possibly make mortar and mortars. How you make bricks,
and bricks are how you make walls, and so you
would be unintentionally working on the Sabbath if you spit
in the dirt. Crazy stuff, right. You could walk on

(09:03):
the Sabbath two thirds of a mile, but you couldn't
walk any further than that. Pity of the food that
walked two thirds of a mile away from his house
couldn't walk back, poor guy. They had stipulations about what
you could eat and the produce of your lanth. You
couldn't climb a tree on the Sabbath because you might

(09:24):
break a branch, and that could be interpreted as harvesting fruit,
which is work. All kinds of crazy stuff. The craziest
one was you could eat an egg laid by one
of your chickens on the Sabbath, so long as you
killed the chicken for breaking the Sabbath. How many no
religion makes you ridiculous. That's who. Nicodemus is. Pharisee ruler

(09:51):
of the Jews, and a verse one ruler of the
Jews means that he was part of the Sanhedron. Somebody
says Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was the supreme court of Israel.
That's who it was. These were elected officials from amongst
the people. They were devout, they were intellectual, they were knowledgeable,
they knew the law backwards before, like I said, they
memorized it. Nicodemus was in the select group of seventy

(10:13):
one Jewish men who literally ruled over the entire nation
according to the law. And then there's one third thing
I want to tell you about Nicodemus that we pick
up from Chapter three of John, which is that Jesus
in verse ten, if you got your bibles open, you'll
see it there. Jesus says, aren't you the teacher of Israel?

(10:35):
Not a teacher, not one of many? No, the which
means that Nicodemus was not just an intellectual superior. He
was the dean of academics at the University of Jerusalem
in the first century. What I'm trying to tell you
is you don't get any more religious, and you don't

(10:57):
get any more devout, and you don't get any more
serious about being a good person than Nicodemus. And yet
verse two says that this man, Nicodemus Amen, this man
came to Jesus by night. Why did Nicodemus come to

(11:17):
Jesus by night, anybody want to guess, because he was afraid.
He was afraid that his little religious insider group would
see him associating with this obscure Nazarene carpenter turned rabbi.
You have to understand, in the geography of Israel, Jerusalem,
where Nicodemus lived, was in the south, and Nazareth, where
Jesus was from, was way up in the north. We're

(11:39):
not talking about like this is the Bible Belt Jerusalem,
like the Bible Dallas Sexus or I don't know, Tennessee
or Atlanta, Georgia. He's he's not from Boston. He's from
like bangor Maine. That's where Jesus is from. Like that's
the relationship. Right.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
So so this obscure guy who's doing these signs and wonders,
Nicodemus comes Sam by night and his name is nicod
dems And it makes it very convenient to call every
sermon ever preached on John three, Nick at Knight stupid
preacher jugs thanks to Nickelodeon. But that's you know, he's

(12:14):
coming to Gee the night because he wants to hut.
And I love the fact that the scripture just says
wait a second, He's just a man.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
He's just a man. Here's what that means. You know what,
strip away all the things that you think you are,
strip away your titles and your academics, and your degrees
and your and your knowledge and all the things that
all the people and all the groups and all the
social clubs that you belong to, and when you stand
before God, you're just a man or a woman. Right,

(12:44):
That's what John is saying here. And you have to
know that when you read the Bible, you can't worry
about chapter divisions. You know, chapter divisions of the Bible
were not a part of the original text of the Bible.
So this was from one from chapter two read write
to chapter three. Because let's just back up in chapter two,
verse twenty three. This is how John left off that chapter.

(13:05):
He says, Jesus was in Jerusalem at the pass Over feast,
and many believed in his name when they saw the
signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part,
did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people,
and he needed no one to bear witness about man,
for he himself knew what was last two words, everybody
what in man? Jesus knew what was in Man. Don't
stop reading. Read right into chapter three. Now there was amen.

(13:30):
So when John is talking about the fact that Jesus
knew what was in Man, Exhibit A. Is Nicodemus a
devout religious, intellectually superior, revered leader of Israel, and before

(13:51):
Jesus he's just a man. And more importantly, he just
he comes to this obscure rabbi from Nazareth with all
of his clothes and all of it. You know, they
wore funny hats, and they had the scripture talks about philactories.
Philactories which are still a thing in Israel to this day.
They're little black boxes that they would strap to their foreheads,
into their forearms, and they would put little Torah scrolls,

(14:13):
little parchments of scripture, wrap them up and put them
in there. Because the scripture says Deseuteronomy that you show
you show write them on your hands and on your foreheads.
They literally take it literally that you got to put
the word of God. That would be like a modern
day Christian, you know, sewing the Bible to his forehead
and walking around and said, well, the Bible told me
to do this like this religious leader comes to this

(14:37):
obscure Nazarene and Carpenter, and do you know why? Do
you know why? Because apart from all of his religion
and all of his acolades and all of his glory
in the eyes of man, here's what Nicodemus knew. Write
this down. This is the point. Number one. What Nicodemus
knew is that you can be religious and not write
with God. Put the write that down? Can we get

(14:57):
that on the screen a little bit delayed back the
You can be religious and not right with God. That's
what Nicodemus knew. Let me put it this way. In America,
you can be a good person and not right with God.
America's favorite religion is not Christianity. It's I'm a good person.

(15:24):
Because every time you ask somebody, are you going to Heaven?

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Why I'm a good person? Well, based on what whose
standard are you going with? Well, I'm not as bad
as Jeffrey Dahmer. Really we're going to You only go
to hell if you eat your neighbors. That's where we're going.
Everybody that doesn't eat people is going to have it. See,

(15:50):
this is the game that we play with ourselves because
we do this as America's all the time. I'm a
good person. Well, how do you know? I feel it
in my heart? Your heart is sick. You have a
sick heart. Your heart lies to you on a regular basis.
The person who lies to you the most is you. You're

(16:14):
always lying, You're always deceiving. Even your own thoughts don't
aren't true. Your feelings aren't real. They're momentary synapses in
the brain, brought upon you by the experiences of the moment. Jeremiah,
chapter seventeen, verse nine. The heart is deceitful above all else.
The heart lies, Jesus said about the human heart. He said,

(16:37):
out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts, murders, fornication, lies,
adult Listen, it's not the R rated movies that make
you defiled. Is what's already in here that make you
know you're not what you should be. This is what
Nicodemus realized. You could be a good person. You could
be a religious person. You could be a devout Catholic,
a fundamental Baptist, a hearty Presbyterian, and still not be

(17:00):
right with God. That's why he comes to Jesus at night.
Something's missing, something's not right, and he knows it. And
this Jesus knows something and has something he doesn't have.
So what does Jesus do in verse three? Drop the hammer?
Cat's dead. Okay, here's what he says. Truly, truly, I

(17:20):
say to you, unless one is what born again? Man,
No two words in the English language have more cultural
baggage than those two. I used to work in secular work.
I used to work at a bank, and I've been
born again my whole life, basically, you know, since I
was a kid. But that term born again, because the
eighties got a lot of you know, baggage associated with it.

(17:44):
One of those born again believers, Oh, those crazy people.
And I remember I was working with a bunch of
people who were Catholics and devout Catholics, and when the
conversation led to the fact that I was born again,
they started laughing and mocking me. Oh you're when I
was born again? People, I said, I said, okay, just
let me just tell you that the Jesus that your

(18:04):
church talks about said that unless you're born again, you
cannot see the Kingdom of God. And I'll never forget.
One of the ladies said to me, shot right back,
she said, well, I guess I'm not going to see
the Kingdom of God. Then, mind you, this was a
devout Catholic. Religion can make you ridiculous. It can blind
your eyes to your need for God. So Jesus says,

(18:29):
you can't do it. You can't, You can't see the
Kingdom of God, Nicodemus. All of your religious upbringing and
and all of your training and all of your schooling
are nothing before the eyes of God. So Nicodemus has
got questions verse four. How can a man be born
again when he's old? He can't enter into his mother's

(18:51):
womb again, Jesus, that would be ridiculous. Wouldn't have been
funny if Jesus is like, no, duh, that's not what
I'm saying, Nicodemus. And the answer from Jesus is truly truly.
Whenever Jesus is truly truly is like, pay attention. This
is serious, I say to you. Unless one is born
of water and the spirit. Make sure you just note

(19:11):
that we're gonna get back to that he cannot enter
the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the
flesh is what flesh. Flesh gives birth to flesh. Let
me put it this way. Evil gives birth to evil.
Bad people give birth to bad people. How many of

(19:32):
you parents, Every once in a while you'll see your
worst trade come out of your child. Doesn't it make
your blood boil? You're like, what ye? How did you

(19:52):
become in a denial? You won't admit that there you
There's a great commercial in the nineteen eighties where the
kid was caught by his dad smoking pot. Remember this,
and the father breaks into the rub and said, who
taught you to do this? Where did you learn to

(20:12):
do this stuff? What does the kids say? I learned
it by watching you. That's that time to burn the bongs.
I gotta get out of this thing, right Like a
flesh gives birth the flesh. Some of you blame your
parents for your bad habits. You know why, because flesh

(20:33):
gives birth the flesh. Some of you are the parents,
and you're tired of your kid's blaming you for all
their problems. The good news is is that God has
a wonderful sense of humor, and he will give your
kids that blame you for their bad habits their kids
of their own that will blame them for their bad habits.
So the future's bright flesh gives birth to flesh. That

(21:00):
which is born of the spirit is what spirit? So
eight times and ten verses Jesus says the word born.
It's an important point. It's an important point because this
is one of the things that John opens his gospel with.
In John chapter one, he says, in verse twelve, but
to all who did receive Jesus, who believed on his name,

(21:20):
to them he gave the right to become children of God?
Who were what born? Not of blood, nor the will
of the flesh, nor the will of man, but born
of God. Okay, this is gonna be really good. Okay,
let me ask you a question. This is a simple one.
If you've been to fifth grade, you can answer this question.

(21:41):
What did you do to be born the first time? God? Good? Nothing.
This was the most confident crowd of all three services,
and you all weren't even that confident. To be honest
with you, all all three terms be like what nothing?

(22:02):
Your parents did something they decided to throw on some
romantic music and candles and dinner, and then you Okay,
So the point is you had nothing to do with
your first birth. And this is the word that Jesus

(22:23):
chooses to talk about how we get right with God.
So if you had nothing to do, if you brought
nothing to the table to be born the first time,
what do you do to be born the second time? Nothing?
Are you hearing what I'm saying. Jesus is challenging Nicodemus

(22:46):
at the chor of Oyas, because at the corp of
Oyas he's a religious guy who does all who does
all kinds of religious things that make him think he's
right with God. And Jesus shows up and says, none
of that counts. You are not someone who achieved salvation.
You are someone for whom God loves and gave his
life for so that you might be born again. And

(23:09):
the only thing you bring to the table is your sin.
That's it. That's what I brought to the table when
I got saved. Give that's all I had, and God
brought his grace, his love, his mercy, his kindness, his

(23:29):
compassion and made me a brand new person. You're not
looking at somebody who achieved You're looking at somebody who
God loved. That's what Christianity is really all about. See,
it's the men and the traditions and the Churchianity that
clouds it all. Up with all kinds of layers of

(23:50):
gunk that turn people off and say, I don't want
a part of that. That's not what I want. I
don't like that, all those rules. It's not that it's
something happened in us. That wasn't what we did. It
was what God did for us. And I'm born not
a flesh alone, but I'm born of the Holy Spirit
of God. Here's what I want you to write down.

(24:11):
Number two. What Nicodemus needed to know was What Nicodemus
needed to know was salvation is something that happens to you,
not from you. You don't you don't achieve it like
a lot of Christians. And I get it. You say
why God saved in nineteen eighty two? You got nothing

(24:32):
change the phrase, say the Lord saved me in nineteen
eighty two. You said, this is semantics, No, it's not. No,
it's theology. It's imperative that you make God the subject
of your salvation story and not yourself, because if you

(24:53):
got saved, you could possibly then get unsaved. Are you
hearing this? But God saves. God subject saves verb, you
direct object. So this is important because it's not my story,
it's his story. It's not youstery. It's not mystery. Mystery

(25:18):
is a mystery. I don't know why I act the
way I act. I don't know why I did the
things in the past that I did. I could blame
my parents for some of it, but most of it's
my own stupid fault. It's not my story or mystery.
It's history for mystery, so that my story can glorify
his story. Are you hearing? Because this is really good preaching, man,

(25:40):
and I'm telling you you gotta wake up a little
bit this morning. It's not I gotta say. This's a
Lord saved me. If you're finally starting to realize that
you had nothing to do with your salvation, just give
the Lord a good amen. This is what Niodemus needed
to know verse seven. And I think Jesus is looking

(26:03):
at Nickodameas, and Nickodamea is like, because look at verse seven,
what is Jesus? Do not marvel? I can see you're confused.
Don't do that. Don't marvel that I said you must
be born again. Verse eight. The wind blows where it wants,
where it wishes. If you got in your notes underline
where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you

(26:24):
don't know where it comes from or where it's gonna go.
You don't know those things. Some of you, that's your story, don't.
You don't even know the exact date that you got saved.
Like I get there, I go, I use the word
the Lord saved you. You don't even know the day the
Lord saved you. It's just suddenly. I was talking to
somebody between services, I think last night, after service, and

(26:46):
he said, pastor, you'll never believe where I got. So
I got saved while I was standing in a church.
They didn't even preach yet, they were just singing about
Jesus and the Lord saved me. I know that we
do the hand raised moment because we want to go
you in a prayer to confess Christ. But sometimes it happens,
and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's just a reaction to
that fact that already happened. The wind blows where it wishes.

(27:11):
You hear it. You see the effects of the wind. Yeah,
you see the effects of the wind. It's like C. S.
Lewis said, I don't believe in God because I see him.
I believe in God like I believe in the sun,
not because I can see it. But because I can
see everything because of it. God is the cause the
effects of the evidence. And the one thing about us

(27:32):
we know is that we can't control the wind. We
can't control the wind. We can't control the weather. Amen,
New Englanders can't control the weather. Really wish we could
concerning this last weekend that we've had. I've watched Back
to the Future Part two when Marty McFly went to
the future. He went to twenty fifteen. Remember that, that's

(27:53):
how old that movie is. Went to the future that
was seven years ago, eight years ago. And when he
got there, they were controlling the weather. That's what Back
to the Future too told us that by twenty fifteen
would be able to control the weather. Instead, we got
iPhones on Instagram. I'd rather have weather control anybody with
me on that anyway, can't control it. This is the

(28:15):
point that Jesus is making because salvation is not your doing,
It's God's doing. Write this down so I know you're
getting it. Religion is man centered. Salvation is God centered.
I got saved as you centered. The Lord saved me
as God centered. That's my testimony. The Lord saved me.
Religion is what you do. Salvation is what God does.

(28:38):
And no, they don't work together. They don't work together.
Another Pharisee who did not want to be a Christian.
His name was Saul of Tarsus, pharisee of Pharisees. He's
called himself a religious devote just like Nicodemus. The Lord

(29:00):
showed up, saved him, changed and transformed him. Would write
years later these famous words for we are saved by
grace through faith. And this is not your own doing,
not of works, so that no man can boast. It
is the gift of God, not of work. There's no boasting,

(29:21):
there's no there's no boasting in heaven, which means religion.
You know why people are prone to religion because they
like to boast. I go to church, I'll give my money,
I dressed for the occasion. Look at me, look at all.
And they put stuff on their social media talking about
their church, like their faith, their religious practice, like what
the heck Jesus said. Don't do that to be seen

(29:42):
by men, because when you do that, you're trying to
boast of yourself. That's what religion leads to boasting and arrogance.
Salvation leads to gratitude and humility and This is how
it should work. The longer you're saved, the more you're
grateful that you're saved, because the longer you're saved, the

(30:03):
more you realize just how much God needed to save.
Are you hearing this? That's how it is for me,
Like we want God just to fix the outside of us,
like fix these things that I do on the outside,
because I don't like them and people around me don't
like them. But God isn't just interested in fixing the outside.

(30:24):
He wants to fix the motivation inside that produces the outside.
And guess what, he wants to go deeper than that.
He wants to fix the things underneath, the motivation inside
that produces the things we do on the outside. And
Christianity and walking with Christ is a lifelong exploration of

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how much God needed to change about you. Because I
don't know, if I'm talking to anybody who knows, there's
some there's still some stuff that's inside and I'm like,
why is that there? And then the longer you say,
the more that happens for you that God saves you.
What religions man say centered salvation is God said, Hey,
Religion leads to anxiety. Salvation leads to peace. Religion leads

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to that anxiety. How because if you're doing the I'm
a good person thing, if you're doing that game, I
got I got a great question for you. How good
is good enough? I'm a good person? Uh? Huh? How
good is good enough? Do you? Are you sure you
did enough to get to heaven? Are you sure? Maybe

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you did some things to undo the stuff that you
already did, So maybe you need to redo that stuff
and stop doing the other stuff that undid the stuff
that you did before. Anxiety? Are you hearing it? Anxiety? Anxiety?
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. That's because you've put
your faith in you and not in God. This is
what Nicodemus needed to know. Number three, what Nicodemus should

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have known This is a long point long phrase, So
just we'll leave it up there for a while. Only
God can make life come from death, light come from darkness,
and order come from chaos. Only God can do that.
God is the one who brings this stuff about. Right.
Nicodemus should have known this, because what did Jesus say?

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You are the teacher of Israel. You study this book,
not the New Testament. I understand the Old Testament but
you study this. It's your life, it's your occupation, it's everything,
and you still don't get it. You still don't get
that God is the source of everything. You gotta be
born through the spirit and through the water. And so

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here's what Nicodemus asked. In verse nine, he says, how
can these things be? Verse nine, Verse ten, Jesus says,
you are the teacher in Israel, and you don't understand
these things? What things? Let's go back to verse five.
It says this, unless one is born of the water
and the spirit, he cannot enter in the Kingdom of God.
That's verse five, okay, verse five, Unless you're born of
the water, in the spirit, you cannot enter the Kingdom

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of God. Water. Spirit, somebody say water, somebody say spirit.
Those two things go together all over the Bible. And
the reason why Jesus is incredulous that Nicodemus doesn't get
it is because Nicodemus, if he studied the Bible, he
would have seen it that God's spirit and God's water

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work on water always produce life. Let's take a look.
Let's do an Old Testament tour of these two phrases
going together, go all the way back to Ezekiel chapter
thirty six, when Israel has been abandoned by God. They've
been exiled into Babylon, and they are look they look
hopeless and helpless. And God sends Ezekiel, this prophet, this

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Old Testament prophet, to give them a good good news,
give them good news. And here's what he says, Ezekiel
thirty six twenty five. I will sprinkle clean what water
on you, and you shall be clean from all your
cleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you,
and I will give you a new heart and a
new spirit. I will put in you within you, and
I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh

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and give you a heart of flesh. And I will
put my spirit within you. And I will cause you
to walk in my statues and be careful to obey
my rules. What is going on, God is saying, I
am going to change you from the inside out. I will,
I will, I will. I will wash you with my water,
and I will fill you with my spirit. That's salvation.

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When God washes you of sin and puts the spirit aside.
It so that you don't obey him because you're following
the religious crowd. But because your heart has been changed
by His Holy Spirit. See a lot of people talk
about in America that Christianity is on the decline. That's

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not true. That's not true. Do you know what's on
the decline? Fake Christianity is on the decline. People who
just followed the religious crowd because being a Christian gains
you some points in the community that was the United

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States of America. Ladies and gentlemen, those days are over,
and everybody who was just following the crowd through religious
practices to be accepted by other people who were following
the religious practices. Those people of suddenly woke up to the
fact that being Christian is no longer cool, and so
they've jettisoned Christianity because they were only doing it for
the sake of other people's approval. But God is still

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working in people's hearts. From north to south, from east
to west, from la to Boston and Chicago to Dallas.
People are still coming to the Lord Jesus Christ as
God changes the heart and not just the habits, his
spirit changing your heart and washing you with His water.

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Let's back up a little further in the Bible to Exodus,
when the people of Israel are coming out of Egypt
and God has saved them out of their slavery. And
they're walking into the Promised Land and they hit a
roadblock and they come up on the Red Sea. It
is a very famous story, and wess we missed a
little detail of the story. And they can't go any
further and they look behind them and there's Pharaoh's army.

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And Pharaoh's army is charging coming to kill them, wipe
them out, because he's got a bit of a case
of fomo. He's missing out now on having his slave labor,
so he's coming to get them back. And they and
they cry out to God, did you just bring us
out into the desert to let us die? And God's like,
I don't know what to do and I'm sorry. Moses

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is like I don't know what to do. And God
is like, stop whining. Guys, is to Moses, take your
staff and raise it up. Exodus chapter fourteen. Look what
happens verse twenty one. Then Moses stretched out his hand
over the sea, and the Lord drove back to sea
by a strong wind. The word in Hebrews ruah, which
means spirit. It was in a natural wind. It was
a supernatural wind and all night and made the sea

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dry land, and the waters were divided, and Israel functionally
gets baptized. Paul talks about this in one Corinthians ten.
He says, Israel gets functionally baptized in the water and
in the sea, and they come out of that sea
a new nation. And Pharaoh goes into the water and
the water closes up on him, and he's dead. And

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God destroys their enemies through the water through the work
of his spirit, and gives birth to a new nation
through the work of his spirit upon the waters. That's
why you get baptized. That's why you get baptized, because
you're saying publicly and visibly that this is what happened
to me. God brought me out of my slavery to

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sin and change my heart and made a new man
and a new or new woman inside. Let's go back
even further to the Bible, Genesis chapter eight, and poor
Noah is floating on the waters. We like to focus
on the fact that Noah was faithfully he built the
arc and it was a powerful story. And he brought
the two by two animals and the seven clean animals,
you know, the seven of each clean animals is really

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cool story, cute story. We put it on our nurseries
and for our kids, which is really weird. Anybody painted
the nursery and the No's Arc theme. We did this
for our first child. I remember I walked into it.
I'm like, why did we do this? This is when
God killed everybody. Why did we do this for the
decorations of my child? Anyway, So Noah is on the arc,

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floating and the water. The rain is off, but the
whole planet is covered in water. It's like a Christopher
Nolan film, sitting on the water with all these animals.
And you have to think what went through Noah's mind
in that moment. He must have been like, uh, what
now everybody's dead except my kids and my daughter in
laws and my wife and these animals. And he doesn't know.

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But Verse one of Genesis eight says God remembered Noah
beasts and the livestock that were with him in the ark.
And God made a wind rua blow over the earth.
And what the waters subsided. God's work of the wind
of the spirit on the waters brought new life to Noah.

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We can go even further back in the Bible. Let's
go to the first page. The easiest chapter to find,
Genesis chapter one. In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth, and the earth was without form, chaotic
and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep,
and the spirit of God was hovering over the face

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of the waters. And God said, let there be light,
and there was life. God brings life out of death.
God brings light out of darkness. God brings order out
of chaos. Why is that important? Because apart from God,
your life life is chaos. You're walking in darkness and
you're death destined for death. But when God speaks, light

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comes and life comes, and then order comes into our
body and into our life. What is God doing in
your life? He is bringing the order out of chaos.
The mess that you made. He's going to take it
and turn it into a testimony. He's going to take
it and make your history a glorious story of His glory.

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That's the business of God. And a scripture says in
Genesis one nine that God separated the waters and he
put dry and let dry land up here. And scripture
says that he squeezed together some dust in the earth
and blew into the nostrils of Adam and made a
living being out of the dust of the earth. And
that is a picture of friends, of how God makes us.
He takes us from the dirt, he takes us from

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the mess, he takes us from the the mud and
muck of life, and he puts us in his hand,
and he breathes into us as spirit, and we become
born again to the work of God. This is why
Peter says in First Peter one twenty three, he says,
you have been born again, not a perishable zee, but
of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

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This is where the story ends with Nicodemus. This is
the last part of the conversation. Jesus kind of just
kind of preaches for a few more chapter, for a
few more verses. In John chapter three, we don't hear
another word from Nicodemus and John chapter three. So the
question is this what happened to him? What happened to him? Well,
fast forward two years John chapter seven. Jesus is back

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in Jerusalem for the Passover feast again. He's preaching and teaching,
and the Pharisees are they've had it, so they send
soldiers to go and arrest him. This is two years
into his ministry. He's got one of year left. It's
not God's time. And the scripture says in John chapter
seven that the officers verse forty five, the officers came
back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who said
to them, why did you not bring him in? Where

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is he? And the officers answered, no one ever spoke
like this man. I would get a kick out of that.
Like they came with the chains and the handcuffs up
to Jesus. They're like, they're gonna rest him, and Jesus
is teaching and they're like, whoa, And they dropped their
chains and handcuffs because the word of God changes our hearts.
The Pharisees are not pleased. They say, have you are

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have you also been deceived? And he says, look, have
any the pharisees have any of the authorities or pharisees
believed in him? But this crowd that does not the law.
They're cursed. They they're dummies, they're idiots. They follow me
because they're stupid. Very next verse Nicodemus. Nicodemus, who had
gone to him before and was one of them, said
to them, does our lod jug a man without first

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giving him a hearing and hearing what he does and
learning what he does. You know what Nicodemus is doing
right here, He's starting to step out into the light.
He's stepping out of the night and into the light.
And they vilify him, don't they? Verse fifty two. They replied,
are you from Galilee too? Galilee was a slur, Like
I said, backwoods up northern bengormein that's the slur. Are

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you from there too? Are you backwoods? Nicodemus? Are you crazy?
Are you one of them? Search and see there's no
profit from Galilee? You're you know, you're starting to come
to Jesus when the people who used to love you
start to mock you. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
Fast forward one more year John chapter nineteen. Jesus has

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been put on the cross and has died. He has
breathed his last His body is dead. John chapter nineteen says,
after these things Verse thirty eight, Joseph of Arimathea, who
was a disciples of Jesus but secretly because of the Jews,
asked Pilot that he might take away the body of
Jesus and Pilot gave him permission, so he came and
took away his body. Look at this next verse. Nicodemus, also,

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who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing
a mixture of myrrh and awlos about seventy five in weigh.
Seventy five pounds is an enormous expense. It was actually
the exact weight of spices that they used to bury
kings with. What is Nicodemus doing. He's stepping out of

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the night and into the light. That's where the Bible
ends with regards to Nicodemus. But good news, we have
church history and tradition that tells us a little bit
more about what happened in Nicodidemus. You know what happened
in Nicodemus. The Lord saved him. He identified with Jesus,

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and he got baptized. Guess who baptized him. John and
Peter baptized Nicodemus. He followed Christ, he worshiped Christ, he
glorified Christ, and he lost everything. They stripped him of
his titles, They took him off the Sandhedron, they kicked

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him out of the Pharisees sect. They took away his property.
Third richest man in Jerusalem at the time. They took
away all his money, and they exiled him out of
the city of Jerusalem. And years later, for bearing witness
to Christ in front of strangers, he was beaten to
death with clubs. And the world would say that Nicodemus
lost everything, But in that moment, he already knew he

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had gained everything because he came to Jesus at night
in John chapter three. But for two thousand years, ladies
and gentlemen, he's been walking with Jesus in the light
of his glory in heaven. You're gonna see Nicodemus in heaven.

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You're gonna see it because here's what Nicodemus now knows.
Here's what he now knows. He's in heaven not because
of his religion, but because he received and believed the Savior.
And the most important question of your life is if

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you've done that too, So your religion and your accolades
and your accomplishments and your good personism before God, you're
just a man or you're just a woman, and your
only hope is to trust the Savior.