Andy Stanley - Ninety Part 6 : Nic at Night

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You know, there's several professions that don't get enough credit,
but I think one of the unsung heroes in our
culture are people who are men and women who are
EMTs emergency medical technicians. And I don't know if you've
ever been in a situation where you had to call
nine to one one and you know, a couple of
folks show up, two or three folks show up, You've
never met them before, and they just they just go

(00:23):
to work. And the amazing thing to me about EMTs
is they don't know what they're walking into, but they
know it's an emergency, and they walk in and they're
asking people questions and they're getting different answers, and they're
getting information and misinformation, and then they just figure out
what they need to do and they just go to
work and they do it. And one of the things
they never do, one of the things they never do
is try to assess the guilt or the fault of

(00:45):
the person who's been injured. They just go to work
and they save the day. We're in the middle of
a series where we're following Jesus from the moment he
stepped on to the pages of history as an adult
on the banks of the Jordan River to the moment
in time that he served as the savior of all mankind.
And we said throughout this series, and this is the

(01:06):
thing that we hope you take to the very end
with us, is that Jesus did not come to continue
something that had begun a long time ago. Jesus didn't
come as Judaism two point zero. He didn't come to
complete the Bible. Jesus came to introduce something detached from
everything that came before, that was absolutely stand alone, brand
new that he came to establish a brand new relationship

(01:28):
between God and man, a brand new covenant. He came
to give us an overarching ethic for all of our
relational decisions, our financial decisions, that he refers to as
his new command. And he came to begin a brand
new movement that we call the Church. And when he
showed up, he immediately drawed a crowd. And when he
showed up, he immediately disturbed the status quo, because whereas

(01:49):
most of the people who followed Jesus thought he was
the continuation of something old, that perhaps he was just
a new rabbi with a new spin on Torah that
he'd come to maybe bring some reform to the temple
system and too, the religious system of his day. There
was a group that understood from day one that this
is a trouble maker. This is someone who's come to disrupt.
This is someone who's introducing, not an add on, not

(02:11):
a continuation of something that's absolutely brand new. And it
was the men who controlled the temple. It was the
men who controlled the religious system in the first century
Galilee and specifically Judea, the men who controlled what happened
for people who came to the temple and left the temple.
And what they understood in Jesus was something that was
absolutely true that most people missed, that this was something

(02:33):
that was a total departure from everything that came before.
In fact, when Jesus was eventually arrested and they tried
to bring witnesses in against him, one of the things
they accused him of was inciting rebellion with the people
because they saw something most people didn't see, and they
saw something that many church people don't see as well.
One day and Jesus and his guys were, in fact,

(02:54):
we left off here last time. Jesus and his guys
were walking through a wheatfield and is the disciples start
breaking off heads of grain to eat it because they're hungry.
But it's the Sabbath and the Pharisees and the posse
that always followed Jesus that try to catch him doing
something wrong. Is that Aha, you're doing it again. You're
violating the Sabbath. And they get into this argument, and
finally at the end, Jesus leans in and we talked
about this, and he said, look, you're so concerned about
the Law. Me too, I'm a Jewish man. You're so

(03:16):
concerned about the Temple, me too, I'm a Jewish man.
You're so concerned about all of these things. But don't
you recognize something new has come? Then he leans in
and he says something so offensive we read right by it.
He said, look at me, something greater, something greater than
the Temple, is here. But if something was greater than
the Temple, then the temple was no longer necessary, because

(03:37):
the temple was the epicenter of Jewish life. The temple
is where they housed the tour of the law. The
temple is where God in some way resided and represented
the people and protected the people. And Jesus makes a
statement that makes no sense something greater than the temple
is here, and he would predict in that moment something extraordinary.
That sacred, sacred, Sacred was always a space in the

(03:58):
first century. Sacred was a sacred was priests. Sacred was
a text, sacred with sacred men and sacred places doing
sacred things. And Jesus was announcing and it would begin
to unroll. He was letting the world know that soon
sacred would be commuted, that it would be commuted to
the hearts and the minds and the consciences of people,
that there would be no more sacred spaces and no

(04:19):
more sacred places, because there would be nothing more sacred
than the person you're seated next to, the person you
work with, the children that you're raising, the person you've
committed your life to. Because the spirit of God was
going to leave the temple, the mobile God was about
to inhabit the hearts and the lives of people, and
when that happened, everything would change. And as a foreshadow,

(04:40):
and he would spend time with untouchable people, and he
would touch untouchable people, and he would invite a tax
gatherer to be one of his followers, and then he
would go to that tax collector's homes, and even Jesus'
closest disciples weren't so sure they wanted to do that.
That was like a bridge too far. Tax gatherers are
traders to their nations. They're an embarrassment to their family.
And Jesus says to Matthew, I want you to follow me,

(05:01):
to which Peter said, if he follows Us, I might
unfollow because he's not my people. And Jesus said, that's
my point. Sacred is about to be commuted. Now. This
disturbing of this piece and this disruption of the status
quo was certainly threatening to some, but as we're going
to discover today, it was actually intriguing to some others.

(05:22):
Most assumed that jesus endgame was that he would march
into Jerusalem, probably around Passover, because there was always unrest
in Jerusalem around Passover. Everybody was on edge, the nerves
were high, and people were always hoping that this would
be the passover, that God would do something spectacular and
send Messiah. And everybody assumed that at some point, maybe

(05:42):
on a passover, Jesus enters Jerusalem and he takes off
his rabbinic robe, and they discovered he has a big
m on the shirt underneath Messiah, and he proclaims himself king,
and they re established the nation of Israel as a kingdom,
and Rome is thrown outside the borders, and things would
be restored to the time of Solomon or David. But

(06:03):
the more discerning, the more discerning who listened to Jesus,
they sensed that perhaps something else was up with him,
because he spoke, as we've seen, he spoke with extraordinary authority,
but he refused to take charge. He almost immediately he
won the crowd, but he refused the crown. He had

(06:27):
extraordinary power and influence, but over and over and over
he refused to leverage that power and that influence for
his own sake. He was intriguing for sure. Now there
was a pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a
member of the Jewish ruling Council, and the Jewish ruling

(06:49):
council was also called the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was like
the Parliament and the Supreme Court all rolled into one.
And Nicodemus, who was a pharisee. That meant he started
at the lowest rung of the latter in terms of
religious status and because he was politically astute, perhaps because
he was well connected. Perhaps we don't know, he had
made himself, he had worked his way into this very

(07:09):
elite group of men that served like again the supreme
court for the whole nation of Israel. They represented Israel
to Rome. There were about twenty two to seventy men
who sat on this council. And it's so interesting that
John actually gives us his name, because this is a
verifiable detail. This again is like the gospel writers saying
to their readers, fact check me. You can check this out.

(07:31):
You know there's a san Hedrin. I'm giving you a name.
His name was Nicodemus. And John tells us that he
came to Jesus at night. Now, did he come to
Jesus at night because he was busy during the day,
or did he come to Jesus at night because he
didn't want people to know that he was talking to Jesus. Now,
when you read the Gospels, you're left with the impression
that getting an appointment with Jesus would be a very
difficult thing to do. Everywhere he went there were crowds,

(07:55):
and everywhere he went there were people who were trying
to get to him and get at him. Some Nicodemus
knew somebody, or he put his name on a waiting list,
but eventually he had an appointment with Jesus, and Jesus
only open slot was at night, or perhaps Nicodemus communicated,
my only open slot is at night, because I'm not
sure I want anyone to see me an esteemed respected

(08:15):
person in this community speaking to the rabbi who stirs
up so much trouble, and Nicodemus showed up with a question.
In fact, I bet Nicodemus showed up with a list
of questions, but he never got to his questions. He
came to Jesus at night and he said, rabbi, and
again there was a title of respect. But there are
a lot of rabbis. Rabbi, he said, we know that

(08:38):
is we are certain, we know he represents a group
of people. We know that you are a teacher who
has come from God, and that this is an extraordinary
thing for Nicodemus to say. It's like, you know what,
you don't fit in a box, you don't fit in
a category. You're not acting very messiah like. But there's
one thing that we cannot deny clearly you have come

(08:58):
from God. And the reason we know that you've come
from God is not just what you say. For no
one and we've been around for a while, no one
could perform the signs. Now this is important as well.
We think of some of the things that Jesus did
as miracles, but the stude the people who were paying
attention understood that when Jesus healed people, he wasn't just
doing miracles, and when people fed people, he wasn't just

(09:19):
doing miracles. That every single one of jesus healings and
every single one of jesus supernatural acts was actually a
sign pointing in a direction. And Nicodemus was an educated
man and he understood these things that Jesus is doing,
they're not just willy nilly. He's not just meeting needs.
There's a method of this. This is going somewhere. And
it was clear to him these signs that are pointing

(09:41):
in a direction, clearly he must come from God. No
one could perform the signs you were doing if God
were not with him. And that was the preamble, that
was the setup, that was the introduction, and then Nicodemus
takes a big breath to ask his big question. And
then Jesus does that Jesus thing where he answers the
question before the question gets asked, just to throw the

(10:03):
question er off into control the conversation. So Nicodemus rars
back to ask his question. Jesus puts his hand on
his shoulder, I think, and the text says, and Jesus replied, verily, verily,
in some text, very truly, remember that one, verily, very
the king James, verly, verly, very truly. I tell you,

(10:25):
no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they're
born again, to which Nicodemus probably I see. There you
go again. I've been watching you. This is what you do.
You don't let people ask their questions, and when they
ask questions, you tell them stories. Very truly, I tell you, Nicodemus,
I know why you're here. I know what your question is.
I know what you're getting at. You know I've come
from God. But I'm not talking like other people that
you would consider to be very godly. I seem to

(10:48):
have a different angle, a different perspective. My category seem
to be much larger than the traditional Jewish category. So
let me just go to the heart of the matter.
Let me just go to the bottom line for you, Nicodemus,
we're both busy men, and you don't want to be
seen with me anyway. I tell you, no one can
see God. No one can see the Kingdom of God
unless they are born again. This is so confusing to Nicodemus.

(11:09):
What do you mean I can't see the Kingdom of God.
I'm Jewish, and for Jewish people in the first century,
the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Israel were synonymous.
What do you mean I won't even see or really, technically,
you're telling me I won't even recognize the Kingdom of God.
Of course will I was born into it? And Jesus says, no,
you have to be born again, or literally to be
born from above. Nicodemus, welcome to the Kingdom of Israel.

(11:33):
But to get into the Kingdom of God, there's a
second requirement. You have to be born again. Now at
this point, I think Nicodemus chuckles. He knows Jesus is
kind of playing with him. He says, Rabbi, how can
someone be born when they are old? And he points
to himself. Surely they cannot enter a second time into
their mother's womb. To be born. He knows that this

(11:54):
isn't literal, but he doesn't know exactly what Jesus is saying.
And then what he really wanted to say is in Jesus,
why are we talking about this? This is not what
I came to talk about. And again, this is my
only opportunity to be one on one with you. I've
got questions, and I've got people at home waiting for
me to come back with answers to their questions. Jesus answered,

(12:15):
very truly, I tell you, no one can enter. First,
you can't see the Kingdom of God. No one can
enter the Kingdom of God. They won't recognize it and
they'll never get in unless they are born here it
is again, unless they are born both of water and
the spirit. Nicodemus is like, what where's this going? Jesus continues, flesh,

(12:35):
Flesh gives birth to flesh. You know, Jewish people have
Jewish people, right, Philistines have Philistines, Romans have Romans, Greeks
have Greeks. I mean, flesh gives birth to flesh. Your
flesh got you into the Kingdom of Israel. Congratulations. Flesh
gives birth to flesh. But Nicodemus, Spirit gives birth to spirit,
that there's there's something more, that it takes something else.

(12:57):
You can be born into the Kingdom of Israel, but
it takes something more to be given entrance to the
Kingdom of God. And then I think Jesus chuckles. Then
he says, you, come on, Nicodemus, you, you of all people,
you of all people, should not be surprised at my
saying you must be born again. Come on, the wind
blows wherever it pleases. Again, he goes off on another

(13:19):
you know, illustration, Nicodemus is going on. I don't think
I'm ever gonna get my question is answered the wind.
The wind blows where it pleases. You hear it sound.
You hear it sound, but you cannot tell where it
comes from or where it's going. So it is with
everyone who is born of the spirit. And does a
little word play here, because Jesus uses a word when
the text the word spirit, the word wind, or the
same word. He says, the spirit's like the wind. You

(13:42):
know there's win. You see the effects of win. You
hear the wind, you don't know where it came from,
you don't know where it's going. And so it is
with the spirit of God and what he's getting at
with with Nicodemus. In his very first century Jewish context,
which was the only Jewish the only context he had
to draw from, he said, Nicodemus, I understand, many many
years ago, are father Abraham. God made him a promise
that he would make him a family, make him a nation,

(14:03):
that he blessed the world to the nation. And sure enough,
you and I are living in the day and age
when the family became a nation and we're part of
the kingdom of Israel. The God then through Moses made
an exclusive and exclusive covenant with our people. We got
all those commandments, all the rules and restrictions. God made
an exclusive or covenant with our people. But Nicodemus, God

(14:26):
is not exclusive. He's like the wind, He's like the spirit.
He moves outside the confines of our people's covenant with him.
And yes, while we are locked into an arrangement with God,
God is not limited by this arrangement. God is the
mobile God. God does not live inside the temple. God

(14:47):
is Spirit, and our nation, Israel, is a means to
an end, and in the end, the entire world will
be given an invitation to be a part of the
Kingdom of God. There will be people from every tribe
and every nation and every tongue. His invitation will be
extended to everyone. An entrance into the Kingdom of God

(15:09):
requires a second birth, a spiritual birth. Nicodemus didn't have
a category for any of this. How how can this be?
He asked, In other words, how did I miss this?
And then again Jesus kind of leans in, Come on, Nicodemus,
you are Israel's teacher. You're one of the pre eminent teachers.

(15:29):
Everybody's looking to you for God, and you are Israel's teachers,
said Jesus, and you do not understand these things. Well.
The conversation goes on and on and on. You know,
sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's not. Nicodemus is so so bewildered,
but he's not resisting. He's like some of you. He
doesn't get it. There's so many questions. He's not resisting.
It's like I want to understand, but I'm just not

(15:50):
getting it. And then Jesus gets to something that's common
ground between he and Nicodemus. He gets to something that
Nicodemus can latch onto. He can finally get some traction,
Jesus says, just as Moses. Nicodemus is like, okay, now
you're talking about something I get Moses. Moses, we know, okay,
Moses is the covenant maker and the command giver, the
covenant maker, command giver. Moses came down from the mountain.

(16:11):
He said, God's injurn into a brand new kind of
exclusive relationship with Israel. Here are the commandments. You got
to keep, it said, I will if you will, kind
of thing I got youa Jesus says, just as Moses
lifted up the snake in the wilderness. Again, Nicodemus says, like,
I know this story. I've taught this story. I heard
this story as a child. We thought it was so cool.
The nation was moving through going from Egypt to the

(16:31):
Promised Land. They go through an area of the desert
where with all these snakes, people are getting snake bits.
Some of the snakes are poisonous, people are sick, some
of them are dying. And then this crazy thing where
Moses makes a bronze snake like they needed another snake,
and they put it on a pole and they go
through the area and the people are saved, and yeah,
I know that story, So why are we talking about that?

(16:52):
So the son of Man, Jesus says, So the son
of men must be lifted up like the bronze snake
on the pole. Now once again, nicod He was just like,
wait a minute, the son of Man, that's code for Messiah,
son of Man, that's code for the one we've been
waiting for for a long time. And if you put
a man on a pole, if you put a man
on a pole, clearly that man is cursed by God.

(17:15):
Because when a man hangs from a tree, or a
man is impaled on a pole, or a man is
hoisted up on I don't know, or say a Roman cross.
When a man is on a pole or on a cross,
or that's a sign of a curse. Are you telling
me the son of Man? Are you telling me that
the Messiah is gonna suffer, that the Messiah is going
to be cursed by God? Once again, I I Jesus again,
I want to understand. I mean, I'm here asking questions

(17:38):
or trying to ask my questions. I just don't understand.
Jesus continues. He says that everyone there, it is again
that everyone, that everyone who believes may have eternal life
in him, And again Nicodemus is like, wait life, eternal life.
I mean, we know how you get eternal life. You
love the Lord, your God with all your heart and mind,

(17:59):
soul and strength. That's how you get eternal life. You
keep the commandments, That's how you get eternal life. You
do what God asked us to do. Mount Sin, we
know how you get eternal life. Are you telling me
somehow eternal life is going to be available to let
me see if I get astray, everybody will have access
to the Kingdom of God. They're going to get eternal
life because the Messiah is going to be put up

(18:19):
on a poll signifying that he's cursed by God. Now
one hit pause on Nicodemus and Jesus. We're going to
come back to it in just a second. I got to
tell you something else. It's interesting, Okay, when you're reading
the Gospels, it's very very very important to Matthew, Mark, Luke,

(18:40):
and John is very very important to remember that much
of Jesus teaching, that much of Jesus teaching would not
make sense until after his resurrection. So just think about it.
These events actually happened in history, Matthew. You know wyewitness
Mark who's spent time with Peter Luke, who's thoroughly investigated
all these things. John and eyewitness. They are documenting what
they saw and experience, or they're documenting what eyewitnesses saw

(19:01):
and experience, and they're documenting this after the story is
completely over with. So every once in a while in
the Gospels, the writers will pause the story, will pause
whatever conversation they've recorded or whatever's happening. They'll sort of
pull out of the story and they'll make comments on
what's happening in the narrative that they're writing about. We
do this all the time when we tell stories. When

(19:22):
you're telling a story, you're in the middle of a story,
you're kind of walking through what happened. Then you kind
of pull out and say she didn't know or he
didn't know. Later they would discover then you get right
back into the story. Well, the gospel writers do this
all the time, that they paused the story to comment
based on what they knew that the audience in the
story didn't know because they hadn't gotten to the end
of the story. So I'm gonna give you an example

(19:43):
of this that we're gonna go back to Nicodemus. Everybody
following me, everybody with me on this? Okay, good, I
can just tell smart people. Okay. So so here's the
here's an illustration from Luke Matthew Marn't Luke. Luke is
quoting Jesus. I'm gonna show you the quote and then
he's gonna pull out make a comment based on what
he want wanted his readers to know that the people
in the story at the time couldn't know. So here

(20:04):
this is just an example. Then we'll get back to Nicodemus.
Now this is Luke and he's quoting Jesus. Listen carefully.
He writes, this is what Jesus said. Listen carefully to
what I'm about to tell you, says Jesus, the son
of Man is going to be delivered into the hands
of men, so Jesus. Luke says, this is what Jesus said.
Then Luke hits pause on telling his audience what Jesus said,
and he adds this comment. But this is Luke's words,

(20:26):
not Jesus. But they did not understand what this meant.
Luke's writing here's what he said. But you know what,
when it happened, his audience in the story, didn't know
what was what he was talking about because they hadn't
gotten to the end of the story. But I, Luke,
I know how this thing's in, and so I just
wanted to let you know what's gonna happen. Then he
jumps right back into the story. We do this all
the time in our storytelling, and this is important. Look
up here. This is why you should take the Gospel seriously. Okay,

(20:50):
this was not a nor, this was not a motif.
This was not the way that stories were written when
people were writing fiction. In other words, when you read
the nitty gritty details in the in and outs of
all these stories and all the names and all the details.
This was not written decades in decades and decades after
the fact. This was written exactly like somebody who was
trying to get all the facts out but at the

(21:11):
same time keep the readers engaged with the story. So
in the conversation this is so important between John, between
Jesus and Nicodemus, John who documents all this for us,
he does that very same thing he's telling us about
the conversation between Nick and Jesus, and then he pauses
the story to pull out to make sure those of
us who are reading this story understand what's going on,

(21:33):
because not only did Nicodemus not know what Jesus was
getting at John, who was there, he didn't know what
Jesus was getting at either, because Jesus was pointing to
something that hattn't happened yet. That nobody had a category
for a suffering, dying stuck on a poll Messiah. Nobody

(21:56):
was looking for that, nobody was waiting for that. In fact,
that's a bad ending to the wrong story. So John
pulls out temporarily to put two and two together for
his readers. John put it this way. John tells us
in his own words, these aren't Jesus. He tells us
in his own words what Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus,

(22:18):
who couldn't possibly understand what Jesus was talking about because
it hadn't happened yet. But for John, what he realized
later when he looked back on this conversation. He realized
how important this conversation was, and he doesn't want you
to miss it. He doesn't want his reader to miss it,
and the reader would eventually get to the end of

(22:39):
the story. In fact, many of the readers of the
Gospel of John had heard this story, they just never
heard it read. But John didn't want to wait. And
this is the coolest thing about it to me. Little
did he know, I mean, he has no idea. Little
did John know. Little did John know that he would
dictate because I don't think he wrote this. I think
he dictated this to ascribe. He know that he would

(23:00):
dictate twenty six words that would reverberate around the world
generation after generation after generation after generation, twenty six words
that would survive the Empire and survive the Temple way
beyond his generation twenty six worlds. It's in twenty six
words that would change the world that his friend had

(23:22):
come to say. So he pauses from the conversation between
Jesus and Nicodemus, and it's like he's saying to you,
and it's like he's saying to me, you see, you see,
you see. I want you to understand this, you see,
for God so loved the world. Nicodemus said he can't

(23:43):
get outside of his Jewish framework. Of course he couldn't.
And it's like John says, I don't want to wait
till the end of the story. I want you to
understand what he was trying to say to Nicodemus is
so important. For God so loved the cosmos, the whole
world that he gave, he hasn't given it yet. This
is why Nicodemus can't figure it out. Then what he
can figure out, how is a messiah gonna suffer and
die that he gave his one and only son. And

(24:07):
then he struggles and tries to figure out exactly how
do I say this? And they use a little Greek
word that's a conjunction, that's a connector word, a hennoclaus
we call it in Greek. He says, in order that hennah,
and order that, and then John does something extraordinary. In fact,
in all of Greek literature, no one took the Greek
word the Greek noun for believe or the Greek verb

(24:27):
for believe, and connect it to this preposition. Is like
John is saying, Okay, I gotta get this right. It's whoever,
it's not whoever believes that. It's not whoever believes that.
This isn't about believing facts, it's whoever whoever. And there's
no Greek word for trust. There's no Greek word for trust.
It's just believe so John even and perhaps he's dictating
this to a scribe and describes like, Okay, you can't

(24:48):
say it that way, and John's like, no, I want
you to say it this way. It's not good grammar.
We know it's not good grammar because this phrase doesn't
show up anywhere until it shows up in John's Gospel.
John says, do it this way anyway, that whoever believes
in as in trust in, will not perish, will not

(25:09):
be This word is used throughout the Gospel John will
not be lost, will not be lost to God. And
then the strongest contrast in Greek, but but will have
eternal life. Write it that way. He had no idea.
Now this is very important, especially if you've left church

(25:30):
you're not a Christian or the Bibles full you know, mistakes,
and just this a second, okay, look up here in
this moment, John is not writing the Bible. The Bible tabiblia.
That doesn't show up till the fourth century, when all
of these documents got collected and then got put together
with the Old Testament scriptures and got you know, put
a big old gold you know, folder around it and

(25:52):
the gold cover on it. The tabiblia John's not writing
the Bible. In fact, this has nothing to do with
the Bible. This is a man who saw things that
would blow our little, itty bitty minds, and at the
end of the story knows he's got to document it
because he's one of the few people who was there
for all of it. And he dictates it to a scribe,

(26:15):
and he doesn't want it in Aramaic, and he doesn't
want it in Hebrew. He wants it in Greek. And
do you know why he wants it in Greek? Because
Greek was the language of the Empire. It wasn't the
language of Palestine. It was the language of the Empire.
And John seemed to know more than anybody else. This
is a message for the whole world. So let's get
it in a language the whole world can understand and embrace.

(26:40):
For God, so love the world he gave. And then
John says, Okay, before I get back to the story,
there's one more thing I gotta say, because they're gonna
miss this. I don't want to wait till the end
of the story. In fact, they may get to the
end of the story miss this. I want to make
sure they got this, because this is what Jesus was
trying to communicate to Nicodemus. Nicodemus hold, whose whole worldview

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was when Messiah comes, we're gonna throw the invaders out.
So John adds, these are his words for God, just
so he didn't want us to miss it. For God
did not send his son into the world to condemn
the world. God didn't send Messiah into the world to
judge the world. God didn't send his son into the

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world to line up all the sinners and tell him
about all of their sin. He didn't come to the
scene of an accident and lecture those who had been injured.
I have the church has Jesus didn't. I've not come.

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Jesus didn't come, John says, to condemn the world, but
that the world through him might be saved. He showed
up like an emt and he just went to work.
And when he realized that the world needed a blood transfusion,

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he used his own. And suddenly we're thrown back to
day one, John the Baptist banks of the Jordan River,
who everybody's waiting, waiting, waiting, because John says it's gonna happen.
It's happen. It's about to happen. It's about to happen.
And John says, everybody who's been looking at me, look,
I want you to look there from now. I want
to look the lamb of God who comes to take

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away the sin of the world. And John is right,
and it's like, oh, we should have seen that, we
should have put two and two together. But I want
to make sure my readers get it before they get
to the end of the story. For God, not just Jesus.
For God so loved the world that he gave. See,

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when you love, this is what you do, isn't it.
When you love, you give. When you love, you give,
That's what you do when you love. For God to
love the world that he gave his wand and his
only son, that whoever and here it is, whoever not
just believes that. See, you don't become a Christian because
of faith. You become a Christian because all of the
evidence points to the fact that Jesus is who Jesus

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claims to be. That's why you become a Christian. You
don't become a Christian because of faith. You come become
a Christian by faith because placing your trust in Jesus,
that transaction is how you get connected to the Kingdom
of God, that whoever believes in him won't be lost
to God, won't perish, won't fall away, won't get lost

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in the cheffle, but have a different kind of life,
eternal life. You will be born, as Jesus was trying
to explain to Nicotinus, you will be born again into
a brand new family, a family where you have the
privilege to call God your father. Years later, another pharisee,

(29:59):
a pharisee who to be the best pharisee of all,
who tried to put the church out of business, who
then became a Jesus follower. He looks back after the
resurrection at the whole story and he says, this is
how I see it. It's as if God is inviting
you to participate in an adoption process, but you're not
the one doing the adoption. You're the one being adopted,
and you get to choose whether or not you want

(30:20):
to be adopted, and if you say yes, God is
more than happy to adopt you into his family because
of what Christ has done on the front end to
make that possible. Now, when we explain John three sixteen
to children, here's how we explain it to children at
all of our churches, at all of our campus. It's

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everywhere that we have an opportunity. Here. Here's how we
explain it to children. We put it this way. That
God loved, so he gave. That's what you do in
your love. God loved, God gave. And what are we
supposed to do. We're supposed to believe, not believe that
trust in. We believe, and then we receive eternal life.
God love, God gave. We believe. We receive God love
God gave. Starts with God. We believe, we received that.

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Getting into the Kingdom of God is not about d Oh,
It's about Dne. He did all the heavy lifting, and
he says, it's an invitation that I'm inviting you to accept.
Now back to Nick and Jesus for just a minute.
We don't know exactly what Nick made of this conversation.

(31:24):
He kind of wanders off and he gets home and
his wife and you know, everybody, it's like, how'd it go?
You know, did you get my question answered? Nick's like, no, no,
something about the Messiah's going to die on a pole,
and everybody gets in. I don't know. I don't have
any idea what he's talking about. But eventually Nick got it.
And here's how we know, because after Jesus was crucified,

(31:48):
Nick's in the back of the crowd. No doubt, he's
a san Hedrin, He's kind of responsible for this whole thing,
you know, around Passover. He's in the back of the crowd.
Can you imagine this moment. All he sees there are
the tops of heads. He knows Jesus has been arrested.
He's absolutely sure Jesus has come from God. This was
not the ending he expected. And he's looking over a
whole bunch of tops of heads, you know, and suddenly

(32:09):
can you imagine this moment? And suddenly lifted up from
in front of the crowd, he says the cross, and
there hangs Jesus. And it's like it's as he said,
cursed by God, abandoned by his own people, not the

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end of the story any of us anticipated, but exactly
what he predicted. And when Jesus is dead, Nicodemus risk
his reputation once again, and I think, risk his life,
and he and a guy named Joseph, Joseph from Arimathea. Again,
John gives us all these details. It's like Okay, you

(32:53):
don't think this history the story is true. Fact check me.
These are the names asked them find these people. They're
still running around, Joseph of Aa and Nicodemus. They're absolutely
sure this man came from God. This is not the
end of the story the way we anticipated the end
of the story. But this man deserves more than to
have his body dumped on a pile of other bodies
for the dogs to come and eat. So they go

(33:14):
to Pilot and they probably have to slip Pilot a
few coins to say, we would like to have that body,
because it's against the law to bury the body of
someone who's crucified. And Pilot gives them permission to take
the body, and the son's going down and Sabbath is
about to begin, and they take about one hundred plus pounds,
which means they had two or three servants with them,
and they get to this tomb that had never been
used before, and Joseph of Airamethia's Wife's like, now, honey, wait, wait, wait, wait,

(33:38):
you share you want to use our tomb? I mean,
you know how much that thing costs, and it's all
cleaned out for our family, and you know Joseph, you're
going to be are you sure, And he's like, yes,
I don't know exactly who this guy was, but he
deserves better than this. And we're going to use our tomb.
And they prepare the body the best they can because
they're in a hurry, and they put him in close
that stone over the front to seal it so animals

(34:01):
won't get in, so that eventually that body will deteriorate
to well, there's nothing left but bones, and they would
go back in later, take the bones, put it in
an ostuary, and give it to a family member, or
bury it somewhere. And Nicodemus participated in that. He did
not have answers to all of his questions, but he

(34:22):
knew enough to know that this man had come from God.
And maybe that's you. You'll always have questions and I'll
never have all the answers for you. But if you
know that, you know if there's something that when you
hear this story, it stirs your heart. And maybe it's

(34:45):
been stirring your heart for weeks or months or years,
and you've heard it. You've heard it, and you come
and you go and it's like, but today, maybe for
the first time, the dots connected. It's like that, you know,
you sort of got that last bit of information or
that thing that kind of pushed you over, pushed you
over the line. And if today that you're like Nick DMUs,
I know enough to know that Jesus came from God,
then I want to invite you to do what John,

(35:07):
who was an eyewitness to the entire story, suggested that
we all do everyone in the whole world do. This
was the point of his gospel, This was the point
of Jesus coming. I think he would say to you,
would you do what I've suggested? Because eventually Nicodemus did,
Joseph of Aarimathea did millions and millions and millions of
people since then? Did would you be willing to believe

(35:30):
and receive? The invitation is open because God already loved,
and God already gave. What Nicodemus couldn't put together because
it hadn't happened yet is so clear to us because
we're on the other side. So I want to invite
you to consider, would you would you would you today?
Would you do what Nicodemus ultimately did? What John encourage

(35:52):
us to do? What Jesus came so that we'd have
the privilege to do. Would you believe, would you trust him,
would receive Jesus as your savior,