3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a
ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus [1] by night and said to him,
“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these
signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless one is born again [2] he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4
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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [3] 7 Do not marvel that I said to you,
‘You [4] must be born again.’ 8 The wind [5] blows where it wishes, and you
hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it
is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
9 Nicodemus said to
him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of
Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to
you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you
[6] do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you
do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one
has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
[7] 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of
Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. [8]
16 “For God so loved the world, [9] that he gave his only
Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order
that the world might be saved through him.
(John 3:1-17 (ESV)
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 descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
Trinity Sunday, A Sunday
dedicated to the revelation of God as he is, three in one, triune,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is a doctrine we would not know if God had not
revealed himself to us in this manner
through his Son Jesus Christ, who indeed teaches us heavenly things. He alone qualified to do so,
because he alone has ascended to heaven, he alone has descended from heaven, he
alone, the Son of Man. And he reveals to us the nature of God, as he reveals to
us the love of God in his sacrifice on the Cross. These are intimately
connected for us, God being three in one, and our eternal salvation. For God so
loved the World that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life.
This of course is what Nicodemus had come to talk to Jesus
about. The nature of salvation. Nicodemus had hang ups with what Jesus had to
say, because Jesus tells him he has to be born again, born of water and the
Spirit. What follows is a discourse on baptism, in which the triune God is
first introduced to us, as water pours over our heads in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then of revelation. Nicodemus
belonged to the Sanhedrin that would crucify Jesus, that had rejected the
baptism of John. And to drive home this point, John says that after this Jesus
went out into the country side to baptize, and John was baptizing at Aenon near
Salim because water was plentiful there. Nicodemus is having a hard time with
this, of what value could be water?
It’s the same sort of objection that is met today on any
number of theological issues, really. The Trinity, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper,
issues of sexual morality, the word of God. How can you know? This is the
question. People instinctively know that God is beyond our reason, that he is
unfathomable. I had a guy recently tell me this, and then immediately begin to
tell me God couldn’t be who I said he was because that would be unreasonable. I
kindly, and as gently as I could explained to him that he could not have his
cake and eat it too. When he didn’t understand my meaning, I pointed out that
if God is beyond our reason and unfathomable, and this was an agnostic more or
less, if we are agreed on that, then he is in no place to tell me how God can’t
be. It’s sort of what Jesus is getting at here when he says if I tell you
earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you
heavenly things?
The fact is we know so little. We like to think we are quite
advanced and know so much more about the world than past generations. We
figured out the pattern of the stars as it were. Our technology is incredibly
advanced. We have a “scientific worldview.” Oh, but it is fun. What makes
science fun, I mean truly fun, isn’t what we know, it’s exploring what we don’t
know. A few minutes listening to a lecture by Tyson Neil deGrasse and you begin
to learn how much we just don’t know. It sort of makes a person wonder then why
he can be so full of the hubris he condemns in past generations as he makes his
own wild claims about the possibility of God and so forth. We may know more
about the nature of wind than Nicodemus did in his day, but is it not still a
mystery to us? The nature of time and
space that used to be so simple, and yet it has now been occupying the minds of
the most brilliant physicists for the better part of a century. There is still
much to know about this world. And yet we think we can tell God that we know
him better.
We really aren’t any better than those who want to measure
God according to first grade math of one plus one plus one equals three. Does
it make sense that we should treat God as if he was as fathomable as beans on
an amicus? The world wants to say, but it is just water, surely God doesn’t
need water to save us. But it is just bread and wine, how can that be the body
and blood of Jesus Christ? How can words, written on a page by men handed down
over the centuries, how can that be the word of God, when it so badly
contradicts our own human reason, our scientific knowledge? But then it makes
sense that if we do not know earthly things, perhaps we are not in a place to
contradict the Son of man, who was made man for our salvation, who walked on
water, and even changed it into wine, who rose Lazarus from the dead, and three
days after his own death rose again. God himself come into the world, not to
condemn it, but to save it. God who died for our sins, and rose for our
justification.
Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
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