Music playing For Life Weekend, we'll find out why salvation requires more than church attendance or Bible knowledge or involvement in religious activities. We'll take a look at a good religious man who got it wrong before he got it right. Alistair Begg is teaching from John chapter three, but he begins by recalling the story of Levi's conversion in Mark chapter two. He nevertheless shows he is favorable to the whole lost world when he calls all without exception to faith in Christ, which is entry into life. When, in Mark chapter two, the people grumble concerning Jesus going to the home of Levi, who was a newly professed follower of Jesus, but a tax collector nevertheless, and the religious establishment said, This is ridiculous.
What is he going into the house of someone like this for? And Jesus says, I didn't come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And when we read the gospel records, we realize, as my good friend Sinclair Ferguson says, the pulse beat of God's heart has an evangelistic rhythm.
Now, my purpose in these studies is largely twofold. One, who as yet do not believe in Jesus, may come actually to believe in him, to discover him not simply to be a figure in history, somebody who is remote to them, but a friend and a savior. And at the same time, to enable those of us who profess to follow Jesus to understand how Jesus dealt with people and how we in turn may be better enabled to live out our Christian lives in the context of our day.
John sets it up. Now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. That gives us all the credentials that we need. It was a spiritual belief that was called out on the strength of the evidence that Jesus had been provided. But, says John, Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. And therefore, when this religious man appears under cover of darkness, Jesus knows what is in him. Now, Nicodemus has presumably seen enough and heard enough of Jesus to recognize that as he describes him, he is a teacher come from God.
That's his opening gambit, his opening gambit. We might wonder, by what mysterious constraint did Nicodemus find his way to Jesus in the night? What are the factors behind his arrival, about which we know nothing?
For fear of being associated with him, for fear of what his friends and his colleagues might say. There would be no surprise in that, but we know that he came. And so he came to Jesus by night and said to him. Therefore, presumably it was dark. But the real darkness was a moral darkness. The real darkness, a spiritual darkness.
His own night was blacker than the night in which he came and Jesus knew. What this is making perfectly play is that even upright, sincere, religious individuals are by nature without hope and without God in the world. The religious and the irreligious without God. Devoid of spiritual life, born in transgression, unable to rectify their predicament, and without hope. In other words, such an individual is not in need of information, but is in need of regeneration.
Such an individual is not in need of renovation, but rather of transformation. spiritual conversion. Something so unbelievably transformative that the best analogy that one can come up with is the analogy of physical birth.
And all that is contained and entertained in that amazing miracle that happens all the time. The opening gambit. Rabbi, it's pretty obvious you're a teacher sent from God.
Nobody would be doing the signs that you're doing if God were not with him. Well, we move from an opening gambit to a striking response. A striking response. Whatever expectation Nicodemus shared with his friends and colleagues about the kingdom of God, surely this really knocked him back just a little bit. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, or in the King James Version, verily, verily, I say to you, although I do remind you that Jesus was not using the King James Version at that time. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Alright, so in the Jewish mind, the kingdom of God was all going to come together at the end of the age. And at the end of the age, entry into the kingdom would be guaranteed to every good Jew. Jesus is not talking now about a kingdom that is out there at the end of the age. He's talking about the present reality of the kingdom. Remember in Mark's Gospel, Mark has opened his Gospel with the words of Jesus, the time is now fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand or is it near, repent and believe the good news.
John, in a very similar way in this incident, is driving home the same reality. And that this entry into this kingdom is possible only as a result of being born again or born from above. Well, verse four tells us that Nicodemus responds in a quite surprising way, actually. How can a man be born when he's old? It's a strange question for such an intelligent man. He knows you can't be born when you're old. Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
Of course he can't. I wonder really why he's asking it in this way. Is he simply saying that he can't see how given his age and stage, it's not possible for him to turn over a new leaf? Is that what Nicodemus is saying here? He's too clever to think for a moment that Jesus is suggesting some form of physical reconfiguration.
Jesus comes back to it. Truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh.
That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said this to you. Look at that, verse seven, you shouldn't be surprised that I said this.
You shouldn't be surprised. But verse 10, Jesus is saying, I actually am surprised. Are you the teacher of Israel? And yet you don't understand these things?
You shouldn't be asking questions like this. You shouldn't be marveling, but I'm marveling that you've come here under cover of darkness, knowing all that you know about the Old Testament. And you're here asking me these questions in the darkness of the night? You say, well, this is quite interesting, isn't it? That Jesus would chide this man Nicodemus and chide him as he does as the teacher of Israel. And legitimately so, because he hasn't put the pieces of the puzzle together.
What pieces of the puzzle? Well, you can turn here, if you're still with me, to Ezekiel chapter 36, and the verses 25 to 27. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Now Nicodemus would have known these words from Ezekiel.
He would have known the words of the psalmist, the psalmist's prayer in Psalm 51. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. You see what Jesus is doing is this, that the prophesied cleansing of the Old Testament and the renewing of heart by the spirit is that to which Jesus refers as the basis of entry into the kingdom. In other words, it is the work of God's spirit. So don't stumble over what he's saying here about water and the spirit.
I think it's fairly straightforward. The experience of cleansing from the old life symbolized by water, and the regenerating power of the spirit symbolized by wind are the pictures that Jesus is employing in pointing out to Nicodemus the absolute necessity of being changed by God. This you see is at the very heart of this. We're talking actually about conversion. We're talking about being saved. We're not talking about encouraging people to have a kind of superficial interest in the existence of somebody called Jesus of Nazareth. We're talking about a radical, God-ordained, eye-opening, heart-changing encounter with Jesus.
That's what we're on about. And if we have started to become sufficiently satisfied with the vaguest of interests on the part of our friends and our cronies, then we have moved away from what the Gospels teach and have begun to create some kind of gospel of our own. You see, it's not enough for us simply to lay out Jesus on the smorgasbord of religious options. We do not have that option because of who Jesus is and because of what he's done. It's not pride on the part of the Christian to say that Jesus is the only way. It is logic on the part of the Christian.
There is no one else who can save because no one else is qualified to save. Therefore, he has every right to say to a religious Jew like this, I'm surprised that you as a religious leader, you have not put the pieces of the puzzle together. So he goes on to say to him, listen, if you don't get what I'm telling you about how to enter the kingdom down here, how are you ever going to grasp the ideas that are related to the consummation of the kingdom?
That's the best I can do with it. If I'm telling you the way of entry into the kingdom now, and you don't get the way of entry into the kingdom now, there's really no point in me telling you about what it's going to mean when the kingdom is consummated in the reality of a new heaven and of a new earth. So he makes clear the absolute necessity of the new birth. He makes clear for Nicodemus the supreme tragedy of Jewish unbelief. Still, he says, and still you do not understand these things.
You do not believe. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, remember, he says so poignantly, since we have such a hope, we are very bold, are we? Not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. Listen to this, for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
Do you believe that? That our devoutly committed Jewish religious friends begin and end their day with the Shema, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. And they say to their children, and they talk about it when they walk along the road, and when they lie down, and when they get up. And every time they do, there is a veil over their eyes that prevents them, and only in Jesus is the veil taken away. And here is the religious leader, confronted by Jesus himself. Rabbi, teacher, teach me the absolute necessity of new birth, the supreme tragedy of Jewish unbelief, and the complete sufficiency of Christ's death. You see, Jesus is actually preaching the gospel to him, isn't he?
That's what he's doing. Jesus is preaching the gospel from the Old Testament. No one is ascended into heaven, he says, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Here we go again, the Son of Man. That should ring a bell for him. The Son of Man, you mean Daniel 7, Son of Man?
That's exactly what I mean. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. There's another bell. Jesus is not choosing things arbitrarily. He's not just chucking big bits of the Bible at him. No, he's ringing his bell for him. He's saying, come on now, you know the Torah.
You're the leader of Israel, for goodness sake. And what is he reminding him of? Well, he's reminding him of the scene that's recorded in Numbers chapter 21. The people said, why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
There's no food, there's no water. God sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many of the people of Israel died. God did that. God does things like that.
Because he cares so much. And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned. And there you go. For we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he take away the serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people.
And what did the Lord say? The Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole. And everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. They had grumbled and they had complained. A plague of poisonous snakes are sent to bring death to many of them as a judgment upon their sin.
The bronze snake on the pole was the means God used to give new physical life to those who believed God's promise. And look to the serpent. The people said, don't I have to do something? No, look. That's what our friends say to us all the time. It can't be like that, can it? You're not possibly telling me that all I have to do is believe.
Yes, that's exactly right. Believe. The people who were cleansed believed. The others sat around saying, it can't be that straightforward.
And they died. And so in a similar fashion, Jesus knows that he is going to be lifted up and that all who look to him will become the recipients of spiritual life. That's what we're saying to our friends. Look to Christ. Look to him. He's the Savior. Look and you'll live.
Let me finish there. Because if Jesus is driving home, as I suggest to you, the absolute necessity of new birth and the supreme tragedy of Jewish unbelief and all our unbelief and the complete sufficiency of his death for sin. Then he is also driving home the personal responsibility of each one to believe in Jesus so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. People were not saved back in Numbers 21 on account of their being in proximity of the pole. But only when they rested all their hopes upon that which was promised to those who looked. That's why Calvin is so good when he says in his institutes around Book Three, all that Christ has done for us is of no value to us so long as we remain outside of Christ.
A mere knowledge of these things is of no value at all. Because you see intellectual assent needs to be combined with volition. It needs to be combined with action and that's again what we need to be saying to our friends. That's what Jesus is saying to this religious man.
You know all this stuff and yet you're missing it. Wouldn't you believe so that whoever believes will have eternal life? Let's make it clear for us as we stop that the message is for everyone who believes. Salvation is not given until the gospel. The message of Christ dying in the place of the sinner is believed. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.
God loves men and women so much that he will pursue them with his love in order to bring them to repentance and faith. We began by quoting Sinclair, that the heart of God beats with an evangelistic rhythm. We then end with the question, does my heart pulse with an evangelistic rhythm? The work of conversion, said Richard Baxter in his day, is the first and greatest thing we must drive at.
After this we must work with all our might. This misery of the unconverted is so great that it calleth loudest for our compassion. I confess I am frequently forced to neglect that which would lead to the further increase of knowledge in the godly because of the lamentable necessity of the unconverted. Who is able to talk of controversies or of nice, unnecessary points while he sees a company of ignorant, miserable sinners before his eyes?
Who is able to talk like that? But once it's not unkind to say evangelical Christianity in contemporary America is well able to talk like that. So our response should be in part, redirect us to go back to our friends whether they are religious people coming under the cover of darkness or as tomorrow morning if anybody shows up, irreligious people stuck in the noonday sun. Will you commit yourself to that? How much time do you have left on earth? Do you remember when you used to sing as a teenager, lead me to some soul today, teach me God just what to say, friends of mine are lost in sin and cannot find their way? Or are you just concerned, are we just concerned to make America the way we really would like it to be for our grandchildren and we'll worry about the unconverted once we get all the important things fixed? No, I don't think so.
I don't think you would be here if you felt that way. You're listening to a message called A Man in the Night on Truth for Life weekend with Alistair Begg. In addition to Truth for Life's daily and weekly Bible teaching, we also carefully select books we can recommend to you each month that will help you learn more about God's word. And our selection today invites you to travel alongside the Apostle Paul. The book is called An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul, His Life, Ministry and Missionary Journeys. The book explores the religious, cultural, political and social climate of the first century Roman world where Paul lived. You'll travel alongside him tracing his journeys through Jerusalem, Cyprus, Macedonia and more.
And along the way you'll meet those who joined him. The book is full of maps and photos to help you get a clear picture of Paul's adventures as you trace the timeline of his ministry and the letters he wrote. Get to know this unique figure of the faith and gain a deeper understanding of how and why God used him in such extraordinary ways. Find out more about the Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul when you visit our website at truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for taking time out of your weekend to study the Bible with us. Next weekend we'll learn how Jesus responded to a morally corrupt social outcast. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
