Our Gospel lesson today introduces us to a gentleman by the name of Nicodemus. As a Pharisee and a ruler, he was a prominent figure in the community. We know from Jn.19:39 that he was also very rich because when Jesus was being prepared for burial, Nicodemus showed up with somewhere between 75 and 100 pounds of a myrrh and aloe mixture that they used to bind the linen clothes that our Lord was buried in. It is obvious that this first encounter Nicodemus had with Jesus had a profound impact on him. To understand how far this man came to be a follower of Christ, we need to know where he started from.

To say that the Pharisees were a salvation-by-works party would be an understatement. Their whole lives were dedicated to works, but as Nicodemus found out that night, when it comes to salvation, works don’t work.

"In many ways, the Pharisees were the best people in the whole country. There were never more than 6000 of them [and] they were what was known as a chaburah, or brotherhood. They entered into this brotherhood by taking a pledge in front of three witnesses that they would spend all their lives observing every detail of the scribal law.

What exactly did that mean? To the Jews, the law was the most sacred thing in the world. The law was the first five books of the Old Testament. They believed it to be the perfect Word of God. To add one word to it or to take one word away from it was a deadly sin. Now if the law is the perfect and complete word of God, that must mean that it contained everything that anyone needed to know for the living of a good life, if not explicitly, then implicitly. If it was not there in so many words, it must be possible to deduce it. The law as it stood consisted of great, wide, noble principles which people had to work out for themselves. But, for the later Jews, that was not enough. They said: ‘The law is complete; it contains everything necessary for the living of a good life; therefore in the law there must be a regulation to govern every possible incident in every possible moment for every possible individual.’ So they set out to extract from the great principles of the law an infinite number of rules and regulations to govern every conceivable situation in life. In other words, they changed the law of the great principles into the legalism of by-laws and regulations.

The best example of what they did is to be seen in the Sabbath law. In the Bible itself, we are simply told that we must remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy and that on that day no work must be done, either by man or by his servants or his animals. Not content with that, the later Jews spent hour after hour and generation after generation defining what work is and listing the things that may or may not be done on the Sabbath day. The Mishnah is the codified scribal law. The scribes spent their lives working out these rules and regulations. In the Mishnah, the section on the Sabbath extends to no fewer than twenty-four chapters. The Talmud is the explanatory commentary on the Mishnah and in the Jerusalem Talmud the section explaining the Sabbath law runs to sixty-four and a half columns; and in the Babylonian Talmud it runs to 156 double folio pages. And we are told about a Rabbi who spent two and a half years in studying one of the twenty-four chapters of the Mishnah.

The kind of thing they did was this. To tie a knot on the Sabbath was to work; but a knot had to be defined. ‘The following are the knots the making of which renders a man guilty; the knot of camel drivers and that of sailors; and as one is guilty by reason of tying them, so also of untying them.’ On the other hand, knots which could be tied or untied with one hand were quite legal. Further, ‘a woman may tie up a slit in her shift and the strings of her cap and those of her girdle, the straps of shoes or sandals, of skins of wine and oil’. Now see what happened. Suppose a man wished to let down a bucket into a well to draw water on the Sabbath day. He could not tie a rope to it, for a knot on a rope was illegal on the Sabbath; but he could tie it to a woman’s girdle and let it down, for a knot in a girdle was quite legal. That was the kind of thing which to the scribes and Pharisees was a matter of life and death; that was religion; that to them was pleasing and serving God.

Take the case of making a journey on the Sabbath. Exodus 16:29 says; ‘Each of you stay where you are; do not leave your place on the seventh day.’ A Sabbath day’s journey was therefore limited to [approximately] 1,000 yards. But, if a rope was tied across the end of a street, the whole street became one house and a man could go 1,000 yards beyond the end of the street. Or, if a man deposited enough food for one meal on Friday evening at any given place, that place technically became his house and he could go 1,000 yards beyond it on the Sabbath day. The rules and regulations and the evasions piled up by the [thousands].

Take the case of carrying a burden. Jeremiah 17:21-24 said: ‘For the sake of your lives, take care that you do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day.’ So a burden had to be defined. It was defined as ‘food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put upon a wound, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an eye-salve’, and so on and on. It had then to be settled whether or not on the Sabbath a woman could wear a brooch, a man could wear an artificial leg or dentures; or would it be carrying a burden to do so? Could a chair or even a child be lifted? And so on and on the discussions and the regulations went.

It was the scribes who worked out these regulations; it was the Pharisees who dedicated their lives to keeping them. Obviously, however misguided a man might be, he must be desperately in earnest if he proposed to undertake obedience to every one of the thousands of rules. That is precisely what the Pharisees did. The name Pharisee means the separated one, and the Pharisees were those who had separated themselves from all ordinary life in order to keep every detail of the law of the scribes.

Others believe that because this happened in the earlier part of Christ’s ministry, when our Lord had not yet become such a controversial figure, Nicodemus just wanted to visit Jesus when He wasn’t as busy. Either way, this little conversation was about to change this Pharisee’s life forever.

"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."v2 Nicodemus and others of like mind recognized Jesus as a prophet that was close to God, but did he go out of his way that night just to share that with Jesus? He was looking for the answer to a question he did not know how to ask. Jesus, knowing the heart of Nicodemus, told him exactly what he needed to hear, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven."v3

What was Nicodemus to make of this comment? In the Greek, the word anothen, translated as "again", can have at least two different meanings. The first meaning, and the one that Jesus was referring to, means "from above". The second meaning, and the one Nicodemus was thinking of, means "again". When Jesus said "you must be born from above", Nicodemus was thinking, "I must be born again or anew" as some translate it. "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?"v4

Jesus answers Nicodemus by elaborating on the first comment, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."v5

We’ll get back to Nicodemus in a moment but it is important not to overlook what Jesus is saying here. Let’s look at verses three and five together; "Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."v3 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God."v5

When we say that someone is "born again" we mean that a person is "regenerate". The church has always taught this. To say that someone is a "born again Christian" is a redundant statement. You cannot be a Christian unless you are born again, but the question becomes, how and when does this take place?

In verse five Jesus answered this question, "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." For 2000 years the church has taught that regeneration occurs at baptism. The historic churches, Roman, Orthodox and Anglican all hold to this doctrine. For me, the road to belief in this teaching was not an easy one.

The churches I attended after my conversion both taught believers regeneration rather than baptismal regeneration. In other words, I was "born again" when I became a believer and I confessed my faith in Christ. It was with this understanding that I entered seminary. Bp. Grote was teaching the class on baptism but because of my presuppositions, I could not comprehend what he was trying to tell me. I remembered him pausing and then he asked me the question "did anything happen at our Lords baptism?"

"Yes", I said.

"What" he asked.

"The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus" I answered.

"Well, if Christ is our example, and something happened at His baptism, shouldn’t something happen at ours?"

All of a sudden the light came on, so to speak. This wasn’t about my works, beliefs or faith, it was about His grace.

People have a tendency to rely on their experiences rather than the truth of the bible. If the two don’t seem to line up, we lean towards that which we have experienced. This can lead us away from the truth and stand in the way of salvation.

( Friday evening, Johnson ranch.)

Something does happen at baptism! God imparts His grace upon us by His Holy Spirit. The problem is that not everyone reacts to Gods grace in the same way. Some grow in the grace of God from the time they are old enough to understand. Others, like me, wonder in the wilderness much of our lives until we realize that God does have a purpose for our lives and we decide His ways are better than ours. Unfortunately, there are some that will never heed the call of God in their lives. They reject the grace offered to them and they die in their trespasses and sins. Nicodemus was not one of those.

He came to Jesus believing that his works would get him into heaven. Jesus said, ‘sorry, nothing you can do will get you there. You have to be born from above, by the Spirit."

Now you may side with Nicodemus on this one. Christian baptism had not been instituted yet, and Jesus wasn’t referring to John’s baptizing. How was he to know what Jesus was talking about? He should have understood because of the teachings of the Old Testament and especially the words of the prophet Ezekiel;

Nicodemus should have known, but he was so wrapped up in his works agenda that he was blind to the fact that the Son of Man was standing before him and sharing the truth of eternal life with him.

"No one has ascended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And 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."vv13-15

I believe the light came on, so to speak, for our brother Nicodemus at that moment. He came to Jesus knowing that there was something special about him, but he was not expecting this revelation. The one standing before him in the darkness on that night was the one who would be the light of the world, the Messiah. That night, Nicodemus traded his belief in his own works as the pathway to heaven, for the truth that Jesus was the only way to eternal life.

When we are forced to question our beliefs, this usually leads to some sort of crisis. We can dismiss what we are learning, or we can investigate it further. Nicodemus could have walked away that night after listening to the words of Jesus, but he didn’t. I’ve got a feeling that they probably spent many evenings together during Christ’s time here on earth.

We don’t know if Nicodemus remained a Pharisee after that night. We don’t know what role he played in the early church. What we do know is that his life was never the same after that first meeting with Jesus. That night he learned the truth about eternal life; that until God changes our hearts, we can’t change; that the most important thing we can do is believe in the Son of God; and that without Jesus, works don’t work.

Amen……..