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00:35 Amen, glory to God. Thank you for joining me. Good to be here.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. I hope you’re excited to dive into God’s Word. We’re discussing great truths that came directly from Christ.
00:45 I say came past tense but really come directly from Christ because Christ is alive. Amen. God’s Word is a living Word.
00:53 Amen. And today we’re diving in to John 3. We’re gonna read John 3 1- 21 which is Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus and then we’re going to look at three truths that come directly from Christ in verses 11 through 16. And it’s just a wonderful, wonderful passage of Scripture.
01:13 Of course John 3 16 everybody knows that or almost everybody knows that I should say. But there’s so much depth there. I mean think about it.
01:20 How many times do you think of John 3:16? Do you think about who Jesus was speaking to or what the context of that verse was? Amen. There’s a lot to it and we know the most clear picture of the gospel. As I understand it, it’s 1 Corinthians 15 1- 4. But John 3:16 is a verse that I love to use and I love to preach on.
01:38 And beyond that there’s a lot of context here. So let’s dive right in. John 3:1-21 Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus.
01:47 I’ll start here. John 3:1. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with Him.
02:08 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is the flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is the Spirit.
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02:36 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and now hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit.02:52 Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and ye received not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Manbe lifted up.03:27 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.03:45 He that believeth on Him is not condemned, but He that believeth not is condemned already, because He hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.04:12 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that hisdeeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Amen. Glory to God.04:21 That’s John 3:1-21. I love reading that scripture. I get better each time I read it.04:28 Amen. I trip over it a little bit less. I hope you enjoyed hearing it.04:31 Let’s get right into this. Who is Jesus speaking to? We understand Jesus, God in the flesh, our Savior and Lord, is speaking. This is the red-letter text.04:40 He’s speaking to somebody named Nicodemus. Who’s Nicodemus? He’s a Pharisee. He was a ruler of the Jews.04:48 We don’t have time to go into all that he was, but he’s a very interesting character. Most of what we learn about him we learn in the book of John, though he’s mentioned here and there elsewise. I believe he’s wealthy.04:58 I believe that he was essentially like a Supreme Court justice. The Jews had the Sanhedrin. They had, even though they were ruled by the Romans, they had some authority over their laws, especially their religious laws.05:08 You can think of Nicodemus as one of the members of that council. If you think about the Supreme Court, when does something go to the Supreme Court? When it’s disagreed upon, it’s very complex, it escalates all the way up to the Supreme Court, and then they are supposed to be kind of the most right, the most authoritative. That’s who Nicodemus was.05:29 Here he is at night coming to speak to Jesus. Man, Jesus is rebuking him gently, but He’s rebuking him saying, look, you’re an expert in these things, and you don’t even understand these basic principles I’m teaching you. But he truly didn’t, and that I think goes to show the ignorance of the Pharisees, but also the curiosity of Nicodemus that I believe God had put on his heart, and the earnest nature of Nicodemus from when I could tell that he really wanted to know what was going on.05:58 What we see here is with Jesus conversating with Nicodemus, we see truths that we can apply, great truths that are directly from Christ. First of all, we see that a true witness is often rejected in verse 11. Verily, verily, I say unto thee.06:12 By the way, when Jesus starts something or mentions verily, verily, he’s saying, listen up, listen up. The idea of repetition in the Bible, as I understand it, means it’s very important, and that’s why there’s a lot of repetition in the Bible. And here we see, verily, verily, I testify that we have seen, and ye received not our witness.06:32 And I believe ye here, as Christ addresses Nicodemus, is not addressing him just personally, but addressing the Jewish people. So it’s certainly addressing the Sanhedrin, the rulers, the Pharisees. You read the New Testament Gospels, you see Jesus constantly rebuking the Pharisees and getting into it with the scribes and the Pharisees.06:50 So I believe this is not just at Nicodemus, but the larger group here, even of the Jews, saying that we speak that we do know. They were speaking of knowledge. Christ is speaking, and His disciples are speaking of things that they know, right? And they testify that they’ve seen it, Amen Think about all the healing and all the miracles that Jesus would perform, Amen Incredible miracles, and yet, and people would say, we’ve seen this, and yet they didn’t believe.07:19 You received not our witness. And so we see here a spiritual truth, and that is that even though we have been changed, even though our lives have been radically altered by Christ, I speak to you from experience. I was a lost sinner on the way to hell, Amen I was living for myself.07:34 I was living in the world. I was miserable. I was in trouble in every regard.
07:40 I was sinful by every stretch of the imagination. I could get into it, but again, for respect of time, I’ll just let you know, I was living awful. I was living bad.07:50 And oh, how Christ came and saved me, Amen And oh, how He made a difference in me. He completely changed me. There’s traits about me that are totally different.07:58 He made me a new person. I was born again. I was risen with Him, Amen The old things are passed away.08:04 Behold, all things become new. And yet, as I go to witness to people, as they have seen the transformation in me, as I try to explain these things, they don’t believe. Maybe you’ve been there too.08:14 You try to witness to people, and they don’t believe. A true witness is often rejected, and Christ is pointing this out all the way back here in the New Testament, in verse 11 of John 3, that your true witness is often rejected, Amen Now, that doesn’t mean we should not continue to be a witness. That means that Christ can identify with what you’re going through, and that you should keep going, understanding that that’s the nature of the game we’re playing.08:38 And I don’t want to downplay evangelism as a game. I want to simplify it so we can understand you today. When you go play baseball, if you thought every time you were supposed to get a hit, you’d be awfully disappointed knowing that even the best players only hit three or four out of ten balls coming at them, right? Their batting average, 300 or 400, is considered a very, very good all-star level in pro baseball.08:57 And so we should consider, if one or two will even hear our witness, praise God. We have lost family, we witness to them. If they’ll even hear the witness, we praise God for that, because we realize that a true witness is often rejected.09:11 But then we see something else here in verse 13, And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven. We see the true witness of Christ in verse 13. So we see a true witness is often rejected, and then we see that Christ is the true witness.09:33 He is the only one that can speak of these heavenly things because he came from heaven. And Christ is saying, nobody else has done that. I am God in the flesh, essentially is what He’s saying here.09:39 And we understand that this is the true witness of Christ. And so when people say that there is a way to God without Christ, they are fooling themselves and fooling others. The Bible clearly states there’s no way to the Father but by Christ, and we understand that today.09:52 Finally, the salvation plan. Of course, we understand this, and you’ll understand this. Verse 14, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.10:09 For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Amen. Glory to God.10:16 I love the repetition there in verse 15 and 16. 15 says eternal life. 16 says everlasting life.10:21 I’ll take them both. Amen. I love it.10:25 That’s the salvation plan. And we see here that God’s plan for salvation is clearly outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, tells us that it is God’s plan to save us by the blood of Christ. The Bible speaks of God being pleased that Jesus was bruised for our iniquities, for our sin.10:43It’s incredible. God’s plan. I would never ever want anything to happen to my kids, and I look at pictures of my kids, and I see them, and I say, Oh, Lord, I can’t imagine something bad happening to them, or even at my hands something bad happening to them.11:00 And oh, the response I get back from the Lord every time, just in my mind and in my heart, I did it, son. I did it. So you don’t have to because I did it.11:08 I don’t have to sacrifice my son because he sacrificed His, Amen, His beloved Jesus, His only begotten. He sacrificed Him on the cross so that you could be saved and I could be saved. And when we truly get a hold of that, when we truly get a hold of the great love, the great, absolute, incredible love that only he possesses, that we could never possess, that he possesses, that sacrificial love, then we’re gonna want to be saved more than anything else.11:31 And once we’re saved, we’re gonna want to serve Him more than anything else. So if you’re not saved today, understand it’s very simple to be saved. Believe on Jesus Christ and what He did for you on the cross.11:42 Understand your need as a sinner. You know, again, we don’t need to complicate the gospel. Here, Nicodemus, he’s an expert, but he’s confused.11:50 And here, a child can understand the simple gospel message, and that is the wonder of the gospel. As you look into John 3 and you dig into it, you see this conversation where Jesus is telling Nicodemus very plainly the only way to be saved is believing on Him. And the only way to be born again is believing on Him.12:06 The only way to have eternal life is believing on Him. Everything comes by believing on Jesus, Amen Not by baptism, not by money, not by works, not by anything else, but believing on Jesus Christ. In order to fully give glory to what happened on the cross, the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection, to give glory to the sacrifice that God provided for us sinners, is the only way to do that is to accept that free gift of salvation.12:31 Any other way is an abomination to God. And God makes that clear throughout His scripture, Old Testament and New, but clearly we see it here in John 3, and it’s such a beautiful, beautiful scripture. And we see that many people don’t want to hear this, and the evil hates the light, and they don’t come to the light because they don’t want their deeds reproved.12:51 But what the evil, they don’t understand is everyone will bow the knee before God, and everyone will answer for what they’ve done and what they’ve said in life. But we that are saved, we can plead Jesus and get heavenly reward and be with Him in heaven forever, and that is the promise our God makes. And we hold Him to that promise because we know there’s no variableness or shadow of turning with God.13:10 He’s a great God, and he’s a God of love, and he has a plan for all of humanity. The Bible says he desires all to come to repentance and to come to knowledge of Him. Praise God.13:20 Glory to God. Get on fire for God today. Give your life to Christ, and if you have, serve Him with all your heart and all your soul.13:25 Live for Him. Love Him. Matter of fact, love Him first.13:29 Get on fire for Him by loving Him, and watch how He will use you and how you can serve Him. That’s the right order. Accept Him as Savior.13:36 Fall in love with Him. Seek Him, and then He will lead your path. He will direct your path.13:42 The Bible says that God is light, and that He will direct your path. Oh, trust Him today. He’s a good God.13:48 He’s a wonderful God. He deserves the glory. He gets the glory.13:52 That conversation with Nicodemus wasn’t just valuable for Nicodemus, though it was, as we read on in the New Testament, that he’s with Jesus at the burial with many tens, 70, 75 pounds of spices to anoint him. Amen. Not just that, but for us today, let’s take it, and let’s use it to grow closer to God.14:13 I thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless, and Amen.