(7/7/2013)
TO SEE THE KINGDOM OF GOD
John 3:1-15
Key Verse: 3:3
“Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are
born again.’”
It is truly interesting to see Apostle John who introduces us to a variety of people,
the young and the old, man and woman, the privileged and the underprivileged in his
gospel. For instance, in chapter 1, at the outset of his gospel, we meet the roaring-like
evangelist John the Baptist followed by a handful of passionate young men who decided
to devote their lives to Jesus as his followers in response to their Savior’s calling. Then
in chapter 2, we witness a group of happy and joyful people at a wedding banquet
having our hearts warmed up by our Savior’s blessing of the event by his changing
water into wine. Then Jesus would visit the temple; his holy anger as a righteous God
would erupt toward a crowd of corrupt people. He turned over the tables and drove out
animals and said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market
place.” Then in chapter 4, we see a wounded and lonely woman who was engaged in
one to one Bible study with the Saviour at Jacob’s well. And here in today’s passage we
meet a man named Nicodemus. If we read verse 1, we see that he was a Pharisee, a
religious officer who commanded many people’s respect at that time, and also a
member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, a higher position than a member of
parliament in our context so to speak. And he was a teacher because our Lord Jesus
recognized him as such, as well as a rich man. Do you remember the father’s song in
the movie “Fiddler on the roof”? There he sang like this, “If I were a rich man, I wouldn’t
need to work hard as a farmer, Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.” If we read John
19:39, with his great wealth, he bought seventy-five pounds of expensive perfume in
order to anoint Jesus’ dead body. To summarize, he was a social prodigy, a man of
success and accomplishments whom most people would envy. And of course, we can
imagine what kind of effort he must have made in order to reach the place he was now.
We know it is never easy to reach the top in any field and this man had all the power,
honor, wealth, knowledge and even a noble character. But in this passage we see him
visiting our Savior Jesus. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps he was expecting miracles or
some magic power to be displayed by Jesus. Notice that he came to Jesus at night.
Perhaps he had a serious, dark and desperate problem that no one else could solve.
It is easy for us to think that a person of human success and accomplishments
like Nicodemus need not come to Jesus, or at least that they need him less than the
poor or the disadvantaged. But that’s hardly true. All people, whether the lowly, the
successful, the poor, the rich, movie stars, politicians, the intellectuals, yes, even
Einstein need to come to Jesus. Why? It is because all men are created in God’s image.
The Bible tells us human beings became separated from God, because of their sins and
thus, God’s curse came to us. So we suffer much while living in this world, with a
meaningless, purposeless, hard and troubled life. But that’s not the end. We shall face
God’s eternal judgement after our life on earth. Life does not end with physical death,
the decay of one’s physical body. Scripture tells us that we are “destined to die once
and after that we would face God’s eternal judgment” (Heb 9:27). This punishment is
not just one or two years of suffering but eternal suffering tormented by engulfing fire in
a fiery lake of burning sulfur about which even our Lord Jesus himself warned against .
Whoever we are, whatever effort we have made to live as a good person, whatever life
we lived, we are condemned by God because of our sins because the Bible declares all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:10). All people need the Savior;
they need to be born again to have eternal life.
Can you feel Nicodemus’ desperation and confusion in his words? In verse 2, he
says to Jesus, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no
one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” (2) He was
expecting some kind of miracle from Jesus though he did not know what it was exactly.
You know he was nervous, fearful, doubting and anxious, though he tried to maintain
his composure. His inner person was full of darkness. Up until now, he had been
running, running for human success and accomplishment. And he reached the top.
Then what did he find there? What did Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Earnest
Hemingway, Yasunari Kawabata find there when they reached top?
Nicodemus could not find any more hope when he reached to the top. He felt deep
frustrations and nowhere to turn.
There is a novel titled “Hope for the flowers” written by Trina Paulus. Often it was
classified as a children’s novel, but rather than being meant for children, it’s a story that
was written in allegorical form and has profound social, political, philosophical, and
spiritual meaning. It all starts when Stripe, who had been hatched from an egg, begins
to search for a better and satisfying life. In his search, he reaches the base of a pillar
made up of caterpillars. Thinking he would find out something which would give his life
meaning, he struggles hard in order to reach the top by stepping and climbing over all
other caterpillars. However, when he reached the summit, he found nothing. He realizes
that many other caterpillars who had reached the top fell down from the top after finding
out that there was no higher place to go. Upon realizing this, he fell into into deep
despair. Suddenly, he met a yellow butterfly who had been changed from a caterpillar.
With this butterfly’s help, he spins a cocoon and emerges from the cocoon and finally
transforms into a beautiful butterfly and flies into the sky effortlessly. One scene in the
story that I remember in particular describes how before becoming a butterfly, the
caterpillar talks with an old caterpillar who was spinning a cocoon. The young caterpillar
asked the old, “How can I become a butterfly?” The old caterpillar said, “In order to
become a butterfly, first of all, you need to have a storing desire to become a butterfly
even giving up your desire to remain as a caterpillar.” “Do you mean I must die to
myself?” the young asked again. The old caterpillar said to him, “Well, sure it has the
meaning of death. But it is not really death because even if you appear to die outwardly,
actually your true being is not dying. It is just being changed and transformed.” Now let
us remember the Strip caterpillar’s change into a beautiful butterfly through the process
of spinning the cocoon.
Look at verse 3. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see
the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” In initial stage of the conversation,
what Nicodemus was saying just “hello” to Jesus but Jesus who knew his fundamental
problem so well saw him with penetrating eyes. So he drew his attention to the subject
of being born again, to which Nicodemus did not how to respond because his spiritual
eyes were closed. Jesus said to him, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom
of God unless they are born again.”
Here Jesus talked about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God? I will ask you
a question. What is the kingdom of God? Do you see the kingdom of God clearly? Then
what does it look like? The kingdom of God is the kingdom where our Lord God rules
his people with his love and righteousness. Of course, we can go there when our life on
this earth ends after having met Jesus on the cross as our personal Savior. To help
your understanding of the kingdom of God, I like to introduce an old evangelist’s
description of the kingdom of God. In his sermon, he said “Think of a city without a
cemetery—there are no death. If there would be such a city on this earth, what a rush
we all would make to go in! However, you can’t find out such a city on the face of this
earth. A city without tears because God wipes away all the tears up. This is a time of
weeping, but, by and by, there is a time coming when God will call us where there will
be no more tears. A city without pain, without sorrow, without sickness, without death.
There is no darkness. The Lamb is the light. It needs no sun; it needs no moon. The
paradise of Eden was nothing compared to this one. The tempter came into the Eden
and triumphed, but in that city, nothing that defiles will ever enter…And he goes on like
this, “The kingdom of God is good because there we shall see our Lord Jesus. In
speaking of his eagerness to enter the kingdom of God, someone said that he would be
really happy in the kingdom of God because he can see the loving Lord Jesus all the
time. But it seems to me that just look at Jesus even once will be more than a reward…”
Do you agree with me? I really think just one look at my Savior Jesus in the kingdom of
God will be more than any blessing, and because of this I want to go there.
In Luke 17:20, our Lord Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God does not come
with careful observation. The kingdom of God is not here and there but within you” (Lk
17:20). What does it mean? It means the kingdom of God is not theory, but it is real in
one’s heart; when there is the kingdom of God in one’s heart, there is inexpressible
spiritual joy and heavenly peace even though we live in this troubled world, because we
are ruled by God’s love, justice, righteousness and his grace. And when we have the
kingdom of God in us, we see beyond this world; it is because our value and purpose of
life is not any more earth-bound. We live for something eternal, not something temporal.
Therefore we do not easily give into fatalism or sorrow but move forward against the
army of adversity by faith.
Jesus told Nicodemus he must be born again to see the kingdom of God. “To be
born again?” How can I possibly explain this spiritual experience or phenomenon well?
You know, “To be born again” has the meaning of “being born from above” Or it has the
meaning of “To be newly born”. “To be born again is to be born newly fundamentally
and essentially. This means we take off our old self in Adam and wear our new self in
Christ. This is not just the change of human condition, but a work of new creation. It is to
be born as God’s child from being a child of the devil.
Have you have this kind of experience, when you were struggling with your life
feeling lonely, tired, fearful, deserted, crying not knowing what to do as you found
yourself as a loner in the whole universe, then your Saviour on the cross met you? Then
you felt such a strong presence of God and his love and peace in your soul that from
that time on God’s presence was not abstract or vague at all but a very real, so real that
you were even inspired or encouraged to devote your life to him as his precious
children? Didn’t you pour out tears of thanks when you were born again through your
personal encounter with your living God when you were struggling with the words of
Jesus? We need to remember Jesus who came into our hearts when we accept him
through sincere repentance. And we need to continually change and fix our eyes from
the world to Jesus.
But alas! Nicodemus was so ignorant of the spiritual reality. Although Jesus told
him God’s truth so plainly, he kept on saying, “How?” “How can someone be born when
they are old?” “How can this be?” And our Savior Jesus knew his problem was not a
matter of intellect but a matter of pride. Jesus rebuked him saying, “You are Israel’s
teacher and do you not understand these things?” And still having compassion on him,
Jesus revealed him the secret of the cross, his death on the cross. Jesus said to him,
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted
up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” The people of Israel
complained to God when they faced some hardship while journeying in the desert. Then
God punished them by sending them many poisonous snakes to bite them. And as they
repented their sin and asked God for help, God ordered Moses to make a bronze snake
and put it on a pole and set it high in the sky so that whoever saw it by faith could be
saved. From this historical event, we learn that the way of salvation is a humanly
irrational. Only those who see Jesus on the cross with the eyes of faith can have God’s
salvation and eternal life in the kingdom of God. We thank and praise God for his Son
Jesus who died on the cross in our places. May we look at him on the cross by faith so
that we could find God’s salvation and enter into the kingdom of God.