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May 18, 2008
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Stories of Transformation from the Book of John
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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“Changed Understanding”
John 3:1-21
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A favorite songwriter of mine, Michael Card, wrote one song on faith with a chorus that reads:
To hear with my heart,
To see with my soul,
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold,
To trust in a way that I cannot see,
That's what faith must be.
It is a delightful picture of what it means for us to truly live this thing called life not by “sight” but by faith. It is so much easier to live based upon what we see around us, on feelings, to live based upon what we can “do” about some situation in our lives, than to live by “faith in the unseen”.
I don’t know about you, but I know that in my life I live so much more frequently based upon sight than upon faith. I have faith – I believe – but there are times when I begin to put forth effort to “make something” happen as if it all depended upon me. So then, even though I would “claim” to have faith, the way I am living betrays the fact of what I am actually believing.
If I am worrying about a future event, I am not trusting God with that event. Even though I claim faith in Jesus, the worry says, “I don’t think He is big enough to handle this problem”. If I am stressed out about all that is not happening according to schedule or about all that work that is before me to accomplish, then I am not at peace, and clearly not walking in the peace that Jesus says HE has given me. Now if I am not walking in that “peace” I am not operating my life upon confident trust in Jesus.
This week as I was encountering some of the stresses of this season, I asked the choir on Thursday night to pray for me. It was a request that was a confession as well – for to ask others to pray for me as I am stress, is an admission that I am not walking by trust. They did pray and you know what: it helped my heart and attitude immensely!
In the New Movie Prince Caspian (the 2nd in the Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis) the 4 children are taken back to Narnia and Peter especially struggles to believe, to live by faith in Aslan (the Christ figure) and for some of the movie opts for faith in himself rather than in the Great Lion. He reminds me of myself.
I find that many weeks my life betrays my lack of faith, my inability to really live out the fact that I am a new creature in Christ, that I am a son of God.
When I reach these places, I need a changed understanding – I need to return again to the basics of what I say I believe, what I claim and come back to the basic grammar of my faith.
When I turn from all that I am believing that is false, back to the truth, then God is more free to move in my heart anew and I again take hold of that hand that I cannot see and walk by faith, by confidence in Jesus.
- When I turn to John 3, I am reminded of this very reality for in it I encounter a man who helps me remember that I am still a work in progress – that being religious is not the goal of my days, but being Jesus’ brother, the son of God, is.
In John 2 after cleansing the temple, we are told that while in Jerusalem for the Passover feast that Jesus performed many miraculous signs and many people who saw these signs, “believed in Jesus’ name”. But even though they “believed in Jesus’ name” we read that Jesus would not entrust himself to them, or more straightforwardly would not “believe in them”. The reason the author gives for this is because Jesus knew what was in a man. And then immediately after this, we read, “Now, there was a man…” which begins the story of Nicodemus.
What was “in a man” that Jesus knew was there? Performance, control, manipulation, greed, covetousness – in one phrase? “the human heart” Jesus knew the heart of man for he had a human heart. He knew what came forth from the heart. “Tempted to sin in every way as we are”. Jesus really “knew” – the only difference was he never sinned.
We find that as this “man” Nicodemus comes forward, a man whose name means “victorious among his people” – who we are told is a leader of leaders, a man of no small clout in the public eye, that he comes lauding Jesus for these same “signs” which caused people to believe in His name. There is the evidence that Nicodemus then is a type of these who believed in the Name of Jesus but had not experienced or received the LIFE of Jesus.
He comes at night – perhaps he did not want to be seen by his fellow Pharisees, or perhaps he was busy and had to get away when he could – but darkness is a significant element in this gospel. Jesus brought life and that life was the light of men, we read in the first chapter, so that Nicodemus comes at night gives a picture of the darkness that he is living in.
Even though he would be considered someone great among the people, even though he was a ruler among his people, as he comes to Jesus he comes as one who is blind and dead. Jesus declares to him “you must be born again, meaning, you must be born of water and the Spirit” in order to see and to enter the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of light and love. He had to go to the basics of faith, to the very “beginning” (a place Nicodemus had never before been).
Nicodemus knew he lacked something, but never imagined he lacked all of life, he lacked the necessary birth in order to see and enter all God had for him. “How can this be?” he asks.
- “Nicodemus your faith is inadequate for what you need for life,” Jesus is telling him. It is not a belief in the name of Jesus based upon the works He has done, but belief in Jesus as the Son of God, the one who came from heaven, the one by whom we are born into a new relationship with the living God that is needed. Then we will hear with our hearts and see with our souls and be guided by a hand we cannot hold…
Nicodemus’ conversation with Jesus lets us in on what this new birth is – it is a work of God in a person’s life. It is not a WORK that we do for God, but a work God does for us and in us.
Nicodemus had spent all his life “working for God” – he was a truly “religious” guy who did everything that God had ever commanded plus kept plenty of other laws as well just to be certain the law of God was fully kept. But with all this, still he was blind and dead in the eyes of God. IT was not “his” belief in the name of Jesus that was needed but living faith in Jesus the Son of God by which God could bring new birth.
It is the Spirit who alone can bring spiritual life to a person and He does so in response to faith placed in Jesus. It was the great reformer Martin Luther who said that “Faith is God’s work in us that changes us and gives new birth from God… Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith… It is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.” (from “An Introduction to St Paul’s Letter to the Romans” Luther’s German Bible of 1522, trans by Rev Robert E Smith, from Dr Martin Luther’s Vermischte Deutsche Schriften, by Johann K Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63, Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854, pp. 124-125, ubp).
“To all who received Him, to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God…” John had told us in the first chapter.
This is what God always intended to do, Nicodemus is told. There was a time when Moses was leading the people to freedom out of captivity that serpents came into the came and everyone who bit died. But God had had Moses make a serpent of bronze and lift it up on a pole so that all those who were bit by the deadly serpents in the camp would be able to look at the serpent on the pole and with one glance be delivered from death. That glance was an Old Testament equivilent of “placing faith” in Another.
Similarly Jesus predicts his own death on a pole, on the cross, so that everyone who “believes in him”—but glances at Him— may have eternal life. In Moses’ day it was salvation from physical death, whereas through Jesus it is the reception of life that lasts for eternity.
- So far Jesus has reminded Nicodemus and us that the new birth is necessary for this thing called eternal life. And that New Birth happens as a work of the Spirit of God in our lives as we believe in Jesus, the Son of God. It is belief in Jesus the one who has come from heaven in the flesh – not belief “about Jesus” that brings this life.
And God promises this life for everyone who believes-- this is sight to see God’s kingdom, it is entrance into that realm. In Caspian only Lucy can at first see the great lion and Peter laments to her, “Why can’t I see him?” to which she responds, “perhaps you weren’t looking”. When our faith is no longer secure in the person of Jesus we will be blind to His presence, and miss participating in His kingdom.
There were many in the camp with Moses who refused to look at the serpent to be saved. Like the commander from Aram named Naaman who almost bypassed healing of his leprosy for he thought it below him to dip his body 7 times in the Jordan River, so there are people who refuse to turn from their own lives, from their own practices, from their own attempts to save themselves, to control their lives’ destinies, to Jesus who offers them life and sight and entrance into God’s kingdom!
Jesus takes Nicodemus and us back to the basics of trust – of looking to Jesus upon the cross for our sins and to the remembrance that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
There are only two options Jesus gives Nicodemus – either receive what is offered, place faith in Jesus, turn from your own religious efforts, be born anew, or reject what is offered, remain in death and darkness, under condemnation and even, as he says in the last verse of this chapter, wrath.
The gift is that we can return to this place multiple times. Whenever we begin to live by sight not faith, whenever we begin taking control of all of life anew, whenever we get stressed out by our days and need a refresher in what our lives are really all about, we can return here, to the basics of our trust, the basics of our faith and there lift up our eyes to the One who died for us between earth and heaven, on the cross.
It was the early church father Athanasius who said that since Jesus died not upon the ground nor up in Heaven but suspended between the two, then he died in the realm of Satan, who is the prince of the power of the air. He therefore died defeating all satan’s works – who works his worst in the air, in the whispered thoughts into our heads, in the communication between people, in the darkness of evil acts.
In this passage I am reminded to return to faith, to a changed understanding of God and of myself, of a remembrance of what it means to “walk by faith”.
As Michael Card wrote:
*Chorus*
To hear with my heart,
To see with my soul,
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold,
To trust in a way that I cannot see,
That's what faith must be.
When the universe fell from His fingertips,
He decided He wanted some fellowship.
But the man and the woman would not submit,
So He made a better way.
When the moment was right, He sent His own son,
And He opened the way so that everyone
Could have hope and believe that when time was done,
He'd be able to make us one
*Chorus*
To hear with my heart,
To see with my soul,
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold,
To trust in a way that I cannot see,
That's what faith must be.
Now I understand that there is a key.
It's Jesus in me, a reality,
That God is in Christ, and that Christ's in me,
That with faith I see what is unseen
*Chorus*
To hear with my heart,
To see with my soul,
To be guided by a hand I cannot hold,
To trust in a way that I cannot see,
That's what faith must be.
That's what faith must be.
(by Michael Card, c. 1988, Birdwing Music, div of Sparrow Corp/MoleEnd Music, arr ics ubp ccli#877311)
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