Bible Text: John 3:1-17 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2023 | Isaiah sees the Lord in the Temple. This is where the Lord promised to be. The Lord of course is everywhere. In Him all things exist, in Him we live and move and have our being. He’s on the mountain. He’s on the lake. He’s in a cheese sandwich. God is everywhere. The question is not simply where He is, but where He is for us, to meet us, to speak with us, to give us who He is – love and purity and beauty and righteousness and eternity. The Lord is in His Temple; that’s where Isaiah finds Him.
Jesus fulfills that Temple. It was a picture of Him. Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up, Jesus says – referring to His body. Jesus is where God meets His people. Once again, Jesus is everywhere. He is God. He is the eternal Son. When the Son became a man, the human nature was taken into the Person of the Son. So Jesus is present as the God-Man everywhere, on the mountain, on the lake, in a cheese sandwich. The question is again not simply where He is, but where He is for us, to meet us, to speak with us.
The answer seems easy for Nicodemus, who could go to Jesus and speak with Him at night. We don’t have that luxury. Jesus is ascended to the right hand of His Father. He is simply not with us in that mode of presence that He was with Nicodemus. He does not talk with us and walk with us in our gardens.
But He is with us always. When He said, “I am with you always even to the end of the age,” He was not speaking like our modern secularized funeral homes speak with their meaningless pseudo-spirituality – “dad is still with you” and yet he’s very obviously not there, not speaking with you. They speak an unreal thing. Jesus speaks reality. He is with us always. And with Jesus all who are joined to Jesus in heaven and on earth. And this not simply as He is on the mountain, or on the lake, not merely present. But powerfully working and speaking and giving. And not just as God, with His body far behind. No, He is with us completely, the God-Man, our Lord and our Brother, with the body that bore our sin, and He is with us actively to give us who He is – His purity, His righteousness, His beauty, His eternity.
It is beyond beautiful that even though Nicodemus is with Jesus, can touch Him, can smell Him, can look into His eyes, Jesus points Him to Baptism. “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit He cannot enter the kingdom of God.” There were plenty of men who were with Jesus, who saw Him, touched Him, and didn’t benefit a thing from it. Think of the soldiers who gripped His arms to nail His hands to the cross. Or those who struck His precious face. They touched God, they gripped His holy body. But without faith in Jesus there is no saving touch. The woman who reaches out and touches the hem of Jesus’ robe hears the words that are so precious to us, “Your faith has saved you.”
Faith saves because faith lays hold on Jesus where He is to be found. And Jesus makes it very clear where He is to be found. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo I am with you always even to the end of the age. He comes to us in Baptism. We don’t have to sneak to Him at night. He is with us there openly in the water and the Spirit. Baptism is not just water. It is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word. Without the Word, there is no Baptism. Just water. Just getting wet. But with the Word it is a Baptism. It is the creation of a new man. It is God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit putting His name on us. And when He puts His name on you, He is not simply present with you, He is present for you, actively sharing with you everything He is. He is Father. He makes Himself your Father. He is the obedient and perfect Son; He makes you a son of His Father, makes you share in His inheritance, in His righteousness, in His life. He is the Spirit, and you become a spiritual being, desiring above everything to have fellowship with your Father through Jesus Christ His Son, to know Him and to love Him and to trust in Him.
This new birth of water and the Spirit is what we need to enter the kingdom of God, back into fellowship with God. This is not some rule, some arbitrary hoop you have to jump through in order to get to heaven. Get baptized, say the words, apply the water, and you’re good. No, it is literally a new birth, birth from God as a new creation who lives as God’s child. It is pure grace, pure love from God Himself. It is the Father saying He is and will be your Father forever; it is the Son insisting that His blood was shed for you, that He is your Brother, and that you are now a child of God; it is the Spirit working the trust and love that belongs to God in you. And so Baptism, though only applied once, lasts forever. Because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not go back on their promise, God’s promise does not fail.
This is what we sinners need. Sin has broken us. God created us to know Him and without the new birth we don’t know Him. The Father created us in the image of His Son, that means He created us to be sons, to be children, as the Son is to the Father. He breathed into us the Spirit of life, to live by His life. Sin’s horror is not only that we have been severed from our God, from knowing Him, from loving Him, from His sharing Himself with us, but that we have nothing in us, nothing, that can bring us back to Him. The gulf between us only He can cross.
Nicodemus is the perfect example of this. Nicodemus had everything a man works for in life. Everything good you can gain by your own industry and piety and righteousness, he had it. He was a Pharisee, by far the most respected class of people in Israel. He was wealthy. He was well educated. He was a venerated teacher. Had an excellent reputation. He was a ruler too, a member of the Sanhedrin – one of the seventy most powerful men in Israel. But he didn’t even know who God was. He comes to Jesus in darkness literally, because he’s a coward and is ashamed to talk to Jesus in the open, but also spiritually, because with all his learning, with all his goodness, he doesn’t even know who his Maker is. That’s how far man’s abilities get him.
God is good. So He shows people this. He allows them to feel the lack. Nicodemus knows he lacks something. He has everything, but he’s discontent. He has everything a man can gain, but this isn’t enough for him. And that’s good. It shouldn’t be enough for anyone. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit to show us the vanity of it all. There is a discontent that is very beautiful, godly – a discontent with everything the world can give, wealth, status, power, if Jesus is not there. Earth has no portion I would share, yea, heaven itself were void and bare if Thou Lord were not near me. So Nicodemus goes to Jesus to get from Him what he simply can’t find in himself. We should learn this discontent of Nicodemus. Who cares if I have education and intelligence, if I don’t use it for Christ’s kingdom? What good will wealth do me, if I lay up treasure for myself and am not rich toward God? What is the joy of family except what Joshua confesses, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” What is health, what is long life, what is my own righteousness, except things that will cease to exist without Jesus. Be discontent with life without Christ. Let it bore you and depress you. But life with Christ, whether in sickness or in health, in riches or poverty, in fame or disrepute, is beautiful, full, complete, the start of everlasting life with God.
Nicodemus is a coward but Jesus is gracious. He goes to Jesus at night. He’s afraid what people will think if he goes to Jesus in the open. He’s discontent with life, but he’s not come to the point that he’d gladly give it all up if only he gains Jesus. St. Paul’s beautiful confession, that he considers everything rubbish in comparison with having Christ, isn’t Nicodemus’ confession yet. But it will be. The new birth will turn this coward into a man worthy the name. Nicodemus will eventually defend Jesus to very powerful people, he’ll risk losing his spot on the Sanhedrin for Him. He’ll take insult for Him – are you from Galilee too, they’ll ask? When all the disciples run away and are hiding, Nicodemus will step out in public, in broad daylight to take down the body of Jesus from the cross and bury it. In the end he will give up power, reputation, and wealth because He has found something far greater in Jesus. This is what Christians do, it’s what the new birth of Baptism gives, a life that clings to Jesus, calls on God as Father by the power of His Spirit and does not let go. So in Nicodemus you see what Jesus so often taught, that the last will be first.
And notice Jesus doesn’t rail at him for his cowardice. That’s not because cowardice isn’t horrible. It is. The book of Revelation puts cowards first in the list of those consigned to the lake of fire, puts them together with murderers and fornicators. Those who know the truth of Christ and refuse to stand on it because they don’t want to lose their comfortable place in life are cast from the kingdom. We’ve seen this in our time. It’s not popular to be a Christian anymore. So people leave in droves because standing with Jesus on marriage or His Gospel will lose them friends. Jesus doesn’t allow this in His Kingdom. He who is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and wicked generation, of Him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory. We have nothing to be ashamed of, precisely because we have Jesus. He takes away all shame, the shame of sin, the shame of ignorance. We have truth and goodness and purity and beauty, we have God Himself, the Creator and Ruler of this world, clothed in our human flesh.
Jesus does not extinguish the smoldering wick, He doesn’t break the bruised reed. The coward Nicodemus lacks what every man lacks in himself and what Jesus alone can give, what He came to give, fellowship with the true God. The scoffer Jesus turns away. The countless Pharisees who tried to test Him, He turns them away. The proud who feel no lack and have no hunger or thirst for a righteousness not their own, Jesus turns away. But the weak and cowardly Nicodemus who knows his lack, He welcomes and gives him exactly what he needs.
And what he needs is Baptism. That’s what Jesus teaches him. What is born of flesh is flesh. You need birth from the Spirit. What you couldn’t accomplish with all your work and with all your smarts and with all your own righteousness, Baptism gives. The Father who so loved the world that He sent His only Son to die for you, the Son who was lifted up on the cross and answered God’s wrath against your sin by His bitter suffering and death, the Spirit who gives the Life of God, this God comes to sinners and brings them again into fellowship with their God. That’s the power and promise of your Baptism. And this fellowship continues in this life and in the life to come, constant. It births us into Christ’s Church, which is His Body, which is the true Temple, where God dwells. Here He is constantly working with an active Word, with the body and blood that purchased our salvation, with the Life which is our life now and forever.
You see a change then in Nicodemus. His cowardice turns to courage. His love for the things of the world fade as His love for His Lord increases. This is the active working of the God who makes us His own in Baptism. To know the Holy Trinity is the goal of human life. And this is the life that has no lack. We bear His name, call on Him as Father, know that we are joined to the Son and share in everything He is, and live the life the Spirit gives, forgiven of all sin, eager to obey our God’s commandments, and excited for the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.