Nicodemus And The New Birth

Text: John 3

John 3:16 is definitely one of the most popular verses in the Bible. it describes the love that God has for sinners. He gave His Son, Jesus to cancel the debts of sin for the entire world. On Sunday, Dec. 5th, Pastor Durham brought out the fifteen verses prior to this famous passage. In his message, the text from John 3 that is little less popular was brought to life.

To begin, we learned that Nicodemus was tagged with three titles. concerning his religious party, Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Pharisees were known to be interpreters. They expounded on the Ten Commandments. Sometimes they were in agreement and sometimes they were not. For example, the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the law because He worked on the Sabbath. They found fault in Him healing a man on the Sabbath day.

Nicodemus also held a prestigous position. he was a Jewish religious leader. The Sanhedrin council was a religious governing body made up of seventy members. The Romans handled the civil branch of government and the sanhedrins governed religion.

According to the scriptures (v.10), Nicodemus was a teacher by profession. he was an Old Testament scholar, but he still didn't understand what it said about the Messiah. This night he was a student. Christ taught him! Our humble Savior used the concept of birth to explain salvation to Nicodemus.

Pastor Durham used several illustrations to describe different types of births; clay, surgical, sac, savior and spiritual. The spiritual birth is what Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about. Spiritual birth changes your destination from hell to heaven. Unlike reformation and church membership, which are outward things, the spiritual birth is an inner change.

Nicodemus didn;t seem to understand Jesus' explanation, so Jesus gave him an illustration he could understand. In verse fourteen, jesus reminded Nicodemus of the Israelites that wandered in the wilderness. Many of them suffered snake bites. God gave Moses the bronz snake for the afflicted Israelites to ook upon to be healed. In order for this cure to work, the people had to believe in it and the bronze snake was lifted up so that the Israelite would have to look up t be healed. Just like God gave Moses the bronze snake to cure the snakebites, He gave the world Jesus to cure sin.

In verse fourteen, Jesus foreshadowed himself being lifted up. And when He was nailed to the cross and lifted up, he drew all men unto Him. All of us have sinned and come short of God's glory. He loved us so much that he gave us Jesus in exchange for the sins of the world. Just like Nicodemus had to understand, we must go through the new birth to be joint heirs of God's Kingdom.

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