Knott, Carl: Living Portraits Of Scripture 02 ~ John 3

I must not have said anything wrong last night because I didn't feel any electrical shocks. I'm still kind of waiting. How many people here tonight speak Spanish? Unos cuantos. A ver. le parece si tenemos una reunión en español entonces? Y que esos gringos se apuren. No, I'm not going to translate that for you. I brought with me a few. We just printed some tracks in Seville, and, uh, I brought a few of them with me just so you can see them, just to remind you mainly to pray for us. We want to give one to every, uh, home in the village that we live in, and we have nine thousand of these to give out, and, uh, we're going to run out. We have to reprint before we get done, but we're starting off now. This one is one they give, uh, they like to give to the ladies because it has a rose on it. It says, Jesus Christ has spoken. Do you know what he has said? And on the inside, it just has text from scripture. There's no comment or anything. Very good. This one, uh, He died for me, is a story from the Spanish Civil War, where a man who was supposed to go fight in the war, and uh, there was a good friend of his in the village who was a bachelor, and this man who was supposed to go was married and had children, and so the bachelor went and he said, I'll go and fight in your place because you have a family and I don't, and he was killed in the war. And the man went and found the place where his friend had died. He read about it in the paper, and he went and found the place where he died in the battle, and he put up a little marker there, and it just said he died for me. And it's a very good story. So anyway, uh, those who can read Spanish can read it. The rest of you, you just have to learn Spanish. And this one says it was his whole life. It tells a story of, uh, something that happened in San Francisco many, many years ago, thirty, forty years, I don't remember the exact date. A young man was buried with his motorcycle in the grave with him. And, uh, they asked why they did that, and they said because it was his whole life. And the person says, if that's, if we would have to be buried with whatever was our whole life, how many things would have to go into the grave with us? And, uh, it's very good. So in our village, a lot of people ride motorcycles. Everybody rides motorcycles. They start off at about thirteen years old. There's a man on our street who's seventy who really can hardly keep his balance, and he's got a motorcycle, and we all stay out of the way when he rides it. So, anyway, uh, I'll leave these. You can, those of you who read Spanish can feel free to take them and give them to somebody if you want to, and pray for us as we give these out there in Spain. Uh, also, there's some literature out on the book table on your left as you go out the door that, uh, was sent. I know some people in Pennsylvania who publish and in other places, and some didn't get here that I was hoping would come from New Jersey, a magazine called Missions. Uh, so I don't, I don't know if it'll come after I leave or not, but just help yourself to that. There's a few cassette tapes, uh, by the daughter of a lady who's in fellowship in our assembly in Seville, and she always gives me a few to take and give to people when I travel, so I'm getting out of the problem of having to decide who to give them to. I just put them on the table, and whoever grabs them, they're there. Don't get up during the meeting now, that's cheating. Uh, and then there was another thing that, um, came from the Berean Call, uh, and Dave Hunt's ministry. I had no idea what the article was going to be for May when I asked him six weeks ago to send some material, and it turns out it's a article about the movie The Passion. But at any rate, uh, just so you know, nobody was trying to pick a fight. I didn't know what the article was about. I didn't know even know what was in the paper this time when it came. But just take whatever you see that's interesting out there and read it, and and like the the old farmer in Texas said, when cows eat and they find a lump in the grain, they don't kick the stall and run out and create a riot in the barnyard. You know, they just nuzzle the lump off to one side and keep eating. So that's the way you have to do it. Eat the orange and spit out the seeds. Okay. Let's go to the book of John. Book of John. Chapter three. Randy. How do you do it? Several people have been trying to guess, and I just told them that we were going in the opposite direction from last night, who we're going to talk about tonight. And Randy guessed it. He sat there and thought for a few minutes at the dinner table, and he said, Nicodemus. I didn't tell anybody. Adal and Steve started out this morning at breakfast trying to get it out of me. Chapter three, again reading verse one. I'm gonna read down to verse twenty one. 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. 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 a 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 flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel and knoweth not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen, and you receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you 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 Man be lifted up, 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. 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, but he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this evening we come in fresh dependence upon yourself, upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit, upon the power of the Word of God. We come and meet together this evening in the name of the Lord Jesus. We don't have any other name. Nothing else binds us together but Him. And so we pray that He would be lifted up among us, that He would be exalted, and that His name would be precious to each of us. We thank you for the privilege of meeting together. We want to think for a moment of all the people who live in places in the world where they cannot, for one reason or another, meet together as we do. What wonderful privileges and liberties you've given us here. Help us to make full use of them, Heavenly Father, we pray, and invite you to work in our hearts, to change our lives, and to use us for your honor and glory. Sanctify this time that we are together. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, this is the opposite direction, because last night we were in the land of the Gadarenes. I don't know a place more diametrically opposed to the land of the Gadarenes than the city of Jerusalem, the holy city of Jerusalem. No pigs on the streets of Jerusalem. There they didn't speak Aramaic with a thick northern accent. There they, in, in Jerusalem, they spoke Hebrew correctly. There was the temple. There were the priests. There met the Sanhedrin. There were the tombs of the kings, King David, and all the rest. And there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus. He didn't have a demon. He didn't have a hundred demons. He didn't have a thousand demons. One place is opposed to another, as one man is opposed to another. Very little that meets the eye would strike us as being in common between the demon-possessed man in the land of the Gadarenes and this Nicodemus on the streets of Jerusalem. And yet they have something in common. Just as we in our day do also. I think about the possible reaction people could have to our study last night, and they could say, that's fine. Yes, Jesus helps the down and outers, the homeless, the social disaster cases, the hopeless, eh, and incorrigible section of humanity. That's their only hope. Like the Catholic Church has Saint Jude for the hopeless cases. They have a saint for this and a saint for that, and Saint Jude is always reserved for the hopeless cases. You see someone go in, eh, to a Catholic church and go to the altar of Saint Jude and, and light a candle and begin to pray, you know they got problems. They're praying to the saint of the hopeless cases. Nicodemus doesn't look like the Gadarene demoniac. He doesn't act like him, and I don't think he thinks like him, but he's going to find out what he has in common with him. People think the gospel is fine for the down and outers, for the hopeless cases. The gathering demoniac had to be delivered from demons and from a ruined life. Nicodemus was a good man who had to be delivered from religion. He had to be delivered from being a good person. Maybe he was a good person since he was a little boy. Maybe he was the, the perfect model Hebrew child. We don't know. In Spanish, when a child is really good, they say he never broke a plate. Nunca roto un plato. I asked a little boy that in our assembly not too long. I said, tú nunca roto un plato, verdad? I said, you never broke a plate, right? And he looked at me and said, nope. Well, he hasn't had his down bringing. He's getting his up bringing, like we said last night. He hasn't come to the down bringing part yet, but he'll get there. He'll get there, bless his heart. And that's what people would say about Nicodemus. Isn't Nicodemus nice? Isn't he a good man, like they say in the South? Bless his heart, he's a, he's the kind of man you'd like to have for a neighbor. The good people, spoken from our perspective now, you understand what I'm saying? People that we call good and people who think they're good end up in the same place as demons and demoniacs. If something doesn't happen. And we want to think about that tonight. Lest anyone think that the gospel we preach is for people who are really between the rock and the hard place. It is, but only for them. And the rest of us, as long as there's money in the bank and health, and then- and things pretty much seem to be going okay. Well, fine upstanding folk, you know, deacons in churches, members of the choir, uh, lay readers, altar boys, and all the rest. Just like Nicodemus. There was a man of the Pharisees. He was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were the ultra conservative of the Jews, the ones who adhered to a literal reading and interpretation of the scripture, and who tried to apply it so literally, especially to other people's lives, that they could really make life miserable for people. The Pharisees. This man was not only a Pharisee, it says here he was a ruler of the Jews, in verse one. a ruler of the Jews. He was not only a ruler, that means he was in the leadership, and if you go to John chapter seven and read there, you'll find him meeting with the Sanhedrin. And the Sanhedrin were that council of 70 who governed all of Israel. And he's meeting with him. He's on the inside with the chief priests and the Pharisees. He's one of the governing members of the nation of Israel. Here in verse ten, Jesus says to him, Art thou a master of Israel and knoweth not these things? He was a master, he was a teacher in Israel. He was a knowledgeable man. If he were among us today, he'd probably have his PhD. And Jesus said to him, in verse seven, you must be born again. You see, there's some things that you may do, and then there are things that you must do, and you must be born again. There's some things that are optional, and some things that are necessary. If a car is going to run, a motor is not optional, it's necessary. A radio is optional, but not a motor. And Jesus said the must word. You must be born again. There was an old brother in a Canadian assembly years ago. I was told this by one of the men who was a young man, eh, in his assembly, and the man who told me that is now with the Lord, so you can imagine we're going back at least two generations. And he said when he was growing up, this brother, whenever it would be his turn to have ministry, he would always get up and open up the Bible and begin to preach one section or another, but he would always get around to it somewhere in his message, he would always say, because you must be born again. And they began to notice how in every message he preached, he said it. It didn't matter what he was preaching about, he always fit it in somewhere there in the message, you must be born. And the young people took notice. You know how the young people... Now I'm looking at the young people, they're looking at me, they look real serious right now. But then they go off and imitate my accent. They don't think I know it. Young people pay a lot of attention, they catch everything, you see. And the manners, I've seen some of them. I snuck up on one one time in another country who was, uh, imitating the different preachers, and he didn't know I was standing behind him. He started imitating me, and everybody was laughing uproariously. Well, they were laughing because they saw me behind him, and they, he thought he was, they were laughing at him, and so he just really poured it on, you know? And then pretty soon he turned around, and he nearly died of a heart attack. Young people catch everything, and the young people know that they begin to notice, and they begin to nudge each other, and they begin to talk about it, and they, whenever he would preach, they'd all sit and watch him. They were, what were they doing? They were waiting for it. Wait, when's it going to come? When's it going to come? There it is. He said it. You must be born again. And my friend went up to him, uh, one time, or I think he was visiting him in his home, and he said, uh, uh, brother so and so, could I ask you a question? Uh, eh, don't, don't be offended. And he kind of hemmed and hawed around, and he said, well, we just, some of us noticed that, um, whenever you preach, uh, it's just an observation, you know, but that you, and he kind of beat around the bush a little. He said, well, you always say you must be born again. He said, oh, I know I do that. He said, oh, you do? You do it on purpose? He said, yes, and there's a very good reason. He said, what is it? And he said, because you must be born again. There's some things you may do and some things you must do. And the Lord comes right to the point with Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to him at night. I don't know if it was because the Lord wanted to go to bed early. He didn't waste any time with Nicodemus. I don't think so. One of the things we learn as Christians about this is that sometimes we waste too much time coming to the point. It takes us too long. It takes us ten visits or ten years of friendship building bridges, we say. We all learned that term. All good American evangelicals have learned the term build bridges. We don't build bridges. We build land bridges. We build bridges you could vi- drive the whole sixth Infantry across at once, they're so wide, huge bridges, and then we don't even walk on them. Now, there's a such thing as earning the right to be heard, and uh, get gaining an, an ear, winning someone's confidence. There's a such thing, and there's something to be said for all of that. When I come back to the scriptures, I don't see the Lord taking two visits to get to the point with people. Suppose he said to the Gadarene man last night, well, you have a difficult condition, but there's hope for you. What about if we meet every Friday? I'll get the men to row me across the lake, and we'll meet every Friday and spend an hour together, have some therapy. He didn't do that, did he? He's not going to do that with Nicodemus. Nicodemus did something good. Says in verse two, he came to Jesus by night. He came to Jesus. Whatever else you want to say about him, and he's criticized for going to Jesus by night, and they deduce from this, and they may be right, but it's conjecture. We don't know. We have to learn not to go beyond what is written. We don't know. But they deduce from this that he was afraid. He was fearful of what the other members of the Sanhedrin would say. Maybe he just had a busy day and he couldn't get there before then. We don't know why it was. Maybe he wanted to, maybe he wasn't afraid, he just wanted to have Jesus alone, and Jesus was occupied with people all day long. But whatever the reason was, be it fear of man or busy schedule or whatever his reason was, that's not the point. The point is he came to Jesus. He had interest, he had doubts, he had questions, he wanted to know more, and so he came. And I want to just say that right off at the beginning tonight. There's no way you're ever going to get on in the spiritual life if you don't go to Jesus. You can't do it. Not next week, not next year, not when you retire, not when you go on vacation. That night in Jerusalem, and and we don't know because Jesus didn't stay in Jerusalem. He went to Jerusalem and visited during the feast times, and if you read through the gospels, you'll notice that, that the times he was in Jerusalem are like, um, markers along the way. He would have mission, he would sh- come and show up in Jerusalem at the times of the feast, and then he would leave, and he'd be out, and he'd come to Jerusalem again at the time of another feast, and then he'd be gone again. So Nicodemus isn't going to wait. This is early in the ministry of Christ. This is at the beginning of it, early in the book of John, and he doesn't wait. He goes to Jesus by night, and I think, well, that's just one of the best first steps, the best that anybody can take. Just get down on your knees or bow your head right where you are tonight and say, Lord, I want to come near to you, and I want you to speak to me, and I want you to help me. Or you just come to pass the evening with your friends or see what the preacher from Spain had to say. Or did you come to meet Jesus? Nicodemus knew where he was going when he walked out of the house that night. When he walked through the streets of Jerusalem in the chilly evening air and found that place where Jesus was staying, and some of the theologians think it might have been John's house in Jerusalem. We don't know that either, but wherever it was, he found it. He knew who he wanted to see, and he knew more or less what he wanted to ask. He wasn't really sure how to resolve everything that was going on in his mind, but he didn't have to wait until it all congealed and came clear to him. With whatever his doubts, whatever his level of comprehension, he went to Jesus. And that night, because he took that step, that night became a night that changed his life. And that can happen here. He said to him, Rabbi, we know. Now he's a spokesman. He didn't start off, and notice how Jesus is going to change gears on him here. He doesn't start off saying, uh, I had some questions I wanted to ask you. He starts off as a spokesman for the Sanhedrin, a spokesman for the chief priests and the Pharisees. We know that thou art a teacher come from God, he says. We know. We who? You and the frog in your pocket? We who? Well, Jesus doesn't ask him, uh, who are those? He's not interested in that. He doesn't get sidetracked like we do sometimes in a conversation. We who? We want to who, and who are they? Who are some of those people? Do I know any of them? The Lord Jesus is going to deal with the person he has in front of him at that moment in time. He's not going to get distracted onto these other things. We know thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him. He recognized that Jesus did miracles. He recognized that he was sent from God, and he said that they knew he was come from God. Well, now later on in the Gospels, it doesn't look like many of the Pharisees and the chief priests knew it. Maybe, maybe Nicodemus was being generous here, including everyone else. Or maybe he was speaking for a very small minority among the ruling class of Israel. But at any rate, you'll notice how Jesus answered him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, I say unto you. He's speaking now in the second person singular. I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. No more we this and we that. Jesus went right to the individual. He's, in a sense, he's saying, okay, Nicodemus, that's fine, but now let me say something to you personally. And that thing that he said to Nicodemus personally that night, he says to every one of us here tonight. He says, you must be born again. Except a man be born again, he cannot. Doesn't say he shouldn't or he won't be allowed to. It says he cannot. That means impossible. He can not see the kingdom of God. Religion can't get you there. Now, last night we saw a man who was lost in ruin because of a demon. Satan's power was at work in him, and his life was hopeless. But he was no more lost than the man we're looking at tonight. And this is the thing that God has to drill into our hard heads. The ugliness and the lostness of the human nature of a person who has not trusted in Jesus Christ, their condition. Jesus says, you cannot see the kingdom of God. You can't do it. You can't go off into space and live without a spacesuit and a helmet on. You can't walk on the moon in your bathing suit. And you can't go to heaven, you can't see the kingdom of God unless you're born again. And he said that to a religious man. He said that to an educated man. He said that to a man who was part of the ruling class of Israel, to a man who was, we, uh, we would say here, uh, the, the model citizen. They would have given him the keys to the city. He sat on the board of regents, the board of directors. He was known to everybody. When Nicodemus walked down the street, everybody saluted him. Uh, you don't say that. What's the word in Engli- in s- uh, greeted him. I'm translating from Spanish now. Le saludan Don Nicodemo, como esta usted? Mister Nicodemus, how are you today? Mister, of course, Mister Nicodemus or Doctor Nicodemus, see, or Rabbi, they would say, Rabbi Nicodemus. Teacher is what Rabbi means. So you'd be treated with a lot of respect. And people like that, don't they? They like it. Oh, I walk down the street and everybody speaks to me. Everybody knows me. I have a lot of friends, and they know my titles, and they know I'm a self-made person. I, I didn't inherit it. I got this by hard work. I studied, and I learned my Hebrew as a little boy, and when they took me to my bar mitzvah and got out the silver finger and held up the scroll of the law and put that silver finger up there and began to move it from right to left on the text, on the Hebrew text, I stood there and read it in the synagogue, and all the old men stood around and watched, and they thought, isn't that wonderful? This Jewish young man has learned to read the scriptures, and now he's going to be recognized as an adult in the Jewish community. There in the temple, when they opened the gates of the temple and they're making the sacrifices, there's Nicodemus. He offered the sacrifices for sin. He offered the sacrifice of trespass offering. He offered the peace offering. He offered the burnt offering, all the different offerings Nicodemus would offer them. He knew exactly what to do. He was a model Jew. And not only that, he had risen to the place where he was a teacher in Israel. We would say he had the magisterium. Anybody here know what that is? The Magisterium is that doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church by which they hope to convince us that only the Pope and the cardinals and the priests under their instruction can properly interpret for us the scriptures. You can read the Bible, but you can't know what it means. You don't know what it means. The magisterium, it means they can, they can interpret it, they can teach it. That's what it is, teaching. They can teach you the scriptures correctly, and nobody else can do that, and that's what they believe, which boils down more or less to, uh, the same as a little sign we used to have when I was a flight instructor in the Air Force. We had a sign on the wall behind the instructor's desk, so the students sitting at our desk always had to look at this sign on the wall back there. It said, uh, rules for flight instruction. Rule number one, the instructor is always right. Rule number two, in the case where the instructor appears to be wrong, see rule number one. And that's basically what the Magisterium doctrine is. The church is always right. Rule number one. Rule number two: when the church appears to be wrong about something, see rule number one. And in those days, of course, Judaism, and that's all Catholicism is, is a Judaized Christianity. It's the mixing of priests and temples and sacrifices that God had done away with, with Christianity, in which those things have no place, and they mix those two together, and you come up with Roman Catholicism. Now, please understand me, I'm not Catholic bashing. I have no quarrel with Catholics, none at all. I live in a country that's ninety eight percent Catholic, and I get along just fine with everybody. My quarrel is with the system. With the system and with the doctrine that keeps them enslaved and keeps them blinded and refuses to give them salvation. They can never have forgiveness of sin, except with an eyedropper. You go in and confess your sins, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, and you're on your knees or seated, and, uh, and he, and when you're done, he tells you that he absolves your sin in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that counts from that second that he says that backwards. That doesn't count one second later. One second after he absolves your sin, which he doesn't really do, but which he says he does. One second later, if you have an evil thought, you might as well just, um, pitch a tent in the confessional. I mean, really. You, uh, go through the, the gate that they had, uh, open, that, that golden gate in Rome that they had open for the pilgrims to go and go through that, and if they made a pilgrimage and went through the gate there in Saint Peter's, then they could have a plenary indulgence. Now, what is a plenary indulgence? That means a full indulgence. It means all of your sins are forgiven. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, read the fine print. From today backwards. And if you're walking out of St. Peter's and you stumble and stump your toe on something and say something you shouldn't say, well, sorry. Nicodemus was a teacher in the religion, the only true religion, and that had the magisterium. And he needed to be born again. He was a nice man. He was a good man. He was a religious man. He was a model citizen. He was an educated man. He was a man who was apt to teach. He had a gift. He had a concern for other people. A man who probably lived selflessly. He was a man who believed in God. Oh, but the Bible says the demons believe in God. You don't get any points for that. Believing in God, all that does is say, well, you're at least on the par with the demons. James two nineteen, Thou sayest thou believest in God, thou doest well. The demons also believe and tremble. Demons believe, and there is a place, and it's not heaven, where unbelievers go and become believers. There's no atheists in hell. No atheists in hell. They all know God exists. Nicodemus believed in God. He was a moral man. Religious, regularly attended the synagogue. How many people across our country regularly attend church services? Did Nicodemus take part in the services? You better believe it. Like so many people that can re- that have the liturgy memorized. They know when they're supposed to recite the Apostles' Creed, they know when they're supposed to stand up, when they're supposed to sit down, when they're supposed to say, Lord have mercy, and all the things that s- they, it's all memorized, they know it all. Or, in churches like ours, you sing the hymns, and they know the hymns, they learn the tune, they know the language, they know how to say brother, they know how to say sister, they know how to say praise the Lord. I was telling Adel this morning, and Steve, I met, uh, I was in Trujillo in Honduras, and I met a man who had a parrot that could sing a gospel chorus. I know because I, my room was right by the, my window, the parrot was in a cage right outside. It's about, the cage is about as long as the table down here, and had a little urolite, um, roof on it. And whenever it rained, and it was raining torrentially, it would make the rain make a lot of noise on the roof of this cage, and the parrot liked the noise, so he'd get real excited. It'd be pouring down rain five o'clock in the morning, the sun's just starting to come up, and this parrot would be going wild out there, right outside my window. So I got up then, whether I liked it or not, but it was kind of funny. He would sing in his little parrot voice. Now, only the Spanish speakers know what I just said. Give me a new heart. I heard it so many times. That's how I memorized it. I didn't even have to write it down. I said, good night, if a parent can learn it, I can learn it. Give me a new heart, oh Lord, to praise you. Clean, crystal clean, sweet as honey, a heart to praise you. That parrot was singing that, and I listened to it, and I said, I think last year when I was here, I told you a story about a different parrot. See, I have this thing about parrots, I guess. And I got to thinking, how many people are like parrots? They got the words, they got their act together, but there's nothing under the surface. And that parrot, he was enjoying himself. Nicodemus. You know, my heart really goes out to people like Nicodemus. I feel deeply for religious, good people who are lost, who don't know the reality of a personal relationship with God, but they're trying. They're not trying to fake anybody out. They're trying. They're doing what they know to do. They're going to the meetings, they're joining the choir, they're saying the words, they're there doing their part. They're trying, and they're doing it sincerely from their heart, and they are L-O-S-T lost. Just like Nicodemus. See, he thought he had it all covered. He thought he had all the bases covered. He thought everything was going along pretty good until he met Jesus. Until he met Jesus. And then he found out that being a good religious man in the true religion and not being an idolater and not doing this and not doing that, because some people think that that's what pleases God too, and you can give him a big long list of things that you didn't do and that you don't do. I don't drink, and I don't chew, and I don't go with folks that do. Nicodemus could say a lot more than that. He was interested in Christ. That's why he went. And he wasn't afraid to find out what he needed. But a lot of people, religious people, good people, they don't get too close to Jesus. You hear me what I'm saying now. They don't get too close to Jesus. They stay a little ways off because they don't want him to mess up what they got worked out. They don't want him touching their territory. They're afraid they might get a surprise, and they don't want to find out that all this they've been doing so sincere, and they're trying so hard, the last thing they want to hear is somebody tell them it's worth nothing. And they say, oh, well, then I just will go out and be with the, with the people like that demonic, go raise pigs and act like a wild man. So no, don't go do that either. Find Jesus. He thought he had it all worked out. And the first thing the Lord said to him, and we're back to that about getting to the point, aren't we? Now, the Lord didn't do it in an ugly way. When we say you have to come to the point with people, that doesn't mean when somebody says something to you, you pick up a Bible and whack them over the head, or you insult them, or use some derogatory term, or, or speak to them in a harsh or unkind way. But there are kind ways to come to the point. Don't you believe that? When you love someone, you know, in Spain they have a bad habit in the hospitals. Person is, eh, goes in, they're diagnosed with cancer, the doctor won't tell them what they got. He won't tell them. He'll call the wife in or the children in, and he'll tell them what he's got. He won't tell him. He's got it, and he's got six months to live. And you know what they tell him, and I know cases like this, they tell him he's, he's got a virus in his lungs. They're gonna put him on some medicine for virus. He's got an infection. They tell him things like that. They won't tell him what's wrong. Everybody knows it but him. They hide it from him because they say he's only got six months to live. So don't scare him with any, just let him be happy. Man, it's my life. It's my eternity. If something's wrong with me, if I go to the doctor and something's wrong, I want him to look me in the eye and tell me the truth. And I want to ask you a question tonight. Would you be willing to get close to Jesus and to say, Lord, look me in the eye and tell me what's wrong? Tell me the truth. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Don't do any of that. Just lay it on the line with me, see? I want to na- I want to have it straight out. And this is exactly what Jesus did. Exactly what he did. He found out, Nicodemus, he found out that he wasn't fit to see heaven. Religious people, good people need to know that. You're not fit to see him. Religion, even evangelical religion, because we might as well talk about that, because that's what we are here tonight. Evangelical religion will never get you to heaven. You can't get there that way. Religion doesn't give people a new life. What does religion do? It puts a robe on them. It teach them to walk around with their fingertips together and to say nice things. But underneath all of that, satin and whatever else it is, all that, all that, uh, attire, it's the same old person it always was, and they know it, and you know it if it's you. And all that pretending doesn't change anything, and all that trying hard doesn't get any points, and it doesn't change anything. And the Lord Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, you're not fit to see heaven unless you get born again. You have to be born a second time, as you were born the first time, flesh, the natural man, see. And the Lord was kind enough to tell him that. Unless you're born a second time, your flesh, your natural condition, you can never see heaven. You can't do it. Just like you can't walk on the moon in your bathing suit, you can't go to heaven like you are if you've never known the new birth. And the devil takes these terms, and the world takes these terms, and they turn them all around. People don't even know what they mean anymore. I remember when I lived in, in Texas, when I was in the Air Force, and John Denver was so popular then. He went up and smoked dope up in the Rocky Mountains and camped out up there, and they saw a meteor shower, and he, it freaked him out because they were all high when they saw it, and he came down and got on his television show, and he told everybody about this experience, and it was awesome. You know, that's a favorite American word, you know. It was awesome, and I was born again. Because he had an exhilarating experience, and he thought being born is an exhilarating experience. He thought being born again, as somebody else told me, he said, I was really depressed. I was in the, I was a long way from my family, and I was really depressed, and I started thinking about God and all of that, and then I just started laughing, and I felt better, and I got some relief, and I got over all of that, you know, and I, I was born again. And good old President Carter, when he went way down in the polls, some of you don't even know who I'm talking about. Well, I guess I'm dating myself, no way around it. I don't have to say anything anyway, the top of my head dates me. And President Carter went way down in the polls, and then he got, had a turnaround, and his approval rate went way up, and they put in the newspaper, Carter is born again. People don't know what these words mean anymore. Nicodemus didn't know what it meant. Verse four, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Enter a second time into your mother's womb? He's a teacher in Israel. Did he really think he could do that? What was he thinking? I don't know, but he'll be in heaven. So, I'll ask him if I remember, if I even care about things like that when I get there. I think we're gonna have a lot to talk about in heaven, a lot of things we'd like to know about. What on earth were you thinking, Nicodemus? Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, 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 flesh. See? We have a saying in Spanish. La mona, aunque se vista de seda, mona es y mona se queda. A monkey, even though you dress it up in silk, is a monkey and always will be. But they use it for things like this, like what the Lord said here. You're born flesh, and that's what you are. You can dress it up, you can dress it down. You can, you can fix the display window any way you want to, but the person on the inside hasn't changed. And you see, this is what the Lord is talking about. He's talking about a change on the inside. He's talking about a new nature. He's talking about a new creation. He's not talking about self-improvement. He's not talking about pulling yourself up by your suspenders. He's not talking about going to recovery groups and self-help programs and therapies. He's talking about a new life. And we say in Spanish, borrón y no hay cuenta nueva. Wipe the slate clean, and there's not a new slate. There's no more account being taken. It's a new life, where the Lord has forgiven all of our sins, not the sins up to that point in time, but all of them. They're all gone. Past, present, and future. How many of them were in the future when Jesus died on the cross? How many of my sins were in the future when Jesus died on the cross? All of them. So let's not play these little word games, dividing sin up into time parcels, see. When the Lord forgives a person, he doesn't do it on the installment plan. They're wiped clean. And Nicodemus is a religious man who needs a new life. He was in the right religion. He was a sincere man, he was an educated man, but he wasn't fit for heaven. And we're going to think about that real quick, why he wasn't fit for heaven. What about this, what the Lord said? That which is born of the flesh is flesh. What does he mean by that? What is the flesh? He's, he's not talking about skin. Flesh is the word, it does mean that, but it's the word they use to mean our natural person as we are born from our mothers, with our will, our thoughts, our instincts, our desires, everything about us, our makeup, as we naturally are, see, and that cannot go to heaven. Nicodemus was a good man, but he wasn't a perfect man. Suppose you let a bunch of people into heaven that only had one bad thought every day. That'd be pretty good. You went through the whole day and you only had one bad thought? That'd be pretty good. Even though none of us would like to have the worst thought he's had today put on the billboard up here for everybody to see. And if you're in agreement with me on that, then you know there's something wrong in the, basically fundamentally wrong in the human heart. Well, there's not going to be any thoughts like that in heaven. They're not going to be there. The Lord equips us for going to heaven by giving us a new nature, by giving, putting new life in us. That's what he does. He does it on the inside. We have a lot of orange trees where I live, some of the best oranges I've ever eaten in my life. In, in our village, people live right across the street from us, have a grove out in the country, and they sell them the biggest soft balls and full of juice. They're really delicious. You know, those orange trees, you could go over there and cut off all those oranges from those orange trees, get rid of all that fruit, and you could say, now that isn't an orange tree anymore. See, there's no oranges on it. And suppose you could convince people that that was true. Well, next growing season, you'd be proved to be wrong, because time passes, and the nature, the sap, and the nature on the inside of that orange tree, what's it doing? Pretty soon it's going to produce buds and flowers, and out are going to come more oranges. It's a question of time because it's the nature of the tree, see? And what religion does is it goes around cutting off the oranges. And what God does is he goes into the nature of the tree and he changes it from the inside. He makes it new on the inside, see. That he's, he's not dressing up the outside, and he's telling Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, is corrupt. It's corrupt, spiritually corrupt. It can't go to heaven, it's spiritually corrupt. The natural person is that way. In Genesis eight twenty one, the Lord said when he spoke to Mo- uh, to Noah after the flood, he said, he mentioned there, he said, because every thought of the heart of man is evil continually. He said it. In Jeremiah seventeen, he said the heart, verse nine, he said the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The heart. In Mark chapter seven, the Lord said about the heart. He names a great big long list of things that come out of the heart, evil thoughts at the top of the list, fornication, adultery. He goes on and on, this long list, and when he comes to the end, he said, all these evil things come from within. Remember the illustration of the orange tree. They come from within and defile the person. What pollutes us? What contaminates us? Is it the wicked world we live in? No, it's the wicked heart. It's our wicked inside. It's our wicked nature. And that's where God wants to do the work. He doesn't go around putting choir robes on people. He goes around putting new hearts in people. He's changing the inside. And my friend, you be as religious as you want to, and all you're going to do is be in the same category as that parrot. They say all that stuff and they has no idea what he's saying. Those words don't mean anything. He has no relationship with God, no new life. It's just words. It's just learned behavior. And I'm afraid that in a lot of evangelical churches at the end of this age, we're finding more and more people who've got a lot of learned behavior. And second Timothy three five says that. It says in verse one, in the last days, evil times or perilous times shall come. It means dangerous, difficult, hard to bear times will come. Men will be lovers of their own selves. And he goes on with a great big long list. He comes down to verse five, and he says, having a form of godliness, but denying the power. Just like that parrot. Da da da da da da. They, and they got all the behavior and all the words down, but there's nothing on the inside. Nothing on the inside. Never been a changed life. Never been a new birth. There's been a slow and calculated evolving i- into something that imitates Christianity. See? You slowly became a Christian, and you slowly edged your way into the church, and you slowly became accepted and gen- and began to gradually learn the vocabulary until finally you felt comfortable with it, and then you raised your hand and said, I'm a Christian too. Uh-huh. And my dog's a theologian. Nobody gradually comes into Christianity, my friend. Forget it. It's a birth, a new birth. The Lord Jesus says, you must. He didn't say you must learn the language. He didn't say you must imitate the behavior. He didn't say you must do your best. He said you must be born again. And how are you going to be born again if God doesn't do it? He gave us this to do, be born again. And you know what? We can't do it. You can't do it. But the Lord can make it happen in your life if you come to him, and he can make it happen. Tonight. It's not a process. It's a meeting with Jesus. It's a trusting in him in which he changes your life. And he goes into all of this with Nicodemus because he knows Nicodemus needs to hear this. Religious, good people, nice people, good neighbors need to hear this, that they're corrupt on the inside. They're spiritually bankrupt. They cannot impress God. They cannot earn his favor. They cannot make it into heaven the way they made it in business or made it in society or however they made it. They can't do that with God. Heaven is an environment in which only people who have a second life, a new life, a life that's come down from heaven can live. You must be born again or you can't see the kingdom of God. The natural man is corrupt. He's corrupt, spiritually corrupt and spiritually bankrupt. Now, the Bible says that, says it in Romans seven eighteen also, but I just wonder if you know that about yourself. Nobody ever became a true Christian who didn't first know they were a sinner. Remember what we talked about last night? That down bringing? Listen, friend. And I don't say that just as a fancy word, I mean it. My friend. If you don't realize that Jesus Christ is the only one who can change your life. You're on the wrong path, and it will do you no good, even though you come to every meeting they ever have from here to the end of the world at San Ramon Valley Bible Chapel or any other place. It will do you no good. These seats and these people and this atmosphere will do you no good if it is not that through this, you make a decision to trust in Christ and have the new birth from him. He's got, I don't have it to give you. He's got what you need. You need the new birth. You need a new start. You need a new life. You need to be a new person. But do you know that about yourself? Are you still trying to put Band-Aid? You still trying to put cosmetics on it, you still trying to put a, a satin tunic on it and dress it up and call it something nice and make it look pretty to the outside? God's looking at the inside, the heart. He said the heart. He's not talking about the clothes, what you're wearing, and how you look to people. Man looks on the outward appearance. The Bible says the Lord looks on the heart, and he says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Nicodemus had a wicked heart. Yes, he did. And Nicodemus would have agreed with that. Why would he offer sacrifices in the temple as a good Jew? You offer sacrifices because you sinned. That was a way of seeking forgiveness. I talk to Catholic people who say they don't sin. I say, you don't sin? Do you go to Mass? They say, yes. I said, uh-oh, we got a problem. So what do you mean we got a problem? I said, we got a problem. Do you say the penitential act when you go to Mass? I, I, I couldn't say it word for word in, in English, in, in Spanish, and translated roughly, I confess before God Almighty that I am a sinner, that I sinned many times in thought, in word, in deed, by omission. And I call upon the Lord, I call upon the Father and the Son and the Holy Virgin and the apostles and the angels, and and it says y vos santos and all the saints to to pray for me and to forgive me. This is the way they talk. So you're gonna say that, and then you're gonna tell me when I talk to you about human nature and about your spiritual things, you're going to tell me you're not a sinner? Then you lied when you went to Mass, and that's a big fat one. You went in what you thought was the temple, you got before God in his holy presence, you thought, and you told him a big fat whopper of a lie. I mean, you didn't lie in the street, you lied before the altar. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned. Por mi culpa, por mi culpa, por mi grandísima culpa, my fault, my guilt, my fault. And beating their chest, they say it. Ah. I wish they really believed it. See, you think when we preach the gospel, we're trying to get down on you. You think when we talk like this, we're trying to tell you that we're better people than you are, and you got it all wrong. There's no bigger sinner here than me tonight. The difference is I've been saved. The difference is, and those of us, and I'm sure plenty of people would argue with me about who's the biggest sinner, but they'd be wrong, I am. The difference is some sinners go to Jesus, and they turn themselves over to him. They put themselves in his hands, and they seek that forgiveness and that new life from him, and other people keep on putting on the spiritual cosmetics. They keep working on the outside, and they never get to the inside. How does a flower grow? Does it come off a big ugly brown stick out of the ground, and then a bumblebee or a butterfly goes by and sprays some paint on it, makes it pretty? Is that what happens? The beauty comes from within. It grows, and the beauty's coming from within. See? And that's what religion and good works and all that does. Paint, paint, paint, paint, paint. God wants to make something new. He wants to make that new life grow from within, you see. Born again. This is what he's talking about. You must be born again. The Bible says that the natural person is dead in trespasses and sins. You're not only corrupt, you realize, I already told you that I'm at the top of the list, and I'm gonna talk to you about you if you're, if you're not a true believer in Jesus Christ tonight, if you've never been born again, I'm gonna talk to you about you. Because you need to hear it, just like Nicodemus needed to hear it. You're dead. What do you mean dead? I'm not dead, pinch. Ow. Don't feel dead to me. That doesn't mean that kind of dead. The prodigal son. The Lord told the story of the prodigal son. Went away into the far country, and then finally one day he came back and his father made a feast for him, and he said, his father said, this my son was dead. Luke chapter fifteen. This my son was dead and is now alive, and we should rejoice, he said. See, he was dead. How was he dead? There were no comings and goings between him and his father. There was no fellowship between him and his father. There was nothing between them. No words, no companionship, no nothing. And that's the way you are with God if you've never been born again. You're dead spiritually. There's no fellowship between you and God. Nothing between you and God. No companionship, nothing. God is your creator, but you're not his child, you're his creation. You were born into a human family, but until you find a new birth, you've never been born into God's family. And how dare you say, Our Father who art in heaven? How dare you pray the Lord's prayer and tell a lie in prayer? Our Father who art in heaven. Because if you've never been born again, God's not your father. Oh, and they do this by the hundreds in churches and temples all around the world every week. Our Father who art in heaven, and they feel so religious, and they are. But God's not their father. They've never been born again. They told a lie in prayer. They're self-deceived. You're dead. It's an awful way to live. Only Christ can give you life spiritually. You can't get it by being religious. Nicodemus, nobody more religious than him. You can't get it by being a good person. Nobody, and you'll excuse me for saying it in my southern grammar, nobody gooder than him. It don't cut it. Got to be born again, see. Dead. You don't have any life or any relationship with God, and God wants you to have it. You don't have it because you don't want what God wants, unless you're changing tonight. And I'll tell you that, the minute you decide you want what God wants to give you, you can have it. You don't have to come to church for a year. You don't have to quit this and quit that and clean up your life, because you can't clean up your life. You can't, and I'm gonna talk southern grammar, and you can't born yourself again. You can't do it. You can't earn anything like that. You can't build it. You can't make it. All you can do is let God do it, and he can do it. He can do it. He has the power to do that. He spoke to the waves and the wind last night. We saw that, didn't we? Peace be still. And you know what he can do? He can speak a word in an instant of time. He can clean out all that storm that's going on on your inside. He can just wipe that right out. He can take all that sin, he can take all that stuff, and you think, if people knew what I'm really like on the inside, well, God doesn't. He loves you anyway. He's already done a full background check on you. And he wants you in his family. And that's why he said to Nicodemus, he didn't say to Nicodemus, how do you do, another religious man, look, he called the disciples, look at this, here's another hypocrite. Look at them, here they go, they come in the temple and they do this and they do that, look at... The Lord isn't getting on his case. The Lord wants to save him. The Lord wants to take him the next step. He had gone, this man had gone as far as a person can go in religion, and he still wasn't there. He wasn't even on the train yet, he wasn't even in the station yet. He couldn't get there. And the Lord looked at him, and I think that you could say, without twisting the scripture, you say the Lord looked at him and he loved him. Poor Nicodemus. He tried so hard. He just needs to be born again. That's what you need. Quit trying and start trusting the Lord. You can't do it, but he can. The natural man is dead. The natural man, it says in Ephesians two, is controlled by Satan, Ephesians two two. He's held captive by the will of the prince of the power of the air. He does what he wants him to do. You can't, you couldn't quit sinning if you wanted to. You can't clean up your life in that sense and make it a new life. There is a power greater than you, a power operating in that Gadarene demoniac that we saw last night. We saw the power of Satan. Men are not stronger than demons, and they're not stronger than the Satan that controls them. In Ephesians two, the Bible says that that is a spirit that rules in this world and has men and women captive in this world and causes them to do and be, do the things they do and be the way they are. You have a wicked heart. You have a corrupt heart. That's like saying you have a guitar that sounds terrible. Your strings are out of tune, but not only that, you got, you got somebody who is a malicious creature twanging on the strings and trying to get as much bad music out of it as he can. See, and that's the devil. He's playing the instrument. Controlled by Satan. You can't change your life. You can't conquer sin. You can just trust the Lord Jesus. You must be born again. The natural man is an enemy of God. Romans five ten tells us that. That we were enemies, and Christ died for us. The Lord didn't die for his friends. Take a close look at the hill of Golgotha when he's dying there. That'd be a very small company of people if he just died for a few. He didn't have many friends when he died. I wasn't one of his friends, and neither were you. And it's my fault that he died. And if you can't say that, you're not there yet. The Bible says he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. It's not about the nails, and it's not about the thorns, and it's not about the mistreatment. It's about the fact that on that cross, something was going on that doesn't show up on paper and in photos. He bore my sins, our sins, in his own body on the tree. He was hanging there with all of my sins on him, every last sins that I don't even know about. And I thank God that I don't have to know what all of my sins are in order to be forgiven and saved. That's God's department. I just know I got them and that Jesus took them away. See. Without hope, Ephesians two twelve says, without hope and without God in the world. That's a pretty bad way to be. You don't have any help. Don't, don't tell me, don't come on and say, oh, well, that's your point of view. I'll take my chances. Point number one, it's not my point of view, it's what Jesus said. You remember, I'm not reading you a story I composed. This isn't a track that I wrote, a gospel, piece of gospel literature. This is the scripture. This is what Jesus said. This is what Jesus told Nicodemus, see. So religious or atheist, young or old, or rich or poor, or educated or ignorant, or strong or weak, it doesn't matter. You don't have any chance to take your loss without Christ. You'll never have a new life without Jesus Christ, and you'll never have a happy eternity without him. Nicodemus was a hopeless case, totally ruined and unfit for heaven, and that was a tough pill to swallow for a nice religious man, sincere good man like him, but he needed to hear it. And Jesus, like the divine doctor that he is, he put his finger right on it, and he told him exactly what was wrong with him. And now I've told you exactly what's wrong with you. Jesus loves you anyway, and so do I, and so do we. But you have to decide. You want to keep putting makeup and satin tunics on that hopeless case, trying to dress it up on the outside, or are you going to say tonight, enough is enough. I want to be born again. You want to keep putting duct tape on that old life of yours and band-aids on it and trying to string it up with wire and repair it and patch it and give it another coat of paint, or do you want to give it up and take a new life from God? Trade in that old model, because it's not ever going to take you where you really want to go. That's Nicodemus, and there's a lot more we could say about him, but I think we said enough. I think we all got the point. Demoniacs, down and outers need to be saved. They need to be forgiven. They need the power of Jesus Christ in their life, and so do good, fine, upstanding, sincere, religious people. Now, I just gave you the two extremes, see? So if these need them and these need them, and you say, oh, but I'm not as good as some people, like our neighbor in Spain, she said that, said, I'm not as good as some people, but I'm not as bad as other people, she said. So you're in the middle? Okay, well, the good ones need to be saved, and the real bad ones need to be saved, so guess what you need? That's like the marble test, you know? Which hand has the marble? That's not real hard to figure out. I hope it isn't, because that's why the Lord gives us these passages. He doesn't want us just to know the story about Nicodemus. He wants us to figure out that he's talking about people like us, because he wants to do something. Now, the Lord's here tonight. He's meeting with us. Randy guessed what I was going to preach about, but the Lord knew it. And if you're here tonight, it's not by accident. The Lord's speaking. Nicodemus went and sat and listened to Jesus by night, and we know by reading the rest of the Gospel of John that Nicodemus became a believer. He was born again. He defended Jesus later on to the Sanhedrin, and he was one of two that took him down from the cross after he died. He took him down, he took down that body of Christ, and he took it to its burial place. Nicodemus loved the Lord. He didn't know him very well that first night, but that was the night where he came to know Jesus, and tonight can be the night where you can stop being a stranger and really come to know Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your love for people like Nicodemus. You know how confused and wrong we can be, and you love us anyway. Thank you for loving people whose lives look like an absolute disaster, like that man, that demon-possessed man running around and cutting himself, but you love with that same love the finely dressed religious people in the churches, trying so hard, so sincere, but they need to be born again, as everyone here tonight who hasn't come to that place in their life needs. Impress it on their hearts, make them think of it before they go to bed, and the last thought before they go to sleep tonight. You must be born again. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.