Tuesday 18 March 2014

John Chapter 3 verses 1 – 20 Nicodemus encounters Jesus 16 March ‘14

I’m sure all of you know – or at least I hope you know – someone whose integrity and sincerity you both admire and value: someone you reckon you can trust – even if you know they are not perfect and, like all of us, have their flaws and failings: yet, nevertheless, they are the sort of people for whom playing by their moral code and standing up for what is right, just, and fair is who they are. Such people tend not to worry too much about what other people think of them, are happy to go against the flow if the flow is going the wrong way, and are motivated by a genuine desire to discover the truth and live by the light of that truth. I think this Nicodemus was one such guy: there’s a lot to admire about Nicodemus. I’ve got a lot of time for Nicodemus, the rabbi who, as we heard in our reading, comes to Jesus because he is a genuine seeker after the Truth and recognises in Jesus something quite unusual.

We can chart Nicodemus’ progress in St. John’s Gospel: we see a man, a genuine kind of guy, who is not content with anything less than the truth. We see him move in his relationship with Jesus - this new young Rabbi claiming and doing and teaching things that must have really disturbed this essentially good guy, Nicodemus: move from CURIOSITY to CONSCIENCE to COMMITMENT. He appears here in chapter 3 and then again in chap’s 7 &19. And in who he was, the type of person he was, and how he develops in his relationship with Jesus, we see something of a model or illustration of how it is when someone who is a genuine seeker after the truth – the truth that is about life’s deepest questions: why are we here, how should we live, what happens to us when we die, and other such pressing questions. Nicodemus thinks that Jesus is worth the risk: and by chapter 19 we learn that it was for Nicodemus a risk worth taking.

Now I realise that this chapter and some of its verses are very well known to many of you. Indeed, I am sure several of you could be up here this morning instead of me! Some of the verses are either disturbing or liberating – depending on which way you choose to look at them! So, in this season of Lent, when we are asked to consider more deeply our own walk with God and the present health of it, let’s take a closer look at this encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus.    I must warn you at the outset; there are some challenging matters here to consider.

Nicodemus was a member of the religious and academic elite of his day, something Jesus acknowledges. But for all his academic ability, his religious knowledge and genuine curiosity about Jesus, we see from this encounter that he is still very much in the dark about Jesus and who he is; and this to the extent that Jesus actually criticises him for his lack of understanding and discernment. Nicodemus’ problem is that he has allowed all his religious, academic, and cultural presuppositions and prejudices to blind him to the truth about Jesus up to this point. He eventually comes to a living faith, I think, because his search for the truth is genuine and, as we see later, he comes to faith in Jesus for who he is, the long-awaited Messiah, the Saviour of Israel.

Some of you will remember the famous Bishop John Robinson who wrote a book called ‘Honest to God’ in which he very controversially questioned some of the beliefs and doctrines of the Church. He was a very well respected academic who was made a bishop in the Church of England, as they often are. Very interestingly though, it was his genuine seeking after the truth that later in life caused him to fall foul of his academic peers when he went against them and started to question and argue against some of the foundations on which his peers and predecessors had built their academic reputations. As a result he was ostracised by many; treated as someone who had ’lost it’. But he hadn’t; he had simply been honest in his search for the truth and, as those who knew him explained, had, as a result, come to know more clearly the living God.

I had a similar tussle myself when I was reading theology at Cambridge. I was given to read for one of my essays a book by a very eminent female German professor of New Testament studies. Basically, one of those to whom you had to defer if you wanted a good mark for your essay. That I quickly decided and attempted to show that this female wunderkind was talking nonsense did not go down well. She after all was the academic authority: I was but a simple ex-infantry officer with a faith and some knowledge of the Middle East. Now I have to acknowledge that she seemed very sincere and, I believed at the time, a genuine seeker after the truth. I did not get a good grade for my essay. Ten years later however I stumbled on an article about this dear lady in which she had recanted all her previous academic insights about the New Testament, showed how the academics had misled her and their students, and repented of what she had taught. Why did she do this? Because she had met, at long last, the risen Jesus, the living God. Through the love and the prayers of some of her students over the years she was able to come out of the darkness of academic blindness into the light of Christ. And you know what really made me jump for joy? 

Nothing about my being right after all: no, it was comparing an early photograph of a young, distinguished and very serious-looking professor with the smiling, joyous face of a woman now in her 70s who had so obviously come to know Jesus.

Now you may not be an academic by profession or nature: I certainly am not. But each one of us has to ask ourselves, in the light of what Jesus says to us Sunday by Sunday, day by day, hour by hour, what is it in my life, what are the intellectual or social or moral passions or prejudices that are preventing me from seeing Jesus for who he really is or from following him faithfully?

In v2 we learn that Nicodemus has been struck by the evidence of the miraculous signs in Jesus’ ministry (Read): and what he says to Jesus implies that he thinks there must be even more to Jesus than what he has seen so far. But Jesus replies to Nicodemus over the next admittedly puzzling dozen or so verses by telling him that it is no use trying to understand him and the kingdom of God in terms of earthly categories, that is, in terms of what we know or like to think we know about God. (If I had a penny!) But the truth is that a person may only understand God and his kingdom (v3) and enter it (v5) if he or she is willing to undergo a complete spiritual regeneration by God. The term for this that Jesus uses is ‘being born again’ or ‘being born from above’: and that can only come through (v5) water and the spirit. That is to say, through repentance and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. What is more (v8), such things are only understood by those who no longer try to get their heads around God according to their own or the world’s ideas but who now see themselves and the world from God’s revealed point of view; what he has told us about the world and about you and me. To be quite frank, those who are born of the spirit will often seem quite strange to those not born of the spirit: because they will have different priorities in life, different goals; be different in many ways.

This is still all too much for poor old Nicodemus. (V9) ‘How can these things be?’ he exclaims. Jesus is not sympathetic to him (v10). If he had interpreted the Old Testament correctly he would have seen that Jesus’ teaching was not only based on the Old Testament but that Jesus himself was the fulfilment of the Old Testament promises and prophecies.

Jesus’ response shows that Nicodemus’ failure to believe was more reprehensible than his failure to understand.  It was St. Augustine who put the matter so exquisitely, ‘I believe in order to understand.’

Verse 12. Jesus says to Nicodemus that if he cannot hoist in this elementary spiritual fact that he needs to be born again in order to see and enter God’s kingdom, then what is the worth of Jesus trying to explain to him the mysteries of that kingdom. 

You see, unless you and I have been converted to the person of Jesus and the priorities of his kingdom we shall not be able to understand.

In verse 13 Jesus asserts his credentials and then in verses 14 & 15 explains, using an  Old Testament illustration, that He must lose his life in order that ‘whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.’

Verses 16 to 21 are almost certainly an additional commentary by the apostle John on this encounter and these words of Jesus; a commentary that spells out the great cost of Jesus’ sacrificial love for the world and the urgent, vital, and necessary need for people to turn to Jesus and accept him as their Lord and Saviour. The judgement or analysis of human nature we read here is not a comfortable one but it is an accurate one for those who are willing to be honest with themselves about themselves, and who are genuine seekers after the truth.


The greatest truth for any of us to learn in this life is that our lives do not belong to us but are a gift of God, on loan, for a time. In the time that we have here, we need to understand that our sin is a real problem and that we must allow God to deal with it in the way that he has chosen; a way that favours no one and includes everyone -which is through faith in Jesus. Christianity is the most inclusive – to use the modern politically correct jargon – in the world: but it is not an optional lifestyle extra as some would like to see it. Such a view is part of the darkness in which some people choose to live their lives. It is up to us, to you and to me, to help them to see the light of life and the light to life, which is Jesus. V16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.’

Study Questions for St. John Chapter 3 verses 1 – 21 March 16th 2014

This well-known encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus raises some very interesting and challenging questions but also some very rewarding and encouraging information about Jesus and about ourselves. It highlights the difference and the distance between those who are willing to look at life and themselves from God’s point of view rather than look at God from their and the world’s point of view. This encounter reveals the disconnect that may only be bridged by faith. It also shows that sincerity alone is not sufficient to find our way to God but that humility and an openness to him are vital if we are to ‘see God’ and ‘enter his Kingdom’. Three times Jesus uses the telling phrase ‘very truly I tell you’ or ‘Verily, verily’ of the older versions. Nicodemus is from the academic elite and the religious leadership; he is steeped in the learning and traditions of his faith; and yet he is still unable as yet to grasp that here before him is the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies and promises.

1. Why do you think Nicodemus came to Jesus ‘by night’?

2. What has prompted Nicodemus’ interest in Jesus and why does he reckon that God is somehow with him.

3. What sort of things do you think prevent Nicodemus from seeing who Jesus really is?

4. What sort of things prevent human beings from seeing who Jesus really is?

5. How do you understand the term ‘born again’ or ‘born from above’?

6. Why are ‘water and the spirit’ required to be able to enter the kingdom of God? What do these signify?

7. What do you understand by the phrase ‘Truly, truly, I tell you.’ How would you express that in modern colloquial English?

8. What do you make of verse 8? What great truth or truths is Jesus conveying here?

9. What does verse 16 mean to you? How does this promise affect your life?


10. How would you explain verses 17 – 21 to a non-believing friend?

Saturday 1 March 2014

STUDY QUESTIONS FOR ACTS CH18 VERSES 1 – 11

In order to give you a better ‘feel’ for the kind of people Paul was dealing with in Corinth you will find it very helpful to read at least chapter one of his First Letter to the Corinthians, a letter he wrote in response to some of the ‘goings on’ in that church after he had left it. It shows how much is needed not just in founding a church but in keeping it on the straight and narrow when there are so many adverse influences both internal and external that can undermine it.

1. Why do you think Paul went to Corinth, given its terrible reputation as a centre of depravity and the worship of Mamon?

2. Why do you think Aquilla and Priscilla welcomed Paul into their home? What might have motivated them?

3. How easy do you find ‘arguing with and convincing’ (v4) people about Jesus and their need for salvation? Have you ever been pleasantly surprised either by your own courage or by people’s responses? How should we ‘argue’ with people? Do we need to do so today?

4. What is at the heart of Paul’s message? (See also 1 Corinthians Chapters 1&2) How would you put the message today to someone who asked you what Christianity is all about?

5. What do you make of verse 6 and Paul’s actions and response? What does this say about Paul and his calling?


6. How many instances of encouragement can you find in the passage that convinced Paul to stay in Corinth? In what ways have you found encouragement as a Christian to keep going when things are tough?

Acts Chapter 18 verses 1 – 11

As we continue our voyage through the Book of Acts, we come to chapter 18 and Paul’s arrival in 50 AD in the city of Corinth, some 50 miles South West of Athens from whence he had just come. It was a very cosmopolitan centre of commerce and it had a terrible reputation. It was Julius Caesar who had founded it as a Roman colony in 46 BC for its strategic merits; and from that time it had began to grow. It was a now real hotchpotch of entrepreneurs, ex-Roman soldiers, merchants, sailors, slaves, and agents of every – and I mean every - form of vice. It was a rough, tough place and a byword in the empire for debauchery. It is not surprising then that in his first letter to the Corinthians (I Cor 2:3) written around 54AD, Paul talks of his arrival there ‘in much fear and trembling’. Nevertheless, Paul knew that if the love of Jesus Christ could actually take root in Corinth of all places, the most populated, wealthy, commercial-minded and sex-obsessed city of eastern Europe, it must prove powerful anywhere.

And that‘s the reason, whatever else you may hear from other pulpits or in the media, why I do not believe that we should give up on the generation we have been given to introduce to Jesus, or change or waterdown his Good News just because his message seems to many people today to be so strange, and increasingly so socially and morally unconventional. This is the problem when a generation or more of Christianity has been effectively lost, discarded, undermined by so-called ‘new’ cultural, social, and moral mores that have blinded people not only to the truth of Jesus and his love for them but also to the unpalatable truth about themselves and about their love of themselves. Jesus came to liberate people from their destructive preoccupation with themselves and with the various little gods that control their lives and lead them into the slavery to all kinds of ambitions and attitudes that are destructive of self, of others, of community. And we must not kid ourselves that just because we happen to have a circle of nice friends or that what we see on the TV sometimes are just ‘the exaggerations of a minority’: just talk to Mike, our youthworker, or to Rachel, our Headteacher about the kind of attitudes and outlook they encounter in their work. No, this generation desperately needs the Good News of Jesus; and he has called you and me to share it with them lest we drift slowly but surely back into a Corinthian-style society. It’s no good just complaining that the country is going to the dogs morally and socially: we need to stay faithful to Jesus and to act!

Compared with his rough treatment at the hands of the Macedonians, especially at Philippi, Paul had a relatively straightforward time in Athens – the usual combination of mockery and interest, but sadly not many believers that time. At least the church was founded there. He arrives now in Corinth probably feeling weak in every way – physically battered, emotionally deprived of the partnership of Silas and Timothy, and naturally in some fear at the prospect of coming face to face with ‘the city of love’. But as we see in our passage today, God is faithful to those who serve him, providing the support and encouragement he needs.                                                                                First, Paul encounters the warm welcome of Aquilla and Priscilla; then Silas and Timothy turn up; then, when he storms out of the synagogue, he is welcomed to base his ministry right next door; and then Crispus and v8 ‘many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptised’. Not only can Paul see things working in his favour now, reassuring him that he is in the right place, but God himself also confirms  these encouraging developments by reassuring him in a dream that  v10 (Read).

Now it is perhaps easy for us to say to ourselves today, ‘Well, that’s a lovely story; but what relevance is it to me today. I don’t see these things happening in my life and I certainly don’t get dreams from God? ‘ Well I think there are one or two things here that we need to recognise and to ask of ourselves.

First, this burgeoning team and the work around Paul is being blessed by God because it is his work, it is the work of the Gospel, and it is about their being open, willing, and obedient. The Church often and still today can easily get side-tracked into what I call ‘churchy matters, church business, church activities, that often have little to do with our first calling and responsibility - which is to proclaim the love and the truth of Jesus to the generation in which we live. Unless this is our first priority as a church, we cannot expect God to bless and prosper activities or business that detracts from this calling. For different churches, this can mean different things: what each church and each individual member needs to ask themself is this: where do our, where do my, priorities lie, and am I giving my time to the things that really matter to God – not just to me, and how I like to ‘do church’?  All I would say here is that if we open our eyes to what God is already doing around us in regard to establishing and furthering his kingdom, and if we open our minds and our hearts to what he is saying to us – or trying to say through us the competition from elsewhere! - then he will let us know where he want us and what he really wants us to be volunteering for. And another important thing: whilst churches can be sources of comfort, consolation, and community in themselves – because the world so often does not offer these, the strongest, most genuine, liberating and fulfilling Christian relationships are those – like that of Paul, Aqilla, Priscilla, Silas, Timothy, and Crispus, that are lived out together in responding to our calling to share Jesus with others.

It is very pertinent in respect to note in our own day the reasons why many churches have closed though lack of numbers (over 450 Anglican churches in England in the past 5 years!) whilst hundreds more have opened in England in the same period. A very simple comparison demonstrates that the closed ones by and large had not made the sharing of the Gospel their priority

(The fact is you can never have enough jumble sales or flower festivals or concerts to keep a church open. Why? Well because churches need members, and members are people, and people become Christians - as opposed to churchgoers - not for sales or shows or concerts but through receiving the Gospel. And that is why so many more churches are opening and growing in England; because those Christians are prioritising their first calling in the life of their church.)

Secondly, we need to ask ourselves some questions about this young church in Corinth that Paul founded and, in the 18 months he was with them, began to grow? Was it a fellowship of superheros? Was it a model Christian maturity? No! Quite the opposite, as Paul’s letters reveal.

It was a large church. But it was full of cliques, each following a different personality. Many Christians were very snobbish: at fellowship meals the rich kept to themselves and the poor were left alone. There was very little church discipline: a lot of laxity was allowed, both in morals and doctrine – an all too common combination experience strongly suggests. They were unwilling to submit to authority of any kind and the integrity of Paul’s own apostleship was frequently questioned. There was a distinct lack of humility and of consideration for others, some being prepared to take fellow believers to court, and some celebrating their new freedom in the most selfish of ways. They seem to have been very keen on the more dramatic gifts of the Spirit and were short on love rooted in the truth.                                         

The picture Paul paints is of a far from perfect church, which is why of course he had to write his letters of which we know, from the two letters we possess, that there must have been at least 4 and not just the 2. But what Paul discovered in Corinth was not only that God supported those who were faithful to their calling but also that he was willing to work with the dregs – those who, in the world’s eyes anyway, had little to offer. Paul discovered that God can work most effectively through the weak when they allow him to do so. Indeed God actually chooses to do so in order to humble or ‘shame’ the proud. You see, money, education, success in life, pride in our ourselves can so easily become stumbling blocks to humility and to service if we reckon them to be our achievements rather than God’s gifts. So in spite of all their shortcomings, shortcomings Paul has to write to them about and reprimand them about, he still loves them and wants them to continue into maturity, a path that can only be taken in humility. Paul is wonderstruck by the grace that God has given to this very rum bunch: he has no blindspots when it comes to recognising their weaknesses; but he knows, from great personal experience, just what God can do in the humble and faithful. Read Chapter 1 of his first Letter and you will see exactly what I mean.  

So, to sum up some lessons for us from this passage:                                               

First, the primary calling of Christians and the work in which we will discover both the faithfulness and grace of God and the joy and encouragement of real relationships with our fellow Christians is in the sharing of the Gospel with this generation. That Gospel does not need to be changed or watered down to fit in with the latest world views and people will find it challenging. 

Secondly, whoever we are and whatever our credentials or lack of them, God can and wants to use each one of us in the service of the Gospel. We just need to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to what he is already doing, and then humbly offer ourselves in his service. 

And thirdly, God will provide. He will provide whatever it is we may lack. 

Sometimes this will mean that we have to set aside what we think are strengths because they are in fact weaknesses that actually inhibit our effectiveness as disciples.


Here is a verse for us all to take to heart and to put into practice    I Cor 15: 58