John 3:14-21
Nicodemus was a prominent man among the Pharisees, knew his Bible up and down, and attended
church regularly. Nicodemus was like you and me. As a human being, he had the same concerns that you and
I have. Is my faith strong enough? Have I done enough to be saved? The greatest of his concerns was whether
or not he was going to heaven?
In our text for this morning, Nicodemus sought out Jesus under the cover of night. Why was a Pharisee
seeking out Jesus? He had heard some mind boggling things about Him. He had heard of the miraculous
changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana. He had heard of the authority Jesus had shown when he
purged the temple. He now wanted to know from this better than average rabbi if what he was doing was
going to get him to heaven.
As we follow along with Nicodemus this morning, I want you to put yourselves into his shoes. I want
you to think as a Pharisee, and sadly, that means that we don’t think that differently than we normally do. The
reason I say that, is because as Pharisees, we too at times look for the “way to heaven”. We want to know if
we are doing the right things. We want to know if we have done, or are doing enough to get to heaven. We
want to know if our faith is strong enough to get us to heaven.
Jesus answers all of these questions this morning. In this familiar section where we hear the most quoted
bible passage of all time, often misapplied and misunderstood. It is my prayer, that you understand just
exactly what God meant when he sent the Son of God and Man in this one act of love. Listen this morning as
God’s Love Lifts up His Son for the World.
As a witness
As a warning
I.
As a Witness
As I said earlier, Nicodemus was looking for answers. He wanted to be absolutely sure that what he was
doing was the right thing to get him into heaven. Perhaps, he was a little intrigued that maybe - just maybe
this was the Messiah, the chosen one. See Nicodemus would have been very well versed in his Old Testament
as a Pharisee, so he would have been expecting someone like this. Just to be sure, he finds Jesus and after
Jesus shows him the necessity of being born again by the Holy Spirit, and is convinced that Jesus knows
something about the subject of salvation. Jesus takes the opportunity to teach him even further.
Jesus had spoken to him about being born again, in an earthly sort of way. But Nicodemus doesn’t
understand an earthly description, and he’s a teacher of God’s Word. Makes you wonder how well a pastor
can really lead a congregation today without being properly trained in God’s Word. So Jesus, speaks to him
from the earthly to the heavenly using the pictures that Nicodemus would understand. He begins with an old
testament reference which in one sentence shifted from the work- righteousness that the Pharisee looks for to
the Son of Man found in Numbers 21:8,9. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of
Man must be lifted up.
Jesus was telling the Pharisee, that just as the Israelites were to look to the bronze snake to live in the
desert, so we are to take our eyes off ourselves and what we have done, and instead keep our eyes focused on
the Son of Man, who must be lifted up on Calvary. Jesus clearly is making reference to the incarnate Christ.
Incarnate means that he was born as a man, taking on human characteristics. Which means that he was
tempted as we are, suffered as we do, and died as we will. The difference is that he didn’t sin in any way. The
reason he is lifted up, is so that people look to him alone for salvation. 15 that everyone who believes in him
may have eternal life.
Now Jesus, masterfully brings to their knees, Nicodemus and the entire self-righteous, work-righteous
world including us, who thinks that there must be something I can do and must do to save myself. The words
are familiar. 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in
him shall not perish but have eternal life. I said we were going to see what this means as Pharisees. Let’s
take it apart. For God – God was not a man that he owed us anything. God is God. He owes us nothing. All
man is subject to him. Naturally, we are to think that we must appease God’s wrath by what we do. And yet,
God so loved the world – Despite the fact, and yes it is a fact, that all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God. Despite that fact, God still chose to look on us not with the wrath that we did deserve, but with
pity and grace. The nudge is that we had nothing to do with that pity and grace. Once again, God’s love did.
He so loved the world and the only way he could love her was by giving up his one and only Son. Through
God’s Son, God’s love was shown and given. God could not love a world that was plagued with sin, because
God hates sin. But yet he could love this world that is full of sinners, not because we go to church every
Sunday, not because we read our Bible faithfully, not because we don’t get drunk on Saturday night. No, God
loved us because of his Son who was lifted up.
Can you believe that? A Pharisee named Nicodemus eventually did. Does the Pharisee in you still prick
your conscience and say, yeah, but I still have to do this and that, because that’s what God wants. Yes, and
God wants us to be perfect too, but are we that? No. What God really wants is our hearts. He wants us to trust
and lift up the one he gave up for us. That’s what believing is. It’s throwing away our own sense of what we
think is going to get us to heaven, and picking up what God says and simply saying. “Ah, Yes, that’s it. It’s
all been done by you Jesus.”
See, what happens when we revert back to our own works, and what we do to get us closer to salvation,
we lower the Son that God has lifted up. When the Devil says, “the Son of Man died because of how terrible
you are, you must do something to make up for that.” Tell the devil, take my works to hell with you. Jesus
has already done them perfectly for me. I will NOT perish, but will have eternal life because of him.
When God sent Jesus it was never his intention that any should perish. I think it goes without saying,
that the whole purpose of God sending Jesus into the world was to save sinners. Jesus tells Nicodemus here
that 17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, So we say, “Aha, there is something that I have to do. Just
believe.” Believing is not something that I do. It is something that God creates in me. When God lifts up the
Son, I simply choose not to reject what God has already done for me.
It’s like a man who tells me I have a $1million in my bank account. Would you believe him? Probably
not, but the fact is, that it is there. I didn’t put it there. My believing doesn’t suddenly put it there. It’s there
because the man put it there for me. So also with our salvation. It is put on my account before God because
God put it there on the Son that he lifted up for the World. Believing is the result of the faith that God has
created in me.
II. As a warning
Jesus continues with a WARNING! Jesus has just let Nicodemus and the Pharisee in us, know. You did,
continue to do and can do nothing. Jesus did it for you and you believe it with the hand of faith that the Holy
Spirit has given you.
BUT . . . and now comes Jesus warning. but whoever does not believe stands condemned already
because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. In other words, if your deeds are what
you fall back on. If you are looking for satisfaction in your own mind before God. That is not believing in the
name of God’s one and only Son. See to believe in God’s one and only Son is to believe then that all that I
do gets me nowhere when it comes to salvation. All the things that I try to do to ease my conscience or make
up for something bad that I did. Throw them all out the window. They mean nothing when it comes to my
salvation. Instead GOD wants us to lift up the Son. Believing in something means that you look to it all the
time for everything. Problems, answers, solutions, attitudes, corrections, and yes, even discipline.
Jesus sums up this thought when he says 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men
loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
As soon as you have one thought of doubt in the cross of Christ and of his merits as the Son of man who lived
and died in your place. As soon as you have one thought of disbelief in his merits as the Son of God in saving
and sanctifying. You are lowering the son. You are diverting your eyes away from the Son of God. To use
Jesus words, the Light that has come into the world is shut off.
That’s the way the world is. Humanitarian aid, giving money to charity, civic righteousness in society
makes people feel good and makes them look good too. But Jesus says, even those deeds are evil because
they are absent from the Light of Christ. Those that do them do not trust in Christ as their Savior. For that
reason their deeds are evil. As Jesus says, 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into
the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. Those acts that looked so good on the outside were nothing
but evil. NOW, if they come into the light of Christ, they won’t be good deeds anymore, but evil because they
are done outside of Christ. They were done for some other reason. Really, what they are doing is robbing
Christ of his glory on the cross and lowering the Son of God which God has lifted up for them in the world.
Thanks be to God that he has lifted up His Son. Thanks be to God that it was for a world of sinners like
us. Thanks be to God that our deeds then are not evil, because God by lifting up his Son has made us
creatures who love to live in the Light of truth. Jesus says, 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the
light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”
Those who live in the light live in the truth. They credit nothing they do as meriting anything toward
their salvation. Rather, they credit them as deeds done through God. They are done as a response. In doing
so, the Son is lifted up and glorified.
Nicodemus, was a man who desperately needed to hear this message. We need to be reminded of this
message and continually. There are many others out there who need to hear this message as well. Be bringers
of this message of witness and warning. Lift up the Son, as God in love has lifted him up for the world.
AMEN!