Sermon on John 3:1-17, Holy Trinity Sunday 2021 (B), "Seeing and Entering the Kingdom of God"

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. In John 3 we meet Nicodemus. Who is he? A moral, religious man. Serious about spiritual matters; curious about Jesus’ teachings. A Pharisee, devoted to purity, good living, and obedience to the Law. He also was an upper-class member of society on the prestigious Sanhedrin, a council of 70 ruling elders, who eventually judged Jesus guilty of blasphemy (though he and his friend Joseph of Arimathea did not consent to their decision). He comes at night to speak to Jesus, hiding his interest from his fellow Pharisees or the Sanhedrin. At the end of the Gospel of John, however, he openly comes out as a disciple of Jesus, honors Jesus’ body in burial in Joseph’s tomb.

Early in the story here, his faith is beginning. He sees Jesus is from God. He says: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him”. Jesus’ miracles and likely even Jesus’ teachings convince Him that Jesus is from God. Last week we talked about conviction of the Holy Spirit. See Him convicting Nicodemus’ heart? Faith is coming alive but he’s still not seeing the kingdom of God. Something is still missing. Conviction is at work, but not complete.

Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Then He adds in v. 5, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, He cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus was calling Nicodemus to a radical change. He calls us to the same! To see or enter the kingdom of God, you must become something beyond what you already see or understand. External morality, spirituality, and good living is not enough! We must become totally different people than who we already are in the flesh. We can’t see or enter “as is”. Our sinful flesh is a barrier to seeing or entering the kingdom of God. We must each be born again of water and the Spirit. External changes, morality, and spiritual behaviors aren’t the same as the total inner and outer work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. You can’t get from first birth to second birth by the flesh. Not by our own effort or anything we do.

Have you ever tried being born? How did you do that? Are you ready to try it again? It’s a weird question, but maybe it gets you to think like Nicodemus about the difference between something happening to you, and something you do yourself. At the risk of stating the obvious, being born isn’t something you can do to yourself. You can put yourself through school. You can get yourself a job. Teach yourself how to cook, build furniture, or a million other things. But you can’t give birth to yourself. Not the first time around. Not the second time. It just doesn’t work that way. It requires outside agents—for your first birth it was your parents. For your second birth from above, it is God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

You all were born of the flesh—you were there on your birthday; it happened to you. You’re living proof of that. But you didn’t have any say in the matter. Sadly, many people resent it, and wish they weren’t born into this world. God must be heartbroken when a precious child, whom He knitted together in their mother’s womb, wishes they weren’t alive. Job and other believers in the Old Testament wished such things when they were at their lowest, but God never made a mistake in creating us. Anyone who feels that way about themselves needs our special love and compassion, to help them see and know why God made them. Never fall for the devil’s lie that you don’t matter to anyone or that your life doesn’t have purpose, value, and meaning. God sent His Son to die for you, so that you would know just how precious you are to Him! But back to the point, we didn’t choose our birth or make it happen. It happened to us. And we’re all blessed by every one of you here, in person or online!

The same is true at our second birth. We don’t do it to ourselves; it is done to us. True, its different in that you are already alive before your second birth takes place, but Jesus is showing there’s no connection between the birth of the flesh and new birth of the Spirit. You can’t cross from flesh to spirit on your own gifts or effort. We must be born again, or “born from above.” It happens to us. God doesn’t make a mistake, and He lovingly forms us to be His children in a whole new way. Disciples, followers, children of the kingdom. Without this second birth from above, we’re still outside the kingdom in our sins. Being a good person on the outside, or outwardly spiritual doesn’t make the change—it must be an internal work of the Spirit. A God-given new birth from above. We can’t do it on our own.

So how does this birth from above happen? Water and the Spirit. Baptism. Our old sinful nature drowned in the waters of Holy Baptism so God raises us up to new life! It happens when we were washed in the waters and made alive again. But notice what Jesus says about this new birth: “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”. Nicodemus saw a fair bit outwardly. He saw that Jesus was a teacher from God. He saw miracles. But he still hadn’t seen the kingdom of God. Gradually Jesus would reveal this to him. Fully the Spirit would give him new birth to see the kingdom. Certainly, by Jesus’ resurrection, Nicodemus fully saw and believed in the kingdom of God. But our flesh is blindfolded. When we look for the kingdom of God with the eyes of our flesh, we won’t see it happening. Won’t notice it. Even if we have been born from above, we often fall back into looking for the kingdom of God with eyes of flesh and see nothing. God’s kingdom doesn’t aim to impress worldly eyes. It isn’t seen by them.

Jesus spoke a lot about how the kingdom of God couldn’t be seen. In Luke 17, for example, Jesus says that “the kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20-21). He’s essentially saying it’s right under your nose and you don’t see it! Jesus IS the arrival of the kingdom of God, but eyes of flesh can’t see. He said the kingdom of God belonged to little children (Luke 18:16), even as His own disciples were trying to keep the kids away. Don’t look for the kingdom of God with eyes of flesh. Earthly eyes looking for value, success, glory, and power in the ways of the world just won’t see God’s kingdom. Jesus’ kingdom came invisibly, yet powerfully among the people. Like the blowing of the wind or a seed growing underneath the soil. Its invisible, but you hear it and see its effects. Invisible doesn’t mean “not there.” Doesn’t mean “nothing’s happening.” It means the spiritual cause of these works, the Holy Spirit’s operation, is hidden from our eyes. However, born from above we can see it with spiritual eyes.

How do we see the kingdom of God? Jesus hides it under such ordinary things like Word and water in baptism. Or bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. Or Christians gathered to worship together and pray together. But it’s more than what we see on the outside. You can be here on the outside and not see what’s happening inside. The growth of new life by water and the Spirit is something invisibly happening inside us. “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Do we see and recognize how faith is given and created by the Holy Spirit when an infant is baptized? No, we don’t see or understand; but it is still happening, just as surely as the child grows for their first birth in their mother’s womb, without us seeing or analyzing the process. Do we see and understand how Christ’s words cause His body and blood to be present for us to eat and drink in the Supper? It’s a mystery. We don’t see or understand. But the Spirit doesn’t need our understanding to be powerfully at work. Thank God that the Holy Spirit doesn’t stop working just because we don’t see the kingdom of God with fleshly eyes!

That’s exciting and mysterious. It’s exciting and freeing to know that the Spirit is blowing where He wishes (always in full agreement and unity with the Father and Son, as we confess this Trinity Sunday!!). Spiritual eyes see the kingdom of God happening. It’s freeing to know that we don’t control God’s Spirit, who is filling the world with conviction, bringing us to the Truth, bringing us to life. We’re not in the driver’s seat, we’re recipients of His new birth. We’re baptized into the new life of the Spirit, to become someone altogether new and different from our flesh. Don’t see or understand how it all works? The Spirit does! His work is real, and His work continually brings us to Jesus Christ, God’s Son sent to save the world.

Not only does new birth by the Spirit help us “see” the kingdom of God. It also is the condition by which we “enter” the kingdom of God. Jesus puts these in parallel in John 3:3 and 5. Without the new birth of water and the Spirit, we can’t enter the kingdom of God. Our sinful flesh blocks our sight and our entry into the kingdom. Which is why we must be born of water and the spirit. It’s a major condition Jesus puts on entry into God’s kingdom. But then do we fill that condition? By grace, God provides everything we need to meet that condition of entry! The Spirit creates our faith. The Spirit washes us with holy water and joins us to Jesus in baptism. The Spirit convicts our hearts to turn from sin, drowns us in baptism, and pulls us up breathing new life into our lungs, raised in faith to praise our Lord and God! The Spirit opens our eyes to see the kingdom of God and enter by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In other words, all we need for new life, our admission to the kingdom of God, is given us freely by God! That is grace. God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. It’s all over the Gospels. Admission is a gift, not a right or anything we earned or deserved.

Between the now of our faith walk in the kingdom of God, and the not yet of our future entry into God’s kingdom, we live in that new life, that new birth of the Spirit. We look past the surface, the exterior. Spiritual eyes look deeper for the work of the Holy Spirit, for the evidence of the kingdom of God in the faith of a child, the humble working of God in the common forms of the Word and Sacraments. The unseen work of a seed of God’s Word, planted in someone’s heart by the Gospel. While we’re still in the flesh, our eyes will get heavy and be blinded from the kingdom of God at work around us. But stirred up by the Spirit and awakened to our new birth of water and the Spirit, we’re alive to see and participate in the kingdom of God. Praying for its growth, walking in new life, spreading the news that God so loved the world, so that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. In Jesus’ Name, Amen!