Week 9 ———  Jesus and Nicodemus
John 2:23 – 3:21

John 3:1-3   Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “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 answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

We feel like we understand Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. After all, that encounter has the most quoted verse in the New Testament, John 3:16.  Yeah, we know all about this. These words are important to us. God put this here for us. But I want you to see it differently. These words were said for you but not to you.  We usually read it as if Jesus was talking to us, Christians in America in 2024.  But he was talking to a Jewish Pharisee in Jerusalem in 27 A.D.  Nicodemus doesn’t know what we know.  He hasn’t seen the football players with John 3:16 on their faces nor the guy with the crazy hair holding up the sign at the pro games.  He is not familiar with the term ‘born again.’  We have heard it all our lives.  But not only does Nicodemus not know what we know, we do not know what Nicodemus knows.  I want to look at that encounter again through Nicodemus’ eyes so we can fully understand what Jesus was saying and why Nicodemus was having so many problems with what Jesus was saying.

We usually ask why Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.  But I want first to ask why he came to Jesus at all.

“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.”  John 3:2.

So, Nicodemus saw the miracles Jesus had been doing.

John 2:23   Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.

But John tells us Jesus did not ‘entrust himself to them’  — he didn’t tell them who he was.

So Nicodemus can’t figure out Jesus. He saw the miracles, but he also knew that two days ago, Jesus raised a ruckus in the outer court of the temple, taking a whip and driving out the people selling sacrificial animals and the moneychangers. So, who was this guy who could do miracles but also threw a fit in the temple? Jesus is a puzzle to him.

Nic is curious to discover who he is, but he can’t afford to be seen talking with the guy who made such a mess in the temple, so he comes in secret. He starts the conversation by giving Jesus the benefit of the doubt and perhaps a compliment, “I know you are from God.”  With such a gracious opening line, He is expecting Jesus to reply something like,  “Oh, thanks, Nicodemus,”  “I appreciate you saying that,” and “What nice words coming from such a respected member of the Sanhedrin.”  But instead, Jesus says:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  John 3:3.

What kind of response is that?  Apparently, Jesus is not going to waste time with pleasantries.  Now, Nic is puzzled and shocked.

Jesus starts, “Amen, Amen.”  This is a very Hebrew way of saying, ‘What I am about to say is a fundamental truth.’  Now, Nicodemus is taken aback because he thinks his spot is secure in God’s kingdom already.   The Pharisees were sure that all Jews would enter the kingdom through resurrection on the last day.  The only way that they could lose their position in God’s kingdom was to renounce their Jewishness and deny their faith.  He was shocked to hear that he was lacking.  He has been told all his life that his ticket was punched.  And of all things to say to a pharisee!  This Jesus fellow is sounding about as crazy as that John the Baptist fellow.

Remember how John the Baptist responded when the Pharisees came to him:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.   Matthew 3:7-9

John the Baptist says the same thing.  Being born a Jew is not a free ticket.  God can make children of Abraham out of rocks!  Now Nicodemus feels a bit insulted. But he can’t deny Jesus’s miracles, so he tries to understand what Jesus is saying, questioning him further.

“How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  John 3:4.

Nic is wondering how he can be born a second time, when Jesus was talking about a whole different kind of birth. (The Greek we translate as ‘born again’ carries with it the concept of birth from above – ‘born again from above.’)  Jesus tries to clarify it, saying that what you need to enter the kingdom of God is a birth of water and spirit—a natural birth of water and then a spiritual birth.

Nicodemus is not understanding.  Jesus says, “This shouldn’t shock you; the spirit is like the wind.  You can’t see it, but you can see its effects.

Nic still doesn’t get it.—it makes no sense to him, so he asks,  ”How can this be?”  Jesus says, “Wait a minute, you are the great teacher in Israel, and you don’t understand this?”  It is like he is asking Nic, ‘Haven’t you ever read the Bible?’ (He will say this to other Pharisees later on.)  He tells Nic, ‘If you can’t understand how God works on earth, then you’ll never understand the stuff of heaven. You aren’t even getting the easy stuff. How will you ever understand the more difficult things? ‘

We have to stop here.  Why was Jesus expecting Nic to already know about this?  Nic was supposed to know the Old Testament, and the idea of regeneration by the Spirit is not an uncommon theme in the Old Testament (see Isa. 44:3; Isa. 59:21; Ezek. 11:19, 20; 36:26–27; Joel 2:28–29; Ps. 51:10).  Jesus expected the great teacher of Israel to understand these things. Nicodemus, of course, was not alone in this shortcoming. Jesus accused other Pharisees of being people who claimed to see but were, in fact, blind (9:39–41).  Jesus expected Nic to remember that God would do something new, something that involved God’s spirit—a new heart and a new spirit—a spiritual rebirth.

Jesus presses on, while Nic is trying to absorb this.  He is going to throw Nic a bone. Nic is a scholar of the Old Testament, so Jesus will give him a remez.  Remez is Hebrew for ‘hint.’  Rabbis do this all the time. They use some phrase from scripture and expect you to know the scripture, grab that context, and use it in what they are saying.  This is what Jesus does on the cross. He quotes the first line of Psalm 22, expecting you to know the Psalm. If you do, you will understand what is happening at the crucifixion.  We do this also with movie quotes. For example, if you were in an unexpectedly odd situation, you might say to your friend, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” You expect them to know the context of the quote and pull that context into what you are saying.  So here is the hint Jesus gives Nicodemus:

“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” John 3:13.

Did you catch the remez?  In case you’re a little behind on studying and memorizing your Older Testament, let me help you. Nic knew there was a verse that asked, “Who will ascend into heaven..” 

Deut. 30:11-12   Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.   It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”

Let me make sure you know what Nic knows: Remember that Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell address to the people he has spent the past 40 years leading to the land he will not enter.  He desperately wants them to follow the rules that God has given them.  He reminds them if they do well, they will prosper as a nation, but if they do not keep God’s laws, his Torah, then they will not prosper.  (And we see that in their history.)  Here, he tells them that the instructions God gave them are not hard to keep. It is “not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.”  It is not so complicated that we have to send someone up to Heaven to get an explanation and then come back down here and explain it to us.  It is “in your mouth and in your heart.” That is, you already know it; this is easy stuff.

Jesus says the same thing later in his ministry:  

Matthew 11:28-29  “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”¹  

And we see it also here:

 1 John 5:3  “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”

Contrast that with what Jesus says about the Pharisees’ teaching:

Matt 23:4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders,

They made it hard — Nicodemus was a member of the group that made it hard. These Pharisees made additions to the law that God gave on Sinai.  They call it the ‘Oral Law’; Jesus calls it “the traditions of men” (Mark 7:8).  Their point is to build a fence around the Written Law to keep people from breaking it.  It is like guardrails on a road.  You don’t want someone to run off the road on a curve and fall off the mountain, so you put up a guardrail.  But it is like the Pharisees came along and said, ‘Well, you don’t want anyone to hit that guardrail and scratch up their car, so let’s put a guardrail in front of that guardrail to protect it.  And eventually, you can’t drive on the road for all the guardrails.  For example, if the written law says, “Don’t work on the Sabbath,” then the Pharisees reasoned that they needed to strictly define work so people wouldn’t accidentally break the law.  But these additions to the law made life difficult for everyone.  Having a day of rest is wonderful, God’s idea from Genesis 1.  It is a gift to us.  But the Pharisees made it very hard to keep all their Sabbath laws.  Let’s look at how that works today.

Building a fire was defined as work.  If you can’t light a fire on the Sabbath, you can’t flip a light switch because there is a little spark when you do.  This means you also can’t start a car, even an electric one.  So you walk.  But you can only walk so many steps; one more than that is a sin.  Carrying stuff is work, so you can’t carry anything outside your house, like a handkerchief in your pocket or your house key.   You can’t tear; tearing is work. So, for the Sabbath, you can buy toilet paper that is pre-cut and folded.  When I was a Pediatric resident at Boston Children’s Hospital, we lived in Brookline, which was 90% Jewish.  Many houses had two refrigerators, two sinks, two sets of pots and pans, two dishwashers, and two stoves.  Why?  Mixing meat and dairy products in the same meal, container, or storage was not okay.  My friend had to wait 6 hours after eating any dairy product before he could have any meat product.  Where did they get the idea of not mixing meat and dairy?

Exodus 23:19: Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk (also in Exodus 34:26, Deut  14:21).  This was a common Canaanite practice as part of their sacrifice to ensure the fertility of the land. God forbade this because it was idolatry.  

I am not your rabbi.  Jesus is your rabbi.  You fall under his teaching.  My job is to help you understand his teaching.  His yoke is easy.  I do not want to make it harder.  I will go out on a limb and say it is not idolatry to eat a cheeseburger.  And I am not saying this to poke fun at my Jewish friends.  I deeply respect anyone who strives to meet the obligations God places on them.  But my understanding of the Scripture falls more in line with the Karaite branch of Judaism that follows only what was in the Scriptures and doesn’t follow the rabbis’ additions to the law (Oral Law.)  And God knows, we Christians have done the same thing, adding our own ‘traditions of men’ to the scripture and holding them to the level of Scripture, so let’s not throw rocks. (Did you get that remez?)

Moses and Jesus pointed out that following God’s instructions is not hard. The scriptures were written so that a young child should be able to hear and understand them. Any eight-year-old child should be able to listen to them and know what to do just by hearing them read once.  

Deuteronomy 31:9-13  “So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.”

Every seven years, they would read the first five books of the Bible to the gathered nation. Does that seem impossible? Actually, you can read those five books in Hebrew in about 12 hours (English would take 14 hours). You can read the entire Bible in 75 hours, and all but six individual books of the Bible can be read in three hours (which happens to be the amount of time the average American watches TV every day).

But wait, if it is so easy that a ‘little one’ can understand it, why is it not so easy for me to understand it today?

1. It was written 2-3000 years ago in a language you can’t read to a culture that is incredibly foreign to you.  Everyone then knew about the ‘young goat in the milk’ thing because it was all around them.  It turns out that the life of nomadic shepherds 3000 years ago in the Middle East may not make much sense to engineers in 21st-century America.  They use idioms we have no idea about. (I’m sure if we said we ‘got up on the wrong side of the bed’ to a shepherd in Jesus’ day, he would be a little confused.)
2. The Bible contains different types of literature. The Bible contains history, law, poetry, songs, wisdom literature, prophecy, personal letters, and apocalyptic literature. You don’t read a book of poetry the same way you read a history book. The Chronicles of Narnia is a great fiction book by C.S. Lewis, and it has some beautiful Christian messages in it, but you would never take the talking lion literally.  Yet many people read the apocalyptic literature in the Bible, like Revelation, and take it very literally even though it is not a history book.
3. We don’t know the history or the land. The people Moses was teaching had just left Egypt, where their people had lived for 400 years. They understood Egyptian mythology, culture, and temples—that’s all they knew about temples and worship. God used their baseline knowledge as a starting point to teach them proper worship. But if you don’t know the starting point, you can’t understand what God is saying to them.  Many people read the stories of the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000 and think they are the same story, but John made a math error.  Why are they different?  They are very different because of where they happen.  The 4000 occurs in the Decapolis, a place with mostly Gentiles.  But you don’t know that unless you do a little reading.
4. Sometimes, we are the problem.  We have preconceived ideas that we don’t want to let go of.  That is why Nicodemus had trouble understanding the ‘born again from above’ thing.  If you think you are a lock to get into heaven because you were born Jewish, then you may not want to hear that is not enough.  If you have been told for 400 years that the Messiah is coming as a military leader, then when it doesn’t happen that way, you have to be open-minded enough to see it.
5. We aren’t willing to study the Bible as we were taught.

  Acts 17:11  Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

They listened eagerly to hear the message. But they didn’t just listen and go about their business. They heard Paul speak and then took the time to go through the Scriptures to see if what he was saying was true. They examined the Scriptures every day. They talked about them as they went about their lives. If you don’t do this when you hear a sermon, then I guess you think your preacher is better than Paul. Be a Berean! Study the scriptures for yourself.  

So Moses said: “It is not up in heaven, so you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” And Jesus said to Nic, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”  Do you get the remez now?  The point is that (1) God has clearly taught us what to do.  (2) It is not hard to understand or do.  and (3)  But since you Pharisees have found a way to make it hard, then I am the Messiah who has come down from heaven to explain it to you and show you how to live it correctly.  This is a claim of divinity.  Nic, did you want to know exactly who Jesus is? Well, here it is: he is the guy from heaven, Daniel’s Son of Man, the Messiah.

And because Jesus desperately wants Nicodemus to understand this, he gives him one more well-known Scripture reference to drive it home:

John 3:14  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Now, this is an odd one.  Jesus comparing himself to a snake is a shocker.  Let’s look back at the story.  The children of Israel are nearing the end of their journey in the wilderness.  The country of Edom will not let them pass through, so they have to go around — it is a long detour that means an extra several months of walking.  They are discouraged. And they are tired of walking.  And the temptation to murmur gets the best of them.  (When does temptation strike?  At your weakest.)

Once again, they begin complaining to God about the food. We have talked about this—murmuring, complaining about your circumstances—this is sin. It is more than ungratefulness; it is denying the goodness of God—faithlessness.  

This will be the last time they complain about the food.  This is strike three (another remez.)  

Numbers 21:6   Then Yehovah sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people, and many Israelites died. 

This is the wrath of God against a people who continue to sin over and over.  It is a curse in the form of the animal who was cursed in Genesis 3.    It brings death — the wages of sin is death.

How do the people react?

Numbers 21:7   The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against Yehovah and against you. Pray that Yehovah will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

It’s incredible how people run to God for help when disaster strikes—to the same God they were complaining about just yesterday.  We saw this happen after 9/11  when all of the churches were full (for a brief time).  But God does not take away the snakes.  The snakes are still there, biting people, filling them with poison that will cause their death.  He doesn’t remove the snakes, but he provides a way to remove the curse of death.

Numbers 21:8-9   Yehovah said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”   So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Does it seem odd that Moses would make a copper/bronze snake² and put it on a pole? 

It was not odd at all to Moses and his people because they understood the context. We don’t know what they knew, but we have some context they didn’t have at the time.

The snake, one of the gods of Egypt, was often worn on the headdress of Pharaoh as a sign of power. If you defy Pharaoh, you will die, and you will die the most agonizing death Egypt knows — death from a cobra bite. In Egypt, this was a sign of the power of death. You fear Pharaoh because he can kill you.

So God tells Moses to turn this sign of death into a sign of deliverance from death. The people would look at the serpent on the pole and see that God has provided a means of deliverance from the curse of death they deserved.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that the Son of man must be placed on a pole and lifted up.  People can look to him to see that God has provided a means of deliverance from the curse of death.  A curse they brought on themselves due to their sin.  So God takes the cross, the symbol of Roman power over the Jews.  Rome holds the power of life and death over you. And Roman crucifixion was the symbol of that power.  Like the cobra, the most cruel, agonizing death Rome knew of.  You fear Rome because it can crucify you.

 Now Jesus does what Moses did.  He takes this symbolic representation of pagan control over life into a vehicle of healing through the One true God.  The symbol of Rome’s power is converted into a sign of Yehovah’s grace, just as the symbol of Egypt’s power was converted into a sign of Yehovah’s grace and healing.  And in both cases, the recipient must look upon that pagan symbol and see something new; not a sign of the power of pagan gods but a sign of the authority of Israel’s God.

Jesus is trying to connect the dots for Nicodemus.  The serpent brings death.  It was the Accuser, in the form of a serpent that tempted Adam and Eve and brought death into this world.  As Yehovah told Eve in Genesis 3, one day, one of her descendants would crush the snake. Jesus crushes the serpent by disarming him, removing his weapon against us, that is death.

This is how much God loves the world, Nicodemus. And we come to that verse you already know, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”  The word ‘world’ in Greek is ‘kosmos,’ from which we get our word ‘cosmos.’  God is not just redeeming people; God is redeeming all of creation. And if you have memorized 3:16 but don’t know 3:17, please add that one to your list.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  John 3:17

Jesus’ church has messed up so many times, thinking its job was to go around condemning everyone of every sin (well, of the ones they don’t do). Jesus said he wasn’t there to condemn; he told the woman caught in adultery he didn’t condemn her.   He was on a mission to save the world, not condemn it.  If you find yourself speaking words of condemnation instead of words of salvation, then do you think you are better than Jesus?  We are condemned already; we know we are condemned.   The church should not be known for telling everyone what they are doing is bad.  We should be out telling everyone what God has done that is good.

And it will be Nicodemus’ friends, his cohorts in the Sanhedrin, that will condemn.  They will condemn the only one who never deserved it.   But it will be Nicodemus who will speak up for Jesus.  It was in the fall, about six months after Nicodemus first encounters Jesus, that charges are first brought up against Jesus in the Sanhedrin.  And Nicodemus stands up and says,

John 7:51  ”Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” 

Nicodemus, along with Joseph, his fellow member of the Sanhedrin, will arrange for Jesus’s honorable burial. 

John 19:39  ”And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.”

We don’t know exactly when Nicodemus finally understood.  It may not have been until Jesus was ‘lifted up,’ and he recalled Jesus’ words.  But as Moses and Jesus said, it really wasn’t that hard, once you drop your preconceptions and biases.

Sometimes we are like Nicodemus.  Sometimes, God is trying to tell us something, but we don’t get it.  Maybe it is because we don’t know our Bible, or we don’t have time to read it, or we don’t take the time to dig into it and really study it.  But often it is because, like Nicodemus,  we read the Bible with a closed mind, looking for what we think we already know.  We read it through the lenses of our preconceived doctrines and traditions.  Are you willing to forget what you think you know from tradition and approach the Bible with eyes to see?

Moses said it’s not hard; even a child can understand it.  You don’t have to have someone come out of heaven to explain it.  But after hundreds of years of teachers getting it wrong, someone did come out of heaven to explain it.  Jesus said he didn’t come to do away with what God had already said (the Law and the Prophets), but he came to bring it to its correct conclusion, to explain it fully.³  And then he sent his Spirit to be with us, just as the prophets had foreseen, to comfort and guide us.  Let us all seek to diligently study God’s Word with eyes that are not clouded with preconceptions and thousands of years of man’s tradition, but let us study using all the resources God has given us under the power of His Spirit that lives in us.

1.  This is a loaded verse and there is a lot for us to unpack later.  For now, just know Jesus ‘yoke’ is God’s instruction that binds us together so we can do the work we have to do.

2.  The Hebrew can mean either bronze or copper, but copper is much more likely in this area.

3.  This is why, in “The Chosen,” Jesus says, “I am the Law of Moses.”  He is the author and embodiment of the Law and the Prophets, and he came to explain them and fulfill their meaning to us.