This is quite interesting, isn't it, that Jesus would chide this man...as He does, as the teacher of Israel. And legitimately so, because he hasn't put the pieces of the puzzle together. What pieces of the puzzle? Well, you can turn here...to Ezekiel chapter 36 and to verses 25 to 27. God's word to His prophet: I will sprinkle water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules. Now, Nicodemus would have known these words, from Ezekiel. He would have known the words of the psalmist, the psalmist's prayer, in Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me. You see, what Jesus is doing is this: that the prophesied cleansing of the Old Testament and the renewing of heart by the Spirit is that to which Jesus refers as the basis of entry into the Kingdom. ...The experience of cleansing from the old life, symbolized by water, and the regenerating power of the Spirit, symbolized by wind, are the pictures that Jesus is employing in pointing out to Nicodemus the absolute necessity of being changed by God. ...We don't understand how the wind whips up. The hymn writers usually help us: I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin; revealing Jesus through the Word, creating faith in Him. I know not how this saving faith to me He did impart, or how believing in His Word wrought peace within my heart. But I know whom I have believed... This, you see, is at the very heart of this. We're talking actually about conversion. We're talking about being saved. We're not talking about encouraging people to have a kind of superficial interest in the existence of somebody called Jesus of Nazareth. We're talking about a radical, God-ordained, eye-opening, heart-changing encounter with Jesus. ...And if we have started to become sufficiently satisfied with the vaguest of interests on the part of our friends and our cronies, then we have moved away from what the gospels teach, and have begun to create some kind of gospel of our own. Excerpt from "A Man in the Night," (Part 2 of 2), Alistair Begg |
(Note: This sermon is labelled Part 2 -- there is a Part 1 online as well, but the parts overlap and in a confusing way, so you may want to just stick with Part 2.)