Core Text: John 3 (Nicodemus and Jesus), with reference to 2 Timothy 1:6-7
Main Thesis: Intellectual or religious knowledge of Christianity is not the same as being spiritually born again. True salvation requires a work of the Holy Spirit — being “born from above.”
Key Points:
- Nicodemus, a master Bible scholar, still lacked genuine spiritual life — representing anyone who knows about Jesus but doesn’t truly know him.
- Ray shares his own testimony: raised in church, spiritually empty until a sovereign encounter with God at age 19 in college.
- The bronze serpent in Numbers 21 foreshadows Christ on the cross — we must “look to” Jesus in our sin, not our own religious performance.
- Sin is not just actions but thoughts, pride, and motive.
- The only people beyond reach of salvation are those who love darkness and refuse to come to the light.
Call to Action: Humble yourself before God — not as a guarantee, but as the first step toward an encounter with the Holy Spirit.
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Thank you. Thank you, Brother Ron. Jackie and I, we just came back from Dallas, Texas. We spent a week being with a band of brothers and sisters from a family of churches. We feel very refreshed. I did not know that there are people who think like me and who believe what I believe, but I found a group of people who are. Our hearts just knit together just so fast.
And we had eight-hour sessions each day. People are spirit-filled. They don’t tire easily.
Just, just a lot of praise, a lot of worship, being on our face, a lot of preaching, testifying, tears, just. I was blown away.
What the Lord did this past week and many testimonies, I think, will come forth from this time. And I always called myself a conservative Charismatic. To defend my position, I kind of framed it by, okay, I’m not this on this extreme, I’m not that on that extreme.
And this group was a group of brothers and sisters who said, we are holding intention, the word and the Spirit, which is another way of saying conservative Charismatic.
But they did it in a different way that I think honors the Lord way better than I have these last 15 years. They did it by saying, that guy, we might not fully agree, while we bless him, this guy could be a little bit off. I don’t agree with him on certain points, but he’s my brother.
And to bring unity around this conservative Charismatic, equaling word and spirit, we are unifying under the essentials. The non-essentials, we hold loosely. We may do things a little differently from one church to another.
And so I learned that I haven’t repented enough, but I will be repenting this coming week of how I was too careless with my words and framing things in ways that did not honor the Lord and did not encourage unity in the body of Christ.
And so that is the kick in the butt the Lord did for me as I fellowship with people who, we have the same convictions. But they, they walked it out in a way that just really challenged me. And so that is. That’s my quick reflection on this past week.
Let me just read a couple of verses and we’ll pray from 2 Timothy 1:6.
6 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, 7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:6-7, ESV)
Okay, let’s pray. Father, we pray that the sincere faith that some of us have, that you would fan it into flame, that as we see you, there is a transformation that happens in your presence. When we encounter you, we get transformed from timidity and fear to fearlessness, and from self-centeredness to love, and from just busy minds and stress and anxiety to a sound mind.
This is what happens when we come face to face with you.
So, Lord, we ask that for those who don’t know you, that we would meet you tonight for the first time. And for those who have met you and whose faith is sincere like Timothy, I pray it would be fanned into flame and reach a higher level. Thank you, Lord.
We pray that you would help us and help me to preach the gospel in a way that is simple and understandable. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
What is a. And this is the Lord just changing the message during the worship.
What is your favorite verse? Or okay, it could be your favorite verse. So if you don’t have a favorite verse, what is one of the most popular verses? So you can answer either.
Yes, John 3:16. Yes, I will touch on that one. But anybody else have a favorite verse that they want to share? And maybe we can limit it to a verse that captures the gospel.
And without cheating, who was this verse given to? Nicodemus.
Okay, so let’s go to the verses before.
1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 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.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:1-21, ESV)
Amen.
And there is the gospel in this chapter. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,that whoever believes in him will be saved.
Nicodemus was a man who was an expert of the Bible. You could say he was a PhD of the Bible. And yet he was not born from above.
All he knew was earthly birth and earthly learning and earthly study and earthly attaining of a degree. And he comes to Jesus at night because for a man of his stature and his background, he should know spiritual things. And yet somehow, deep down, he understands.
And maybe some of you who grew up in church,you will feel in this moment, maybe I don’t know Jesus. Maybe I can talk about Jesus and talk about faith and talk about heaven and hell and sin, but it’s here. It is mental, it is intellectual. It’s not here.
And Nicodemus felt something on the inside. It’s not quite clicking. I can keep teaching, but I don’t understand.I remember when I was 19 years old. I grew up in church, and yet I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know a thing about Jesus. I was so bored when I went to church. Nothing made sense.
I went on a mission trip actually in high school. And I was so uninterested in spiritual things. I was interested in a girl who was attending the mission trip like I was. My focus was there.
And as I’m sleeping in the night, I’m playing secular songs. So clearly, spiritually, I was not in a good place. I was only there because my dad told me to go, because he had a plan. You go to this trip and then you write about that in your college essay, that’s going to improve your chances of going to school. So he had his motives. But God touched me there on that trip. And when I came home, I started reading the Bible a little bit. I was interested in spiritual things.
And then it got quenched because my dad said, what are you reading the Bible? You got to work on your college essays, go back to your studies. And so the Spirit that started to move, it just got shut down when I was in high school.
But I remember it started to activate. Something started to change. And I remember even as a pastor, many years later when I met Jesus as a sophomore in college, so that’s 1993. I didn’t become a pastor until 2011 and then started preaching for two years. Around 2013, I was stuck again.
And it was exactly the way Nicodemus must have felt. He studies a Scripture and still he doesn’t understand that much.
It says in 1 Corinthians 2 that the natural man cannot natural mind. The natural man cannot understand the things of God. They are spiritually discerned. And even if you have a PhD in Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, systematic theology, it does not mean you have been born from above.
And I remember all the commentaries that I would read in my first two years of being a pastor.
And it was a 40-hour exercise and full manuscript, a 20-page essay, and trying to deliver that on a Sunday. And then after two years, I was like, burning out. I said, this can’t be preaching. There’s got to be more than this.
And the Lord told me, put all of the commentaries away. That’s just man’s interpretation. And you’re trusting in a man’s interpretation and you’re just regurgitating somebody else.
Did you know you can do that and not be born again, born from above, as long as you’re academically trained and you know what commentaries to turn to?
And these guys have PhDs. I bet they’re very similar to Nicodemus. you’re putting your full trust in these men, these authors. How foolish I was.
Because I can’t understand spiritual things with my natural mind and just studying about it from other people. It’s not even my own study of the original text and the history. No, I’m going. I’m like, bypassing all of the study.
I’m just trusting somebody else’s study who has a Ph.D. Just because of the training that we have in America, we lift up people with degrees in education, and we think because they have a few letters after their name, they must know more than me. We get brainwashed that way in school.
You trust the person behind the pulpit just because they have a degree. And if you ask them, like, how did you learn this? Well, I learned at a seminary. Well, where did a seminary learn it?
They learned it from a commentary. Where did this commentary come from? It’s just a circular thing. Degrees of people teaching other people without degrees.
This is the truth. This is what you should believe. And Nicodemus is an expert in that way of thinking and trying to attain spiritual life. And he hit a wall.
And you might be feeling that you’ve been attending church for many years, maybe you’re even serving, and maybe you’ve even taught Sunday school, you’ve taught a Bible study. But if you’re honest, maybe you don’t know too much about spiritual things.
It takes great humility. I respect Nicodemus. I respect him immensely. He is. He should be the hero of all the academic types, that if he can encounter Jesus and at the end of his life, there are signs that he is a disciple of Jesus.
If this scholar of a man, the teacher of teachers with multiple PhDs, if this guy can humble himself and say, I don’t know anything, Jesus, you’re the real teacher. Can you start teaching me? If he can be saved, there’s hope for all of us.
And he says,
3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3, ESV)
God and born again is actually another way to translate that is born from heaven. We know earthly birth. Earthly birth. You came out of your mother’s womb, you grew up physically, you attended school, you graduated, you became a. You became. Graduated elementary school, and you went to junior high, high school, college, and you get a job.
And that is all earthly and the Spiritual things. In certain circles, it’s the same thing.
You go to seminary, you get a PhD, and you just study and study and study. And it’s earthly but spiritual life from the man who came from above. He says, let me tell you a thing or two about heaven. I’ve been there. And he says, you need to be born from there a second time. That’s why it’s translated born again. But it is born from heaven.
And how does this heavenly birth, this second birth, happen? Jesus says, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (John 3:5, ESV)
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:6-8, ESV)
This heavenly birth, this new birth, this being born from above, it starts with the Spirit of God, and only God can do that for you.
You can’t do that in your own flesh and insert the Spirit of God in you and be born like. Just because I believe intellectually, that is not being born from above.
Being born from above is like a blind man. And there’s so many different ways to describe the gospel and salvation. It’s like a blind man who is utterly walking in darkness. And in a moment, everything changes. The light switch comes on and he sees. That is how radical a transformation being born from above is.
Of course, some of us, we.
Maybe we can’t perceive it that way. And okay, there’s a salvation that happens progressively, step by step. And there’s a season when maybe you were born from above. But in the Spiritual realm, if we could perceive it accurately, it happened in a moment where the Spirit just blew upon your life.
For me, it was when I was a sophomore in college. I had no interest in God at all. But I found myself after one year of just losing my way and just blowing that, just a blur of a year.
And then sophomore year, just finding myself on the street because we just, our housing fell through, and we’re like scrambling in the summer. I ended up at a house full of 23 or so Christian brothers.
So that’s how God started to bring me back. I started attending a church with these brothers and started hearing about sin. It’s like, what? I didn’t think I was a sinner. I thought I was a good person. I listened to my parents. I haven’t murdered anyone.
And just little by little, and if you read the latter half of the verses in this chapter, I began to see that there’s something in me called sin that I didn’t recognize before.
It’s not even just, it’s not even the acts. Although as a teenager, as a 19-year-old, there are plenty of sinful acts. But even the deeper things of the way I think, this pride that says I’m better than everybody.
And throughout my college years, it was like me trying to prove that I am worthy of respect. I am stronger, I am smarter, I am better than you. I might not articulate, but deep down there is that kind of arrogance, this kind of pride in me.
Of course, with all the hormones of that year, all the lust of the flesh, even if you don’t act it out, it’s just even the thoughts. And as I’m attending church, I’m starting to see a conviction of sinfulness that I never knew I had.
Of course, there are plenty of actions when you’re that young. But on top of that, it’s the way I thought to myself when nobody saw it. But I knew what I was thinking. I knew how I looked at other people.
And God began convicting me of my sin. And on one particular day when I was 19 years old, the wind blew. I was a corpse walking into that service, but I walked out of that person a new creature. Because the wind blew and the eyes opened, the ears opened, and there was an altar call.
And I went forward and I gave my life to Jesus because I heard Jesus call me by name. I did not want to go up. I was such a shy kid. This is a relatively new group, and it’s like hundreds of people, and I see people going forward.
On any given Sunday, as I was leading up to that day, I say, what are they doing? Why are they on the floor? Why are they weeping? What are they confessing? It’s a little crazy to me.
I’m not going to do that. I already thought, I’m saved. I grew up in church. I’m born again. I’m never going to do what these guys are doing. And I’m so shy, and I’m just going to stay in the back. And just, I felt the compulsion. No, come forward, Ray. I’m calling you. Come forward. And like me fighting myself, like, I want to stay seated here. I don’t want to give my life. I don’t want to go forward in public in front of people. And next thing I know, I’m in the front.
I’m in the very front. I’m flat on my face, weeping over my sin. It’s because the wind blew, the wind blew.
And it says, and this is verse 14,
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14-15, ESV)
And of course, this is a reference from Numbers 21. This is even after the parting of the Red Sea. And this is a symbolic representation of the new believer’s life, that you pass through water.
And so for a believer, as it says in Mark 16:16, we are saved. Everyone who is baptized and believed is saved.
And this parting of the Red Sea, as you look at other places in Scripture, is a symbol of baptism. And these people were baptized. They were running away from Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, this supernatural miracle, it’s them being born again, you could say.
And yet despite that, and now I’m talking to those who are born again, these supposedly born again believers, they grumbled in the wilderness every day.
And God got so fed up by their grumbling that he sent fiery serpents. And the poison of these serpents was killing the people. But God had mercy. And he said, Moses, create a bronze snake, put it on the staff, lift it up, and whoever looked upon that bronze pole of a snake would be healed.
And of course, Jesus, who died on a cross, he became sin for us. He was put, raised up for all of humanity, of all generations.
And those who recognize their sin, we look at that cross because Jesus became sin, literally, that serpent, that sin. He bore that on the cross. And we look on his payment through his own life. There is forgiveness and there is salvation for those who confess their sin.
And you might think, well, if I were these people and I lived through that kind of miracle, I wouldn’t be grumbling if I saw bread fall from heaven and water come from the rock and a pillar of fire and cloud, and I literally see these miracles every day.
I wouldn’t grumble. I wouldn’t complain. But if you’re born again, it’s the same reality for us. In some sense, we have the fullness of the revelation. That was just a foreshadowing, that was just a shadow. We have the true substance, Jesus Christ.
But aren’t we? Don’t we grumble all the time? Although we’re saved, although we have a roof over our head? Even Jesus doesn’t have a place to lay his head. We have people who care for us. The whole world turned on Jesus, crucified him. You had gas, you had a car to get here.
You have food in your stomach. There’s snacks in the back. Yeah, we complain all the time. This is how serious this problem called sin is.
And we must look to Jesus on a daily basis and say, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. The only people, as we read the latter part of this chapter, the only people who are left out of this salvation plan are those who are in the darkness. And their works are dark works, are evil works, sinful works. And because they love the darkness, they love the works of darkness.
They don’t want to change. Those are the only people for whom the gospel will stay out of your reach. There’s no condemnation as we read.
Let me read it again. It says,
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:17-21, ESV)
So did you catch the tension here? As sinners, we notice this poison is in us and it is our acts.
But even deeper than our acts, it’s our thoughts, it’s our motives, it’s how we view people, it’s our pride, it’s our lust. All of that is called sin.
But if you come to Jesus and you come clean and you say, this is who I am, the same way that Nicodemus, as a scholar, he’s showing he’s coming clean. He’s not trusting in his academics, he’s not trusting in his. What he’s projecting of this. This. This thin veneer of respectability. He is coming clean to Jesus, saying I don’t know anything.
I’m too ashamed right now to get baptized, in a sense, and to declare to the world that I am coming to you right now. But I’ll do it in private. But he’s coming clean to Jesus.
And if you come clean, no matter what you’ve done, there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
The only person who cannot be saved is. you’re in the darkness and you love it and you don’t want to change. And there’s certain things that you do that nobody sees. You want to keep doing it.
That person is in danger of not being saved. But as long as you say, this sin, this chain, this addiction, these works of evil, I don’t want to live this way anymore, there is a free offer from Jesus.
Come into the light, confess your sins. There’s forgiveness for you. There is no condemnation. No one’s going to judge you. Just come clean, confess your sins. And Jesus says, I want to set you free.
If the Spirit is blowing in your heart, please answer his voice. Okay, let’s pray. And if you could.
If we could have the band come forward. Can we all stand? I just want to lead us in some prayer.
How well do you know Jesus? Do you know him personally? Is he abstract and conceptual? Is he personal? We’re not talking about your parents, Jesus, or your siblings, Jesus, we’re talking about yourself. Is he your master? Is he your Lord? Is he the best friend that you run to before anybody else? That’s how you know you know him. Because he’s so precious to you. Do you know this Jesus?
If not, there’s no shame in admitting that you don’t know him.
It must have been so hard for Nicodemus. A teacher of the law, a teacher of teachers, a Pharisee of Pharisees. He would be like a seminary professor who’s a pastor. There’s no shame in saying, I’ve been to so many church services over the years, but it’s so academic. I don’t know what it means that the Spirit blows and opens eyes and ears. And I don’t know what it means that spiritual things are understood through the Spirit and not through our brain or intellect.
If that is you, I want you to come forward. Or if you feel more comfortable just at your seat and say, Jesus, I want to know you.
Spirit, we invite you into this place. Please blow, Holy Spirit.
We don’t know where it comes from, where it’s going, but we invite the Holy Spirit to open up eyes and ears and soften hearts. We pray that we would be born from above and filled with the Holy Spirit and not be afraid, timid, and selfish, but be transformed by an encounter with the real Jesus who gives us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind.
All the noisy thoughts can be replaced with a sound mind.
All of the self-centeredness in the ways that you think when you’re by yourself can be replaced with love.
All the timidity, all the self-consciousness, all the praise of man seeking can be transformed into power. You just need to meet him, and it just starts with humbling yourself.
Humbling yourself is not a guarantee that he will meet you, but it is the first step. For Nicodemus, it was his first step to come forward, and he did not meet Jesus. I think it didn’t seem like it, at least from the text in this chapter.
But to this scholarly man who humbled himself, Jesus gave the most precious and famous verse that captures the gospel. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)
And then sometime later in Nicodemus’ life, as he continued to humble himself, the wind blew. The first step: just humble yourself, and you can express it in whatever way that’s comfortable to you. Whether it’s to come forward, whether it’s to kneel at your seat, whether it’s to raise your hands.
Do it in a way that is comfortable for you. It’s just between you and the Lord. Everybody else, eyes closed. We just want you to meet the Lord. We invite the Holy Spirit to come and blow in this place. Okay, let’s pray. Pray Lord, that you would help us. Pray that you would help us, O God. Pray that you help us, O Lord. We want to be born from above. Want to be born from above. Want to be born from above. Please help us, Holy Spirit. Help us, Holy Spirit.
Help us, Holy Spirit.
Help us, Holy Spirit. Save your people. Save your people.
We confess all of our sins. We humble ourselves in your presence. We confess all of our sins, Lord. Doesn’t matter all the years in church, all the years even serving. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have the Spirit. It doesn’t matter if our eyes have become blind, our ears have become deaf. If we are not filled with the Spirit.
What power do we have if we have an encounter you? What hope do we have for power, love and a sound mind?
We’re going to stay the same year after year. Please help us, Lord. Please help us, Lord. Please meet us, O Lord, without an encounter. Lord, we’re the same year after year.
Please, we pray that the Spirit would come and open up eyes and ears. Help us, oh Lord. Help us, oh Lord. Help us, O Lord. Help us, oh Lord.
Can we pray for one another? You don’t have to share, but if the Lord puts something on your heart, just lay hands on someone next to you and just pray.
Whatever the Lord deposits in your heart, just pray for the person next to you for the next few minutes. Okay, let’s pray.