13 A Teacher Come From God

XIII A TEACHER COME FROM GOD

John 3:2 The third chapter of the Fourth Gospel is in some respects an outstanding chapter. For one thing, in his third chapter the evangelist introduces his readers into the first inquiry-room, as we would call it. And in that canonical inquiry-room our Lord Himself is the Director and the Counselor of awakened souls, while a ruler of the Jews is the inquirer and the convert; and all the time the evangelist is standing by and is laying up for our learning all that he sees and hears that night. Nicodemus had not slept soundly one single night, nor had he spent one single day without feelings of remorse, ever since his visit of inspection and interrogation to Bethabara. Among the many impressive things that Nicodemus had seen and heard at the Jordan, the baptism of this new Rabbi, called Jesus of Nazareth, was the most impressive and the most memorable. And Nicodemus had never got over that. Ever since his mission to Bethabara Nicodemus had carried about in his conscience this self-condemnation that he also ought to have offered himself to the Baptist for repentance and for reformation and for the seal of John’s baptism to all that. And Nicodemus would undoubtedly have come back from Bethabara to Jerusalem one of John’s baptized disciples, had it not been for his high standing in Jerusalem, and for his fear of his fellow Pharisees. And ever since Nicodemus had despised himself and condemned himself in his own heart and conscience because he had not the courage to do what he knew he ought to do. At the same time it was not the Baptist and his baptism that weighed so much on the old ruler’s mind; it was much more Jesus of Nazareth. It was all he saw and heard concerning our Lord that took such possession night and day of Nicodemus. And thus it was that at last he stole away out of the city one dark night and stumbled down to Bethany, where Jesus of Nazareth was understood to lodge. I cannot put you in possession of all the things that were agitating the old ruler’s mind that night. To you and to me Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. But just what Nicodemus feared that this mysterious stranger might yet turn out to be, we cannot with any certainty say. "Rabbi," he introduced himself, and said: "we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God." But it took the old ruler’s breath away when our Lord answered him with this so sudden sword-thrust: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom by heart. And my part now is to gather out of this interview some of the lessons it is written to teach us about our own being born again. For this is the first of all lessons for us to learn. This is the first and the best lesson for us in all this world of lessons. And it is the lesson that leaves us the fool of all fools, till we have learned it and received it and experienced it. It is infinitely the most humbling of all our lessons. But it is at the same time infinitely the most consoling and cheering of all our lessons. Let us learn it then. And let us, by God’s timeous grace to us, learn it to-night.

Everything for you depends on your being born again, says this Teacher in His sword-thrust tonight to us also. It had been better you had never been born at all, He says to us, unless you are to be born again. Your birth of your mother, He says to us all, will be no blessing either to her or to you; but rather the reverse, unless you are born again. For, " that which is born of the flesh is flesh." And we know that to be so to our bitter experience, and without His saying it at all. Only, without having our bitter experience of it this Teacher come from God knew what He was saying, and knew it down to the bottom, and away out to the end--a knowledge which we do not yet fully possess. And though He said it over and over again, and with every possible emphasis, He had no pleasure in saying it. And He would never have said it at all, and so many more things like it, unless He had been authorized and enabled to remedy it to Nicodemus and to you and to me.

"Flesh," before we begin to think, is just so much mere sound to you and to me. It is just so many letters in ink upon the page. We read it and hear it and it passes away. But He knew what He said when He said "flesh." He saw it when He said it, and He felt in His heart all He said with His mouth. He shuddered as He said "flesh." And both John and Nicodemus saw Him shudder till they shuddered to be beside Him. He saw the whole evil heart of man as He said it. He saw all the sin and misery of human life from the fall of Adam to the day of judgment as He said it. He saw his own cross on Calvary as He said it. And as He said it He saw Himself sitting on the throne of judgment and all who are born of the flesh standing at His left hand. And He would have been flesh Himself; He would have been made of stone, to see all that, and not to shudder to His inmost soul, as He said it. "Flesh," as our Lord here uses that awful Scripture word, is not human nature, as the ambiguous word sometimes signifies. For in that innocent sense of mere human nature, our Lord Himself was and is born of the flesh. "The Word," as you all rejoice to know, "was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth." But "flesh," as our Lord speaks of it to Nicodemus, and as Paul writes of it in all his spiritual epistles, is human nature fallen, till it has neither grace nor truth left in it. "Flesh," to them, is human nature poisoned at its very source by sin. It is human nature corrupted and polluted at its heart of hearts beyond all the descriptions of Christ or of Paul or of any one else. It is human nature become the seat of sin and the stronghold of Satan. It is human nature turned into the true and the only bottomless pit. "Flesh," in short, is death and hell. Do you wonder then that He who saw all that, and who had been sent to shed His blood in order to change all that; do you wonder that He brushed aside all the hypocritical civilities of the old Pharisee and brought him face to face with the tremendous realities he was trifling with, and he, an old man, on the brink of eternity? He would have been fallen flesh Himself if He had said anything else than just what He did say in that inquiry-room that night, and if He had said it with any less passion than that passion was with which He said it. But as He also said later on that same night--"God had not sent His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved." And thus it is that having said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," He immediately went to say--"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It is a universal law, and a law to which there are no exceptions, either in nature or in grace, either on earth or in heaven,-that which is born inherits and holds for ever the same nature as that which beget it and bore it. If you are born of a beast, you have the nature of a beast. If you are born of a woman, you have the nature of your father and your mother in you; you are a human being. If your father is the devil, then you will dwell for ever with the devil and his angels. And if you are born of God, you are a son of God. In the words of Christ to Nicodemus that night, if you are born of the Spirit of God, then you are a spiritually-minded man. You are a partaker of the divine nature. You are among the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. But the best way to see what it is to be born of the Spirit is to look at Jesus Christ Himself. Look well at the Preacher of that night, if you would understand His sermon. Look well at the Teacher of that night, for He is the best explanation and illustration of His own lesson. Do not look at Nicodemus, nor even at John, no nor even at Paul. Look well at them also. But look first and last at Jesus Christ. That is what it is to be born of the Spirit. That is what it is to be born again. That is what it is to have a spiritual mind. You know to your cost, and to the cost of all who come near you, what it is to be born of the flesh. But look well and look long at Jesus Christ if you would fall in love with the new birth. Look at Him at all times and in all places; and as you look at Him, it is a law of the new birth that you will become like Him. No man can keep looking all his days at Jesus Christ without in the end becoming wholly like Him. In everything like Him; but for instance in things like these. Things like these take place with you every day, do they not? as they took place with Him. Some one injures you. Some one speaks against you. Some one stands in your way, and obstructs you and surpasses you. Some one despises you and insults you. Some one overlooks you, and treats you with contempt. Some one shows you the basest ingratitude, and denies in the day of your need that he ever knew you. But by this time you have been born again. By this time all these things have become new to you. It is a strange and an unaccountable change to yourself that has come over you; but so it is, and you cannot deny it. You are become meek and lowly in heart. You are strangely loosened off from your former foundations, and you feel inwardly sweet and happy amid all that happens to you. You find yourself, nowadays, actually finding excuses for your enemy. You wonder that he stops there. You are quite sure that God is restraining him else he would say and do far worse things than all that. And when you are near God, of all men in the world, your bitterest enemy, your successful rival, your constant thought, will rise up before you, and your heart will melt for him at the sight of him and at the thought of him at such a time and in such a place. Till the day alone will declare what went up to God from your heart at that secret hour concerning him and his. When once you are born of the Spirit it will be almost as sweet to you to hear your competitor praised and promoted, as it once was to snuff up all that sweet incense to yourself. Humility and patience also will begin to take the place of high looks and a proud heart. And sudden outbursts of anger will cease with you, and old resentments will decay and will die out. Courtesy and gentleness also will be shed round about you where once you were a proverb of all coarseness of manners and all churlishness. And, perhaps most miraculous of all, there will be times when your first thought will be the glory of God, and the good of your neighbor, till you clean forget yourself altogether. To have looked for these things at one time from you; God and man would sooner have got grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles. But in the new birth a greater transformation than even that takes place. For, before you were born again, no thistle in all the world ever stung like you; and no thorn ever tore, as you used to tear, all who came near you. But now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

It is no wonder that so many of you are saying at this moment within yourselves,--But can a man be born to all that blessedness when he is as old and is as old in sin, as I am? O yes; you can. Most certainly, you can. Look at Nicodemus. Nicodemus was born again that very night. He returned to Jerusalem next morning a new creature. It was a quarter to nine, said John Wesley. And by a quarter to nine to-night you may be alone with Christ in your inquiry-room at home. But, far better than that. Our Lord did not let Nicodemus so much as go home. He seized him for his salvation on the spot. Yes; not only will you also be born again to-night; but, old as you are, you will yet live to do Him services that no other disciple will have the courage, and the love, and the liberality to do. Only come to Him, and He will see to all that being fulfilled in you. Do not let your gray hairs keep you back. Do not let the number of your years weigh too much on your mind. Do not let the mountains of your life-time of sin, and your whole chains of such mountains, bar you back. Let all these things the more compel you to Christ on the spot. Yes, on this very spot.

We do not have Nicodemus’s narrative of that night. Much less do we have his autobiography after that night. But you can make it up for yourselves out of this chapter, and out of some other precious passages in this same gospel. Till at last you will come to Nicodemus bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight, when Joseph of Arimathea and he took the body of Jesus, and wound it in the linen clothes with the spices. And then with that Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, disappears from earth, till you will compare your experiences of the new birth with him in that kingdom of God which he has now inherited for evermore. For all who are born again, as Nicodemus was, are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, and shall, with him, inherit the Kingdom of God for ever. Amen!